"Well, that was embarrassing," I muttered as I limped back home.

  The wounds the cats inflicted on me burned fiercely. It was like rolling in briars whilst being stung by a horde of hungry mosquitos. By the time I made it home, I was miserable and angry, the frustration setting in soon after the anger dissipated.

  How was I going to be a vigilante? How was I going to take down the toughest villains in the city when I just got chased off by a pack of cats? I kicked open the door to my bedroom and stomped in, muttering to myself. Then I almost had my second heart attack for the day; there was another damn pigeon at the window. But this time, it wasn't just any pigeon. It was the pigeon. The Pigeon King himself loomed outside my window, imposing and looking thoroughly unimpressed.

  By the time I managed to gather myself enough that my heart wasn't trying to somersault out of my mouth, the Pigeon King was tapping impatiently on the window. I opened it, and he squeezed through, hopping into my room, his wings flapping. He cocked his head at me.

  "Well, mageling," he said, sounding thoroughly unimpressed. "There are still feral felines in my kingdom."

  "Those were not cats!" I said to him. "Those were demon spawn.”

  "Exactly," the Pigeon King replied. "This is why I need them driven from my Kingdom! And instead, Grey Wing tells me you ran off screaming.”

  "I didn't scream," I retorted. "I... I don't think I screamed," I muttered afterwards. "Those cats were... they were not cats," I said again lamely.

  "Yes, we've established that," the Pigeon King snapped back at me, his feathers ruffled. He looked around the room. "This is your abode?”

  "No, this is where I live," I replied.

  "Much like yourself, it's rather underwhelming and odorous," the Pigeon King said, drawing himself up. "So what is it you plan to do next?”

  "Next?" I replied.

  "Well, do you not have any spells?" the pigeon asked, tapping his foot. "An eviscerating charm? An explosive fire spell would be most delightful," the Pigeon King said.

  "No, I don't... I've got some Bang Rocks."

  "Bang Rocks?" the Pigeon King replied, and I swear he arched his eyebrow at me, even though he didn't have eyebrows. "Pray tell, what are they?”

  "They're little pebbles that I inscribe a Rune on, and they go bang," I said, feeling suddenly very lame.

  "Mage, is that the extent of your power? To make small pebbles go bang?" the Pigeon King said archly.

  "Well, I'm still learning, I guess," I said, my face beginning to burn as bad as the cat scratches.

  "Oh dear," the Pigeon King rolled his eyes. "I knew that your growth would have been particularly slow and stunted without an appropriate mentor, but it seems you have no real talent, do you?" The Pigeon King asked. He didn't say it nastily; he said it matter-of-factly, which probably hurt more.

  "All I have is this book, and it's in a whole different language. I've had to decode and translate and look up recipes and potions. Half the stuff doesn't even exist anymore, and the other half is too expensive," I blabbered, trying to justify myself.

  "Where is this book, mageling?"

  Suddenly, I felt defensive. I had only just met this creature. He had saved my life, but I had no idea who or even what the Pigeon King was, and I didn't know if I wanted to show him perhaps my most precious posession.

  "It's around," I replied.

  "It's under the desk, isn't it?"

  My eyes widened when I looked at him. "How did you...?"

  "Little mageling, the item that you have secreted in the wall is of immense power, so immense that I found your home just by following it."

  And then I thought, how did the Pigeon King know where I lived? He had obviously brought me here the night before, sent his messenger, and then arrived himself and I never once questioned how he knew where I lived. Man, I sucked at this.

  "Well, yes, it is back there, but I don't want to—”

  The Pigeon King held up a wing. "Your wants are of little concern to me, mageling," the Pigeon King replied dryly. "But if you're worried about me taking the book from you, rest assured, I want nothing to do with that thing.”

  "Why not?" I asked.

  The Pigeon King sighed and ran his feathery wing across the top of his head.

  "Little mageling, there is an unquantifiable number of things you do not know or understand about the Craft. But what you possess is not simply a book. I'm guessing what you possess are the physical thoughts, findings, and learnings of a being immeasurably more powerful than yourself. How you stumbled across this relic, I do not know, but what I do understand is that books of power, such as that, do not just accidentally come to be, come to be lost, or come to be found again. You have stumbled upon something dangerous, and I would rather have nothing to do with it."

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  "Dangerous?" I asked. "It's just a tatty old book.”

  The Pigeon King gave me a sharp look.

  "It's a wonder you have not been killed sooner," he said and then waved his wing. "Nevertheless, you are my follower now, and I shall try to keep you alive for as long as you are useful. The answer to what you need to do to get rid of these feral monsters lies within that book. I suggest you read it."

  "It's not that simple," I said to him. "It's in a different—"

  The Pigeon King sighed loudly and rolled his.

  "The answers are in the pages, boy. Find them and rid my kingdom of these monsters, and do it quickly." The Pigeon King hopped towards the window again, ready to take off.

  "I don't want to kill them," I said quickly.

  The Pigeon King looked over his shoulder at me.

  "And why not?"

  "Because they're cats at the end of the day, and I don't like killing animals. I don't like killing anything," I said quickly.

  "Oh dear, how have I stumbled across the only mage that didn't want to exercise his power over the rest of creation?" the Pigeon King said to himself. "If you do not wish to kill the creatures, then you'll require some genuine ingenuity to get rid of them. Either way, I want them gone from my kingdom tonight." And with that, the Pigeon King took off, flapping his mighty wings, and he was gone in the blink of an eye.

  I swallowed and scratched my head. How the hell was I gonna get rid of those cats without killing them?

  Two hours later, after about 30 sheets of paper and 2 broken pencils, I was still stuck where I was with no solution in sight. I had no way to get rid of the cats with my limited understanding and knowledge. So, I went back to my journals, flicking through, desperately looking for something that would solve this problem for the Pigeon King so I could get on with my life.

  After another half an hour of fruitless searching, I realized that perhaps I was tackling this problem from the wrong angle. After all, even though these were feral monsters, they were still just cats. People had been keeping wild animals out of their settlements for as long as there had been settlements.

  So, I did the next best thing I could think of: I went online, and scoured the internet for means of getting rid of stray animals. Once I got past a few dozen phishing sites and a couple of hundred advertisements for bizarre pet products, I came across a gardening blog by some little old lady from out in the countryside. She had written about how she kept foxes, cats, badgers, etc from eating her herb garden. She had come up with a non-harmful, non-toxic solution: the use of sound frequencies.

  It turns out wild animals have much better hearing than human beings, and certain frequencies of sound irritate them enough to drive them away. I looked up the product and realized I couldn't afford it. Even if I could, there was no way of getting it out here. But I took this new knowledge and applied it to what I knew of the Craft.

  I pored over the Codex again, gently turning the pages, scouring my notes until I finally figured out the word for sound. With that new key unlocked, I went back to the beginning, searching through every single page. My pencil tip gently glided across the surface of the words. It took me almost to the middle of the book until I found it. A thrill of excitement ran through me, but it didn't last long as I realized I didn't understand anything else in that passage. I sighed deeply and rubbed my tired eyes, knowing I had a long night ahead of me. My pitifully empty stomach growled as I got to work.

  I went back to my basic translation skills and began to try to find as many of the words as I could. Some of them I vaguely recognized, and some I had no idea about. So, I continued going back and forth between my journals, the internet, and the book until I put together a vague understanding of the chapter.

  My eyes were red rimmed and sore by the time I sat back with the tenuous tendrils of a solution. I didn't know if it would work; I didn't even know how it could work, but it seemed to be what I was looking for. The passage was all about using sound as a weapon. Wait, that wasn’t right. I went back to the translation and looked at it again. It was using sound as a barrier. If I could figure out the Rune pattern and the requirements for the spell, I could set up a barrier around the market that would hopefully drive the cats out. I chewed my lip, looked at the time, and got to work.

  Fortunately, the Runes were quite obvious, and the matrix wasn't particularly complicated. But here was the issue: I would need to carve the rune pattern into the brickwork. Rune etching is a complex process that requires deep concentration and time, and I would need to cover both walls in every alleyway around the marketplace. I knew I didn't have the time to do it. Those cats hadn't let me step foot in their territory for longer than a few seconds before they attacked. How the hell was I going to stand there with a chisel, carving Runes into the brickwork, without them attacking?

  I could wait until the morning and do it then? But would I be able to stand there defacing a public building with no one stopping me? Plus, the Pigeon King said he wanted the cats gone tonight, and it wouldn’t be long until sunrise. I was running out of time and options.

  I groaned and ran my hands through my hair, scratching my itching scalp. But what if I didn't have to carve them? I had tried something similar to this once before, and it hadn't worked, but there was something about this sound barrier spell that seemed more passive than the explosion charms. I fished around in the back of my closet and finally found my old label maker. I blew the dust off it, plugged it into my lazertop, and went through the arduous process of trying to download drivers that seemingly didn't exist anymore. After another 30 minutes of wanting to punch either myself or the computer, I finally got it working.

  I scanned the runes onto my computer using my WristPod and began printing the labels. I printed one, and it came out looking actually quite good. But there was no magical buzz, nothing about it to suggest it would do anything. You see, creating Runes wasn't just a process of production and copying. It was a deliberate practice, an infusion of will and concentration into what you were trying to accomplish.

  So I settled down and concentrated. I cleared my mind as best I could, pushing away the fatigue and hunger gnawing at the corners of my consciousness. I began to imagine. At first, it was vague and very short, but I pushed myself to think deeper and visualised the small details. I saw the market square. I remembered the alleyway, the bones, the claws, the blood, the smell, and I saw the feral cats again. Then I imagined the sound; I didn't know what high frequency sounded like, but I tried to imagine it the best I could. I imagined how it would sound horrendous to the cats, how it would drive them away, how they would run into the night squalling, yipping, and yowling, and how an invisible barrier of this sound would form around the market square, keeping the cats at bay forever.

  I guess a childhood spent daydreaming alone and not paying attention in class was finally coming in handy. I imagined colours, sounds, smells, and suddenly I could see it. I just knew it to be the truth. It was what was going to happen. It wasn't imagination; it was premonition. Then I pressed print. As the label machine juddered and shook, making strange piteous whirring noises, I kept that image in my mind. I kept that scenario going over and over again. The label maker printed and printed until, finally, I had a stack of almost 30 of these labels. I held them in my hand and felt the electric crackle of power in them.

  I'd done it. This would work… if the cats didn’t kill me and eat my face before I could get the barrier in place. That felt like a massive IF. Well… as my Grandad would say, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  Time to rid the Pigeon King’s kingdom of feral felines!