Overthrowing Oppression: Nothing

Prologue

The dazzling green grass of the meadows seemed to stretch forever. Even Angsana, a Siamese cryptid soaring high above the grounds, struggled to see where land of the Cloudrise Isles reached its end.

Narrowing her green-gold eyes, she let her gaze trail over the great sea of blue-green grass, and pinpointed at last where it met the endless blue sky in a shimmering line of light.

A wingtip twitched, and she banked, riding the warm air downward in a broad, graceful spiral. Her small group followed her, all silent as ever.

A dark spot on the landscape caught Angsana's keen eye—a creature separate from the others, and not moving. She flew lower, adjusting her path with great beats of her scaled wings.

The others followed her down, in swooping circles. "May Angsana's eyes be forever sharp," screeched Ixora, her sub-commander. "She has found us prey once again."

It was just as Angsana had hoped: the corpse of a cat. Its spirit had gone; its eyes were blank and dead. Perhaps a it had been slain in a war between the clans that resides in the Cloudrise Isles.

It lay half hidden between ocher rocks, barely visible to wingless carrion-eaters; much of its torn flesh remained on its bones, some already rotting.

This fellow feline had once enjoyed its time and its life; now it would nourish the cannibalistic cryptids—just as they, in their turn, would one day become food for the earth and soil of their precious Valley home.

All was as it should be . . . or at least, so the Siamese she-cat hoped. "We must test the flesh, fellow warriors," she called. "Then we can feed in peace."

She banked sharply in to land, the other cryptids not far behind her. Her claws touched the gritty ground, and she stepped a couple of paces toward the carcass. With a glance to the winged cats on her right and left, she nodded once.

"A bad death will linger with the fallen; may the Goddess of Nature Feronia always grant good death," chorused the phalanx, led by Angsana. Each cryptid tore a thin strip of meat from the carcass's flank, gulping it down.

They all paused, looking to Angsana for the final judgment. She closed her eyes briefly. "The kill is clean," she reassured them at last. "Feed, my family."

When the corpse of the cat was picked bare, its bones stripped of the last tattered remnants of flesh, Angsana stepped back. Beating her wings, she launched herself skyward once more, and her Cult-mates followed suit.

It felt good to return to the air, to soar higher and higher into the fierce blue, knowing that her family had eaten well and survived for another day.

When she was high enough to catch a broad current of warm air, Angsana let it take her, like how her mother would wrap her in her warm embrace, twitching her wings, gazing down once more.

From the shimmering horizon to the dark sprawling forests, to the low range of hills far beyond the meadows, she surveyed the land. Her glowing eyes glanced down as she watched the cats below her.

The Golden Rose Cult often sent out patrols to recruit more cats and increase their ranks; they had a tendency to usually pick the cats discontented with their current life or those disabled in some way and weren't given a chance.

And now, as she stared down at the camp, she caught a glimpse of the nursery.

A cat mother, plump with spotted brown and smoke gray fur and orange eyes, was curled around a kit. The kit resembled her in almost every way, from its facial features, well-shaped face and soft sunlit curls.

But her sharp eyes had spotted another kit hidden away in the bramble thorns outside the nursery. The kit had brown tabby fur, white paws and a pale underbelly.

She blinked. Why was that kit nestled away in a thorn bush? There was something wrong. But there was a mighty twitch in her gut. Something about that kit was special.

Angsana's eyes narrowed. She'd keep an eye on that kit. "Oh, special little one," she murmured under her breath. "You are destined for something special, I can tell."

With a mighty slam of her wings, she hauled herself right into the sky, and her loyal phalanx followed closely behind.