Net Loss

As soon as the guards have gone, Crow sneaks with Cat over behind some bushes to get a better look at what they will be dealing with. The creepy-looking witch, Wispnell, is on the opposite shore of the river, close to where all the water is disappearing into a swirling purple vortex. A circular medallion the size of a biscuit and carved from black onyx floats above the shore ground not far from it, engulfed in vortex energies. All the flowers and plants near it are dried-up for some reason. Marla and the guard are standing at the water's edge a little ways further, trying to figure out how they can get across.

Cat wonders, "What do you suppose that hockey puck has to do with what's happening to the water?"

"What is a 'hockey puck'?" Crow asks her.

"Never mind. I'm just going to get closer and try taking it down with the power of imagination, my spe-ci-al-i-ty. It's never failed me... to my knowledge."

Crow is fearful for her safety. "What do you mean? Without a plan? That's madness! What if you get sucked in like the water is? We haven't determined anything about how that thing works; about the danger we're facing."

"Except that I'm a dryad, or whatever I am. I'm not the same as you and the king and the queen and the guards. I can float and walk through walls and all sorts of things. My abilities will help me against whatever that thing can dish out. I'll be fine, I'm certain of it."

Knitten says, "Mommy, don't do it! No, you can do this. You're amazing! No, don't! Oh, I'm so torn!"

Crow contemplates for a moment before saying, "If you're certain, then give it a go. You are amazing. We'll wait here, for realsies this time. Unless you call for back-up. Or just... indicate it, with a signal or something."

Cat nods her head and gets going. After she has left, Crow says to Knitten, "We're going to stay right here, but that doesn't mean we're going to do nothing." He reaches into his pouch and pulls out another device. "I forgot to put this away after using it last week to catch some critters who were nibbling at vegetables in the royal garden. It's a long-distance net trapper, or perhaps a critter-netter, or net thrower; I haven't decided what sounds best for the name."

"How does it work?" she asks.

"It fires a net on a wire that captures what you aim it at. If we see Cat begin to get sucked into that hole, I can use it to grab her and reel her back here to safety. How does that sound?"

"Yay, daddy, you're so smart! Oops, I mean 'Calamity Crow'."

Meanwhile, Cat has floated over the river and has her paintbrush and pencil out, assaulting the vortex by trying to seal it closed with all manner of arts and crafts materials. Nothing has worked so far against the vortex, but she has noticed that her powers fizzle out when they get close to the black onyx medallion with intricate patterns engraved in it.

Wispnell has taken notice of Cat and her efforts. She is more curious than concerned though. The odd amalgam with an owl's head and wings, a snake's body, and a spider's legs slithers on her belly closer to address the two-tailed fox. "What is it you hope to accomplish, little fox faerie? The portal is too powerful to seal closed and my medallion is protected from spells or anyone foolish enough to go near it."

"The engraved hockey puck? Why?" Cat asks, "What would happen if someone were to grab at it? And who carves up a hockey puck anyhow? Is there marketability for that I'm not aware of?"

She grumbles and says, "My medallion, when activated as it is now, sucks the life energy from everything around it to keep a spell running continuously like it is doing with the portal. Anyone who gets too close will have their life stripped from them."

Marla and the other guard have managed to cross the river and are approaching Cat and Wispnell. Marla asks, "Where are you sending the water and why are you doing this, Wispnell?"

Wispnell turns and regards her. "Hello, youngling. I imagined we would eventually meet again. Have your wounds healed?"

"This isn't about previous times, monster!" Marla growls and her fur bristles, roused by powerful emotions of both anger and fright in this moment. "Cease your abuse of nature by restoring the river to its natural path. What are you gaining from this?"

"It's not for my benefit, petulant bunny. It's for the king who used to rule this land! Perhaps you recall cautionary tales of Old King Bazlan, the tyrant. His dictatorship was legendary! I grew up hearing the tales of his cruelty and idolizing him for it. Through intensive research, and by gaining mastery of the dark arts, I have succeeded in retrieving his soul from the Energy Nexus and will soon restore him into a whole new body. Then, we will overthrow the king and queen you so willfully offer up your allegiance to, despite knowing full well the truth behind the current throne. At long last, Bazlan's glorious reign shall begin anew! I have redirected this surge of river water to a cavernous mine inside the mountain where it is being used to power a machine capable of --"

Cat interrupts, "Hey, while you two are reuniting and negotiating the fate of this swirly-dealy here, I'm just going to continue figuring out how to end it."

"That's fine," Wispnell says. "Keep exhausting your magick until you are depleted. You won't succeed."

"Oh, but it's not magick I tap into," Cat informs her. "I'm fueled by imagination. In fact, I think I'm going to try using my noggin to imagine this thing out of existence. Let's see how that goes."

Marla says, "Wow, for real? Is that even possible?"

"It will be when I imagine it so," Cat says, giving her a thumbs-up to not worry.

Wispnell splays her wings and spidery legs out in a threatening display. "You sound annoying, tiny vermin. I don't believe that you can do what you are saying, but just the same, I'd rather not take any chances. It is time that I dispose of you."

Crow, who has been watching their movements this whole time, even though he cannot hear most of what they are saying, says, "Ooh, I don't like the way that creature went all big just then. It's ready to strike at Cat any moment, I'll bet." He places Cat in the crosshairs of his critter-netter, or whatever the name will end up being when he decides, and angles upward to account for the distance. "I just hope she won't be too upset at us for pulling her back over to here." He squeezes the trigger to unlatch the spring-loaded launching mechanism inside and a missile attached to a wire fires forth on a trajectory with Cat's present position. "What if she's actually handling it well and doesn't need rescuing at all? Maybe I'm about to ruin whatever she has planned, Knitten."

Cat senses the missile approaching her from behind and Wispnell gets distracted by the sight of it, allowing for Cat to leap toward the missile and bat it with her paw a half-second before it releases the capture net. This causes the missile to change course toward the medallion as the net springs out and traps it.

Crow watches it happen and says, "Brilliant! How did she do that? If she did it on purpose, then perhaps that black biscuit-thingy has something to do with the purple hole the water is going into. So, if I reel it in with the net, whatever magick is producing the hole could be disrupted. Let's give it a try!"

He squeezes a second trigger on the side which activates a spring-loaded gear system to automatically reel the net back in. Crow has no time to pat himself on the back though as the unnamed thingamajig is almost ripped from his hands and he is pulled with it toward the medallion. At first, he struggles to hold his grip on it while trying to stop his forward momentum, scraping his talons across the ground. The problem lies in that the medallion is not budging even one iota while the gears continue to reel in the wire. When he pushes the trigger back into position to stop the gears, he hears the distinctive sound of something within coming loose.

In desperation, Crow then decides to run ahead fast to gain some slack in the line before wrapping the wire around a tree trunk and wedging the doohickey with no name in amongst the branches. It works, sort of. The forward movement stops and the extra-tough wire pulls tight without snapping in two while Crow puffs hard and tries to catch his breath.

Then it happens: The net cannot handle the strain and the part of it holding tight around the medallion snaps apart, releasing the medallion from its grip and sending the ruined net streaking back toward Crow and Knitten. Crow hears a buzzing sound and looks over to see a smoking groove forming in the tree trunk where the wire is wrapped. He leaps away just before the net returns at high speed and his device bursts apart as the net whips around the tree and hits back into place with far too much force. And with that, the invention with no name is no more.

Crow, having been spared the shrapnel, says, "Whoa, that was close! Are you alright, Knitten?"

"I'm fine, Calamaddy, thank you for asking," she replies, mixing 'Calamity' and 'daddy' together by accident.

The witch lets loose a triumphant cackle, despite herself, at seeing Crow's plight. She found the incident to be far more funny than it was for anyone else. Wispnell turns to confront Cat again, but finds that she is gone.

Marla and the guard seize the opportunity of her attention being turned to begin their attack upon Wispnell, but soon discover that she has had the foresight to protect herself with a magickal barrier. All of their efforts; sword, fist, and magick-enhanced; are being deflected before they can even come in contact with the witch.

Wispnell, however, is having no problem striking at them through the barrier with her sharp owl beak and powerful spider legs. She succeeds in grabbing the guard with her legs and attempts to pull him close so she may inject him with her menacing mixture of snake and spider venom from the fangs on the inner rim of her beak, but Marla reacts before he is plucked far enough into the barrier, uncoupling a coiled whip from her belt and snapping the length of it through the air. She loops it tight around his legs and a dangerous tug-of-war begins.

Meanwhile, Cat has already floated over to Crow in a hurry and alights upon the ground next to him. "I saw what happened! Are either of you injured?"

"Hi, mommy!"

"Hey, baby girl!"

"No, we're fine," Crow says. "Thank you for asking. Did you learn anything about how we might stop that purple hole from making the water disappear?"

"Yes, that. Wispnell admits she cast a spell to create the portal which uses the black hockey medallion to keep her spell going so she doesn't have to waste her attention and energies doing so."

"All that needs to be done is to knock it out of place then, but we've proven that it may not be possible," he says.

"It could be that simple, yes," Cat says. "I mean, obviously it's not simple though, so what else could we try?"

Crow searches his pouch. "I have another invention with me that may prove useful to reach in and grab that medallion." He produces a grabbing tool which opens and closes four finger-like claws as he moves the trigger back and forth. He then explains to Cat, "I brought this along in case the water was being blocked by Thicklemore tumbleweeds. Those troublesome tumbleweeds gather on the castle grounds from time to time and I have to remove them. Their spiney branches are so tightly packed that water can scarcely get through. I thought if a large enough group of them had converged on the river that it might act like a dam. In hindsight though, they are light enough that it would require an awful lot of them to cause that.

"What I'm thinking though," he continues, "is that the opposing polarities of the magnets I have built-in on the Magnemagrabber claws here may somehow interfere with the medallion's ability to stay put as I'm grabbing at it. It's probably a longshot though, but I'm not sure what else I could try."

Cat looks to see the current situation over by Wispnell and the vortex portal. "The guards don't seem to be doing well against Wispnell, and I'm a bit worried about their chances against her, especially since she has surrounded herself with a defensive spell. Marla certainly has the witch's personal attention at the moment, if you wanna give it a go. I'm gonna help Marrow and the others quickly defeat the big guy, Yorbert, so that they can be freed to come help us out against Wispnell."

"Excellent thinking!" Crow says. "And I'm fairly confident I can fly myself across without any help this time," he jokes with her, reaching up to place his trusty goggles down over top of his eyes, while forgetting that he is already wearing a mask with built-in goggles, and awkwardly adjusting them back to where they were.

Cat smiles and fist bumps with him, joking, "Keep your daddy safe, Knitten," before warning Crow, "Don't get too close with that grabber. She said the medallion sucks up life energy from around it and leaves things with an acute case of un-alivedness, so get away fast if you feel anything of that sort happening to you." Then she bounds away to help in the fight against Yorbert.

"Well, wh--. H-Hold on! It does what now?!" Crow calls after her, but she does not hear. "I guess it's up to us now, Knitten, but we've got to be extra careful around that thing, from the sound of it. You ready?"

"Yay, Calamidy Daddy Crow! Let's go!" she shouts.

Crow shoves the Magnemagrabber back into his pouch and dashes in the direction of the medallion on the other side of the river, flexing and flapping his wings as he goes to build up enough speed for lift-off. Air billows beneath his wings and scoops him up with his legs still dangling, running above the ground in an awkward display. He pulls them in and soars across the watery expanse, proud of his accomplishment.

To his right, Crow is now high enough to see Marrow and the others fighting the big wildebeest, Yorbert, along with Cat running to assist them.

As Crow continues to glide over the river and flaps to stay aloft, Knitten, along with the snickerdoodle cookie she has been saving for Cat, edges forward, flutters against the wind, and then slips loose from his vest pocket. 

"Whee! Here I go!" she says as she and the cookie tumble toward the earth below.

[The end is in sight! Next week, I will present the thrilling conclusion to this oddball tale. Three final segments.

What are your thoughts on the story? Don't wait any longer to let me know. What are your guesses as to how this fight is going to play out? It probably won't be what you think, I'll tell you that.

And what is Cat? Just how powerful is she? You’ll be wondering by story’s end. But you may never know if I don't start getting some feedback. This experience has been disheartening, to say the least. It's like this place is a ghost town. Just being honest.]