Path Into the Darkness
Part Six: WilyKit
Chapter Three: The Depths of Hell

While Alluro was with Psiarik and on a subsequent short visit with Erissa afterwards, Chief Ambassador Darkail sat alone in the holding room mulling over all of the recent events and trying to think of a way to bring everything back to some semblance of normalcy. He was not having much luck.



The hunter felt a terrible surge of guilt knowing that WilyKit had succumbed to her demons and become possessed by one, even if it was an entirely different entity than he suspected. Darkail wondered if he had allowed Alluro to remove the mind block the night he had left WilyKit at the MoonTower if his beloved feline would still have wound up possessed, or if she would have had the ability to see her demon attackers for what they were and stopped them in time. He hoped, although with more than a shade of regret, that the answer to that question was yes, because if it was then it meant that there was still a chance to save her. It was a logical step to assume that if they were able to find WilyKit and remove her mental block, and enlighten her to the truth that it might give the Thundercat the strength to fight the evil spirit possessing her and break free once and for all. He was determined that it was worth a try, at any rate.

The ambassador was shaken out of his thoughts when Frostor returned with Alluro and Chilla. “You’re back,” Darkail greeted them, standing up as they came in. “How did it go?”

“My sister did a real number on my son’s mind,” the hypnotist informed him with a frown. “What she did should not have even been possible, and it’s certainly nothing that I can reverse and I doubt that Altheus, that neurologist, or any of the other doctors here can do anything about it. The reason he’s in a coma is that his psyche has been completely torn from his body. In essence, his body is there but his soul is not. Where that is, is something that only Torlei can answer.” Alluro folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “Even though it shouldn’t surprise me at this point, it’s still a shock that she can truly hate me that much.”

Darkail smoothed his hair into place and regarded Alluro. “I was thinking about the situation while you were gone, and I have an idea.”

Alluro raised a suspicious eyebrow at the notion of yet another one of the hunter’s “brilliant” ideas. “Dare I even ask?”

“If Torlei was able to possess WilyKit because she used what WilyKit didn’t remember—what we blocked—to manipulate her to agree to the possession, wouldn’t it stand to reason that if WilyKit were to remember the truth, she would lose her hold over her? Maybe if we can find WilyKit and remove block—”

“Not necessarily,” Alluro clarified. “Theoretically it’s possible, but depending on her strength, WilyKit may not be able to break out of Torlei’s hold even with that knowledge.”

Darkail was encouraged by the psi’s answer. “But theoretically it could work, right?”

“It might,” Alluro conceded cautiously.

The hunter then turned toward Frostor and Chilla. “You said Mumm-Ra and WilyKit went to New Thundera after destroying the MoonTower, right?” 

Frostor nodded. “They said they were going after the Thundercats, which is why WilyKat and Leonora left so quickly. They were hoping to beat them there and warn their people about it.”

“Typical of the cats to show up, wreck our lives, and then take off, isn’t it?” Chilla muttered to Alluro, who nodded in full agreement. The Thundercats had not been high on the list of those he cared for to begin with, and the recent fiasco with WilyKit had certainly not endeared them to him any.

“Then that settles it, I’m going to Thundera to find WilyKit,” Darkail said determinedly, tapping his fist on the table in the room for emphasis.

Alluro blinked dubiously at the hunter. “Do that and you’re not going to find her, Dark, you’re going to find a mess of angry Thundercats who will likely want a piece of your hide for your part in her troubles, and my sister and her dark mage of a mate.” The hypnotist sighed audibly, wondering what it was about hunters that made them so impulsive and more often than not, in his opinion anyway, foolish. “And you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

Darkail smiled confidently at the psi. “Not to worry, I’ve thought that out.”

“Thinking, now that would be a first,” Alluro retorted.

If Darkail was fazed by Alluro’s sarcasm he did not show it. “It won’t be a problem because you’re coming with me, Alluro,” the hunter informed him. “Because you do know how your sister and Mumm-Ra, and you’ll be able to easily remove the block from WilyKit and bring her back to me—to the conscious world.”

“You expect me to go to New Thundera now?” Alluro exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Confronting Mumm-Ra and Torlei without a strategy other than ‘grab the Thundercat and hope we can remove her mental block before Torlei notices’ is not just utterly foolish but downright suicidal. You saw what they did to this place. Do you honestly think that the Thundercats will fare that much better against them, even with a warning from their friends? For all we know, they could be dead already.”

“Besides, Alluro just got back,” Chilla added with a stern look to the hunter. 

“Not to mention that you two are technically under arrest,” Frostor pointed out.

Chilla turned toward the Governor General and frowned. “You aren’t actually going to enforce that ridiculous warrant, are you?” 

“Technically I should,” Frostor argued. “When Selene was last conscious she said to enforce the arrest so that Alluro could be brought back to attempt to reach Psiarik. I can offer an educated guess that she would probably be inclined to drop the charges if asked, but unfortunately she is not in a position to be asked at the moment, thanks to Luna’s brand of stress-free visitation. I won’t ‘arrest’ you two as far as tossing you in a cell, but you should at least be detained on base under house arrest until Selene wakes up to make the final call herself.”

“But that could take hours!” Darkail protested. “If Selene was sedated she might very well not wake up until tomorrow morning.”

Alluro considered the situation carefully for a moment. Although he was not thrilled with the idea of leaving again so quickly to go to New Thundera of all places, he also had no desire to sit around waiting for something to happen in house arrest, and the more he thought about Darkail’s hair-brained scheme, frighteningly, the more reasonable it seemed. It occurred to Alluro that if he was ever going to figure out what Torlei had done to Psiarik, he would have to confront her. Going with Darkail would be a means to that end, and he supposed that it would be a good idea for someone with a shred of common sense—seeing as the Chief Ambassador’s was apparently on vacation—to go along with him, lest he get himself killed. Alluro then turned toward Frostor. “How about a deal then, Frostor?”

The Governor General made a face when he heard Alluro’s tone. “I know I’m not going to like this, but go ahead. What is it?”

“Our so-called crime was putting a mental block on WilyKit and threatening a diplomatic mission, correct? Or something along those lines?”

Frostor nodded a silent affirmative.

“Well then,” Alluro continued, “If Darkail and I were to go to New Thundera and remove WilyKit’s mental block, she could then testify that we didn’t do anything to her against her will, and clear our good names. You know she would tell the truth, because she’s a Thundercat and everyone knows they can’t tell a lie or Jaga will appear from the heavens and strike them with lightning for violating their precious code. Therefore, her testimony would prove without a doubt that we aren’t guilty of any crime and you would have done no harm in letting us go.”

Chilla blinked in surprise at Alluro. “You want to go with him?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Alluro told her with a wan smile. “But confronting Torlei is something that needs to be done—not just for my son, but if she stays in WilyKit’s body it’s quite possible that she and Mumm-Ra will overpower the Thundercats and come back here to finish the job of eliminating the rest of us.”

“What if you don’t succeed?” Frostor argued.

“The matter of our being under arrest and your letting us go will be the least of anyone’s worries if Mumm-Ra comes back for a second round, I imagine,” Darkail told the Governor General. 

Frostor considered the proposal for a few moments, before letting out a resigned sigh. “All right, fine. I just want to state for the record that the two of you are very lucky that I happen to agree that the arrest warrant was ridiculous and that I like you—because as a rule I do not like making exceptions to military protocol for anyone. I’ll give you clearance to go, but don’t make me regret this.”

“You have our word, Frostor,” Darkail said solemnly.

“Yes,” Alluro echoed sincerely, before turning toward Chilla. The ice woman’s expression was difficult to read, even for Alluro, who knew her intimately. He summoned his most charming and genuine smile as he regarded her. “Might I have a kiss for good luck before I leave?”

“You don’t deserve it for leaving again so soon, but all right.” Chilla stood on her tiptoes and brought her lips to his for a short but meaningful kiss. “The ‘welcome back’ one will be better,” she informed him quietly enough so that only he could hear, and then released him from their embrace.

Alluro grinned knowingly. “I look forward to that.”

Frostor opened the steel security door and dismissed the one of the guards on duty, and told the other to escort Alluro and Darkail to the spacecraft they had come in on with the explanation that the arrest had been suspended. “Good luck,” Frostor called after them as they started off. Alluro and Darkail each smiled back in confidence at the two ice Lunatacs that remained behind before disappearing around the corner. Frostor glanced at Chilla and finished his thought aloud. “I have a feeling you’ll need it.”

* * *

Far off from the living world in the dismal void in which she and Psiarik were still trapped, WilyKit turned away from her spectral tormentors and struggled to maintain what was left of her composure. “No,” she choked out hoarsely. “It’s not true.”

The forbidding figure of Grune the destroyer cackled derisively at the Thundercat’s desperate denial. “What, do you think you’re too high and mighty to face damnation for your acts, Thundercat? Wrong.” His deep and mocking voice echoed loudly throughout the empty realm, adding to her feeling of hopelessness.

“But I haven’t done anything to deserve it that I know of!” she cried. The distraught Thundercat clenched her fists and jaw, trying to hold back a fresh wave of frustrated tears from falling. “What did I do? If you know then tell me, because I don’t know!”

Psiarik put a hand on WilyKit’s shoulder and turned her around so that she faced him. “Don’t let them get to you. That’s what they want—to wear us down. We can’t let them win. They don’t deserve the satisfaction.”

Kalin let out a hearty, twisted laugh. “Oh, but we do, and we’re getting it in spades,” the hunter ghost argued. “Your desperation is very entertaining.”

Psiarik refused to acknowledge Kalin with more than a hardening of his glare, but the momentary diversion gave Grune enough of an opportunity to approach WilyKit from behind, his ghostly form boldly invading her personal space. Immediately WilyKit spun around and found herself face to face with the dead sabertooth. Grune chuckled malignantly at the Thundercat’s obvious distress, taking a perverse pleasure at the lost look in her eyes.

WilyKit could not stand his maddening silence for more than a few seconds. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?” she screamed at him.

“You really don’t know why you’re here in the realm of the damned,” Grune said, amused. “That’s even more pitiful than denying it.”

“W—what do you mean?” WilyKit stammered. “Do you know?”

Grune grinned cruelly. “Oh, yes. I know what you did. We all do.”

“Yeah, her body was possessed, and her soul sent here by the same one who did it to me,” Psiarik stated, unimpressed by Grune’s theatrics.

Kalin’s spirit slid behind Psiarik and wrapped around his more substantial form like a boa constrictor would its prey. “That only explains how she’s here, not why. There are many places a displaced spirit can go, but they all wind up where the path they have chosen takes them,” she said, tightening her grip around the still-living psi. “Nothing in this universe happens without a reason, and believe me, there’s a good reason she’s here in such fine company as Grune and myself. A very good reason.”

Instinctively Psiarik wrenched away from Kalin’s grasp. Though as a ghost she was intangible, there was still something undeniably suffocating about her presence, and the psi wanted no part of it. Instead he looked over at WilyKit, but her attention was fully captured by the magnetic and dark presence of Grune’s spirit. “He’s drawing you in, WilyKit,” Psiarik called to her. “You can’t let him.”

If WilyKit heard Psiarik at all, she ignored him entirely. “What do you know about me, Grune?” The hostility in her voice had faded, replaced by a fearful yet curious tone.

“Everything,” was the specter’s sinister reply.

“Everything?” WilyKit breathed.

“Everything,” Grune confirmed. “Including what happened in your lost months—Darkail, your time together, and most importantly, the Hunt.”

As the sabertooth spoke the last two words, WilyKit was flooded with an overwhelming feeling of dread. Something about that phrase made her heart skip a beat, and her stomach feel as though it was caught in a vise grip. “The Hunt?” she questioned nervously. “What is the Hunt?” 

As soon as Grune mentioned the Hunt, Psiarik froze where he stood. Though the hunters were not his native race, most Lunatacs, himself included, knew enough about them and their notorious ceremony to know what it involved, especially on the Night of Challenge. While the idea of the Hunt itself was not overly shocking to him, the notion that WilyKit would willingly participate in such a bloody ceremony was. 

Something Alluro had said to him on the night they’d had their argument over the issue of WilyKit’s mental block suddenly came back to him. 

“Maybe whoever did it had a good reason. Perhaps whatever she forgot will torture her worse than whatever she suffers now, and it was done for her own good.” 

Psiarik looked away for a moment, pondering the implications of that along with Grune’s statement. By the gods, he blocked her participation in the Hunt, Psiarik realized. It made perfect sense and yet no sense at all at the same time. WilyKit couldn’t live with what she did, so she and Darkail had Alluro make her forget it altogether. 

Meanwhile, Grune continued to delight in tormenting WilyKit with her unanswered questions. “What’s the Hunt, you ask? Oh, I could tell you,” the sabertooth ghost told her, “but I know someone else who’d much rather tell you that story.” Kalin rejoined Grune’s side as the dead feline finished speaking, and both ghosts immediately broke out into malevolent grins. 

“Who?” WilyKit asked, her voice shaky with emotion. “Who is it?”

Finding the amused look on the dead sabertooth’s face distressing and knowing that no good was going to come of it, Psiarik took a few steps toward WilyKit so that he stood right behind her. He had a feeling that momentarily the Thundercat would need all the support she could get. Seconds later, a sinister beam of light appeared in the space between the two of them and Grune and Kalin. The ominous light shimmered brightly, so intense that it momentarily blinded the living eyes that watched it, before it took shape and finally faded to reveal the form of a third ghost.

WilyKit gasped and stepped backwards when she saw his face, stumbling against Psiarik. Had the psi not been there she probably would have fallen to the ground, but the Lunatac caught her and righted her balance so that she remained standing. It was fortunate for her that he did, for as soon as her eyes locked with those of the maniacal and violent ones of the specter that now stood before her, she felt the last reserve of her strength begin to slip. 

WilyKit did not understand the reason behind the revulsion and fear she experienced as she looked into the ghost’s dead eyes, for to the best of her knowledge, she had never encountered him before that moment. The spirit was, or at least had been in life, a Lunatac, and aside from the few Lunatacs she had met as of late she was certain that she would have remembered meeting that one if their paths had ever crossed. For starters he was distinctly unusual in appearance for his kind. His natural coloring sharply contrasted with itself in his hair and skin, the first of which was a dark evergreen and the second of which was a pinkish purple, marking him as being of mixed-race descent. While that was not any less common among the Lunatacs as it was among Thunderians, WilyKit had yet to ever encounter a hybrid that had hunter blood until that moment. From the ghostly Lunatac’s features it was obvious that in life he had been at least half hunter, for he had their hair, their wide-set eyes, claw-like fingers, and graceful musculature. In contrast, his skin tone, especially in combination with the blue highlights around his eyes, indicated that the other half of his roots came from the psi race. 

Everything about the Lunatac spirit radiated a cruel, twisted, and insane evil that made the Thundercat’s blood run cold on sight. WilyKit knew instantly that she loathed and despised him, but at the same time she felt panicked and for a reason she did not yet understand, very, very guilty. “Who—who are you?” she asked him weakly.

Unlike his Thundercat companion, Psiarik recognized the Lunatac immediately. “I remember you. Demrock of Serilune,” the psi stated in a cold and accusatory tone.

“You remember me,” the ghost replied in a condescending, angry snarl, “but she doesn’t? Now that’s a surprise.”

WilyKat glanced back at Psiarik. “You know him?”

The psi narrowed his eyes in disgust. “Yes, I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with him before.”

“Indeed,” the ghost called Demrock growled, casting a hateful glare at Psiarik before refocusing upon WilyKit. “But it’s the Thundercat that I first want to settle my score with.” Rage burning in his eyes, he lunged toward WilyKit with the intent of choking her. Instinctively she yelped and leapt back before he could touch her with his hands—terribly bloody hands, she noticed in horror as they came at her—and she swung her legs outwardly at him in a defensive kick. Her foot sailed harmlessly through his transparent form. “Sorry, Thundercat, I’m a ghost now. You can’t do any more damage to me.”

“What do you mean?” the distressed WilyKit cried back. “I don’t even know you!”

“Don’t know me?” Demrock repeated in indignant outrage, “Thundercat, you killed me!”

WilyKit gasped in horror at the ghostly Lunatac’s statement, feeling an emotional shock that felt as physical as if she had just taken a hard blow to her gut. She stared at the spirit in disbelief, but deep down she feared—or even worse, she knew—that what he said was true. “No,” she protested, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “I couldn’t. I didn’t.” She became louder in desperation and hopelessness, but her body contradicted her words and she began to tremble and shake more violently with each passing moment, until she let out a loud, defiant scream. “No!” The distraught Thundercat then collapsed to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

“So you’re the one she killed on the Hunt,” Psiarik said, his voice eerily calm in light of the situation. He rested a hand upon WilyKit’s shoulder for support and narrowed his eyes at the dead hybrid. “Good for her,” he added in a low and hateful tone.

Caught by surprise at the psi’s words, WilyKit looked up briefly at Psiarik with tear-stained and accusing eyes. “This ghost says that I killed him and you say you’re happy about that? Why?” She forced herself to stifle another angry sob. If it turned out that Psiarik was against her as well, she did not know what she would do.

“Anyone that wiped him out of the world of the living should be commended in my opinion,” Psiarik told WilyKit. “He was a sick bastard that deserved to die. Do you remember who he is and what he did? Why he was the prey in the Night of Challenge to begin with?” 

WilyKit shook her head. “No.”

Psiarik cast a second glare at Demrock, who now stood between Grune and Kalin in a unified trio of malignancy. The three of them watched the exchange between the two living souls with twisted delight. “He killed children, WilyKit,” Psiarik explained. “After spending days, sometimes weeks, torturing them and reveling in it. Some of them were street kids or runaways, but there were some he stole right from their own homes. He took them to whatever place he used as his home and did unthinkably sick and depraved things to them. One—the only one—who escaped provided the information we needed to capture him and told us that this animal got pleasure from hearing them scream and cry for help… and then, if they didn’t die first, he’d kill them when he got bored, and find another. And then another.”

“Gods, that’s horrible,” WilyKit whispered shakily.

Psiarik nodded. “He did it sixteen times that we can prove.”

“And another eight that you missed,” Demrock interjected with a sneer. “But let us not quibble over details.” The spectral Lunatac glided a little closer to WilyKit and drew her horrified gaze to his. “It’s too bad that you killed me, when you did, Thundercat. I would have loved to play with your unborn cub someday, too.” 

Before she was even consciously aware that she had done it, WilyKit let out a low and furious growl and struck out at him, almost on instinct. The ghost effortlessly darted upward and laughed her attack off. “Oh, what are you going to do, Thundercat?” he challenged. “Kill me? Again?”

“He was a loathsome parasite, WilyKit,” Psiarik assured her. “If indeed you did kill him on the Hunt, you did the universe a favor by removing him from it.”

Grune sneered at the living souls. “There’s no ‘if’ about it, psi. She did it. And no matter how well your loser of a father and her hunter boyfriend hid it from her, she knows it. Deep down, she never forgot. In her dreams, and in the depths of her soul, she knew.”

WilyKit sobbed hopelessly into her hands. “He says I took his life… that’s wrong… how can that ever be justified, Psiarik? How can you justify it?”

“Because I sentenced him to the death you sent him to,” Psiarik told her. “The criminals guilty of something bad enough to wind up sentenced to being the prey on the hunters’ Night of Challenge are the worst of the worst. Under Lunar-Plundarrian law the fate of those condemned individuals is always decided by the acting rulers. Selene is too sensitive to do something like that on any kind of regular basis without it wearing on her psyche and depressing her, so to save her that stress, the responsibility of sentencing generally falls to—”

“You,” WilyKit guessed.

Psiarik nodded. “Yes. And believe me, I have no regrets in sentencing slime like that rislir over there to death, and for him to die like a hunted animal in the Night of Challenge is more than fitting after the crimes he committed.”

“You’re so arrogant,” Demrock sneered bitterly at the psi. “No wonder Mother hated you enough to send you here with the feline.”

“Mother?” both Psiarik and WilyKit repeated as they exchanged puzzled glances.

All three of the ghosts laughed ominously at their obvious confusion. “It’s a very small universe, isn’t it?” Grune laughed. “So small sometimes that the irony of it is truly something to behold.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” WilyKit demanded. The Thundercat realized grimly that she had lost her patience along with her sanity. 

“Fate,” Kalin answered, “and how it works out. Your mother detested what I helped Grune to become, and here, thirty years later, her daughter—the one she conceived on the night that she betrayed him—has effectively become just like the cat she turned her back on so many years ago.”

“That’s not true!” WilyKat screamed defiantly at the hunter ghost. “I’m nothing like him! I’m not!”

“I wonder if Darkail would agree,” Grune taunted her. “And I know Demrock here wouldn’t. What about your self-righteous Lord Lion-O and your fellow Thundercats? What would they say about a Thundercat born on the Hour of Darkness that broke their sacred Code of Thundera after running off with a green-haired stranger on the Moons of Plundarr? When you see him, ask Tygra that little question and see how he answers it. I’m sure—”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! Just shut up,” WilyKit shrieked almost incoherently before collapsing backwards against Psiarik, who held the distraught Thundercat upright. “It’s not true,” she insisted, sobbing in the Lunatac’s arms. “It’s not.”

“Of course it’s not true,” Psiarik assured her, and faced the ghosts angrily. “She’s nothing like you,” he asserted to Grune. “WilyKit never turned her back on her people or sold them out for her own personal gain. She never let her entire existence be consumed by hatred and revenge. Whatever her motivations for going on the Hunt were, I’d bet the royal fortune in credits that they weren’t anything like yours, sabertooth.”

Grune let out a hearty chuckle at Psiarik’s blustering. “And your faith in her would almost be admirable, if it weren’t so misguided. Who is she to you that you would care enough to defend her?”

“An ally who needs a friendly hand against a bunch of twisted ghostly bastards bent on tormenting her,” the psi retorted. “But honoring alliances is a concept long forgotten to someone like you, isn’t it?”

“Loyalty gets you nothing but a stab in the back, Lunatac,” the sabertooth snarled in retort. “It was your kind that taught me that, more than once.”

“And the nerve of you to stand there preaching so sanctimoniously about it!” Demrock added. “Betrayal is a condition that runs on your side of the family.”

Psiarik’s eyes darkened scornfully when the ghostly hunter hybrid mentioned an issue the psi was already touchy about. “You know nothing about—”

“Oh, but I do,” Demrock countered. “WilyKit’s lovely tribute to Grune by following in his footsteps isn’t the only connection here that’s entertaining in its irony.”

“What are you talking about?” Psiarik snapped irritably.

Demrock raised an eyebrow and sneered. “Don’t tell me you can’t see the family resemblance, cousin?”

Psiarik balked at the ghost’s statement. “What? That’s ridiculous! You’re a hunter…”

“Half hunter,” Demrock corrected him. “Surely you noticed that I don’t look like other hunters. And although I never met her until after my untimely death at WilyKit’s hands, I was told more than once when I was growing up that I looked more like my mother—your father’s sister.”

“No,” Psiarik said with a shake of his head. “You’re lying. Torlei had no children.”

“None that she acknowledged or told anyone about, even your father,” Demrock conceded, “but she never told anyone, even him, the full details of what happened to her during some months when she disappeared at fifteen years old when she bore the child of a hunter named Demlin. It was not by choice, of course—like me, Father liked his playthings young and unwilling.” The rislir ghost cocked his head to the side and laughed at the shocked expression on the living souls’ features. “But we’re all past that now, now that our mortal lives are over and she has someone to hold in higher contempt than the representation of what my father did to her. Ones who betrayed her in life, and continued the favor by interfering in her afterlife. I’m sure you can guess at who that might be.”

Kalin laughed lightly and put her arms coyly around the hunter half-breed ghost. “It’s funny how all those years I knew Torlei back in the city, that I never knew that she was the quiet and morose young mother of Serilune’s only living—at the time anyway—rislir child. Isn’t fate just full of surprises?”

“And just as your father stood by and watched my mother die and then defended her killer, you sent me to my death and defended my killer… who, despite their best efforts, has turned into everything her own people dreaded she might become—and worse, now that Mother controls her, I imagine,” Demrock continued, before fixing his gaze upon WilyKit once again. “I wonder how many she’ll add to the body count you’ve already started, kitty.” The ghost smiled bitterly before his features darkened to a hateful scowl. “I’d find it funny, too, if I wasn’t so personally involved. But as it stands, my only pleasure from it will be watching you suffer.”

“This is insane,” WilyKit protested. She clenched her fists in frustration as more tears she was unable to hold back began to flow down her cheeks. “This can’t be happening...” Her voice faded as she broke into heaving sobs. 

“It’s too late to stop it now, kitten,” Grune sneered at the Thundercat from the shadows. “It was too late for me and it’s far too late for you.”

“There’s got to be a way,” she sobbed, but as she cast a long and teary look at the unforgiving and cold faces of the ghosts, and the harsh reality of their words sank in, the last remains of the mental block Alluro placed all those months ago crumbled entirely and gave way to a flood of repressed memories. 

Instantly she was overwhelmed with flashes and images ten times more vivid, intense, and in the case of some, more horrible than any nightmare she had endured in the sleepless nights since the block had been placed. WilyKat relived the ceremonies of the Hunt one by one. She remembered killing the bird of prey on the Night of Air, slaughtering the small Mepirs on the Night of Fire, how she dove in the murky depths of the lake and strangled one of the killer fish on the Night of Water, and the rough and deadly wrestling match that she and Darkail fought against the bear-like creature from the Night of Earth. She recalled sitting with her lover at the fire in Serilune’s square after each ceremony, gutting and preparing their kills to be eaten, and she remembered the feral, intense way that she and Darkail had made love to celebrate those victories. And then she remembered the last night—every single horrifying detail of the Night of Challenge.

WilyKit and Darkail had taken the Eastern route to chase their prey. There was a river in that direction, one that they figured would attract their prey as an easy means of not getting lost and following a path far enough away from Serilune to avoid their fate. Darkail had told her that the smartest and most challenging of their prey would take such a route, so they followed the river. It was not long before WilyKit’s feline senses picked up on the scent of another Lunatac close by, one who had the semi-familiar scent of a hunter, but somehow off, and one who also had a strong scent of fear about him. Caught up in the bloody thrill of the Hunt, the Thundercat gave chase. At the time she had rationalized her murderous intentions away, telling herself that the act she was about to commit was not wrong because those who were there were condemned criminals marked for death, and that the chase and kill was a sport that would fine-tune her skills as a Thundercat. She had convinced herself that it was not really wrong, until the moment to strike came, and she pounced on her victim.

The man she landed on was a hunter, but he was a half-breed, which explained the familiar but strange scent she had picked up on. The hybrid fought her roughly and put up a chase and struggle that lasted for the better part of half an hour until she claimed an advantage and pinned him to the ground. When the time came for her to deliver the fatal blow, she wavered for a second, feeling a surge of conscience well up inside her, insisting to her that what she was about to do was wrong. At that moment, she almost changed her mind.

“I know you won’t kill me, Thundercat,” he had said to her. “Your kind is too merciful, too weak for it. I can see it in your eyes that you haven’t the stomach to kill.”

She lessened her grip the slightest bit. He had struck a nerve. Did she really want to be a killer? 

“That’s right,” the Lunatac said quietly, “let me go. No one will have to know.”

“You’re here because someone thought you deserved to die,” she responded evenly. “Why?”

“Does it matter?” he countered. “You don’t really want to kill me, do you?”

“Did you hurt someone?” she demanded.

The Lunatac took advantage of WilyKit’s distraction in questioning him by delivering a hard blow to her midsection and knocking her off of him. “Yes,” he growled. “And now I just hurt one more.” The one cast as prey changed his role to that of predator, and rolled over atop her, pinning her to the ground beneath him. “But you aren’t my usual type. You’re too strong for that. I like them weak, too weak to be as much trouble as you… but you’ll do.”

WilyKit clawed desperately at the half-breed, trying to get him off of her. He wrapped his long fingers around her throat and started to choke with surprising strength. She heard him emit a twisted laugh as she gasped and flailed beneath him. Although she ran with the hunters, it was obvious to him, as one who had been raised by them in Serilune, that she had never seriously tangled with one before. He was strong enough to crush her throat with one hand, which, to his twisted discovery, left the other one free to do her more harm. He drew his claws along the length of her body, exposed and vulnerable since it was devoid of clothing for the ceremony, breaking the skin and leaving a long, bloody trail from her chest to her thighs. “It’s unusual for a feline to be among the hunters. Your lover must be one. I can smell him on you. Was it he who convinced you to go out on this ceremonial night of bloodlust, Thundercat?” He clutched at the tender skin on the inside of her thigh, puncturing it in several places. 

WilyKit squealed and struggled more violently beneath him, but was not able to break out of his deadly hold for more than a few ragged gasps of breath before he reinforced his grip. “I wonder what it is that he finds so exciting about you. Think he’d mind if I went and found out?” The hybrid inched his hand poisonously up the length of her thigh until he reached her most private spot, and roughly thrust his hand in, invading and tearing at her tender flesh with his clawed fingers. 

An adrenaline wave of panic and rage surged inside the Thundercat, and she tapped into a reserve of strength she did not realize she still had. Somehow she managed to roll out from underneath the Lunatac, roaring like a wild beast as she did so, and threw him off balance. WilyKit scrambled to her feet before he was able to recover. She realized at that point she could have run away, but she did not want to run. She was too angry and too enraged for that. Instead she pounced on the Lunatac again and slashed at him violently with her own claws. “And to think I almost spared you,” she snarled hatefully. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

WilyKit struck him as hard as she could in the side of the head, not giving the Lunatac the time or the opportunity to recover between blows. When her fist started to ache from striking his skull, she picked up a rock and let it do the dirty work for her. He put up a good struggle against her, but he could not match her Thundercat skill and strength. Somewhere inside her a tiny voice pleaded for her to stop, but just like Grune had not listened to it so many years earlier, neither did WilyKit. Instead she listened to her anger and her rationalizations, ones that told her that he deserved to die and that he would only hurt others like he had before and like had just tried to do to her if she let him live. Somehow in her blind rage and thirst for blood, while the rock cracked into flesh, then bared and bloody bone, she became convinced that it was not only right, but that it was her duty to kill him, and that she should embrace it and carry it out.

And she did.

And now months later, trapped in a realm of emptiness and darkness, facing the ghost of the man she killed and the evil spirits of others who enjoyed watching her in torment, standing nearly alone in a lost oblivion of misery, she remembered and relived that terrible memory once again.

WilyKit screamed, over and over, unintelligibly and inconsolably, as the memories came pouring back to her in a terrible deluge. Psiarik tried to reach out to her and comfort her in her obvious pain, but she could not hear his words nor feel his touch. WilyKit cried out her despair until her lungs physically hurt, and when she could finally scream no more, she collapsed altogether.

Psiarik caught her and held her when she fell, not knowing what else to do. The three ghosts circled around the two of them like hungry vultures. “You might as well accept your fate and embrace damnation with the rest of us,” Kalin hissed coldly. “You don’t have a choice. There’s no way back.”

“There has to be,” Psiarik replied with quiet defiance, though now his own voice had now taken on a tone of hopelessness. The psi looked around, but saw nothing in the dark void they were in except for the three spirits that haunted them.

“But there isn’t,” Grune laughed. “Too bad for you.” 

Suddenly out of nowhere Grune’s spiked club materialized in his powerful hands, and he tapped it against his palm anxiously. Kalin and Demrock poised themselves into a striking position while their hunter claws seemingly grew several inches in length making them look twice as deadly. As Psiarik instinctively backed away, he noticed that the spectral eyes of their tormenters were now aglow with a sinister light of added evil power. The psi held WilyKit tighter, half protectively and half out of outright fear for both of them as the three wicked spirits, cackling in their impending victory, tightened their suffocating circle around mortal pair and moved in for the kill

Path 19