Kano & Cabbage

　　Chip myself away

　　Bit by stony bit

　　Smooth the crevices

　　until there`s nothing left

　　I could be a headstone

　　Finest in the cemetery

　　Chip away my epitaph:

　　Forget Me And Be Merry

　　*******

　　"I can`t do this anymore&"

　　Kano slowed to a stop at the end of a tunnel that opened into a wide cavern. His palms were raw. His knees were bruised. His throat was sandy, his belly was empty, and his heart struggled to keep pumping. He`d been crawling for hours. Days, maybe. Too long.

　　"Mrrrrroohh&"

　　"No, I mean it," he said. "I think& I think I just want to die&"

　　Cabbage pinned his ears all the way back, lips twitching. Something was amiss. He waddled forward, the fur on his tail spiked like a morning star. It tickled Kano`s face, just under his nose.

　　"Cabbage - ugh - move!"

　　The cavern rumbled. Kano froze. Cabbage`s eyes darted every which way, seeking the source of the disturbance. Even the sparse, faintly-glowing dust drifted in a flock down the tunnel from where they came, as if fleeing the sound. The rumbling stopped. In the distance, something clicked and tapped rhythmically, almost like the drum to a song.

　　Kano lifted himself slightly, muscles quivering, so that his chest hovered over the floor. Whatever this beast was, he feared it might sense his heartbeat through the stone. Cabbage assumed a defensive posture, with his head low and his feathers puffed, wings splayed and pointing down. The rumbling started up again, inching closer, then stopped, followed by the same rhythmic tapping. Sweat poured down Kano`s head and neck, collecting in the pit of his chest. He fought to recall anything at all from his defensive magic lessons - he knew the knowledge simmered somewhere beneath his abject terror - but he realized, even if he could remember anything, he was so weary that he wouldn`t be able to summon the strength of magic he would need to protect himself or Cabbage. This was it then, he thought. Unless the beast just passed him by, he was as good as dead.

　　As Kano ruminated upon his impending doom, Cabbage was strategizing. With his sensitive ears, he could calculate the distance to the beast and approximate how much time they had remaining. Judging by the rumbling which accompanied the tapping, and the lack of an echo, it seemed the beast was burrowing through the rock. He sought out any weaknesses in the cavern wall, quickly realizing that lichen grew more prominently in fractured rock - and so, to Cabbage`s Dream-sensitive eyes, the cavern`s weaknesses glowed wherever it grew. Just ahead and above them by no more than fifteen feet, he found the point from where the beast would most likely erupt.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

　　Cabbage knew Kano was weak and useless. He was the half-human`s only hope for survival, now more than ever, and though it was a hassle, he was determined to bring Kano back to his favorite mortal, Pak. But they wouldn`t be able to fight this creature off the way they had with the viper. They didn`t have much time.

　　As the cavern ceiling rumbled and dust crumbled on top of their heads, Cabbage realized what he had to do. At the same time, Kano whimpered and prepared to die.

　　"C-Cabbage - what the hell?"

　　Cabbage waddled onto Kano`s rear and stuffed his face into the back pocket of his filthy, worn out pants, pawing at it with the bony tip of his wing. Kano twisted around and groped for what the cat-owl was rummaging for, finding his cigarette tin, in which he still had the two cigarettes he`d been saving for when he found Pak. He crinkled his face, fighting against the tears.

　　"Mrrrooh!" Cabbage urged.

　　Kano sniffed. "I don`t understand!"

　　"Prrrooooh!" Cabbage snapped, pushing against the hand holding the tin. Bewildered, Kano opened it, took out a cigarette, and meekly offered it to the cat-owl.

　　"MRRROOH!" Cabbage said with a frustrated hop, butting Kano`s hand towards his face. He had no other way to communicate what he needed to do, and if Kano didn`t figure it out soon, he was going to die.

　　Then it dawned on Kano. Cabbage must have understood that this would be his last chance to enjoy a cigarette. His tears flowed freely, touched that his strange companion would care to indulge him in such a simple pleasure in his final moments. Still, he felt heavy, weighed down by all his failures, his inadequacies, all the things he should have said but was too cowardly to say. If he had told Pak how he felt long ago, none of this would have happened. They could have left the city together. They could have kept each other safe. Yet as he brought the cigarette to his lips, a strange calm descended on him. Perhaps it was just the anticipation of the smoke - the smell always did give him a shiver-

　　"PRRROOOOH!" Cabbage shouted, hopping and beating his wings. "PRRROOOH PRRROOOH PRRROOOH!"

　　Kano squeezed his eyes shut, bringing his hand to the cigarette trembling on his lips. The beast`s rumbling was upon them. This was it. Finally, he snapped his fingers to produce a small flame, just as the monster burst through the ceiling, sending stone fragments all through the tunnel.

　　It landed on the ground by the point of its largest, frontmost burrowing spikes, its back half oozing behind. All told, it had six sets of arms ending in tough, spindly spikes, its body that of a horse-sized worm, with no eyes or face to speak of. It loomed over Kano with its gaping maw showing rows over rows of teeth, making a guttural clattering sound, like a guitar string wound too quickly and too tightly. Kano only glimpsed the thing by the light of his thumb-flame, but if he could have seen it in full, the sight alone might have been too much for his weakened heart to bear.

　　The creature reared back, eerily silent but for its creaking, and raised its spikes to skewer the half-human. But before it had a chance, magic exploded from Kano`s hand and engulfed the monstrosity in bright blue crackling flame.

　　Kano didn`t know that Cabbage - far from being a simple cat-owl pet - was actually a being made of pure magic. In his earthly form, he could not manipulate his own magic in the way a person could. Where peoples` bodies contained magic within a fleshy cage, Cabbage`s body was magic, so to attempt evocation would be to destroy his corporeal form. He could, however, exert his Will upon magic already in the air, magic evoked by other creatures. Doing that was as natural to him as breathing. Unbeknownst to Kano and Pak alike, since his arrival to their world, he had thwarted dozens of cowardly magical assaults upon them. To an attacker, it would seem that the two had some sort of invulnerability, or perhaps a guardian angel.

　　As the monster broke through the rock and the half-human produced his pitiful magic flame, Cabbage harnessed the energy and amplified it into a powerful explosion, barely twitching a feather.

　　The beast gave an ear-splitting screech as it flailed, slamming its body into the rock in an attempt to douse the flames, but under Cabbage`s watchful gaze, nothing could put the fire out. The sudden eruption of light temporarily blinded Kano. He covered his ears to block out the awful sounds of the creature`s death, but he couldn`t keep out the stench of its burning flesh. He heaved, but nothing came up, and before long, he passed out from the shock. But at least he was alive, Cabbage reasoned. Perhaps they would make it to Pak after all.