//------------------------------//
// Chapter 14 
// Story: Shattered Pentacle 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Chaos overflowed around her. The air filled with dust, and the harsh echo of gunfire. As a human being, she'd been trained to deal with situations like this. But all that training and practice couldn’t help her as a cat—she could only press herself to the ground, cowering in terror. What was going on? Why was everything so loud? What was that awful smell of burning?
“Child. Open your eyes. Look at me.”
His voice might not have pierced the awful noise if it came as word alone. But Capper's speech cut through soul as well as mind, granting clarity in chaos. She looked up, dared to open one eye, then the other.
“Inaction is death,” he continued. “For you or your allies. Perhaps we flee, perhaps we fight. But cowering is not the way.”
She nodded weakly, then stood. Tabitha's familiar was gone already, without so much as a tuft of fur left behind. She hadn't been too intimidated by the danger to rush into it. But how could Lyra help with something so destructive?
She needed a spell, needed something. So she focused, drawing faint lines of a few symbols in the dust in front of her with one paw. Whether or not that helped at all from the paw of a cat, she couldn't say. But she felt driven regardless. One of Capper's lessons rubbing off on her, maybe.
Information rushed into her mind, focused firmly on the human. No cat was prepared to sense the heartbeat of the living world. Using other magic, any magic, brought conscious clarity. 
She dismissed all the other small creatures, focused entirely on the human-sized. Many moved upstairs, men and women overflowing with adrenaline and hostility.
One went flying another way—straight out into empty air, landing torn and broken on the floor. Vibrant life turned to a desperate struggle at the impact, labored heartbeat and gasping breaths.
Whoever that is, that's where I need to go.
Lyra bounded out from behind the couch, hopping up onto a cushion. It didn't matter that the house was filled with humans rushing around towards their own inscrutable goal. Let them do what they would, she had a purpose now.
She made it to the steps in a few seconds, then out through the open window she'd entered, and through the air to the grass. 
There was someone out here—a teenager in a nightgown soaked with red blood, and a leg that bent the wrong way. Impossibly, she still moved, with strength that defied any ordinary human. How could she even stay conscious in such pain?
Isabelle. Tabitha's little sister crawled through the dirt, trailing blood and crying out. Or—not crying, singing. There was a melody to it.
“Hear me trees, whisper in your leaves. Morning meadow, shimmering brook. Carry my whispers through spring and...” Her words trailed awkwardly to nothing, strength faltering. No wonder, given the sorry state of her body. Blood trickled down her lips, staining the grass.
That almost felt like a spell. Except when she sang, the girl had no nimbus—no almost-invisible signs of Awakened will. If it was magic, it was nothing like any spell that Lyra could cast. 
None of that mattered, of course. Whatever help she was crying for might not come. This was Lyra's student, her friend's sister, shot and bleeding on the ground. Worse, she felt heavy footfalls on the grass. No humans had reached them yet, but they would. Maybe they would finish what they started.
She reached where Izzy fell a few seconds later. Lyra no longer needed physical contact to heal another—but it would still make things easier. She brushed up against the girl's limp fingers, as feline instinct demanded. Hopefully the girl was unconscious, so she wouldn't notice and make the spell improbable. 
Izzy opened one green eye, locked suddenly on her. How could she smile through all that pain—like a cracked porcelain doll. “Did... Th-Theo send you?” she asked. “I don't want to die.”
“You won't,” Lyra swore, though of course she expected no comprehension from her. No time to wait, or somehow ask her to look away. If paradox came, she would have to weather it.
“No gardener would trim the cereus before the night. Though rodents gnaw, and aphids draw their sap, she refuses. Her stubborn roots reach deep. The earth's heart beats in her. Weevils cannot build their nests in her limbs. The desert bird flies elsewhere. Death may reach, but today he turns aside. Even his ears may be moved by the song.”
Would those words even work with her feline mouth? Capper had her so trained to cast that way that she couldn't imagine any other.
Lyra's own nimbus exploded around her, outsized for her feline body. She felt the heartbeat through the earth, shaking her paws, spreading new growth where it touched. She tasted blood in her mouth—strangely sweet, unnatural—the fruit of a transplanted tree struggling to find root in new soil. 
Isabelle stared, wide-eyed and transfixed, with no distractions or illusions to conceal the nature of Lyra's work. Somehow, the spell worked anyway. She coughed, dislodging a half-dozen little metal balls covered in blood. Izzy inhaled, and this time her breath came without wavering. She sat up, resting on one hand. With the other, she brushed against Lyra's fur, as anyone might pet an affectionate cat.
“That was strange magic,” she said. Not overflowing with terror, like a teenager who'd just been shot and thrown out a third-story window ought to be. “How did you do that?”
Brilliant lights blasted them from around the corner, as several armed figures came rushing forward. They dressed like SWAT or other special police, all vests and oversized weapons. Not at all different from the way Bonnie's VALKYRIE unit had her dress.
In the same moment, another sound shook the air, so strange that it had her completely paralyzed with fear. Blaring... trumpets? In the dim shadow of the night, the treeline shattered, with small trees and bushes trampled under the advance of thundering hooves.
Lyra squealed in surprise, cat senses utterly unprepared for the explosion before her. Gigantic animals, the bark of automatic weapons, along with human shouting over a megaphone.
Fortunately, her instincts couldn't get the better of her—a pair of human arms lifted her, holding her firmly against soft fabric stained with blood.
“You're here?” Izzy sang to a stranger, stepping up off the ground onto something wooden and shaking. “That soon? I owe you.”
“Careful how you say that,” answered another voice. Male, though unusually high and melodious. The ground shook again, so violently that Lyra squirmed against her binding. But Izzy's grip was too strong, and so she couldn't get anywhere. “You've accrued enough new debts for one night, Fairest.”
The sound of running hooves shifted to a light trot, with gunfire and worse fading into the distant background. As the sound and light and smells faded, Lyra's faculties gradually returned. She stopped squirming, and opened one eye, surveying her surroundings. 
She was riding in a chariot, like something ripped right out of ancient history. Its driver was... impossible. A towering figure, his skin glittering like gemstones, with huge antlers over his head and crown floating over it all, dark metal wrapped in green vines.
I must be in the spirit world. We crossed the Gauntlet. She'd known that focusing so heavily on Life would eventually come back to bite her.
The girl holding her loosened her grip, obviously sensing Lyra's calm. As she did, she could twist in her arms, enough to look up.
It was still Isabelle, almost. But this was Isabelle as no human girl could ever possibly look. Her skin was perfect, flawless white, her hair cascading down her back like some Renaissance painting. Every suggestion was impossible beauty, more angel than girl. I healed her. She has a beating heart. She isn't Kindred. 
“To your colleague,” Izzy said. “I know that—no getting around it. She saved my life.” She settled down on the chariot’s bench, resting Lyra there on her lap. “I don't know how I'll repay you, stranger. But I will. Spring always repays.”
Now she was calm enough to look around, searching for her familiar. But Capper was nowhere in sight. Had he even made it out of the house? If he did, he wasn't on this chariot. “Can you hear me?” 
Only silence answered.
There were other chariots in the dark, though her eyes refused to focus long on their occupants. They were as freakish in their own ways as the driver in this one. And other things ran along the ground, somehow keeping pace with horses.
Maybe she could call out to local spirits for help? Except—she didn't even seem to need it. She felt no hostility from Izzy, only her repeated professions of a debt to be repaid. 
“No beast of mine,” said the driver. “In fact, that creature is bound by no contract.”
Izzy gasped. Her hand lifted from Lyra's neck, her body suddenly going still. Those words were terrifying to her.
Suddenly they were pulling to a stop, passing through an arch of living leaves and vines. Beyond it was another space—a little like walking into a Renaissance faire. Tents and pavilions rose up against the moonlight, standing in a field of vibrant flowers and grasses. Creatures and people moved between them, all evidently in costume. Or maybe their natural bodies just looked that strange.
None gave Izzy or the chariot’s driver a second glance. A few eyes lingered on her, though, despite her small size.
Finally they stopped, and the driver released the reins, turning in place. Izzy moved to stand, and Lyra hopped down off her lap onto the railing, balancing there with feline grace.
Maybe she could navigate her way out—dodging between all those legs, and into the wilderness. But something about that seemed very dangerous. She smelled predators here, of a kind that no cat had ever met. Maybe with Capper she could face them, but not alone.
Instead she cast another spell—simpler than healing. She would never dare use something like that with humans watching. But these clearly weren't humans. Maybe they would tell her what they were if she asked nicely.
“I'm glad you're feeling better, Izzy. It looked like you weren't going to get up.”
Neither observer reacted with particular surprise to her speech, now that she'd cast the spell that would let her speak with human language. If anything, the taller male seemed annoyed it had taken her this long.
Isabelle curtseyed to her. The gesture was so simple—yet somehow reminded Lyra of the same formality she saw in the Pentacle. Not the same ritual exactly, but cut from the same cloth. “Thank you. Do I know you?”
Others crowded around the chariot, at least a dozen strange figures. Lyra did her best not to look at them—one seemed to have skin made from stone, another was shriveled and disfigured with a level of ugliness that defied simple explanation. Others had animal features, and carried similar scents.
Best to keep her attention focused on these two, or else lose her discipline and flee in terror. As it was, she was so overwhelmed that Lyra couldn't form worlds. In its way, this place was just as impossible as the Supernal.
“You saved the life of one from my court,” said the towering figure. “By my authority as King of Spring, I request and require that you show your face to me, so that I might give proper honors.”
Was that magic? She couldn't tell—but she couldn't resist. Lyra's spell unraveled in an instant. Her body expanded, fur faded, and suddenly an act of effortless balance became impossible. She screamed and flailed, then tumbled backward into the mud.