It was like staring into a mirror, if that mirror also turned him into a small black cat. Its eyes were identical to his own, at least to how they used to be before he got his 'upgrade' and his sclera turned black.

Neither of them moved for the longest time, simply staring at each other as if each one was trying to solve an impossible enigma. The cat's tail swished softly behind it, dancing across the exposed muscles of the skinned bear it sat atop. Seth could swear that he could sense a sort of…amusement radiating from the creature.

Eventually, he decided to break up the impromptu Mexican standoff and ask the question that was scratching at the back of his mind, like a poorly knitted christmas sweater.

"Are… are you a person? Like a shapeshifter?"

There it was again, that sense of amusement. He could actually feel the cat mocking him in some way, which wasn't unusual for cats but usually it wasn't this overt. He could even swear that he saw it smirk before it started to lick the blood off of its paws.

It gave him one last pitiable look, the type you'd give a child if you were telling them they did a good job even when they hadn't, before it chomped at the air a few times.

That action confused Seth but, either out of inability or simple ego, the cat didn't stop to explain itself. It simply chewed the air, hopped off the corpse and saunted throughout the clearing as if it owned the entire city.

It moved from corpse to corpse, pausing for a few seconds to chew on nothing before moving on, all the while Seth watched on in utter befuddlement at the strange and egotistical creature.

Narrowing his eyes, Seth focused on the latent energy within himself and pushed it into his evolved eyes until his vision shifted back to that world devoid of colour. A thin layer of fog swirled around his feet and blocked his vision when he tried to look more than twenty metres away. But that didn't matter for now, as he was only focused on the cat.

Before, when he had seen the world like this, living things simply appeared as silhouettes with a single, glowing orb within their chest. However this simple housecat radiated with a white light that showed every detail of its being and yet appeared ethereal, as he could see the ground behind it as if it didn't exist.

As if it knew it was being watched, the cat looked over its shoulder, once again staring at Seth with those human eyes. Except this time, fused on the ethereal cat body, was a human face. It was the face of an, admittedly, beautiful woman that suited those piercing silver eyes much more than he did, yet the body she had was absolutely not what he had been thinking of whenever he dreamed of cat-girls.

The girl-faced cat smiled at him, a wide depraved smile that reached up to her ears and showed off the cat's elongated fangs, before it sprinted over to the last corpse.

The corpse in question, one of the many deer that the puppets had killed, gutted and skinned, had an glowing orb floating above it, bound to the useless pile of flesh by a single tether, like a balloon. The light was dim and flickering, the tether growing thinner by the second. But that was no concern for the girl-faced cat as it snapped its jaws around the balloon and gobbled it up.

It chewed for a few seconds before gulping it down, causing Seth to snap out of his evolved vision just in time to see the white patch on the cat's chest glow with a soft, barely visible light.

'Cat-Sìth!'

His eyes widened as he stumbled back a few steps, the name of an old fairy tale creature popping into his head as he watched the satisfied cat disappear into the trees now that it had devoured its fill of souls.

When he was young, before his sister had pulled him away from that place, his mother used to tell him all sorts of tales about fantastical creatures and mythical fae. The Cat-Sìth, the fairy cat, had been one of them. Said to devour souls of the recently deceased before the old gods could claim them.

It never occurred to him that the tales of old could come true or… perhaps they always had been.

'Angel… Is it possible for evolved creatures like that to have existed before you showed up?'

[If by 'before you showed up' you mean when we made ourselves known to you and activated the global transcendence, then yes. It is possible. The energy you use to fuel your abilities has existed throughout the universe since its inception, your world and species have simply been unable to perceive it through natural or technological means.]

'It has? Wait, why do you just call it 'the energy' does it not have a name?'

[...It has a variety of names throughout different species and cultures. If you would like to designate a name for further use, simply say so. However, I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt me.]

'Oh, uh… I'm sorry. Please continue and thank you for teaching me. Just um... call it Mana.'

He mentally cringed, doing his best to apologise and sound sincere. He could feel Angel's nonexistent eyes staring daggers at him, like a disappointed parent. After a moment of silence, long enough to make him squirm under their disappointed glare, he heard Angel sigh in his mind.

[Hmph, as I was saying, the energy, Mana, has always existed. It is probable that some creatures could have naturally evolved to possess some traits that take advantage of it. However, the subconscious expanse may also have a guiding effect on some creatures when the mutagenic was introduced, causing them to evolve in the direction of common beliefs.]

'So like… an evolutionary placebo effect? They think they should eventually become that, so they do?'

[Something like that, yes, although they have no active belief or awareness of the process and is often caused not by themselves but the subconscious beliefs of the prevalent sentient species. In this case, humans and their mythologies.]

'You're saying that anything from our mythologies, any creature from fairy tale or legend, has the possibility of cropping up?'

Even as he was asking his eyes drifted to Omelette, who was still happily ripping apart the fresh heart of one of the deers. It was clear that the answer was already right in front of him, hell it had been sitting on his shoulder. If a Wyvern could exist, what was to stop a dragon or a phoenix? Could that giant razor winged raven be considered a Stymphalian Raven?

The zoo flashed in his mind once again as Seth let out an audible groan, pinching the bridge of his nose as he lamented his luck.

'Please… Please don't let any of them become a Nemean Lion.'

Despite his pleas and mental prayers, In the back of his mind, he swore that he could hear a flag fluttering in the wind somewhere.

Dragging himself away from those depressing thoughts, he focused on the positive. The silver lining of the shit storm that was looming on the horizon, ready to rain on him and ruin his parade.

'At least I found a new source of soul food. It got boosted by the upgrade thing, but I haven't seen any wraiths around to increase it anymore. Maybe if I had killed that stupid cat… ugh, doesn't matter anymore. We'll just see if I can do what it did since I can see them now.'

With his mind drifting to the thought of new food, even of the soul variety, Seth couldn't help but lick his lips. All he had to do now was kill something to test his theory, it was just a shame that the Cat-Sìth gobbled up everything here.

Picking up the arrow once again, he tilted his head with a smile.

'Might as well track you down while I hunt for a snack.'

***

As it turns out, tracking was difficult. Of course, It couldn't be as simple as they showed in the movies, there was no obvious trail of broken twigs and glistening blood on bright green leaves. That stuff still existed, but it was a pain to find. It was inconveniently placed amongst unbroken sticks and boring, normal leaves. It was almost as if the bear didn't want to be tracked. Truly inconsiderate of it.

Sandwiched in the middle of his puppet army as he trudged back the way he came, Seth tore off a chunk of the salt cured meat and chewed on it like a savage beast as he grumbled to himself. Staring daggers into the back of the skeleton that was walking in front of him as if it was their fault he had gotten lost. It helped that this particular skeleton was the one that had its head crushed by the bear he was failing to track. He had replaced its lost head with the bear's skull, only fitting in his opinion, as well as replaced its bony fingers with the long and deadly claws of the deceased bear. In honour of this new look, he decided to name this frankensteined skeleton Bearemy.

It was definitely Bearemy's fault and absolutely not Seths.

Night had enveloped the sky an hour ago and this was the ninth time he had lost the trail and had to backtrack. Even then it was difficult to find the clues he knew were there.

The problem with walking through a public park turned mystical forest was that everything looked the damn same!

Tossing the last of the meat into his mouth, he took out the arrow and twirled it between his fingers absentmindedly as he got back on track. Since it had been a frustrating evening, he had decided to amuse himself by focusing on developing his trick.

He could whip small things around with his threads, but what he really wanted to do was learn to control them. He could just imagine having floating swords around him, moving with just a thought as he conducted them like an orchestra of death.

But alas, he still hadn't gotten the hang of it. Still the only thing he could do was make the arrow float, just like everything else. There had to be something missing.

Just as he was contemplating what he could do differently, the hair all over his body stood up on end. Warning alarms blared in his mind as he immediately dove to the side and rolled behind a tree just a few moments before a blinding flash streaked across the forest and struck one of his puppets in the chest.