My Sacred Duty [Closed]

[The Litare]

My eyes snap open. A moment ago I was deep in the nothingness of slumber - now I am fully alert. The sound that pierced my sleep is a welcome one - the soft, cricketlike chirping of a fairy. Hardly different from the mating call of a common insect, yet even amidst the chorus of such calls that takes place every night, the alert is unmistakable to me. Small variations in the chirp's pacing carry information about the encroacher. Roughly 50 kg, and roughly 20 meters north-northwest of me. It is awake, and active. I shiver. The animal's position comes as no surprise - it must have taken our bait. But I had hoped for an easier target.

Well, what I had hoped for is really of no consequence. There is no decision to be made - this is what we came for. My belly still pressed against the forest floor, I chirp a reply to the fairy - wordless, but enough to convey my intentions. I want them to attack it. Then, lowering my voice until it is more felt than heard, I address my earthbound subjects in their own manner. I command them to return to me in haste. A few seconds pass before the first pale vermiform emerges from the soil and slides into my body - I know it will be at least a minute before the deepest burrower can make it back to the surface.

I produce my front left tendril and place a feather on the litare sleeping next to me - my little sister. So long as we are touching, both normal words and the Speech of Gods are available to us. Separated, only words can traverse the gap. -anticipation- "Wake up, sister. The bait has been taken."

She does not awaken quite as quickly as I did. Eyes still closed, she produces her own front right tendril and wraps the tip around mine. -still tired-

In spite of myself, I find the skin around my eyes crinkling up. "You still have a few minutes. Will you please tell your worms to come back?" She does not respond, but I can feel her issue the command through the ground. I lie in silence for a few moments before speaking again. -calmness in spite of the situation; you are safe; i will protect you- "You should know that the creature that took the bait is a big one. It might be a predator."

It is hard to tell if she believes my reassurances, because she doesn't Say anything back. "When we have all our worms, are we going after it?"

-my desire that you are safe is stronger than my desire that you help- "Try to watch if you can, but heed the warnings of your fairies, and don't get too close."

The skin on the front of her face wrinkles. "Okay."

I return the look. -it's okay for you to share your feelings with me; i hope you know that-

"I know."

I drop the subject. She could have easily Said "I know" - so she is definitely telling me to drop it. And I should probably not be chiding her like that anyway.

I don't hear any more burrowing noises underneath me, so the last of my worms must have returned. I stand up and stretch my legs, keeping my tendril wrapped around hers. From the intermittent chirping of my fairies, I can tell that their initial strike is going well. They have successfully destroyed both of the target's eyes, only losing one fairy in the process. Apparently the animal has retreated some distance from the bait in order to nurse its wounds. It most likely thought that the fairies were attracted to the bait as well, and wanted to get away from them. Well, sorry, but escape won't be that easy for you. I know that the fairies will pursue and track it without my input, though once it is blinded they won't attack it any further unless I tell them to.

My peripheral eyes pick up movement to my left. "You ready?"

"Mhm." I can see her stretching her legs, too. "So, I'll hang back and let you go first?"

"Yes." I hesitate for a moment, then let go of her hand. "Don't let it notice you, and if it does, run. Don't worry about getting ahead of me - I'll handle it and meet up with you at the perimeter of the seep." Even though we can't Speak anymore, I can see the hesitation in her eyes. "Everything will be fine. I've done this plenty of times before."

"Okay." A pause. "I trust you."

My gaze lingers on her for a moment longer, then I turn around and head in the direction that the insect calls are coming from. I keep my eyes on my footfalls, and tread carefully, to make sure I don't step on a twig or some such. Although the floor of the forest is lit only by moon- and starlight filtering through the treetops, it is enough for me to navigate by. My efforts are not in vain - the animal has yet to change locations since the last ping. I can't hear my sister behind me, but I can see her movements through my hindmost eyes. A rush of pride flows through me, that she is able to keep up without making a sound.

After a few moments, I come across the bait we had set up a few hours ago - the carcass of a previous kill that we had dragged out with nothing but our tendrils. An herbivore, a lightly built grazing animal that one of the other hunters had apparently caught from the nearby plainsland. I still wonder at the talent such a kill must require - after all, we are not the only creatures in this world to keep watch for each other. At this point the body is barely recognizable - once mangled by the birthing ritual, and twice by the feeding of my current target. It's little more than a tangle of meat and bones now. The smell is distinctive and powerful, though not unpleasant. I maneuver around it and keep going.

Still no movement from the quarry. As I close in on its location, I begin scanning the ground for suitable rocks to open with. I am spoiled for choice. I lean down and extrude my four frontmost tendrils, each one's feather wrapping around a stone and bringing it up by my face. For a moment, I am worried that the noise may have disturbed my prey, but I am now close enough to hear myself if it moves, and it doesn't. Just behind that tree up ahead... I notice that I am shivering. I need a better angle to throw from.

Keeping my current distance, I strafe around the large, moss-covered tangle of roots that my quarry has chosen to rest against. As its body comes into view, my sense of unease is renewed. Under the thin coating of reddish down, the creature's rippling musculature is plainly obvious. I can see its head now - a long, reptilian snout bristling with teeth. It is now that I recognize the creature - tasendi, a heavily built quadruped - and an apex predator. It is larger than I am, and much stronger - it would tear me to pieces in a fair fight. Yet, just as my fairies had advertised, its eyes were caked with blood and obviously no longer functional.

Sorry, but there is no such thing as a fair fight.

I shift my weight on my legs to make sure my footing is solid, then coil back my tendrils against the side of my body, two curled upwards and two curled down. I take aim at the creature's head, and snap my arms like whips, releasing my feathers' grip at the exact millisecond where the angle is perfect. A series of four loud cracks tells me that all four projectiles hit their mark - two to the side of the creature's head, and two to the point where its jaw attaches to its skull. It lets out a roar of pain and rage, and starts to get up, but I know it has only a vague idea where it's been struck from. It turns its head wildly, listening and smelling, but I do not smell like life, and I am not moving. It will have to pick a direction by guesswork. A guess that is even slightly off will expose its side or back to me, and then I will strike. As it tries to figure out where I am, I can see its jaw hanging limply, obviously broken. Reassuring. But it still has its claws - no reason to get overconfident.

The tasendi pauses for a moment, almost as though it has picked up on something. I remain calm, for there is nothing it could have detected. Then it does pick a direction - directly opposite me, where my sister has been following from.

Oh no you don't.

It doesn't make it more than a step before I immediately rush it, my collected demeanor evaporating in an instant. The thought that it has, indeed, picked up on where she is prevents me from thinking about anything else, and as soon as I am within reach, I slap the tendrils I have extended against its neck. It doesn't have enough time to react properly before I hook my claws into its flesh - three punctures to hold myself steady, and one placed strategically above its spine. Unsatisfied with a surface wound, I seek out the animal's notochord and jam one of my blades between two of its vertebrae - a specific two, chosen to inflict exactly the degree of paralysis that I desire. Though I can feel the creature begin to twist around - a maneuver that would have allowed it to strike at me if completed - I never feel the end. Instead the once-powerful tasendi grows limp in my arms, the only remaining motion a rhythmic expansion of its chest.

The creature is heavy, so I let it slump to the ground, and run toward the place it was headed. Indeed, my little litare is only a few meters away. Upon reaching her, I immediately grasp her with four of my tendrils, so that she can feel the terror her recklessness has evoked in me.

-please avoid danger!; stay far away from danger!- While I am able to form some of my emotions into coherent thoughts, the majority of what I send through her skin is simply raw fear and protective instinct. She extrudes her own tendril and grabs one of my feathers. I can feel that she is nervous, but not nearly so much as me.

"I couldn't have stood any further back!" -i wanted to help if something went wrong-

I look down at her, unsure of what to think. -i don't want help!; i want you to be safe!-

"How do you think I feel?!" I don't have to guess.

I pull away from her and take a few steps back toward the tasendi. "We should talk about this, but I need some time to think about it first. And we need to get this thing back to the seep."

She looks at the creature, and her eyes widen. I remember that this is her first time accompanying a hunt. "It looks horrible...."

"Mm. But it was no match for me."

"No, I mean it looks like you hurt it a lot."

I turn to look at the creature myself. Indeed, its skull isn't much the same shape as it was when I encountered it. "I suppose I did. But it would have killed me if I hadn't."

"Did you really have to kill it in such an awful way?"

I stare at her. Had she understood that little from the sermons? It isn't dead... but now I'm reluctant to tell her that. She would probably just get more upset. And if she thought it was hurt now, what would she think of the ritual itself? Perhaps I was wrong in telling the others that she was old enough. Well, the error is already made. I don't think there's any way to let her down gently now, not without lying to her at least. And the lie would be easily discovered. Nothing to be done about it. "Sweetheart, the reason I had to injure it like that was because we need to bring it back alive. The ritual will fail otherwise."

"Oh." She pauses again. I can tell she is having trouble processing the new information. Why the information is new in the first place, I am not certain. "Why?"

The answer requires little thought - it is woven into my mind, in the same way that I don't have to think about walking. "Because then the child will be born without a soul. All creatures are possessed of a soul from birth, except us. The birthing ritual is the method ordained by the Gods so that we might acquire one, and continue to carry out our duties to them. It must be performed without error or deviation, or else it will fail."

"What's a soul?"

I look at her in silence for a moment. "Haven't any of the priests ever answered these questions for you?"

She shifts her weight uncertainly. "I guess I never paid much attention."

Yet you're suddenly interested enough to pester me about it. I exhale, and gesture to the tasendi again. "Here, help me drag this thing back to the seep, and I'll explain everything I can on the way over." This time, she crinkles her eyes at me, and obeys.

[Kliminryu]

I always felt a strong purpose in my actions. I know that I had no choice in what I did but it never mattered because I had no doubt. We never waver, we are the La-Mari.

I remember standing on the side of a vehicle. The landscape moving too fast for me to see detail. I squinted to try and see my surroundings. The vehicle was clear even through my eyelids the landscape was moving too fast. I think we were in a flying vehicle, the swamp beneath us was slowly turning into a dense landscape, more trees, more cover. The trees eventually started to thin out. I don’t know why I jumped, but I knew that I should. Three others jumped with me. We fell for a short while before landing in the bog.

I heard splashes around me as the others landed. Moving together we met at the center and started moving in the same direction the craft had been moving. I remember the smell, the taste of my companions. I’m sure that I had seen them before.

I can't remember the words but I can still see her. I can see her deep maroon mane, held above the deep bog water by her thin muscular legs. I was not tall enough to hold myself completely out of the muck and could feel it seeping up against my stomach through my fur. I stood still waiting for instructions. She motioned for us to follow and we fell in line behind her, walking for several quiet minutes. I felt a tension as we walked.

Without warning there were flashes of light, deafening cracks of thunder. I don't know what was happening. I saw her in the mud. Collapsed against a tree her head only barely above the water. I felt sick, I was sick, seeing her like this. I ran to her trying to lift her away from the chaos. Pulled at her dense fur trying to lift her onto my back, before I could make any progress I heard footsteps, splashed in the water around me.

I saw others, people I didn’t recognize. They spoke softly, reaching towards me, towards her. They came too close, I heard screams, I felt my teeth sink into soft warmth. I felt pain, I felt fear, I kept biting and clawing and ripping. I could feel the warmth fade from the blood soaking into my fur and the bog around me. Eventually the sound stopped, the breathing and splashing stopped. The last creature in my arms ceased his struggle as I pulled my teeth from his neck. The chaos had been quelled. I returned to her. I couldn’t tell if she was safe. I put my body under hers and strained against her weight.

I walked until it was dark and then light and then dark. My body ached and screamed with every step. I could no longer move my left arm. I think I was injured, the pain was there but was fading in place of a crawling sickness in my mind. A darkness that threatened to overrun my thoughts. It pushed at the edges of my vision. I cried in frustration. I had never felt this weakness. I struggled to keep walking, to keep my eyes open. I tripped on a root under the mud, the muck rushing up around me soaking into her beautiful fur. The cold shocked the darkness away, stinging life into my body as the cold electrified my skin with a piercing pain. I struggled to lift her back onto my back. The cold dark air eating at my soaked skin.

It was cold enough to hurt. It must be hurting her as well. I managed to pull her onto the dry roots of a larger tree. I looked in horror at the damage I had done. She was soaked in the mud and slime of the bog. Shaking I combed through her fur with my fingers and tongue, pulling at the mud and grass and slime. I could taste her body as I cleaned her. I felt as if I was a dirty thief, partaking in her beauty without consent. I could not feel the cold that caused my fingers to shake and lose feeling. I felt shame for what I was doing to her and what I had done. I felt my eyes grow heavy as the cold caused my limbs to grow stiff. The same darkness that had left me after I fell in the water returned as I groomed her perfect mane. I fell forward into her stomach as I pulled at the grime. Her soft still wet fur soaked in grime still smelled like her. I tried to push myself off tried to keep my eyes open, I tried to fight the darkness.

I will not waver, I am the La-Mari. I struggled to lift myself from the warmth and beauty that I lay against.

Maybe if I just closed my eyes for a second...

[The Litare]

"Ah, Damaris. Our aspiring huntress. Welcome back."

I look up, startled, and release the weight of the tasendi from my claws. I was not expecting to meet anyone this far from the seep. He must have just been standing in the shadows waiting for me - or else taking care to move very quietly. In case the voice wasn't enough, the twisted left leg of my greeter identifies him immediately.

"Hello, Rene. I'm afraid you've gotten the two of us mixed up - the only aspiring one here is Ciara. I am simply a huntress." In support of my point, I take a step to one side, putting the body of the tasendi in full view. Rene glances over the animal a few times, then turns his gaze back to me.

"Impressive. Quite the formidable quarry you've chosen."

In reality, we hadn't had much of a choice - the tasendi was simply the first thing that stumbled across our trap. Even if we had passed it up and waited, the tasendi is at the top of his food chain. Nothing else would have dared to approach the bait for a long while, once they had caught his scent on it. But if Rene wants to believe we sought out this creature on purpose, I am happy to let him.

"Thank you," I say back.

Rene looks me over in a similar manner. "I assume you incapacitated it by hand?" I crinkle my eyes at him. Though he himself wears the loose black raiment of a priest, I have nothing to cover my own flesh with. Nor anywhere to hide a weapon.

"That's right," I say proudly.

"You know, the gods do not forbid the use of weapons."

"Nevertheless, I choose to use what they have given me. I trust that their judgment in arming me was perfect - I display that trust in my actions." I allow my pride to show freely in my voice. "Do I not honor them by doing so?"

The priest gives me a look that I interpret as concern. "Perhaps. But is it not fair to say that your mind is included in your armament?"

"Indeed. And I make full use of it. But any weapon I had brought with me would not really be a product of my mind. It would have been the product of another mortal's. Lady Semele had no need of such assistance. Why should I?"

Rene exhales, visibly shrinking as the air leaves his upper bulb. I can tell he still has a qualm with what I'm saying. Possibly several. "I'm not here to argue with you. I only tell you these things because I don't want you to get needlessly hurt."

"Why are you here, then?"

"Your mother asked me to guide you back, once your hunt was finished."

I give a low chitter of amusement. Was sitting here in the dark really the best way to find me? I don't remember telling him, or anyone, which way we were planning to go. Maybe he figured it out somehow, and knew we would be heading back this way from our trap. Still, he could have made himself a little more obvious. And anyway, why do I need anyone to guide me back? Was I really going to get lost?

"I'm sorry you had to accept such an asinine request," I reply tersely. "Still, I suppose we should get going."

"Indeed. I'm sure she will be relieved to see you."

I turn back to the tasendi, concealing my look of annoyance. Ciara and I hook our claws back into it and start to drag it. Seeing us strain, Rene wordlessly moves to help us carry the body.

As we are walking, I notice Ciara watching the priest more closely than where she is walking. I cannot tell exactly what her expression means, except that she is thinking about something related to him. Maybe she's still weighing the theological answers I gave her on the way here. I wonder, would Rene have told her the same things I did? Perhaps she remembers more of what he told her than she let on. Perhaps... our answers don't line up. Is her expression one of mistrust?

No, I'm probably giving myself too much credit if I think she would trust my answers over the priest's. She doesn't look up to me that much. It must be something else. I wonder if I should just reach over and Ask her. Though, the memory of her telling me off for being too prying is still fresh in my mind. Maybe I should just leave her alone with her thoughts.

Apparently I can't help my curiosity. -what are you thinking about?-

-don't like him- The answer comes almost as soon as my feather touches her bulb. She might not have even intended for me to pick up on it. My guess is supported when, a moment later, her hostility is redirected toward me. -hey, don't touch me without warning!-

I immediately feel guilty about it, which she can surely pick up on. Ciara is still too young to fully control what other people Hear - if I were in her position, I would be angry, too. -sorry; sorry! i just wondered why you were staring at him-

Though I can feel a portion of her emotions - annoyance, embarrassment, regret - through her skin, I do not detect a coherent reply immediately. She must be wondering how much of what she was thinking I Heard.

-damaris, where did you learn all that stuff about souls and the gods from?-

I am a little taken aback by the question. -talking with the priests; meditating-

-have you ever told anyone about meditating?-

-can't remember; don't think so-

She looks at me, expression deadly serious. -don't tell anyone-

-what do you mean? does this have anything to do with rene?-

She doesn't answer me directly, but she does send me a lot of quite vivid imagery, and some abstract thoughts as commentary. The detail of the imagery is greater than usual for her - it must be a considerable effort for her to send. So I pay attention. From the fragments, I piece together the narrative that she wants to convey. -rene is one of the priests i talked to. i've talked to seven or eight, i think. he's the only one i told about meditating. none of the others. the first time i did it, it wasn't on purpose. it happened while i was asleep. instead of not feeling or thinking anything, i experienced a vision which was a lot like what the priests describe having themselves.- I can see little flashes of it, or of what she remembers of it, through her. An unfamiliar place, seemingly devoid of life. Some kind of massive chamber, with repeating patterns along its walls, seeming to go on forever. But I can't discern anything more than that - the glimpses are too short, and they start to slip out of my mind as soon as they are over.

-after that,- Ciara continues, -i could bring myself to that state on purpose, although it was a lot of effort. and it started to happen more while i was asleep, too. rene was the first person i talked to about it. i was confused. i tried to share part of my visions by touching him, but he wouldn't let me. and he said that what i was doing wasn't meditating.-

-that sounds like meditating to me.-

-yeah?-

-yeah, i've experienced the same thing too; i think it's the same thing anyway. it sounds exactly like what the priests do.-

-right. but rene told me it wasn't. he said that i wasn't able to meditate.-

-wasn't able to?-

-he said that only priests had the ability, because it was given to them by the gods. and the gods would never give a girl that ability.-

I pause for a moment to collect my thoughts. I think I'm beginning to understand why she doesn't like him. -so what did he think it was, then?-

-don't remember; he might not have said. by then, i was pretty upset that he wouldn't talk with me about the visions or explain what they meant. especially, since he was always explaining stuff about the gods to other people. i thought he would be happy to talk to me about it. but he wasn't.-

I hesitate again. -ciara, thank you for telling me this.- I take my feather off of her and pull it back inside my body. My heart is beating quickly now, and I am sure that at least a bit of nervousness is evident in my expression. Whatever Rene was thinking when Ciara told him these things, it seemed to make him uneasy in a way that he couldn't keep hidden. To avoid scaring a little child, he surely must have tried. And yet, I have never heard anyone say that a female litare can't meditate. I'm pretty sure I've done it. Are Ciara and I really unusual? I suppose if I've never asked anyone about it, I wouldn't know. To think that for all my life, I never thought it was important enough to bring up.

Well, we are getting close to the seep now, and there will surely be other hunters returning from their outings as well. It shouldn't be hard to get someone alone to pose the question.

As we near the edge of the seep, the vegetation around us grows noticeably thicker, the trees placed closer together and the smaller bladeleaf plants forming a nearly opaque barrier several dozen meters thick. The air has grown quiet, except for the noise of chittering fairies - this time making no effort to disguise their chatter as another lifeform's. I know that all of this is on purpose - a warning to the other predators of this world. "Turn back."

Then, abruptly, the vegetation cuts out, and a huge clearing extends in front of us for as far as the eye can see. Outside the clearing, nothing is visible - the verdant wall surrounds the entire encampment. Inside, there is nothing growing at all - the ground is bare earth, or else mud. The elevation is not flat - rocky ridges and outcroppings, normally obscured by plant life, mar the landscape. Hundreds of buildings dot the landscape, becoming much denser toward the center. That area is so hotly contested because, invisible from here, there is a massive petroleum seep - the most valuable type of food for our kind. Many of the buildings are reed-and-pitch - temporary, designed to be packed up and moved once a seep has run dry. But this seep is so unusually plentiful that several stone structures have also been constructed - all larger than their temporary counterparts, and all placed as close to the seep as the unstable ground will allow.

My prediction seems to have been correct - there are a few other groups of hunters returning at the same time as us. Some people prefer to hunt at night, and it is just beginning to grow light as we arrive. All of them have at least three members, and all of them are clad in the usual hunter's garb. Hardened leather to provide protection from the environment and lesser foes, and with plenty of room for supplies and weaponry. All of them, too, appear to have been successful, and are dragging their catches behind them. Most of them with ropes.

As we're walking toward the center of the camp, another group catches sight of us, and changes course slightly so as to cross our path. Once within earshot, one of their members calls out: "Hey, Damaris!"

"Hey!" I call back, not knowing the person's name.

"Did you guys catch that thing yourselves?"

"Ciara and I caught it ourselves!" I yell, affirming her guess while adding a slight correction.

"That's amazing!"

I crinkle my eyes, a renewed surge of vigor filling my body. Yeah, I know, I almost want to yell back. "Thank you!"

"And it's so cool how you're teaching your sister to do it, too. I'd never be able to catch anything without my bow and dagger."

At this point the other hunters are close enough that I don't have to yell. "Oh, don't say that. The gods gave you everything you need to combat everything this world has to offer."

The hunter crinkles her eyes back at me. "How did I know you would say something like that?"

"Well, it's true. Really all it takes is knowing your opponent, and being able to strike at the right opportunity. If you want, I could teach you how to do it sometime." I glance back at the tasendi, still slowly breathing, behind us. "Maybe against something less--"

"Oh, no, no, I couldn't," she cuts me off. "I'm not nearly as level-headed as you. Unarmed and unarmored, I'd just run away from the first animal we saw!" She chatters mirthfully. "Then who'd be left to hunt for my old woman?"

I look back out in front of myself. "Speaking of which...."

"Right, right, I've got somewhere to be myself! See ya!" Turning to Ciara: "Bye Ciara! Make sure to pay good attention to your big sis, okay?"

"Yeah," she replies placidly. I can tell she's annoyed, though I don't think the other hunter notices. There are a few moments of silence as our two parties slowly diverge again, then I hear the other group resume a conversation they seemed to be having before spotting us. By that point, they're far enough away that their words blend together in an unintelligible babble, and we are almost upon our destination. An unremarkable reed hut - our home, inasmuch as we have one. There's no door, only a small opening that you have to press your belly against the ground to fit through. The three of us set the tasendi down and enter one after another, pulling it in behind us with a cooperative heave.

Another litare is already inside, crouched in a sleeping position. With the four of us and the tasendi, it's pretty cramped, but there is enough headroom to stand up. Rene does so.

"Lady Accalia, your daughters have returned. Are you ready to perform the ritual?"

The sleeping litare shifts slightly. "Oh, thank goodness. Yes, I am ready." Her voice is soft and weak, but as usual, something about it sets me on edge. She manages to pull herself on top of the paralyzed creature, though it doesn't exactly look easy for her. The priest helps to the best of his ability, steadying her with his tendrils until it's clear that her position is stable.

"Okay, alright," he says soothingly, more to relax her than anything else. He is also touching her, so he may be Saying other things as well - not that I could tell. I can now see the elongated bulge in her upper bulb, pushing her tail out about 20 centimeters further than it would normally go. The blades on the end are also permanently extended. I can't help but feel a little sympathy for her - pregnancy does look uncomfortable.

Once she is perched steadily atop the tasendi, the priest gently takes hold of her tail and guides it to a spot on the supine creature's chest. With the other front tendril on the same side, he removes a small knife from within the folds of his cloak and makes a small incision - barely enough to bleed - near where her tail is positioned. I watch as her tail-claws instinctively grip at the animal's skin, seeking out the wound. Once she has found it, her claws begin to pull themselves inside, forcing more and more of her tail inside the tasendi's body. At the same time, she extends all eight of her tendrils and grips her victim tightly. Though she cannot Speak with it, she must be able to feel its breathing and the rhythm of its heart. I watch with fascination. Even though I've seen the ritual once before, it is just as amazing now as it was then.

Then the real work begins. The female litare lets out a low moan, and the bulge in her abdomen begins to contract. She shivers weakly every time, and every time the mass is shifted downwards by a little bit. I know that eventually, the developing child must leave through the opening at the tip of her tail, but I had forgotten how long this actually took to happen. Nevertheless, I cannot look away. My attention is only diverted when I hear the noise of someone leaving the hut. It takes me a moment to process this, but of course there is only one person it could be. I hesitate, then crawl out after her.

"Ciara~! Where are you going?" I call out.

[Kliminryu]

I woke up coughing, choking on the air I was breathing. I made to stand up and get away from what I was choking on but something jerked against my body holding me on my back as I gagged against the object in my throat. Despite the obstruction I was still able to breath but I continued to cough. My eyes refused to focus on my surroundings. I squinted into my surroundings trying to twist my head to find out what was happening.

I heard voices nearby, like my vision they felt out of focus, as if they were speaking underwater. I had heard these people talk before. I felt as if I had heard this conversation before. I couldn't understand it then either. I felt them touching me, I knew that they would hurt me like they had before. I screamed against the object in my mouth and throat. Thrashing against my bonds I felt their hands holding me down, trying to stop me. I felt the restraint on my right arm give out and I swiped at my assailants. The hands touching me where gone.

Grabbing at my left wrist I tried to remove the restraint, but there was nothing on my arm. Still unable to move my left arm off the table I reached for the structure on my face. I could feel tubes and cables running away from it. I wrenched at the device, tearing cables and tubes. I could feel liquids and gasses pouring out of several. With the cables removed I could finally move my arms. I used them to removed the mask covering my eyes and mouth, I pulled at the device dislodging several feet of tubing from my mouth. Gagging at the sensation I rolled over and coughed slime onto the floor. Looking up I tried to find my assailants.

Instead I was greeted by a dark empty room. The cables that continued to leak onto my chest went up into the ceiling and aside from the table they were the only other feature in the room. I rolled off the table and walked over to the door. It swung open with ease and exposed a long well lit white corridor. There were no doors on either side simply one door at the other end.

I walked down the hallway, yellow slime dripping off my chest. Once I got to the door it opened by itself. Revealing and small elevator. With no other option I stepped inside and the doors shut. I could feel it moving up as I grew heavier. Silence for 30 seconds when finally the room stopped moving and The doors opened. I stepped out of the elevator. I was at the center of a massive room. So big and dark that I could not see the walls, if it even had walls. I was surrounded by cables and server racks. At the center of the room, featuring the doors I had stepped out of, there was a large support column reaching up into infinity at some point it was to far away to see. I could see server lights blinking everywhere. Cables wrapped around the column spiraling up to the heavens. The night sky illuminated the environment, the dense clusters of stars in the arms of the galaxy painting a river across the sky. I stared at the twinkling gems, hypnotized.

My thoughts were interrupted by movement. I heard steps in front of me. It was to dark to see what it was. If it was part of this place it was here to hurt me. I charged, running at the sound. I ran low to the ground. I saw the person who had made the noise. They were wrapped in a series of green and brown cloaks. They stared back at me as I braced against the ground.

I could hear him talking but it was like before. His voice sounded as if it was underwater. I couldn’t understand him. I tensed ready to attack. He was somewhat larger than me, but I do not waver.

I am La-Mari.

I remembered what had happened. I remembered the woman. She was hurt! I couldn’t stand the idea of her suffering, dying without me to help her. I spun around looking for a way out. Looking for her.

The person was still watching me, it didn’t matter. I was completely lost, I kept turning looking for a direction that could lead me to her. After turning around twice I stopped while looking at the cloaked figure. Perhaps it did matter.

The figure saw me crouch, preparing to lunge, and made to run away. I took my opportunity and sprung at his exposed back.

He turned revealing his trap. He caught me by the neck and stopped me cold. The impact sent a shockwave through my body, stunning me long enough for him to drop me to ground and pin me underneath his weight. I gasped for air and writhed against him trying to shove him away until i felt the knife at my throat.

He spoke again, the garbled sound meant nothing to me. I could tell that he was trying to calm me. He spoke in soft tones I couldn’t tell if it was a threat or not. He shifted his weight enough that I could move my leg. Before I could move to take advantage the knife sunk into my neck and twisted up. Whatever he did he hadn’t killed me not yet.

I struggled to pull my arm out from under myself.

“Can you hear me now?” The voice young and female, came from the person on top of me.

I nodded slowly around the knife.

“I’m sorry if i scared you, but I could tell you needed help.” she paused possibly waiting for a response. “You should be able to talk as well. Go ahead give it a shot. Just try making sounds, you should be able to make them into words without much effort.”

I held still waiting for her to pull the knife out of my neck. When nothing happened I tried to speak, “aaaah, uuuuu,” she wasn’t wrong I could feel how to make sounds rather quickly. Without much effort I managed to say, “Nuuuh-ife… knife.”

“Good job!” she pulled the knife out of my body with gentle tug and wiped the blood off its blade. “Promise not to attack me if I let you go?”

I nodded in response, I could feel small amounts of blood seeping into my fur around the cut.

“Well then let's start over,” she stood up off of me and pulled me to my feet as she got up. “My name is Lutlil, what’s yours?”

I thought carefully about how to form my words. Backing away from her while holding the wound on my neck. The bleeding was already slowing down. “What did you do to me?”

“I broke the inhibitors connection to your brain,” She waggled the knife at me, “snipped the connection so you could talk.” Her strange upbeat attitude was warming.

“Where am I?”

“I thought you would be able to tell me.”

“Why would I know this place?” I looked around, reaffirming that this place was alien to me.

“I found you here, it’s my dream after all. Since you are part of my dream I figured you would know…” her voice was filled with confidence as if she was explaining the obvious.

“What do you mean this is your dream?”

“Well it's obviously not real.” she hid the knife back in the folds of her cloak, “Besides, I went to sleep and woke up here that's how dreaming works.” she leaned against a nearby server rack and began scanning me from head to toe. “You still need to tell me your name, how did you end up with an inhibitor? No wait I’m sorry, one thing at a time. What is your name?”

I realized I didn’t know. I had never spoken like this to anyone, not wanting to appear like I was missing something that I was supposed to have I used the next best thing, “La-Mari, my name is La-Mari.”

She stood up straight, I could see her reach for the knife, he voice lost its jovial over tone and lowered as she spoke, “Where did you hear that, why are you talking about La-Mari?”

Her sudden hostility, and larger size, forced me to step back even farther. The dim lights from the servers and stars no longer enough to fully illuminate her from this distance. “I… uh… it's the only name I have ever had!”

“Really?” she leaned back against the server, her hand still near the knife, “So when people call out to you, you answer to La-Mari?”

“Well not really, no one ever really calls out to me.” I wasn’t sure how to explain that I just knew what I was supposed to do and she seemed to be on edge. “La-Mari isn’t really my name, it's just what I am part of.”

She giggled out loud as I finished my sentence, “You NEED to tell me how a shrimp like you joined the La-Mari.”

“You should tell me how you made it possible for me to talk. Have you done this before?”

“I have disabled inhibitors before, I had one while I was in jail. It's not hard to recognize someone who has one. People act different when they can’t talk.” Her hand finally returned to a neutral position. “Are you serious that your are a member of the La-Mari?”

I stared at her silently, last time we talked about this she got pretty mad. “No?”

“Listen, I’m sorry if i scared you. I got worried because the La-Mari are dangerous, you are not dangerous, so I don’t think you are really La-Mari. Do you seriously not have a name?”

“Uh, I guess I never needed one…” I felt embarrassed, something about the way she asked that question.

“Well if you could choose a name what would it be?”

The question caught me off guard. “What would it be?”

“Well if you don’t have a name, you need one. And if your family or friends aren’t here to name you then you would have to choose one yourself.” She had something of a gleam in her eye, “Not many people get his opportunity! My parents named me when I was born, Lutlil, what a boring name. I have met at least 4 other people with the same name. You could choose anything you want.”

I stared at her, this all seemed so bizarre. “I didn’t need a name before, why should I get one now?”

“I need to call you by something. I can’t address you neutrally forever, well, until the dream ends I suppose.”

“If you need a name then you should come up with one, I don’t know the first thing about names.” It’s true, I hadn’t really even considered anyone's name until now, odd that I knew what it was when she said it though, perhaps it was the context that she said it in?

“I said friends and family gives names to others, since we aren’t family then we have to be friends, deal?” She reached forward with her arm offering it to me.

“Deal?” I meant it like a question but i made the mistake of lifting my arm in relex to her outstretched hand.

She grabbed my hand before I could react and pulled me into a hug squishing the yellow slime on my chest into her cloak. Letting go before I could protest “Alright friend!” she said appearing to ignore the mess that I transferred. “I knew a great name for you the second I saw you, how does Ka-Sumiya sound?”

“Ka-sum… wait isn’t that a bug or…?"

“Not really, it's the name of a mythological beast who hides in the shadows and controls bugs!”

“Why would I want to be named after a bug monster?”

“You look just like him!” You have slime dripping out of your mouth and all over you body! If you saw a picture of him you would agree.” She looked far to satisfied with herself. “If you don’t like it then you should think of one yourself. Until then im calling you Miya.”

"Miya…" I felt a warmth from her addressing me with the new name. “It’s only a dream, i guess that will work for now.”

[The Litare]

"Ciara, where did you get that?" I eye her nervously, my eyes fixed on her two front right tendrils. She is holding something - it looks like a curved piece of wood with a row of jagged rocks embedded along the inner edge.

"A friend's house." She isn't pointing it at me or anything, but the mere fact that she has it makes me hesitant to get within arm's reach. She stares back at me, steely-eyed.

"Why?" Why what? Why did you run off? Why are you holding what looks like a torture device? Why are you glaring at me? I'm not entirely sure myself which one I'm asking. Really, I'd be happy with an answer to any of them. Unfortunately, I am disappointed.

"How long does that ritual usually take?" she snaps back at me.

I stammer for a moment. Her hostility is unexpected but extremely apparent. "Uh... maybe around a day?" The weapon is still being held loosely at her side, the tip resting on the ground, but the thought that she might use it on me crosses my mind. I try to banish it. That's insane - why would she? What reason does she have to be angry at me?

"A day?" She clearly doesn't like my answer. A momentary hesitation, then, "Move it. And don't follow me."

Move it? If I'm in her way, that probably means she wants to go back to our house. I don't budge. Out of the four possible targets for that nightmare blade, none of them are remotely acceptable. "Ciara, please tell me what's going on. Why do you have that thing?"

"You never told me how terrible the ritual was! How can you just sit and watch like that?!" Her sudden screaming draws the looks of a few passers-by. "Is that how you were when I was born, too?!"

I find it hard to say anything back, in the face of such vitriol. Still, I can tell she needs an answer. "Well... yes. I know it's not the kindest thing, but it has to be done if the baby is to be normal and healthy. Remember, we talked about this."

"He cut open its chest while it was still alive." Her voice is quieter now, but no less distraught. For a moment, she doesn't say anything further. Then she perks up, as if realizing something. "Uh - I don't have time for this! Move!"

"No. I'll move when I'm sure you won't attack anyone."

She narrows her eyes at me. "Damaris." A moment later, I notice myriad little pairs of wings emerge from her spiracles. "Where are your fairies?" In spite of my earlier bravado, I can't help but take a step backwards. "Did you perhaps send them out to look for me?"

Damn. Did she really call them all back for this? She anticipated my resistance... so, she must really be willing to fight me. Even so, she still hasn't raised the weapon. There's still a chance I can talk her down. "Ciara, I understand how you feel about Rene. But I obviously can't let you anywhere near--"

My voice catches in my throat when Ciara's fairies all simultaneously take flight in my direction. A powerful instinctive fear overcomes me, and with a distinct lack of grace, I try to get away from the swarm. Backing away as quickly as possible, I extend all of my tendrils and whip them in the fairies' direction, doing my best to swat them away before they can reach me. Even overcome by terror as I am, I am able to restrain myself from smacking them too violently. They are very much a part of my sister's body, and even though it seems like she's attacking me, I don't want to hurt her.

My efforts are mostly in vain anyway. There are simply too many of them. It only takes them a few seconds to reach my body through the flurry of arms. I flinch hard at them touching my face - but the sensation of their little blades never comes. Instead they simply move to cover my eyes. At this point I am completely tensed up - so I don't put up much resistance when something slams into me and knocks me over. From the size, and the soft sound of exhaling when it hits me, I assume it's Ciara's body.

"I said to move!" Her voice is almost apologetic. But from the sound of her footfalls, I can tell she doesn't pause for a moment.

"Ciara~!" I call, trying to swipe the flittering creatures away from my face while standing up. For a few moments, they continue harassing me to the point that I can't see anything - then they suddenly abandon their mission to fly after their master. She must think she's far enough past me. More worrying, she must think she needs them for something else.

Even if she's right about being past me, I still can't just let her go after Rene. He may be an adult, but he's unarmed, and unlike me he has no skill in unarmed combat. Not that my skill was all that helpful anyway. I sprint after her. Having had a moment to collect my thoughts, I call out to my own fairies, signalling them to warn Rene of the incoming danger. Spread out as they are, one of them is surely closer to the house than Ciara is.

My breathing is synchronized with my feet hitting the ground. The house shouldn't be far from here - yet I don't see Ciara ahead of me. Just her footprints, distinct from the rest by how much mud she's kicked up in her rush. One more right turn here. I round the corner and, sure enough, there she is, her tendrils entangled up by Rene's in what is clearly a death grip. The weapon is still clasped tightly in her hands, now dripping blood. I glance over Rene's body, scanning for injuries, but I don't see any, and even while struggling to free herself, Ciara isn't trying to use the weapon on him.

"Young lady! What in the world has come over you?!" Rene's voice booms. I stare for a moment longer, then dart past them into the hut. Accalia and the tasendi are still there, and the lady still seems to be in the throes of childbirth, but the tasendi is no longer breathing. A ragged gash runs down the underside of its neck, hemorrhaging blood onto the dirt floor. I sigh and crawl back outside.

"Ugh! Let go of me!" my sister yells, twisting and writhing in an effort to slip loose.

"I absolutely will not! Explain yourself!"

She manages to twist herself enough to glare at him. "What's to explain? The tasendi was obviously in terrible pain, so I put it out of its misery."

Rene glares back. "Whatever you believe you have spared the animal from, you have certainly brought far worse by killing it. What did you think would happen to the child?"

"Looks like it's still being born just fine," she snaps.

"Just fine?" Rene looks at me, almost accusatorily, then back to Ciara. "Just fine? Ciara, you have freed the tasendi's soul from its body before the infant could absorb it. It will now be born without one. Do you have any idea what soulless litare are like?"

"Lot like you and me," she mutters quietly, though I don't think Rene hears her.

"A litare without a soul is just as intelligent as you or I," he continues, "but it has no capacity to empathize with others. They are simply monsters, consumed by their cruelty and lust for destruction."

"Oh, a person with no empathy, that sounds terrible. You're right, it would be really bad if someone like that made it to adulthood." She narrows her eyes at Rene in the most pointed look she can muster.

"Yes, it would. Our only other option is to kill the infant before it can cause any harm. Are you content--"

"No it isn't," she cuts him off. "You say that the baby is going to end up being some kind of monster, but you also said that girl litare can't meditate. I think you're just making stuff up." At this point she has mostly stopped struggling, content to let Rene hold her up as she refuses to support her own weight. "When's the last time someone had a 'soulless' baby anyway? Were you even alive for it?"

"Yes. The last time was just a few years ago. Even without active sabotage," he emphasizes the words sternly, "the ritual can go wrong in other ways. Once started, it cannot be undone or retried. Every time this happens we are faced with the same choice as we are now - whether to let the infant live, or destroy it before it can cause any harm. I am fortunate that our tribe has chosen the latter nearly every time. Once you have seen what a soulless is capable of, even if it is only one victim...." He trails off.

"So it's like I thought. You just kill them on the spot every time. How would you even know if you were wrong, and you were just killing normal babies out of fear?"

Rene stares at her. "Because every time we come close to forgetting what a soulless is like, someone like you comes along and insists on reminding us."

This, finally, seems to get through to her, and she doesn't respond immediately. Rene takes the opportunity to turn his attention back to me. "Damaris. Your sister seems to have some quite thorough misconceptions. As you are her de facto caretaker, I must ask if you have had any hand in this."

"No, I haven't. I am just as confused as you are as to where she got them."

"I didn't get them from anywhere," she protests. "It's only natural to be suspicious of people who lie to you."

Rene looks at her for a few moments. "I have never lied to you. But I suppose I can understand your skepticism. After all, you have never seen a soulless for yourself. And you are certainly not the type to take anyone else's word for it." He looks away, off into the distance. "Still, I am afraid your doubts will have to go unassuaged. I cannot in good conscience allow the infant to live now that you have destroyed its soul, just so that you can witness its vile nature firsthand." He sighs. "I hope someday you will be able to understand the distress you have put your mother through, even if it is not today. Come inside, so that you may remember this moment and reflect on it."

"You're really going to kill it?" she bursts out. "You're the one putting her through distress!"

"Ciara, the child is already dead of spirit. By your hand."

"Please, Rene, just listen to me! I'm never going to change my mind about this! As far as I'm concerned you're not killing a monster, you're killing my little sister! Why would I believe anything else?" She looks at him pleadingly. "Do you really want me to resent you for the rest of my life over this?"

"If you do resent me, it will be your own choice to do so. Do you think I am happy to be put in this position? Of course not. But what must be done, must be done."

"No! You're still not listening! There is another option!" She pauses to catch her breath. "Let me take care of it. If it really is a monster, then I'll be able to see for myself, and I'll admit that you were right. If we have to kill it then, then so be it - at least we'll have a good reason! And if it's not a monster, then you'll get to avoid being a murderer, and we can stop performing this stupid ritual every time someone gets pregnant."

"Let you take care of the child?!" Rene says incredulously. "You are still but a child yourself!"

"I am not! A child wouldn't offer to take that kind of responsibility for her actions!" Her voice is filled with defiance. "And if you are right... I'll kill it myself."

Now it is Rene's turn to fall silent in consideration. I myself can only stare at Ciara in shock, still trying to process the magnitude of her suggestion.

"I admit there is some logic in what you are saying," Rene finally says. "But the matter is not as simple as you make it out to be. The day you discover that the child is a monster may be the same day that it decides to set the village on fire while we're sleeping. You say that we can simply kill it once it is obvious that I am right, but by then, we cannot say how much damage will have been done."

"I understand that. Which is why I'm not going to raise it here."

"Oh?"

"I know that you're probably going to make me do some kind of penance for interfering with the sacred ritual. I've heard that people have been banished, temporarily or not, for crimes like mine. Am I wrong?"

"No, you are not."

"So let me take the baby with me. It'll be as good as dead as far as you're concerned. And if it does hurt someone, it's going to be me."

"Hm." Rene looks at me, though I can't tell why. All I can do is stare back in a daze. "I must say, among all those who have suggested something like this in the past, you are more willing than most to shoulder the burden. I must at least give you credit for that." Ciara looks at him hopefully, saying nothing. "If you truly do mean what you say, then I can see no further problems with your proposal." He adopts an official tone. "Ciara of the Night's Hunt, you are hereby banished from Heaven's Bounty and all surrounding territories claimed thereby. You may return when thirty-six full moons have passed, or when the infant has been slain by your hand, whichever comes first."

"So if the thirty-six months comes first, you'll believe me that the child isn't a monster?" she interjects.

"If it is a monster, I would fully expect it to have tried to harm you many times before then. And it will have had many opportunities. If such a long time does go by in peace, I would have no choice but to accept your claim."

"What about the ritual? Can we stop doing it if I'm right?"

This time the answer isn't as immediate. "I cannot promise you that. Even if you are right about this one child, the fact remains that soulless litare have been responsible for much bloodshed in the past. But I will say this. If indeed, by some miracle, you do turn out to be right, it will at least cast some doubt on our current interpretation of the ritual, and of the gods' will. I promise that I will do my best to learn the truth. With your help, if you so wish."

Ciara scrunches her face up in happiness. "Very well, your terms are acceptable."

"It's not a negotiation," he says quietly, but his expression is one of relief.

[Kliminryu]

“What are you thinking about?”

Her words shatter my thoughts, most of which are questions of some kind. “I don’t know,” it wasn’t a lie, I don’t remember the last time I had stopped to think about anything, “I’m not sure if I understand how I got here…”

“There is probably a better way to go about that then staring at me.”

I took a breath, “Fine, Lutlil, how did I end up in your dream?” I know she won’t have the answer i'm looking for, that’s why I hadn't asked.

“Same way anything does, I suppose. My mind conjures up all manner of locations and people. Odd for a figment of my imagination to have such existential concerns.” She laughed the petals along her head rippling about as she draws breath. “A bite-sized La-Mari having an existential crisis in my dream, I must have eaten something I didn’t mean to!”

My body flushes with heat as she laughs, underneath the warmth there is a cold sad feeling. Shame washes through me at her description, “If you wanted me t-..." Her laughter cuts me off, "I’m being serious!” I can’t stop myself from huffing in disdain as she continues to guffaw at her own terrible joke. “Whatever…” I turn my back on my new idiot friend and let my overburdened mind flood me with more questions. Drowning out her laughter.

Again my thoughts are quickly interrupted, this time by Lutlil’s arms pulling me back into her chest from behind. I struggle for a moment as she lifts me into a back-breaking hug. Despite the force of the gesture I feel no pain, there is a certain security strength of her grip. The warmth of her soft mane smothers my ears and muffles her voice.

“I’m sorry for tearing into you like that,” I hold still; frozen in her arms, worried that if I move she will let go. “It is rather sill- uh... i mean strange, to see a La-Mar- well, someone who thinks they are La-Mari, worried about how they got here.”

I take my time thinking of a response, worried that she will laugh again. “I fell asleep and ended up here as well, are you sure that you aren’t part of my imagination?”

“What?” My body grows cold as she me pushes away from her and spins me around. She stares into my eyes, I stare back lost in her gaze and wondering if she is actively trying to toy with my mind as much as she is. "You mean to tell me that you fell asleep and are now dreaming?"

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Well yeah, I'm pretty sure one of us doesn’t exist and I’m pretty sure its you.”

“It does seem like you are the expert, I can’t remember having dreamed like this before.”

“Well I don't believe that for a second,” She squints at me and for some reason I almost flinch at the gesture, “You mean to tell me that you are old enough to be a La-Mari and you don’t remember ever having a dream?”

“Well, to be honest I don’t really remember much of anything,” I see concern in her eyes as I speak and I hurriedly explain. “Everything before this dream feels so vague when I think about it. I can see images and I can feel events but none of them really have sense of being real, almost like someone else described it to me. It just a bunch of nonsense. I remember being so tired before I came here, and I had never felt tired before that. When I fell asleep I was so scared. I thought I was dying!” Lutlil stares at me, I hope that she isn't dismissing what I say. “I was with someone, I had to carry them and I couldn’t keep going. I… I collapsed and woke up here. I don’t know what's going on.” I feel my body shaking, -why am I panicking like this?-

I barely notice that Lutlil has grabbed me by the shoulders until she speaks, “Don’t worry," Her face and voice are warm and beautiful, "whatever is happening this is just a dream, one of us is going to wake up and everything will go back to normal.”

“I don’t even know what normal is!”

“That’s a big part of dreaming! At least for me. While i’m dreaming I tend to forget where I am or what I am doing. But when you wake up you can just look around. You can look at the time or the people around you or the place that you are in. Sometime it takes a second but you always remember who you are after you wake up. Even if it takes a few second you soon remember and everything goes back to normal."

I pull myself against her chest, fear and sorrow clawing at my mind. “What if I don't remember, How can you be so sure?”

She returns the gesture lifting the weight of my body off my legs, “There is no point in being certain Miya, no on ever is, not about this sort of thing.”

[The Litare]

I stand a few meters behind Ciara, watching over her. She is leaning down, the front of her bulb dipped into the oily black liquid. A bit of splashing and squirming near her face tells me that her worms are nearly finished gorging themselves and have started to return. There are others crouching around the seep too - many of them returning hunters, who I am sure are glad to taste petroleum after days of nothing but dirt. I myself have already had my turn - I can feel my own worms starting to coat the pages of my lungs with the oil they have processed. Indeed, the flavor is heavenly - rich and savory, especially compared to our kind's normal diet. I am going to miss it.

"You know, you don't actually have to come with me," Ciara calls, forming the words with her hind four spiracles while the others are in use. "The punishment doesn't apply to you just because you're my sister."

"Don't be ridiculous," I call back. "It's exactly because you are my sister that I couldn't possibly let you go alone. I promised the elder priests that I would teach you how to hunt and survive like I do, and I haven't yet fulfilled that promise."

"I'm not going to be hunting anything," she says, her voice smiling.

"Even so, there are plenty of dangerous creatures out beyond the veil, and not just tasendi either. And even if you don't encounter a single one, nature can be a harsh mistress. You'll be glad of my help."

"Oh, I'm sure I would be," she says nonchalantly. "It's just that you seem to like it here more than I do. You fit right in - you're a natural hunter, so everyone loves you." I think back to the exchange that the other hunter and I had on our way home. She's not wrong - I do have a taste for adoration. "Leaving the seep is my decision - I don't want to drag you into it."

For a brief moment I consider what she's saying. It would be nice to go on hunting like I have been, returning to the seep every few mornings to drink in the smooth ambrosia and the praises of my fellow hunters. But I discard the thought almost immediately. Ciara's my sister. She's been at my side nearly constantly since she was born. Of course I can't abandon her - now or ever. Besides, nectar or no nectar, what kind of life would that be, without her? "The matter is already settled," I say. "You're not going to talk me out of it."

"Not trying to."

"Good. Then you'll stop talking about it."

"Heh, okay, okay." As we both fall silent again, I look around at my surroundings, half expecting one of those fellow hunters to come up and wish me goodbye. It's a silly thought, since we haven't actually told that many people we're leaving. Still, I imagine that word will get around. I wonder if people will talk about me while I'm gone. I wonder how much they'll miss me....

Don't get full of yourself, says a little voice in my head. Of course the village will be fine without you. You're not that great a hunter. The voice is right, of course. I'm just one person. No one is going to want for prey just because one hunter is gone. They'll forget about both of us by the end of the month.

My peripheral eyes pick up movement from Ciara, and I turn back to look at her. It seems she has collected all of her worms, and is tentatively crawling back from the stony ledge. "You done?" I ask rhetorically. "Then shall we head back to the house?" She does a little curtsy of affirmation once she has regained solid footing, trotting up alongside me as I turn to head in that direction. The only reason we're - well, Ciara's - still allowed to be here is because the child still needs to finish being born. It was Ciara's idea to take our fill from the seep before leaving, but normally that wouldn't be allowed. She would have been "escorted" out as soon as the sentence had come down - most likely by those same hunters who had welcomed us back just a few hours ago. We're lucky Rene had enough patience to understand what Ciara was trying to do. And enough mercy to bend the rules so she could.

The flurry of my thoughts calms down a bit as we walk. It occurs to me that, even though my decision to accompany Ciara was an easy one, I'm still not sure what to make of the situation as a whole. It still feels a little surreal - that she would defy the law so blatantly, then willingly accept banishment from the place she had lived all her life... all for the sake of a mere beast. Nobody else I know would have thought twice about parasitizing the tasendi. Sure, it probably did hurt, but pregnancy hurt too - worse, the longer it went on. There really was nothing to think about. A litare is more important than any animal. And parasitizing a dead body is out of the question. You can't bring a soulless litare into the world just because you're concerned for a single prey item. It'll do much worse than you will, and to the people of your village who have raised and protected you. Ciara's actions seemed to hinge on her belief that this wouldn't happen - that somehow Rene and everyone else were wrong. But I still can't imagine why she would be willing to bet so much on that.

-ciara,- I ask, placing a feather on her body, -why are you so confident the child is not a monster?-

She jumps slightly and looks at me in annoyance, but doesn't back out of reach. If she was thinking something when I interjected, she has managed to hide it from me this time. -i'm not confident. i'm doing an experiment.-

-you're investing quite a lot into the experiment. you wouldn't do that if you didn't think you were right.-

Her expression doesn't change, but I can feel her annoyance through my skin. -i don't think i'm right necessarily. what's so hard to understand?-

-people don't break the law and get themselves banished just for the sake of an experiment.-

-i did; i'm a person; so you're obviously wrong!- She shakes my arm loose and walks more briskly so that she'll pull ahead of me. I don't protest, but simply follow her in silence. I feel a bit remorseful for pressing her; it's obvious she's not going to tell me anything she hasn't already. At least not right now.

A few minutes later, I arrive at our home. Ciara is waiting for me outside, refusing to make eye contact. Despite her attitude, it seems she is too shy to confront Accalia by herself. I hesitate for a moment, then brush past her and into the hut. Rene has since left, probably to go assist another lady with their ritual. Of course he would have - he is not Accalia's personal servant, but one of the whole village. Accalia herself is lying on one of our two straw mats, cocooned in a mass of blankets. I'm pretty sure not all of them belong to us. The infant is indeed born, and, rather than being cradled by its mother, has been discarded in the far corner of the hut, dust clinging to the amniotic fluid that still covers its skin. I frown. On the one hand, I can hardly blame Accalia for not wanting it near her, but even if there is something wrong with it, this treatment seems a little callous. A soft rustling tells me that Ciara has come in, too. I turn to look at her, curious as to her reaction.

She is staring intently at the infant, and like me seems to be upset by its condition. Cautiously, she reaches her four front arms out toward it and scoops it off the ground, drawing it toward her. She is able to do so gently enough to avoid waking it. Once it is close to her body, she transfers it to her four hindmost arms, as they're sturdier and can form a basket more easily. Curling her tail around it as well, she is able to hold it securely. As I expected, the dust doesn't seem to bother her. Without a word she slips back out of the hut, and I follow her.

Once we're out Ciara wastes no time in heading for the perimeter of the seep. She doesn't try to get ahead of me this time, though. After a few minutes of silent walking, she puts her hand on me.

-damaris, can i ask you a favor?-

-of course.-

She hesitates, probably trying to get her thoughts in order. I can sense a bit of her uncertainty, though the full extent of what she is thinking is beyond my grasp until she chooses to articulate it. -i want you to try not to treat the baby any differently from how you treated me when i was her age. even if you believe there's something wrong with her, try not to let it show when you're around her.-

Huh. -okay, i'll do my best.-

-thanks.- A momentary pause. -it's just that, even if there is nothing wrong with her, i'm afraid that she might not turn out well if everyone treats her like there is. in fact---

-no, i understand.- Without words, I echo her own emotions back to her, so that she knows that I really do.

-okay, thank you.- I can feel a little surge of relief flow through her. She pulls her hand away, and we travel the rest of the way without saying anything further. After another few minutes we arrive at the veil - the artificial wall of vegetation surrounding our camp, so dense you can't see more than a meter through it. We push through it slowly, probably more slowly than we need to, as Ciara pauses every few seconds to make sure that nothing is scratching the baby. Both of our fairies are spread out ahead of us, making sure nothing is close enough to ambush us in our comparatively vulnerable state. So far there is only silence from them.

In time, we are past the most difficult portion and back in the relatively open forest - familiar hunting grounds. Of course nothing would dare stray this close - everything with a brain has learned to avoid vegetation so closely packed. Still, my tympana feel more sensitive than usual, and my eyes jump to the slightest movement. I feel alive.

"So, do you know where we're going?" I ask Ciara.

"Far away," she says simply.

---

There it is - the noise I had been waiting for. Hoping for? I'm not really sure. That unmistakable soft chittering - unmistakable to me, that is. Disguised once again as the mating call of a common bug. But - for some reason, it doesn't seem to be blending in like normal. Hmm. Yes, it seems to be oddly quiet here. Here - where is here? Slowly I realize that my surroundings are unfamiliar - the ground is cold, hard, and smooth, and instead of trees, regularly spaced rectangular towers surround me, stretching as far as I can see. I reach out a feather and touch one - cold, hard, and smooth. Instead of the usual mess of chirps and squeals, the only sound is a soft whirring, seeming to originate from all around me.

I look around in a daze; I try to remember how I got here, but nothing comes. I have a dim sense of the urgency of the fairies' cries - something's here, something's here! - but it takes me another few moments before it really hits me. Oh, god, something else is here! Two somethings. Ahead of me, in a large clearing devoid of the smooth towers. Both smaller than me, and more lightly built. And -- what is that permutation of the fairies' call? It is an unfamiliar combination, but -- they are hexapods? How odd. I am so used to hearing biped (four limbs, walks on two) and quadruped (four limbs, walks on four) that this new warning (six limbs, walks on four) takes me a moment to process. But the call could mean nothing else. I smile inwardly, appreciating my scouts' ability to appraise me of my opponents before I have even sensed them.

Well, it doesn't matter how many legs you have. Your soul already belongs to a litare - you just don't know it yet.

Hm. But I should be careful not to overestimate myself. Weak though my targets may be, there are two of them. Perhaps a mated pair? Regardless, I should assume that they will cooperate against me rather than be routed immediately. More importantly, this environment is not in my favor. I am used to drawing weapons from nature, even if only for a few seconds' use. Rocks, sticks, mud, sand. There seems to be nothing here that I can use. Furthermore, the fairies have given me a fairly precise estimate of the size of the clearing, and it's large enough to give them advance warning if I break cover. They're standing right in the middle of it, too - perhaps an intentional strategy on their part.

Well. No need to rush things. Let's see how sharp their instincts are. Using the same insectoid speech as my fairies have been, I give the command to blind the targets. I needn't say anything else - the fairies' own instincts will guide them to attack in the optimal manner. Which is to descend on the target from multiple directions, so that fleeing or defending against one leaves the target open to others. A few losses are acceptable, but the little creatures will instinctively pull out after four, or after more than a few seconds of trying if they have not made any progress. Their flight is quiet but not silent - normally the forest would cover their approach both visually and aurally. Expecting my foes to notice the fairies at some point, and be distracted by them, I take the opportunity to advance my own position forward. My footsteps, too, are quiet but not silent - with no noise to cover them, they may be audible to my prey. I can only hope that they will have other things to worry about.

[Kliminryu]

I take deep breaths against Lutlil’s chest. I sense grass and fish. Visions of a lake shore fill my mind the flittering of insects near the water. Really loud flittering.

“What is that?” Lutlil’s fingers digging into me as the fluttering grew louder.

“Lutl-” she interrupts by dropping me before stepping over me, crouching low to shield me. “Whats going on?”

Before she can answer I see the source of the sound. Strange flying creatures flitting through the air, spiders with wings for legs. The creatures do not approach us with any caution. Reaching Lutlil first I hear her cry out as the swarm encompasses us. Fire boils through me at the sound of her distress. I slither out from her protection and jump to face the swarm.

“Cover your eyes!” her voice laced with signs of pain.

My reaction is only barely quick enough. As I close my eyes and duck behind my arm I feel the claws of the spiders digging at my arm, scrabbling at my scales. One claw quickly finds weakness and pierces my arm slashing into me and drawing blood. “Fuck!” I keep my eyes shut as I lash out with my arms and mouth blindly grabbing for the creature attacking me. I bump several of them with various portions of the attack but catch none of my targets. In the few second my face is exposed the monsters swarm about my face clawing at my eyes. With a twitching motion I snap my tongue out into their midst. I touch one before wrapping my tongue around it and drawing into my mouth. I clamp down, half of its body hanging out of my mouth. It slashes at me; panicking in its last moments. I grab the half hanging out of my mouth and bite down hard wrenching the two halves apart.

The blood of the creature mixes with the blood it drew from my mouth and tongue. I taste the iron, of my own, and a strange pungent odor of the monster's. The attack on my eyes continues as I hold them shut. Throwing my head about as I try to catch another, the swarm backs away from the attempt and I don’t feel them return. Holding my hands in front of me I open one eye slowly. The creatures seem to have disappeared even though I can still hear them fluttering just out of sight.

“Did they get you?” Lutlil’s voice is filled with concern and tension. I open my eyes to meet hers.

“Your eye!” I blurt out seeing the blood pouring from her left eye. Draining down the side of her face mixed with tears. I see several of the spider-flies littered on the ground, Lutlil is holding her knife dark with their blood.

"Its fine, I'm fine, we need to get out of here..." She stops, her petals twitching as she turns her head listening.

She stands up, turning away from me. My heart pounds against my chest as she stands silhouetted against the starry sky. Her figure stoking a fire within me.

My heart then stops as I see the spidery monster crawling out of the shadows that she turned to face. The giant mother spider doesn’t scare Lutlil, I can see in her stance that she feels no fear. She lifts her knife in front of her crouching onto her four legs and locking her legs, ready to pounce.

[The Litare]

Hmmm. Quite sharp.

One swipe from a tasendi is powerful enough to kill a fairy with sheer impact force. But the animal, huge and muscular as it is, does not have a perfect range of movement. It is fast, but a specialized ambush predator, its muscles and tendons streamlined for a single, lethal pounce. It is possible for my fairies to dance in and out around it, striking and retreating before it can retaliate.

But this prey is different. Weak though they may appear, their reflexes and precision are phenomenal, and their range of motion seems to cover their entire body. They are able to snap the fairies out of the air without leaving themselves vulnerable. The larger one does this several times, crushing its victims with its hands, while I catch the smaller one actually grab a fairy with its tongue and bite it in half. I find it amusing that, even though I am the one hunting them, they have taken the first bite out of me.

They are not just quick, but smart as well. They seemed to know that the fairies were hostile as soon as they saw them - probably from the attackers' lack of fear. This, I regret. The fairies would have understood a command to mimic the clueless approach of a normal insect, albeit barely - it was my mistake for not giving that command.

Well, little quick ones, your frail darting form may have kept you safe against my initial strike, but I am no insect. I approach them leisurely, feeling the tendons in my legs spring back to carry me into my next step with little effort. Examining the limbs of my targets, I am certain of one thing - they will not be able to outrun me. The orientation of the knees, the relative lengths of the limb segments - these things hint at an organism that is not specialized for running. They must know this - that must be why they haven't tried yet.

I can feel the tension rising as I get closer to them. Still no effort to flee. Then the larger one does something interesting - its hindmost legs shift in a manner that looks similar to dislocation, but the animal is still standing. If anything it looks more comfortable now than it was before. I am not certain, but I would guess that it has done some form of tendon locking. If there was ever any uncertainty about these two standing to fight, this maneuver erases it. I should expect a burst of speed at any moment - the creature could be on top of me whenever it wants. An ambush predator for sure.

Well do it then. These legs aren't just for show. They may not be able to twist like your hybrid limbs can, but that is exactly what makes them so powerful. Only one way for all the muscular energy to go. Jump at me and I'll kick your skull in.

I'm getting closer. About four meters now. I see its legs tense up further, and I prepare for the strike. Three meters.

WHAM

The sound of my foot against its chest as it springs into me, just as expected. The creature lets out a deep gasp, and I know it will be severely weakened for the next few seconds as it desperately sucks air into its lungs. I lean in and curl my tail forward, extending all of my tendrils in a choking embrace. My arms snake around the underside of its jaw, tightening their purchase as they go. I can feel it try to twist and bite me, but I've grabbed it too close to its head - it can't angle its jaws down far enough. The creature struggles, clawing and pulling at my tendrils, trying to forestall its unconsciousness. The feeling of its struggling growing weaker is euphoric. It begins to slump to the ground, and I follow it down, crouching so as to avoid supporting any more of its weight than I have to.

My peripheral eyes keep watch over the smaller one's movement, and I am ready for it to join the fight at any moment. As soon as it does my job will become a lot harder. But it is simply circling around to my left. Is it too afraid to approach me? Perhaps it is not a mated pair, but mother and child. If so, the younger one may be unused to combat and unsure of what to do. Perhaps it is overwhelmed by fear. I savor the thought.

My strangling victim braces itself against the ground and leaps into me at point-blank - a last-ditch effort to throw me off. The sudden force is surprising, but my stance is stable, and I weigh considerably more than my target does, so the effort is mostly in vain. Its gamble must have taken a lot of energy - therefore, a lot of air. Now that it has lost, it is only that much closer to unconsciousness. In its weakness it drops the object it was holding with a clatter--

Wait. It was holding an object?

The smaller one makes a sudden lunge for it. It is quick, but I am much closer. I whip out whichever tendril is on the outside of my death coil and slap the feather down on top of it, pulling it in and curling my arm around it merely a fraction of a second before the little one reaches it. It lands awkwardly, grabbing at my tendril instead of the object. As my arm curls, I feel a sharp edge cut into my skin. A chill runs down my spine as I realize - the big one wasn't clawing at me, it was trying to cut me with a knife. And the little one wasn't afraid to fight me, it was waiting for exactly this moment to strike.

Just what in the hell am I dealing with here?

It won't take long for the little one to right itself and mount a proper assault. Even without the knife, I should assume that it can pose a threat to me. I pull myself behind my strangling victim, using it as a shield in an effort to buy myself a few seconds to think.

The little one wastes no time in trying to free its partner. I can't see what it's doing, but I can feel something sharp and hooked pierce one of the tendrils I'm using to secure the other one. The first bite rips out a chunk of flesh, causing me to scream in pain - the second manages to wedge around my whole arm and tear it away from the throat. In my current state I am helpless to defend against this - yet if I withdraw my arms, my victim will likely regain its full strength. I won't get another chance like this - I need to take something here.

I snake two tendrils up the side of my victim's skull, close but not touching. I move them inward from the side, so as to avoid being spotted by its peripheral vision. Its eyes are open, unprotected by its armored lids. In one fluid motion I extend my claws, plunge them into the creature's soft eye jelly, and pull outwards. The victim hasn't enough breath to scream, but I can feel its whole body contract at the pain.

Good enough. I drop its body and back away.

Then something lands on top of me. My knees buckle to absorb the sudden impact; I am just able to remain standing. The smaller one had just decided to leap at me at the very moment that I backed away - if I had not done so when I did, it would have landed behind me. I can feel it dig its hind legs into me, and the remaining four plus the beak begin to tear into my flesh. The pain from its claws is manageable, but wherever its jaws strike sends white agony coursing through my body. I cannot help but cry out.

I extend all my tendrils upward and grab at it, unable to see what I'm doing. Anything my arms touch, I try to grasp and entangle, regardless of what it is. I suffer a few more vicious bites, but the little creature is unable to hold off being grabbed for long. So caught, I hurl it off of me with a vengeance, my back still burning from the lacerations. The instant it hits the ground, back-first, I bring my foot down on its chest, knocking the breath out of it.

At this moment, I know I've won. The big one has not recovered yet - I will likely be able to sever both target's spines before it does, and certainly the little one's. The only failure is if I accidentally kill rather than paralyze. Yet -- I cannot bring myself to do it. Creatures so small and weak should have gone down without a fight - but they did not. Instead I am bleeding enough that it has begun to drip off me and onto the floor. My back burns like it has been set on fire.

I am a litare - a hunter, and a good one at that. Nothing before has stood a serious chance against me.

I stare down at the little one with a nervousness unbefitting its subdued position. Unable to shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. If I hadn't happened to notice the big one's slight leg shift, if I hadn't had those few seconds of helplessness that all but won me the fight. If the big one hadn't happened to do what I expected, once, when it really mattered.

This feels too much like luck.

Well, I refuse to accept that. I will beat you again. I will fight you to submission as many times as my body can take, until I am satisfied that you truly are inferior to me. I need to know that, smart as you may be, I can hunt your kind if I see you again.

I will do that. But I won't let a mistake go unpunished. You wouldn't. I move to blind the little one as well, accepting that it has enough range of motion to bite me in retaliation. My claws reach its eyelids, closed tight in anticipation. Its jaws meet the flesh of my arm. Violently, I tear myself away, doing further damage to my own tendril. I don't care. It's a voluntary trade - it doesn't count. I back away from them. Now that they are both blinded, it is as if my fairies had done their job after all.

Look around, little quick ones, and tremble at the blackness. You will know how it feels to be the prey of a litare.

[Kliminryu]

The mother did not resemble her children, at least not in appearance. Her actions where the same as her flies. She walked towards us without fear. I see Lutlil match this behavior preparing to strike as the monster draws closer. She waits for the creature watching it approach.

“I can handle this on my own, I don’t want to see you hurt, ok?” Lutlil is not looking at me when she says this but I realize she is talking to me.

“Don’t worry about me!” I’m shocked that she even considered my safety, “What about your eye?”

She speaks softly tensing her legs, “What about it?” she launches at the monster the back-blast from her jump ruffling my mane.

WHAM

I blink in surprise as I hear Lutlil collide with the monsters foot. With only fractions of a second to react the abomination blocked her jump. -It anticipated her attack?- Before I process this turn of events Lutlil has been entrapped in flurry If tentacles, seemingly out of nowhere. Heart racing I search for a weapon, the floor has a few cables but nothing useful. Looking at the fight it’s clear that Lutlil is losing, I can see her shaking against the creatures strangle hold. In a last ditch effort to break free she drops closer to the ground and lunges forward. In doing so she drops her knife.

I hesitate for a second, she told me not to fight, without thinking further I dive for the knife but the monster intercepts my dive grabbing the knife and leaving me holding the tentacle as it cocoons the knife within itself. -What!? It grabbed the knife!?-

I abandon the knife at the gurgling sounds of Lutlil’s ragged breathing. “Let her go!” I scream at the monster turning to the tentacles wrapped around her neck. I bite and claw at the monster's grip sinking my beak into it before getting a better grip behind it and pulling hard. I earn a pained screech as I tear into it.

The creature changes tactics suddenly reaching for Lutlil’s eyes it quickly gouges them Lutlil shaking in response unable to cry out.

“Monster!” I scream, I lunge at the creature abandoning reason, seeking revenge for the damage it had done. My lunge lands me atop the abomination, I claw and bite and anything I can managing to sink my beak into it several time before I feel the restriction of its tendrils pulling me off its face. “Lutlil! Its GOT M-” the words are trapped in my lungs as I slam into the ground, the creature standing on me before I can scramble away. It is much larger than me.

I try to cough, try to breath. The creature offers no respite and quickly goes for my eyes. Grabbing at my limbs and face with its tendrils. Sobbing for breath I scream as I bite at its tendrils, “S- stop! Noo!” the words barely leave my lips the air in my lungs quartered by the gravity of the foot. I bite one tendril as the other snakes under my eyelid. I feel the heat of blood pouring down the side of my face before the pain hits me. I can barely hear myself scream over the pounding of my heart. The creature gouges at my other eye before stomping me into the floor as it steps off me. Something cracks inside me from the force.

Groaning I cough tasting blood and gasoline. More blood than before.

Silence.

I wait for the creature to finish its job shaking as I try to stand. I can’t smell anything but the gas in my mouth. My eyes continue to leak fluid down my face, I don’t dare touch them worried it will cause more pain. The pounding of my heart continues to drown out the noise around me. I wince as I cough again blood splattering against my hand as I cover my mouth. The taste of gasoline tickles my throat threatening to lead to a chain of coughs. I shake as I hold my breath waiting for one of my senses offer feedback.

I don’t know what dreaming is supposed to feel like, but I’m certain that it shouldn't feel this real.

“Lutlil?” I call out quietly still holding back a coughing fit. “Lutlil?”

I feel something step over me, I feel the warmth of her fur and the smell grass makes it through the oily congestion in my mouth.

“I won’t let you die here.” Her voice, her presence, stop the pounding in my head. “Follow me as best you can.” She places her hand on my neck and slowly walks backward. Her touch is electric, overpowering the pain of my injuries. I manage to crack my left eye open, the air against the open wound causes me to wince. I can’t really see anything, the out of focus image is too dark to hold any detail.

The petals along the sides of my head quiver as they adjust trying to find the assailant before it's too late.

[The Litare]

Oh? Backing away? Good. Now you understand - I am not fighting you, I am preying upon you. You may have gotten a few hits in - more than you should have. But your dexterous strikes will do you little good if you can't aim them.

That's right. This is how it should be - it was only due to my own error that you weren't blinded from the very start. Perhaps it was a fluke that I managed to intercept your initial strike - in the forest, your telegraph might have gone unnoticed. But the lack of distractions works both ways - you heard my fairies earlier than you should have, saw them earlier than you should have. I saw how close you came to letting them touch you - you needed every second of that advance notice, I know it. And even then, you might still have failed to defend yourself if I hadn't underestimated you - if I hadn't given my fairies an overly straightforward command. That's never happening again.

My targets are getting further away, so I follow at a leisurely pace to keep my current distance. Close enough to keep an eye on them, but far enough to give me advance notice of any attack.

The skin on my back still burns, though the shock of being so badly hurt by my little assailant has since faded. I am now becoming aware of another sensation - subtler, but perhaps more worrying than the pain. My arms are getting tired. The combination of blood loss and exertion has drained my energy considerably. Tellingly, it is my natural instinct to retract my arms when I'm not using them, but they feel so heavy that I haven't bothered. They're just hanging limply, disrupting my balance slightly as they swing. Well, except one of them. That one's still wrapped around the knife.

I'm not going to stab them with it - I don't need to. Whereas their own claws are clearly suited for climbing moreso than causing serious injury, mine are specialized weapons. For a moment, I consider simply giving it back. I am trying to recreate a normal hunting scenario as much as I can - in which case I wouldn't have a knife, and my opponents probably would. But in a normal hunting scenario, I would have the luxury of breaking their bones with rocks from my unseen position - in this place, there is nothing to throw.

I toss the knife in the air and catch it again - despite my intention, by the blade. The little cut is nothing compared to my back, so it is easy to ignore. But I can tell that the weapon is not balanced for throwing. It will be hard to aim it in such a way that it pierces cleanly.

Well, I suppose it would be fine if it didn't. More similar to a rock that way, anyway. I keep tossing and catching it as I walk, getting a feel for how heavy it is and how it is likely to spin in the air.

The larger one has probably fully recovered from the strangulation by now. The only permanent damage I've inflicted is to the eyes - neither of them will be as fatigued as I am. At this rate, I am going to be unsuccessful, vision or no vision. So it is time to drop the greed.

When I had first seen my targets, I had hoped to capture them both. After all, plenty of creatures larger than them would have been easy enough prey for me to do this. But when I had first seen my targets, I had also assumed they would not effectively fight back, nor protect each other. I will no longer do this. My new goal is to simply put one of them out of commission - whether by knocking unconscious as originally planned, or by killing. In a one-on-one, I will have a much easier time subduing and capturing than I will now, with both targets covering the other.

I toss the knife in the air again. At this point, I am pretty confident that I can stick my target with the pointy end if I try. Next one will be the throw. I curl my feather out for the catch--

WHOA! And kick myself backward in surprise, barely avoiding the sudden leap forward from the large one. It was aiming for my legs, so its leap was too low to continue for long - it hits the ground, though not too awkwardly. Assuming it will jump again, I brace myself to kick forward, but it doesn't. The knife clatters to the ground beside it, and it sweeps its arms along the ground, feeling for it.

I crinkle my face at my opponent. Can't take my attention off you for a second, can I? This creature really is a smart one - not only did it pick up on the sound of me tossing the knife, but it recognized what I was doing and timed its attack to hit during the small window when the knife was in the air. It knew that I would be distracted, focusing on catching the knife rather than on it. I am truly, deeply impressed.

I keep one eye on the little one, prepared for it to enter the fight at any moment, but it hasn't approached with its protector. Instead it has taken the opportunity to flee toward the central structure that they had been backing away to.

The larger one finds the blade. Its mid right hand curls under it. There was never anything I could do about that - the weapon practically landed in its lap. All I can do is strike before my target gets too comfortable with it. I am already braced - I lunge forward, bringing my tendrils up for the stranglehold. With my reduced strength, I will want as many as possible around my target's throat, so I open with all eight, curling my tail forward and under myself so that they can all comfortably reach. All of them make contact at roughly the same time. They tighten around the creature's neck, forcing its head upward and preventing it from biting. At first it seems that the creature doesn't react, but a second later I feel the knife plunge into my upper bulb, on the underside of my tail. Right where my spine is located. The pain causes me to clench up, but luckily the blade stops upon hitting bone. It is probably oriented the wrong way - blade vertical rather than horizontal. I inhale in fear - if my target were to twist the knife 90 degrees, it might be able to slip the blade between two of my vertebrae. I know all too well what will happen to me if it manages that.

With slight reluctance, I pull two of my tendrils away from its neck in order to protect myself. I try to entangle the knife-bearing arm near the wrist and twist the limb downward so that I can't be stabbed again. This seems to work, but the creature deftly grabs the knife from itself with its front right hand and plunges it in again, this time more on my flank. I use one of my two free arms to entangle this one at the wrist as well, this time before it can even pull the knife out.

Then a blinding pain shoots through my body, so intense that I cannot perceive anything else for a split second. My entire body tenses up - I can't even scream, it hurts so bad. The pain radiates out from where the knife is lodged in my body - after a moment, I realize that my target has twisted the blade. Why... why does it hurt so much. Along with the pain is a horrible, strong, tugging sensation. I can't think straight.

After a few seconds, I manage to get enough of a grip on myself to understand that leaving the knife in is not an option. I pull my target's hand out and away from myself - whether the knife comes out with it or not. From the awful pulling in my side, I infer that it does. The creature still has two limbs free - it's just going to transfer the blade again until I dedicate at least four arms to this. Am I even strong enough to choke it with half my arms? It seems to be holding out scarily well as it is. I need to make it a priority to get all eight back around its neck.

I can't see it transfer the blade, but I can feel the movement of its limbs underneath me. I wait until the moment where I think its hands brush each other - then I brace myself and pull its entire body to the right, as sharply as I can. I hear a clatter - apparently my timing was good enough to cause it to fumble. Not missing a beat, it steps on the knife and kicks it backward toward the little one.

Fine. I've seen that move before. I'll just kill you before your little helper gets here. In one second, I bring all of my tendrils to bear on its throat. In the next second, I drive my foot into its belly and pull down. The force of the kick easily tears through skin and muscle, leaving a long, ragged wound down the front of the creature's body. Still, it doesn't do as much damage as I intended. There seems to be a ribcage running all the way down. I was hoping to eviscerate it, but it looks like that won't be happening.

I kick again. Dimly, I am aware of my prey attempting to redirect the force of the kick with its middle arms, but it doesn't have much success. My legs simply can't move side-to-side like that. It spits at me - I close my eyes reflexively, but the saliva doesn't get anywhere near them.

The little one is approaching the knife.

I kick again, trying to target a section of belly that is yet uninjured. The trauma and suffocation seem to be finally taking their toll on my victim - it is no longer putting up noticeable resistance. I kick it a fourth time. My toenails slide down its ribcage - the second kick to an area seems to strip off most of the muscle that remains from the first. I now cannot feel it moving at all.

I release it from my grasp and let it slump to the floor. As soon as it does, I draw back my foot and bring it down on the top of its skull as hard as I can. I am rewarded with a sharp crack. My eyes still watching the little one, I repeat the motion. Crack. It is sweeping its arms along the floor, trying frantically to locate its weapon. Crack. Crack. Crunch. It locates it.

When I finally see it wind its legs up for the jump, I have stopped my execution efforts and am fully prepared to kick it out of the air. But I needn't have bothered - it misses by a full two meters. I turn my body to continue facing it. It scrabbles to face me as well - well, face in my general direction. It seems this one's tracking ability is considerably worse. I take my time watching the little one, waiting for it to spring at me. When it doesn't immediately do so, I decide to sneak in another kick to the bigger one's head.

The little one changes its mind and turns tail. It shifts its legs once before rotating around, then again before hopping off in the opposite direction. It would seem that they have two different configurations of their hind legs - one for walking and one for jumping. Useful information to take note of. I kneel down and reach into the mess of bone and blood that is the larger one's nape, severing its notochord with one of my claws. It was probably dead a while ago, but it won't hurt to be sure. The little one isn't getting away anyway.

I hear a slam and look up. The little one has run into one of the towers, and dropped the knife. It doesn't bother to pick it back up, but simply keeps hopping away. I stand and walk after it, pausing briefly to collect the knife.

I would, perhaps, be chasing my quarry more fervently, if I were not so tired. And if I didn't see that, on its current course, it was going to crash into another tower.

The moment it does, I whip the knife at its chest. I was right - I can hit with the pointy end. If the little one was in the process of getting up, it isn't anymore. I take a few steps forward and snap my tendrils out to entangle it. It is so much smaller than me - one tendril for each of its limbs should be enough. The remaining two, I aim for its neck to keep it from biting. The brief struggle is almost a formality. Once I have all of its limbs in my grip, I splay them out away from its body and stomp on its lungs, causing it to cough up blood on itself. Just to be sure it really is helpless when I move to cut its spine.

The incision goes unresisted. I step off and observe the creature for a few moments, but even after regaining its breath, it makes no move of any kind. Assuming that it can't, I gather it up into my arms, making sure to hold it in as restrictive of a manner as possible on the off chance that I am wrong. Still, it doesn't so much as twitch.

I exhale with relief. Even if it didn't go as I had planned, the hunt was successful in the end. Now all there is to do is bring this one back to the seep. I turn my gaze skyward in order to ascertain which way that is.

Huh.

I don't recognize any of those constellations. I am not an unskilled navigator - I am familiar with the night sky of both the northern and southern hemispheres, and of how each changes with the seasons. But I don't recognize a single thing.

Even in my exhaustion, my heart begins to beat faster in panic. Where am I? How is it that the stars are so completely different from what I expect? Am I hallucinating? I've heard that sometimes, people who are close to death will slowly start to lose their grip on reality. Am... am I close to death?

My legs feel heavy, so I slump to a sitting position, my legs curled underneath me, my tendrils that are holding the little one splayed out behind me. As the last of my adrenaline slips away, I can feel the desire to sleep taking over. I am sure it would feel amazing to close my eyes and let everything go limp. I really want to... but, in the back of my mind, I suspect that if I do, my eyes will never open again. I need to stand back up - I have to stand back up. If I don't want to be found weeks later as a corpse.

Ah, but what good would it do anyway? I don't know which way to go. It's just as likely I'd be walking away from home as towards it. And... maybe if I sleep, my head will be clearer when I wake up. Clear enough to recognize the stars.

[Kliminryu]

Lutlil holds onto my shoulders and guides me backwards. I can hear the effects of the creatures strangle hold in her voice.

“Do you think you can get back into the elevator?” Her voice is ragged but confident, as if she has a plan.

“What? Why?”

Instead of responding she holds her hand around my mouth holding it shut, she pauses listening, waiting. Without warning she shouts, “GO! as she pushes me in, what I assume is, the direction of the elevator. I hear her jump off the ground.

Scrambling in the direction she pushed me I eventually bump into, what I believe to be, the doors. The bump is not very sudden but my head spins at the impact. I nearly fall over as my stomach turns from vertigo. Unable to control the spinning I collapse onto my hands and cough. I cough and cough until I vomit. I taste bile... and blood. The spinning sickness swims through my mind, images of Lutlil choking invade my thoughts.

The sound of combat reach me in my sickened stupor. Spurring me to pull myself off the ground and begin searching the door for a call button. I hear clattering and stomping as I fumble around the frame of the entrance. -Where is it!?- I feel everywhere that I can think, certain that my hands are missing the button by inches but I just can't seem to find it.

The sounds of the fight seem to die out until I hear the unmistakable clatter of the knife bouncing towards me. Spinning around I know that I need to act fast. Jumping towards the knife while it's still moving I get to it before it stops. I drop low to the ground where I last heard it and begin sweeping the floor. I hear clawing followed by a sickening thud, then another, and another. The sound becomes more gravelly and crunchy after the third or fourth thud. I can only imagine what the creature is doing. I feel my hands shake against the floor as they finally find the knife. I imagine the creature’s strange head splitting in half across the middle, opening to reveal rows of twisted teeth curling into a sadistic grin as it reaches for me with its twirling knifed tentacles. I lift the knife to a ready position, hands shaking uncontrollably. Pictures of Lutlil’s mangled corpse hanging from the monster's jaws as it turns to face me, tentacles twisting through her broken frame and picking her insides apart. The crunching stops and I realize I can no longer sense exactly where it is. It's now or never I need to jump before it has time to react.

I jump ready for it to kick me, but hoping it will miss me. One opening is all I need.

Smashing into the ground and tumble forwards, quickly regaining my footing and spinning nearly a full circle before I realize I can’t find it. Its smell is everywhere. I can tell it's on the side I'm facing but I know that I can't land a jump.

I can picture its tendrils reaching for me, covered in her blood, my stomach turns cold at the thought and I run. Turning away from the monster I lock my legs together and begin hopping as fast as I can I don’t make it three meters before I bounce into a server. I catch myself and manage to scramble around it. I dropped the knife on impact and I dont have time to find it, I scramble along the server until i get past it. I don't know how far the corridor goes but I don’t remember seeing them end. I sprint at full tilt, pushing my legs to the limit.

I don’t even feel the impact of hitting the server, or spinning into the ground. I just go from running to sprawled across the ground. The ringing in my ears prevents clouds my perception. I nearly vomit again struggling to get on my feet. I know the creature will be close. I stumble as I get up, hitting the ground I cough again. This time the cough tugs at my side in a strange tight sensation. I reach for my side feeling the hilt of the knife sticking out of my chest.

I cry out in surprise. Grabbing the knife I try to pull it out getting it about a third of the way before my hand is yanked away by a tendril coiling around it along with the rest of my body. In seconds I am trapped just like before. This time as it stomps of my chest, again pushing blood out of my mouth, I can feel a sharp pain deep inside my neck and suddenly I can’t feel the pain in my side, or the pressure on my chest.

I can't feel anything.

What did it do? I couldn’t move before but now I can’t even feel the grip of its tendrils. -Did it bite my head off? How much longer will my brain work after that?- I feel blood seeping into my mouth from the back of my throat. I feel a cold darkness inside my body, did I really feel anything or was I imagining it? No i could definitely feel the burning pain in my eyes, and I could taste the blood on my tounge.

I can’t tell if I am moving anymore, I feel a tightness in my chest. The breath moving out of my mouth is slowing. I can’t feel myself cough but I feel the blood spatter out of my mouth and onto my face. Without breathing in more blood comes out of my mouth pouring down the sides of my face. I feel like I'm drowning. The sound of the knife hitting the floor surprises me, I didn’t feel it leave my side. I hear water dripping onto the floor, clicking and plinking. Cold rain falls against my face as I cough again the taste of iron strong in my mouth. The coughing becomes weaker. I feel a tired weakness in my mind, my thoughts becoming sluggish. I become absorbed by the sounds of water hitting the ground around me. Relaxing as the sounds of dripping and splashing take my mind away from where I am and what is happening.

---

Thunder explodes igniting the world around me. Jolting upright I grab at my chest. I can barely see through pouring rain, but I can see. The willow vines around me sway in the storm. I look at the pitch black world around me, feeling my eyelids searching for the damage but finding none. I feel water surging through the leaves of the canopy above. I see the body of my fallen goddess. Silent and motionless except the smallest rise and fall of her chest. I could see the imprint of my body where I had slept, both on her and the roots around us both.

Relief floods through me as I lift her onto my back, she seems smaller than Lutlil… -who?-

Pain surges through my neck and behind my eyes, I stumble off the roots of the tree falling into the water and mud. I quickly right myself before I start walking.

Something is wrong, I need to get moving. -Why have I been resting? I am La-Mari. La-Mari do not rest, we do not waver-

I stumble again, my head bursting with pain, the water rushing up to meet me as I fall. Frantically I lift my lady's head out of the water, pulling her onto my back. I struggle to push the troublesome thoughts from my mind. -I need to keep moving. I need to get out of here.-

For just a moment, through the storm and the thunder, I hear a soft flutter of a small insect.

I freeze.

Slowly I begin to turn trying to locate the sound amidst the falling rain. I don’t know what I am expecting. But I stay rooted in place unable to move, searching for the source of the sound. I see nothing, I hear nothing, lighting illuminates the sky. Casting shadows across the swamp.

I don’t see anything. Thunder explodes across the swamp shaking me to the core. I run. Legs burning and heart pounding. -I am La-Mari, I do not waver. I. Do. Not. Waver.- but I run all the same.

[The Litare]

Slowly, I open my eyes. I am lying on something soft, and the air is warm. In front of me, the rocky ground slopes downward into forest. It is nighttime - is that right? How long did we walk for? How long was I asleep for? For some reason, I feel a nagging urge to check where I am, so I lean back to look at the sky. Hmm - judging by the stars, less than 100 km away from the seep. That's about a day's walk, if you're not in a hurry. I relax again in order to see what I'm lying on, since it doesn't feel like stone. A mat of leaves, coated in gray down. I don't remember making this.

My peripheral eyes catch a bit of movement on my left, so I turn to face it. Ciara is crouched on a similar mat, her tendrils wrapped around what I assume is the infant. She seems enthralled by it - she's either playing with it, or simply fawning over how cute it is. No, not it - her. I exhale silently - I might need to be more diligent than I thought in order to fulfill her request.

As I twist back to a comfortable position, a sharp pain shoots through my right flank, and I inhale not-so-silently. The pain is fleeting, gone a second later, but it is enough to remind me of something. What I was doing, just a few minutes ago - fighting those strange, six-limbed creatures. I find myself running my tendrils over my upper bulb, massaging the places where they wounded me. I remember now - not just wounded me, but stabbed me, with a knife. The musculature around my spiracles is hard with tension, and I am aware that my breathing has become shallow. The wounds are perfectly healed now - no, what am I thinking, they were never there in the first place. Of course not - it was just a dream. But... if it was a dream, why did it feel so real?

"Damaris, are you okay?" Ciara's voice - of course, she would have seen me moving around. "You only slept for an hour or so."

"Uhh, yeah, I'm okay. I just had a bad dream that woke me up." Even though that's true, for some reason it doesn't feel true when I say it. It feels more like those two creatures killed me, and this is the afterlife. Even though I don't remember seeing them ever before, and even though, obviously, this is the real world. Because Ciara's here.

"A bad dream?" She pauses, obviously confused, but by what, I can't tell. "What do you mean? How could it be bad?"

"Well, in the dream I remember fighting with two other creatures, but they were a lot more dangerous than I thought they would be, and they hurt me really badly. I think they killed me." I don't doubt her that I only slept for an hour - I still feel terribly groggy, and it hurts my lungs a bit to talk.

"Fighting?" Another pause. "Why were you fighting them?"

Images of the dream flash through my mind - the heat of the creature's blood on me, the desperate clenching of my tendrils trying to suffocate one, the blinding pain of it twisting the knife inside me. It all comes back so easily. Yet for all that, I find it hard to recall what I was thinking during the fight. All I can remember is my anger towards them, that they were able to hurt me when they shouldn't have been. Still, even if I can't remember, there is one reason that is far more likely than anything else. "I must have been trying to hunt them."

Ciara gazes at me sympathetically. "You look like you're still in pain."

"Oh, no, not really. It was just a really vivid dream. I'm just remembering it...." I look back at her suddenly. "Say, what did you mean, 'how could it be bad'?"

"Well, all the times I've meditated, I never remember really feeling anything, just hearing and seeing. And I never got into any fights in my dreams."

Right. Until now, neither had I. Of course I wouldn't have. "Ciara, have you ever seen the gods while you were meditating?"

"Uh, well, I think so. I mean, I tried to get Rene to answer that question for me when I told him about it. Like I said, he wasn't very cooperative about it."

"But you think so?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, what else could they be? The priests say that when you're meditating, it feels like you're transported somewhere else, somewhere really fantastical, and you can communicate with the gods while you're there. That's pretty much what my dreams have been like."

I rub my face with two of my tendrils. "Uh huh. But last night you were asking me what a soul was, and other stuff like that. How could you not know, if you've spoken with the gods too?"

"Well, I couldn't understand them."

I freeze, and narrow my eyes at her. What? How could you not understand them? It's called the Speech of the Gods for a reason - you should have been born with the ability to understand them. "You mean like, when they talked to you?"

"Or when they touched me," she says nonchalantly. So you did try that.

"I've never had a problem with either one. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who has."

"Uh huh, well, Rene said that he hadn't heard of any girl who was able to meditate at all. If you believe him about that, then what I'm saying shouldn't be so surprising. And considering how unhelpful he was in explaining anything, it shouldn't be surprising that I don't really understand what's weird and what isn't." Her voice is still cheerful enough, but there is an undercurrent of resentment in that last part.

"Is that why you're so reluctant to believe anything he says?" I ask.

"Maybe. Is that so strange to you?"

"Yeah, it is. I mean, everything Rene has told me and everything the gods have told me lines up."

She scrunches up her face at me. "Oh, yeah? I wouldn't know." From the little catch of air in her throat, I suspect she had something else to say, but decided against it at the last second. There are a few moments of silence between us, then she speaks up again. "By the way, is this the first dream you've had where you've gotten in a fight?" I tilt forward a little. "So, all the other times you've just talked with them?"

With... them? "Well, yeah--"

She looks at me intensely. "That's so interesting. I thought you were on really good terms with them. Why did you suddenly decide to try and hunt them?"

"Hold on, I think you've got the wrong idea. I don't think the two creatures in my dream were gods."

"Oh, I see. Why not?"

Even before she finishes her sentence, I find myself staring at the ground, my expression tense. Why not, indeed. I remember what I felt during the fight - anger, hatred, exhilaration - quite clearly. But the earlier parts of the dream are all a haze. What I was thinking when I first saw them, what my reasoning for attacking them was - it's like I'm guessing at the actions of a different person. Still, I know that person was me. Even if I don't remember, I know what my own logic would have been like in that kind of scenario.

"Well, in all my dreams with the gods, the thought of trying to hunt them never crossed my mind. They just don't seem like the kind of beings you can hunt. But these ones didn't seem any different from normal animals. It seemed natural enough to try and kill them."

"Ah, okay. Do you remember what they looked like?"

"Yes. Like long red-and-white serpents with six legs, partly covered in fur." I pause. "Well, more like little spines. Both of them were smaller than me, one by a lot."

"So that's not what the gods look like?"

"I never remember what the gods look like," I say without hesitation. "Still, the very fact that I do remember what these things look like further separates them in my mind."

"Is it possible that you're just now remembering what the gods look like for the first time?"

I curl my tendrils anxiously. "It's... remotely possible. But I still don't think I would have attacked them if they were gods." I look at Ciara. "You've seen them too, so you must know what I'm talking about. The idea of attacking them just doesn't occur to you. It's outside of the question."

"Yeah, you're right. Although for me, the idea of attacking anything on sight doesn't usually occur."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I guess I just don't have the same kind of instincts that you do." I'm not sure what to say to this, so we sit there in silence for a few moments.

"Hey," I ask after a little while, "you don't remember what the gods look like either, right?"

"Nope."

"Okay." Another long pause. "So, uh, it kinda sounded like you were trying to persuade me not to attack those creatures if I saw them again. Is that right?"

"Yeah, I guess it is."

"Why?"

"Well, you're a good huntress. Even if I don't like how you got it, you have a lot of favor with the gods. Killing or capturing a creature in your dreams doesn't count for anything, but if that creature does turn out to be a god, or even just a representation of one, it might not like that you tried to kill it rather than listening to what it had to say. I don't know if you could actually lose favor that way, but, I mean, it seems like it could happen. And I wouldn't want it to."

Killing something in a dream doesn't count for anything. Of course she's right. I suppose I already knew that. So then, why did I try to do exactly that? Maybe... "I must not have realized it was a dream." A moment later, I realize that I said that out loud.

"I see," Ciara says. "Well, you were pretty exhausted. You still hadn't slept since fighting that tasendi. For me, I usually know it's a dream immediately if I get there by meditating, but if I just fall asleep with no particular intention, sometimes it can take a while to realize. I guess you just didn't realize before you woke up."

"Yeah, that makes sense," I reply absentmindedly. Does that mean it's dangerous to sleep without meditating first? I don't actually know myself, but Ciara may be right about the possibility of losing favor by attacking the gods in a dream state. Given that I don't stand to gain anything, it's definitely not worth the risk. So that means that I need to realize that I'm dreaming right away. If I don't, I'll most likely just make the same decision again, to attack the prey that's right in front of me in order to please the gods. "I guess that means I should meditate every time I'm about to fall asleep, then, huh?"

"I guess it does."

"Can you try to remind me if I forget?"

"I don't think you'll forget, but sure, I'll do my best."

"Thanks." I shift my position in order to get more comfortable. "By the way, these beds are really nice. Where did you get the down from?"

"I went around collecting it from this rocky area. I'm not sure what it is, but there must be a pretty large feathered species living near here."

"Ah, makes sense. I should have figured you didn't hunt anything to get it."

"I mean, it's not like I'm opposed to doing that. There was just enough of it lying around that I didn't see the need to."

"You're not opposed to hunting?"

"Not really. I hate the birthing ritual because I feel like it's needlessly cruel. But I understand that all animals have to die some way. If I had needed to kill something in order to have something soft to lay the baby on, I don't see how that would be worse than another predator killing it for food. It might actually be better, since I would be trying to kill it in as painless of a way as I could."

"What about killing for the sake of gaining favor?"

Ciara crinkles her eyes at me. "I thought that might be where you were going with this. I'm not really going to concern myself with that, at least not until I feel like I understand the gods as well as everyone else seems to. But... I understand that you believe it is your duty to appease the gods with blood offerings, whether the prey is used for the ritual or not. As long as you try to kill them quickly, I'm not going to complain or try to stop you."

"I'm glad to hear it. I was just starting to wonder what I was going to do with myself all day."

"Hah. I just hope you're not expecting my help. I have other matters to attend to."

I look away from her. "Well, I was hoping you would at least come with me. I don't want to leave you two alone up here."

"Fair enough. I won't deny that there are probably some animals I couldn't fend off by myself. But can it at least wait a few days? I want to spend some more time with the baby before we go off somewhere."

"Yeah, sure. I'm still pretty tired anyway." I roll over onto my side and stretch my legs outward. "By the way, what are you going to name i-- her?"

"Mm. I haven't decided yet."

[Kliminryu]

I cough in surprise against the floor as I feel shock and pain explode from my head. I saw it coming even when I was blind, I saw my death. How am I still here, how am I opening my eyes? The crushing impact never came, suddenly I was lying on my chest, my work uniform twisted uncomfortably around me. Not my personal choice of pajamas. As I struggle to my feet I hear voices, I blink several times as I try to shake the headache persisting from the dream. Pain crawls through me, pronounced as if I really had been choked to death. -It was just a dream right? How did I end up here?- Did I pass out at work? I taste blood, I must have bitten my tongue while I was out.

“You should be dead…” The voice came from one of my co-workers, I don't recognize her.

I swallow at the dryness in my mouth, there is more blood than I expected. “Why is that?” My speech is slurred, I feel dizzy. Nausea crawls through me. I swallow again, the blood doesn’t make me feel any better.

She doesn’t answer, instead she pulls out a knife. Her motions is mimicked by others in the group watching me. I make note of them all. Three girls, they hold the knives like children, their stance neutral. I wonder if they have ever fought anyone before.

“I know what this is…” My speech is still slurred but the haze of dreaming is wearing off. I stumble forward and vomit, hard. There is more blood than food, some of it black from rotting inside me.

“I’m surprised you even woke up,” she sneers as she steps forward. She is holding my knife.

I lunge at her before she can finish her sentence, I don’t know why but I expected her to react to counter my attack for some reason. The fight is over before it begins. I slam into her, grabbing the arm with the knife and twisting it away as I bite into her throat. Her mane is short, cut close to the skin like everyone else in this city. With nothing to protect her my teeth find purchase as my momentum carries me past her, twisting her head fast and hard. My knife is in my hand and through her neck before she or her cronies can stop me.

Her still beating heart pumps rich life blood across her chest. I waste no time draining the fluid into my mouth. The iron tide is dark and rich. Coating my mouth and throat as it coagulates in the open air. Blood drools from the sides of my mouth as I stare into the eyes of her companions. I can see the horror as she twitches in my grip. Her mouth filling with blood as chokes on her stupid decisions.

I twist my tongue into her mouth and down her throat, pulling it out covered in blood and the medicine it carries. I drink the fluid savoring the taste, the flavor is iron and death. The savory blend of combat and victory. Spiderlegs crawl through my mane, hair standing on end from the exhilaration. My mane is long and flowing. I feel beautiful as her life soaks into my hair. With nothing left to take I toss the corpse at the feet of my assailants. Their gaze, one of disbelief. They must only just be realizing who they are dealing with.

“You should have fought me in between your doses.” Wildfire rages through me, the taste of her blood exciting me like nothing else could, if I hated killing I wouldn't be here. “Should have killed me when I was down!”

I see two of them prepare to attack, the rest of the people watching have begun run from the scene. Enforcement wouldn't respond to someone passing out in the streets. Unfortunately they wouldn’t have the same dismissive attitude towards murder. Being an eyewitness didn’t offer any benefits. More than a convict however, I need to end this fast.

The two jump at me, not in perfect sync but close enough to be a problem. I don’t have the reflexes to dodge the attack, few do. I cover my face and neck jamming my knife into the chest of the first attacker. The second slams through my guard from the right toppling my stance and pinning me to the ground stabbing at my neck and shoulders. Her assault is true but lacks conviction. The wounds are shallow. I twist my legs underneath her. Grabbing her shoulders I wrench the knife from her companion's chest and drive it through her neck dragging it slowly down through the cartilage. She twitches in response trying to pull away as I slowly saw her chest open. Her blood spilling onto me as she tries to push away. Pull her closer, her strength doesn't compare to mine as I rip into her throat with my teeth.

Her screams stop quickly after she loses her voice box. I hold her struggling form above me as the gaping wound in her throat drains into my mouth. The crimson waterfall radiant with heat and medicine. I relish in the sensation of sapping her strength. Her struggle ceases as she bleeds out.

As I roll her wasted form away from mine I finally feel the effects of the medication reversing the poison of Kimon City.

It was time to run. My uniform, not to mention my mane, is soaked in blood. The euphoria of battle ebbing away I realize that I am in a very bad situation. The hallway is empty now, except for me and my three victims. I recognize the hallway, I think I remember that I was heading to the mess hall for lunch? Why is it so hard to remember what I was doing before I passed out?

I sprint down the hall towards the emergency exit. It's the closest one. I also leave a very obvious trail of blood. Leaving work without permission was a criminal offense, but a minor one compared to murder. Murder is how you end up in this awful city.

I slam into the emergency exit alarms screaming as I tumble out of the building and into the adjacent alley. I need to get to my room, I need medication. What I stole from the attackers is not a full dose and the radiation of Kimon will kill me long before the cops if I don’t get home. I run to the sidewalk, familiar lights everywhere try to steal my attention, hot food here, friendly face here! I grimace at the sparkling scene. The dark clouds in the sky illuminated from underneath by the unrelenting glow of the sprawling city. It must be later than I thought, not very many people are out on the streets.. How long had I been laying there? I walk as quickly as I can towards a metro entrance.The closest is 200 meters down the road. People walking haven’t noticed me yet. I feel as if everyone must be staring at the blood soaked woman stumbling down the street.

The cars zooming by are few in number but almost too fast to make out. The occasional sleek machine streaking by at unreasonable speeds. The tail wind from the cars sends deep chills through my soaked mane. The same wind buffets me as I try to avoid looking at strangers.

I walk briskly along the street until I hear voices calling out behind me. I don’t understand them, they are too far away, but I run all the same. Locking my legs and hopping towards the entrance. It’s now 50 meters away and barricaded shut, much like half of the structures in the city.

The sensation of exhilaration returns with this chase. If I make it far enough into the metro I’m safe. I prefer the parts of the city that are off limits. They have a silence to them that makes it easier to sleep. The barricade is old and I have crossed it before. As I get close I drop to the ground and slither underneath loose sheets of metal. Clambering down the crumbling stairs until I get to the monorails. I bounce into the abandoned vehicles doors, running towards the far and and hopping out through the rear facing window. The pane itself long since shattered and turned to dust.

Once on the tracks I sprint as fast as I can. The sounds of the city distant as my world turns dark. This time it is truly my world and I already know the way. In this darkness I am at home.

---

Footsteps splashing along with the heavy rain, I run and run until the sky begins to glow. The sun climbing into the sky behind the dense cloud cover. Its light is warm and grey. The surging downpour becomes a drizzle, the sprint becomes a crawl as my thoughts continually drift away from the task at hand. I trip and stumble over and over as I move through the swamp. Distractions raging in my mind. I can picture the monster strangling me, I imagine it reaching for my eyes. Its snaking tendrils curling around me twisting into my eyes. I don't like the image but its frustratingly out of focus. I try to picture it but I can't hold its image in my head. I keep remembering that I need to carry her to safety. Out of the swamp. The thought of her safety is overpowering.

-Where am I going?-

The question felt like it came out of nowhere. It shocked me so much that I almost said it out loud, in fact I feel like I should have but something stopped me. I slow my pace, the troubling thought interrupting my march forward.

-No. I need to keep moving.-

I drag my feet back into motion, the thought felt more like a command. My head was beginning to ache from all of the swirling thoughts and images. Before I have the time to further consider my situation the woman on my back is coughing. She fumbles on my back as I rush to a tree depositing her on the roots. I stare at her flowing form anxiously, my gut tying itself in knots. I had begun to worry that she would never wake up.

-Would she be happy with what I had done? What if I hadn’t carried her far enough?-

As if on command I reach into the water cupping my hands and lifting a small amount to her open mouth.

-How did I know to do that? Why am I only now having these thoughts?-

I have so many questions, but she simply struggles to her feet and steps off the tree moving in the same direction that I had been traveling. I mimic her actions now following her once again. I stare in wonder at her as she walks. How can she be so perfect, her movement feels almost artistic. The ache of my exhaustion is quickly forgotten, for the time being I follow her eagerly. My questions disappear.

-What does it matter if I have someone to follow?-

[The Litare]

Even though I feel exhausted, I've been lying here for a good half-hour without falling asleep. Neither of us has said anything since then, nor moved. I assume by the way that Ciara is wrapped around the infant that she has been Speaking with it the whole time. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I want to know which of us is right. But neither have I been able to bring myself to ask Ciara to let me Speak to it, too. It feels almost like her own child. And I know she doesn't exactly appreciate my prying.

"What is it like?" I blurt out.

Stupid. You had that long to prepare what you were going to say, and you still called the baby an "it"? The lack of sleep must be getting to me. Ciara shifts herself to face me more, pulling her tendrils back a little as she does so. But she is still touching it. I wonder what exactly is passing between them.

"Very curious," she says after a moment. "She hasn't bound any words yet, but she wants to know what everything is, especially me." Her voice is filled with affectionate laughter. "And you."

"So what did you tell her?"

"Well, I told her our names." She hesitates awkwardly. "And I tried to convey that we're here to protect her, and teach her about the world. I think she got the idea. It's a little hard without words."

I chitter softly. I know what she means. Once you learn mortal language, you start to think of everything in verbal terms. You lose some of your ability to convey a pure idea, because putting the idea into words comes so naturally. "So," I begin. Does it seem like a monster? A perfectly reasonable question, isn't it? For some reason, I find it too hard to ask. Instead I settle for "Does she seem to like you?"

Ciara pauses for longer this time. "I don't think so. I think she can tell I'm not really her mother. I've been trying to convey as much motherly instinct as I can, but... I don't think she's buying it."

I scan Ciara's face. Obviously this interpretation is at least a little distressing for her. "Ciara, she's only a day old. She doesn't know anything except for what you tell her."

"I think she knows it on instinct," she shoots back.

"Fine, even if she does, is that any reason not to like you? You're still her caretaker. You've put in a lot of effort to keep her safe. She should at least understand that!" She should be grateful!

"How would she? It's not like I can tell her what happened." Ciara shifts her weight again. "And besides, if I'm not her mother, I'm an unknown, right?"

"You're her sister!"

"So what? Why should her sister care what happens to her?"

"Because you love her!" I shout. "That much is obvious to me, and I'm not even touching you! It should be obvious to her!"

Ciara doesn't say anything back immediately, and I start to feel strange for having raised my voice. I don't regret it, exactly....

"You're wondering if she's a monster, right?" she finally says.

"Yeah. Of course I am."

"Talk to her yourself then."

I hesitate. "Gladly." I force myself to stand up and walk over to them. Peering down at the two of them, still crouched beneath me, looking up, I suddenly feel very unqualified to be the judge of this. How would I even know? What am I even looking for? If the little child doesn't love Ciara back yet, well then, so what? Am I really going to say that it has to? I stand still for another moment. Rene made it sound like it would be obvious. Monster. The word everyone uses - not a subtle one. Monsters flay people in their sleep.

I reach out my feather and lay it atop the little creature. Immediately I am flooded with everything it is feeling. Fear, uncertainty. Curiosity. I can feel its entire being focusing on me, wondering what to make of the fact that I touched it. I know that it is afraid of me, and afraid of its own helplessness in the face of me. This is hard for me to stomach - for a moment, I feel the urge to pull my hand away. Just get away from it, so that it isn't uncomfortable because I'm here.

"It's okay, Damaris won't hurt you." She says it aloud, and I suppose she must have Said some version of it to the infant at the same moment. "Damaris is here to protect you. She's really strong. Nothing can hurt you because she's here."

I can feel the base of my tendrils clenching up reflexively. She's just saying the truth - so why am I getting choked up at this?

I can feel the infant's attention on me. I can feel that it understands whatever version of that Ciara gave it. But I can also tell that it doesn't believe her. I feel like it doesn't believe her at all. Because I can feel it evaluating me with its gaze. It's judging how strong I actually am. And it's judging the emotions that it can sense from me, trying to decide if I really am going to refrain from hurting it, and if I really am going to protect it. It must be good at this, because it doesn't seem to come to a conclusion.

I pull my tendril away. "It's not normal. It doesn't seem like a monster to me, but Rene said it was, and it's definitely not like you or me."

"How?"

"It's afraid of me, and it doesn't trust you. A normal infant knows instinctively that adults are there to protect it."

Ciara gives me a hard stare. "Damaris, do you think there might be a good reason that she's afraid of you?"

"No. I'm not hearing this again. When you were a baby, you didn't react to my presence with fear or uncertainty. Whether you knew I wasn't your mother or not, it didn't matter."

Her expression sours further. "You promised you wouldn't treat her any differently. Did you touch her while you were still thinking about whether or not she was a monster? You know she can pick up on that, right?"

"Don't give me that. You were Talking to it before I touched it, so you know it was afraid of me before that."

"No she wasn't!" Ciara screams. "She's just a baby, she doesn't know anything! How can you say she's a monster just because she's uncertain about you?"

I take a step backwards. I honestly wasn't expecting her to say that. I feel strange. "You weren't uncertain about me."

"I don't trust you to remember that." She stands up, holding a protective stance over the infant. "You're going to suggest that we kill her, aren't you. I know you're thinking it." Foolishly, I hesitate. "If I know it, you can bet that she knows it too. Well I'm not convinced. If being afraid of someone who wants to kill you makes you a monster, then we're all monsters." Her stance doesn't waver, but I can see a bit of light glittering on her eyes. "Well? Are you going to convince me or not?"

"Probably not," I say quietly. "Look, I don't really want to kill it. But Rene said that if it was really a monster, it would try to hurt you. Right now, I don't think it poses much of a threat, but it'll grow up fast. I'll be honest - I don't really care what happens to it. I do care what happens to you."

"Fine. I can see I asked too much of you."

"Yeah, I guess you did."

The silence is filled with tension. "So, are you going to try to kill her?"

"Are you really not afraid that she'll try to hurt you first? Not even a little?"

"Of course I'm not. Why should I be? Because of what Rene said?" She laughs. "Because of what you said?"

"And if I do try to kill it, you're going to try to stop me."

"Yeah."

I stare at her. What can I do, then? This feeling, that the situation is slipping out of my grasp... it is new to me. And I hate it. The threat is right in front of me - a frail little entity, the easiest kill I'd get in a long time. But there's no way I can fight Ciara in order to get to it. The whole point of me killing it would be to protect her. And even if I didn't hurt her... badly... she would hate me for it.

No, you're being selfish. So she hates you. So what? Is that better than her being maimed, or dead? This little demon is the only threat in the whole world that she doesn't recognize. If I kill it now, she will be safe.

I watch Ciara's body language. I can see her confidence waver slightly - she can tell that I am thinking about it. She must have been certain that saying she would protect the infant would be enough to hold me off. Little sister... I am sorry. Even if you can't forgive me for this, there is no way I could forgive myself if I let this thing hurt you.

I shift all of my weight onto my left foot and lash out with my right, my heel grinding on the rocks. The kick is forceful, but not sharp enough to injure. Just enough to push her back. I know she has enough time to read what I'm doing, but I'm still a bit surprised when she manages to sidestep it. She has little practice in combat, and as far as I know, none against another litare. She whips out all of her tendrils and wraps them around my extended leg, trying to disrupt my balance, but my forward momentum is overwhelming. I bring my leg down to the ground, lurching forward as I do so, and pulling her body down with my leg. Wisely, she lets go immediately. I snap four of my own tendrils toward the infant, but before I can wrap them around it, Ciara intercepts me, curling her arms around mine. I'm impressed - she's quick.

Her stance is awkward, mine is stable, but we are mostly face to face. Still struggling to force me away from the baby, she manages to get her weight properly under herself, and we find ourselves in a brief stalemate, each trying to gain purchase on the other. I stare into her eyes - I know that the situation is more volatile than it appears. The first one to target a kick at the other's knee, or underbelly, will likely connect, but such an attack could cause real harm. I won't do it - she knows that. She must be considering whether or not she's willing to.

In an instant, my entire field of view goes black, and a second later a terrible pain shoots through the flesh around my skull. I lose my balance, and she pushes me away - it is all I can do to stagger back without falling over. My sight comes back quickly, and I see her glaring up at me, standing over the infant. "You... kicked me," I say flatly.

"I'll do it again," she replies, the truth of the claim evident in her voice. "Stay away from us."

I do stay back, at least for a few moments. So, she is willing to hurt me if it means protecting the infant from me. If I continue to restrain myself, she will prove a difficult opponent, even as small and unpracticed as she is. I need a way to subdue her without harming her. My eyes find rest on her upper bulb - if I want to choke her, I'll need to get all of my tendrils around it. A much harder task than choking something with a throat.

"You can't actually win this without killing me," I tell her. "Sooner or later I'm going to get past you."

"You fight like an old woman," she spits back, eyes gleaming viciously. "Where's your conviction? What do you care if you break a few of your sister's limbs, so long as you win the fight?"

Ciara, you're scary when you're mad. And as much as it pains me, you might be right. Maybe it is a mistake to hold back. "You're right. I know you'll survive a broken limb. And I know that whatever you let the infant do to you will be worse than that." I cough violently, my head still spinning. "The next time I come at you, I'm not going to play nice. So this is your last chance to back away."

She laughs at me. "Do it then. When you wake up, I'll be gone, and you'll never see me again. How are you supposed to protect me then?"

That's the threat you're going with? Do you really care so little about your own safety? Nevertheless, I cannot deny that that outcome scares me. Imagining her alone in the wilderness out there, at the mercy of whatever predator happens across her first - and of course she would take that little demon with her. "I guess I can't afford to lo--" I cut myself off and lunge at her, knowing that at least a bit of her attention will be caught on what I'm saying. My tendrils are outstretched, ready to constrict around her bulb as soon as they make cont--

---

My head hurts. Instinctively I extend a tendril to feel my lower bulb - the flesh is tender, and there is a small cut surrounded by abrasion. Touching it makes it hurt worse, so I retract my arm. It is light enough out to see, but the sun has yet to peek over the horizon. I stand up and look around in confusion - when did I get an injury to my head?

I am standing on the side of a mountain, my feet planted in a nest of grass and feathers. There is another, smaller nest about five meters to my left, this one empty. There is no one around as far as I can see - which is pretty far. I stare at the nest for a few moments in utter confusion.

Ciara's! That one's Ciara's! All at once my memories come flooding back. She made these beds for us - we're out here because she was banished. Of course. And... we were fighting. I remember now. So she must have knocked me out somehow. How long was I out for? At least a few hours, since it was pitch-dark when I went out.

When you wake up, I'll be gone, and you'll never see me again. Her words were spoken as a threat in the heat of combat - a tactic to throw me off and cause me to hesitate. Nothing I wouldn't employ myself. Yet... I don't see her anywhere. "Ciara~!" I call out. No response. "Ciara, can you hear me~?" Perhaps she went off in search of something. Right, she did tell me that she collected the feathers and leaves herself, probably from a fairly wide area. Maybe something else occurred to her that the infant needed. But I don't feel comfortable with her being too far away to hear my voice. I should go and look for her. I trudge down the side of the mountain, head still pounding, taking careful steps on the unstable ground. Occasionally I stumble and cause a miniature rock slide, having to catch myself with my tendrils before I fall.

"Ciara~!" I yell every so often.

---

The sun is beating down on me from straight overhead. I'm walking through the forest, only vaguely aware that the mountain is behind me. I feel like I've walked for miles - yet never once did my cries receive an answer. I refused to believe it at first, but at this point I have no other choice.

She'll die out here.

"I know!" I scream at myself, but the voice in my head won't shut up. It just keeps telling me that I messed up, that she's going to die and that I might as well have killed her. I know.

"I'm sorry Ciara! I just wanted to protect you! Please come back... please c--" My voice gives out, and I go into a vigorous fit of coughing. Not that she can hear me anyway.

How could I have been so stupid? If I had just given up and agreed with her, I could have stayed near her and kept an eye on the infant. Now I can't even do that.

I'm exhausted from searching. It's clear to me that my period of unconsciousness did nothing to help me in that regard. I know that if I keep walking, I'll eventually collapse whether I want to or not. But maybe, if I can just keep moving for another few minutes, I'll get close enough that she'll be able to hear me. "Ciara!" My voice is hoarse, and it hurts to use. I don't care. No response this time either - I have to keep going.

I feel a sudden lurch and find my face pressed into the leaf litter. I tripped. I try to pull my legs under myself in order to stand, but even that is too great an effort. In the back of my mind, I am dimly aware that I could very well die like this, too. My fairies alerting me of approaching threats does me no good if I am too weak to respond to them. I shouldn't have pushed myself so hard. I should have known that with that much of a head start, there was basically no way that I would catch up to her.

I feel the blackness creeping in at the edges of my vision.

[Kliminryu]

The stagnant air of the metro attacks my lungs as I move away from the sounds of commotion behind me. I hop along the thick monorail, covered in rust and dust. The damp atmosphere of the tomb surrounds me and steals the sound of my breath until I only heart the beating of my heart and the thumping of my feet against the railway.

-What do I do now?-

The question eats at my focus. It requires a large amount of my concentration to run in the dark along the tracks. I can’t take my mind away from it. -What am I supposed to do?- I can’t return home. My home is known to the public, more importantly my employer. Killing three employees and work abandonment, if they wanted me dead no one was going to stop them now.

I keep running. Pain lances through my head like a laceration just behind the eyes. Anyone living in Kimon is familiar to headaches. That being said this was worse than anything I've felt before. I know i'm behind on medication but the scale of the pain is insane. I reach for my head holding the side of my skull as it screams in pain. The pounding ache of my heart against my chest increases as I try to move faster. If i don't get home within a few hours I will die here.

-I going to die here?-

It's the first thought I have of my own mortality. I hadn’t considered my death at the hands of my assailants back at work. When they pulled knives on me I didn’t think of my death. I thought of theirs. I saw myself tearing them apart just as I had. Just like everyone before them. Perhaps the result is inherent to what I picture in my mind's eye. I visualize arriving at home, reaching under my mattress. I see myself opening the case of medication…

The fantasy is false and I know it. If I show up at my home there will be people waiting for me. Either city law enforcement or workplace representatives. In either case death is only a matter of interpretation. I would chose a grave in the metro over that.

As I move through the tunnels I feel the burning of the radiation as it cooks me from the inside out. My pace slows to a stumble as I arrive at my station. I round a corner and look down the dark passage. The lights from the city leaking down the stairs and spilling onto the platform. Up above the station it was a short kilometer hop to my apartment, or a long kilometer considering my condition. My head pounding and my stomach twisting I walk along the rail until i'm lined up with the center of the station. I think of all the years of medication that I hid in my apartment. All the effort in collecting and saving as much as possible. Maxing out the time between dosages. Throwing up my last meal to save twenty minutes in between doses medication.

-Why hadn’t I ever thought to stash it away from my house? Worried that someone would find it?-

It doesn’t matter now. Going home simply isn’t an option.

-Maybe if I go to the next station I can find another source of medication? Maybe…-

My thoughts are interrupted by the shuffling of footsteps in the station.

No time to lose I dive behind the rail crumpling into the dust and holding my breath listening for movement. The fall sends waves of pain cascading through my burning flesh. I shaking and bite down holding back a scream.

-What was I thinking!? Of course they would know where I was headed the rail system entrance closest to my house is the only place that I would go!-

“Despair Lutlil! You have nowhere to run, talk to me! I won't hurt you I swear!” Her voice echoed through the tunnels, her voice triumphant.

-Dispair? She wasn’t talking like anyone official. Maybe that was on purpose?-

“I know that you only have hours if not minutes before you die,” She paused maybe she heard me adjusting my stance? “I know what you are thinking Lutlil. Kill me and taking the medication from my body? Right? It won’t work.”

Her knowledge of my actions and thoughts was very unsettling.

“I planned this so that I would be on the end of my dosage so you wouldn’t have that option. I’m not here to hurt you. You have something I want. If you want to make a deal I can get you out of this city.”

-She could be bluffing. If I wanted to I could rush her and take my chances with her blood...-

“The law will come for you soon and this station is where they will look if you don’t show up at your house. They are already there… but you know that.” She stops walking as I pulled myself back onto the rail, we are very close. Holding myself in plain view. Her body was a silhouette against the light coming in from above. No doubt she could see me fairly well.

“What… What is your… plan…?” My breathing is ragged and heavy I feel the words scrape out of my throat, “Why shouldn’t I just kill you and take my chances?”

She hesitates after I speak. I can see fear in her eyes as she gazes at the blood drying in my mane. “I... have a token of goodwill.” She lobs an object at me, underhanded. It is too dark to make out but I flinch at the gesture, the token falling against the rail and onto the floor below with a clink.

I don’t go after it immediately, “What is it?”

“A half dose of medication. Not easy to come by as you are well aware. It should be enough for you to walk to the next station.”

I can’t help but eye the canister on the ground. If she is lying she could kill me with the contents of whatever pill she feeds me. “How do I know that you won’t poison me?”

“The canister contains two pills. One for you and one for me. If you want you can keep them both I brought a back up in case you choose not to share. I will take the pill you return as my dosage to get to the next station to prove neither are poison. I have friends there.”

She is standing too close to the edge of the platform. Honestly she is only about 2 meters away. In the dark it feels farther but I just killed three people and she should know about that. Perhaps she is not scared because she is confident in her negotiation skills, likely for someone who found me before the police. Perhaps things are not as they seem.

I lean over the edge of the rail to grab the canister. I start to reach for the pills before I reveal my trap. Exploding off the rail I slam into the negotiator slamming her into the ground beneath me my knife at her throat in seconds. My head is pounding with pain but I hide my grimace behind a sneer.

“Your friends will walk into the light and drop their weapons.”

“What!?” Her voice is filled with fear and panic, she is a good actor.

“Someone is here to prevent me from killing you, otherwise you wouldn’t stand so close with so little respect for my reputation,” I press the knife into her skin drawing blood. My tongue reaches for her throat wiping the blood away, “Tell them to reveal their position with a callout or at the first sign of movement I carve your heart out!”

I feel the panic well inside her. She wants to struggle but the knife is paralyzing, I know the feeling well. I press the tip of the knife into her neck sliding and cm under her skin. The slightest movement from her provokes me to push it a little harder. With my breath against her neck I can smell the product in her hair.

-What a rich bastard. She can afford to wash her hair with scented soaps. I must be revolting to her.-

“What's it going to be?” The tip of my knife slips another cm under her skin, “I’m running out of time.”

“No one!” her voice is shaking the words fall out over each other as she struggles to talk without moving her neck against my knife, “Alone! I’m alone! Please!”

“I want your backup pill.”

“Ok!”

“Where is it?” My voice is calm but the burning in my chest is becoming horrendous. I need to portray strength or she will see how weak I really am.

“Its… its in a pocket on my vest.”

I reach for the pocket with my tongue, my hands shaking against her as I hold her against the ground. I feel the pill where she described pulling it into my mouth. I slowly step off of her pulling the knife away from her throat as I look around the station. My legs weak my arms tired. I barely recognize that I am slumped against a support pillar as I watch the negotiator lift herself from the ground.

"You are somehow scarier than you've been described..." She stares at me with a look that I can't describe. Blood begins to drip from the wound on her neck.

“How did you beat the cops here? How did you know I was coming if you aren’t with them?”

“You think you are the only person who wants out of this city?” she holds the wound on her throat as she steps down into the rails to pick up the canister she had thrown to me.

“That doesn't explain how you knew I was in the metro,” I can feel the effects of the medicine repairing my body, the effects start in my stomachache and spread in a blossom of heat. It’s a pain not unlike the ache felt after a workout. My whole body hurts, my arms hang limp as I lean against the pillar hiding in the side away from the light. “Have you been watching me?”

“What’s it matter how I know? We need to get to the next station before someone realizes that you aren’t going home,” She opens the container and swallows one of the pills, “Let's go!” her movement shaky as she begins to move down the tracks.

Her unsteady motions are unsettling. I didn’t really care about the people I killed at work, but knowing that I pulled a knife on someone who might have just saved my life…

I didn’t really buy that she is on my side yet. Until she explains how she knew I would be here I suspect she is behind the attack at work. Regardless of my intuition I have no real options. Following her is the only course of action where I don’t end up dead. She was smart to only provide half doses. If she had multiple full doses it might have been worth my time to take them and run.

I drop into the tunnel crumpling onto the ground as my legs completely fail to support the weight of the fall.

“Are you ok?”

My heart wrenches at the sound of her concern. -How could she care about me after I just pulled a knife on her?-

“I’m fine!” I sound angry, I am angry. Her act is annoying, what reason could she have to care about me?

Pulling myself to my feet I stumble after her. Once I get moving I have less trouble keeping the pace. Nonetheless I can tell that I’m moving slower than normal.

-How much longer would I have lasted without medication?-

My stomach turns as I bounce down the tunnel. I feel like I am walking through a vision of my future. Is this my new life?

---

I stare at the knife. The girl in front of me carries a knife, it’s at her hip. I had stared at her for a long time as we moved through the swamp. Having noticed the knife I suddenly couldn’t think of anything else.

-Why am I so focused on the knife?-

My urge to walk intensifies as my mind wanders. I focus on my gait, pushing off the swamping mud with both feet consecutively as I follow her. The grey sky still gently crying as the occasional drop plinks into the water around us.

Suddenly as I walk my hand brushes against a knife at my side. I panic as I struggle to suppress thoughts about this. The strange urges about my focus only seem to appear when I concentrate my thoughts. I had held a knife before, I don’t know how or why, I remember that the knife was important.

-Just focus on my steps-

I return my focus to my gate, as I let my instinct guide my hand towards the knife. I remember a dream. I see a monster viciously attacking me. My fingers wrap around the knife.

-Walk forward-

I stare at the woman before me, following her steps. pressing my feet into the prints she leaves behind. I wasn’t sure why I should hold the knife, I felt like I was trapped, a prisoner of my own mind and these alien urges.

-Bounce, bounce, bounce-

I relax my mind letting myself become absorbed in her image as I walk forward. My mind is empty, I see myself standing under a starry sky. I keep walking. I don’t know what I am doing, my actions are nearly autonomous. I see her standing in front of me beneath the starry sky. The monster looming behind her as she smiles at me knife in hand

“Lutlil?”

I say the word out loud surprising myself and the woman in front of me.

We both stop.

I realize that I am holding the knife, its is through the bottom of my jaw and buried deep into the back of my neck.

The desire to walk was gone.

I feel much larger than I should be, my body misshapen and bulky. The woman in front of me simply stares at me no movement or action.

I pull the knife out of my neck, just like the dream it barely bled.

“Just like the dream.”

The woman's demeanor shifted as I removed the knife her posture lowering. Her hand was moving towards the knife at her side. I could see bits of metal protruding from her flesh. She must be half machine judging from the amount of metal that I could see. She also had a large wound on her chest. The ribs underneath where mangled and the flesh, while no longer bleeding, was raw and torn up.

-How am I just seeing this?-

The clarity of my thoughts was a ecstasy I didn’t understand but I cracked my lips apart as I let out an overjoyed giggle.

“Alone at last.”

I saw Lutlil hold a knife, I saw Lutlil in every move I made. I see her as I explode forward into my opponent before she can draw her knife. I see Lutlil as I disarm her. I realize the extent of her wounds has left her powerless in comparison, I can see that she is no threat. Standing over her form I look around.

-What now?-

I have no idea where I am or what to do. As I glance around I catch a gleam of metal in the grey light of the morning. It's on my shoulder. Slowly I look down at my body. I am just like her. Metal protruding from my body in all the same places.

“Are we the same?”

I know she can hear me but I know that she can’t answer, just as I couldn’t. Was it even a she? Her body was no different from mine and now that I had disabled my inhibitor, as Lutlil had called it, I didn't really see her as beautiful. Its hair is short and its face is distorted by bits of metal and a mask. No feature on its body is attractive or womanly in any manner. It doesn't matter. I know what to do.

“I am here to help,” I look at the person underneath me as I grab them by the jaw and hold them still. I look into the mask covering their eyes while I perform the same gesture that Lutlil had done to me. I slide the knife into their jaw reaching towards the back of their neck. As I perform the incision dread grows inside me, my hands shake, no longer guided by instinct. The confidence of the gesture is completely lost as blood begins to spill from the wound.

A cold realization drains through my body as I quickly remove the knife. The damage is already done. I watch the twitching form of the cyborg beneath me coughs and gasps as more and more blood pours from the wound.

“No!” I scramble to move my hands over the wound, “NO!”

I try to stem the flow of blood as the person continues to cough and gasp against my hands. They shake and twitch underneath me, the blood making it impossible to get a grip on the wound to stop the bleeding.

“Hold still! I’m sorry!” The thrashing and kicking of the form grows worse the harder I try to suppress the throes. I’m scared to use my strength against them lest I hurt them even more.

It's over before have a chance to do anything.

I stare at the limp form in the shallow swamp water. The light rainfall mixing with the blood as it spills into the water around me.

I lift my bloody hands off of the corpse as I stand up and look at the results of my actions, “What just happened?”

[The Litare]

There is a heaviness in my spine and my skull. I feel that my entire being is concentrated there - I cannot move, see, or breathe. The lack of air weighs, presses on me, but I am calm, for I know that death is nowhere near. I persist like this for a few moments, patiently awaiting the burning that I know is coming. As soon as it arrives, I find myself able to gasp in pain. The sound is raw and much too open; my spiracles have yet to form. My legs spasm and lash out from me as they grow outward, kicking up a cloud of soft dust that refuses to cling to the exposed flesh.

Then in an instant the pain is gone - so suddenly that it is hard to remember. Supple skin wraps itself around me, protecting me from the stinging air, and my freshly secreted eyes pop open. My tendrils slump out from their sockets; a strange yet familiar pleasantness weighs them down. I lie in contentment for a few moments, seeing nothing but silvery sky above me. There is no sun, nor clouds, merely a uniformly bright fog that swirls in an unfelt breeze. I pull my splayed legs under myself and stand up. Uneven hills of ashen dust surround me, constantly in flux; charcoal limbs of trees branch into the sky, unconcerned with their own fragility. In the distance, huge dark pillars dwarf these waifish skeletons - further beyond those, indistinct shadows circle the island, looking inward.

I know it is an island because I have been here before. Argyros - domain of the gods. Well, one of them anyway. I suppose I should count myself lucky - I neglected to clear my mind before falling asleep, but nevertheless I ended up where I desired. And I remember how I got here.

I remember my conflict with Ciara, too, but I find that it is not nearly so distressing here. So long as I am asleep, there is nothing I can do about it, so there is no point in worrying about it. Besides, there is something much more productive that I could be doing.

-excuse me,- I think to no one in particular. -i have some questions for you.-

It only takes a few moments for one of the shadows to approach me. Its form becomes apparent quickly as the mist flows out of its way. Its body is piscine - it swims through the air - but the skin is smooth and scaleless, white on the belly and dark blue on the back. The large, rounded tail fin beats up and down, while two smaller but similarly rounded pectoral fins maneuver it to face me. The face bears eight tendrils, tucked modestly underneath itself to drift behind it as it glides. Eight bright orange eyes stare back at me, the pupils like little squiggles. The being dwarfs me - it could easily collect me in a single one of its arms if it so desired - but its presence is comforting beyond explanation.

Numerous smaller creatures flit and dart around the being, each group's motion and way of swimming unique to it. Soft-bodies, things with spines, and things plated with armor - all are subordinate to the god's command.

A feeling of acceptance and welcoming surges through my body - sudden and intense enough that I can tell it does not originate from me. The being has not touched me - its speech is simply overwhelmingly powerful. Neither does it deign to use words - they are a substitute, invented by mortals to compensate for their own weakness. Its meaning is clear regardless.

-thank you,- I think back. I know the words themselves will not go through, but the accompanying sentiment will. -i want to know what a soulless being is like. not what it acts like - i know that. i want to know what its mind is like when you use the speech of the gods on it.-

The being's fins wave gently in the air, keeping its position exactly constant relative to mine. In an instant, its air of welcoming comfort disappears. The air feels colder without it. As before I can feel its eyes on me, but they are no longer friendly. The behemoth scans me, and I become very conscious of my body language as its thoughts unwillingly draw my attention to it. It is examining me. It makes no effort to hide its thoughts, but shows them openly for me to perceive. It is wondering why I asked the question. What I want out of the answer. Mere curiosity? No, I asked the question with a certain... intent. Perhaps I have a problem in the waking world that the answer will help me solve. This is the truth, of course, and when I unconsciously confirm this by visualizing the infant, I can tell that the entity has picked up on it. I am wondering if this litare is soulless or not, no? Still it makes no effort to conceal anything from me, yet it itself is impossible - or perhaps simply pointless - to read. The entirety of the "discussion" centers around me. I am growing fairly uncomfortable by now - the entity can pick up on this, too. So it stops the mimicry. The warmth returns to its aura, and I gasp, stumbling in the ash.

So my intuition was right, then. There was something wrong with it.

Of course, just because the god has dropped the act, it is no less able to pick up on what I'm feeling. It can sense my memories of the little monster as they are forcibly dredged up, and I get a feeling of strong affirmation from it. The answer sparks over my skin - yes, you were right.

-if that truly is what a soulless is like, why do they end up so monstrous? even if they are different from us, i couldn't feel any murderous intent. yet that is what all the stories are about.-

I stagger again as the god forces the answer into my brain. The communication is startlingly direct, even invasive: it feels as though it simply restructures my mind so as to contain knowledge it once didn't. It takes me a moment to process the new information, but once I do the answer is fully clear. My base nature is only a small part of who I am. The rest comes from my experiences in the waking world, and my instruction from the gods in the dream realm. For a soulless being, these two things are experienced very differently. Regarding the waking world, I suppose I kind of already knew that. I have personal experience how hard it is to even call one "she", let alone treat it like another person. But the second half of the answer, I find surprising.

-so they have different dreams than we do?-

Yes.

-you're not there to give them instruction.-

Again the answer appears fully formed in my head. Soulless litare are apparently all male, and thus can all meditate. However, the entities in their meditations do not instruct them in the path of the gods, but in a modified version where favor is gained by killing other litare. Similarly, while there may not be initial bloodlust, the same righteous fervor I feel when hunting animal life is instead redirected toward other litare. The killing instinct develops with maturity, just as mine did, and is funneled to the appropriate (or inappropriate) targets with education, just as mine was.

I shake myself vigorously, stirring up wisps of ash that are reluctant to settle. It's a boy, huh? Not like Ciara or I bothered to check - or would have been able to tell the difference if we had. The god's answer reminds me of a discussion I had earlier with Ciara about whether it was unusual that the two of us could meditate. That response seems to confirm that it is. How insignificant of a question that seems now - but I am here, and I will not be waking up for a while, so I may as well know for certain.

I don't even have to form the question into words. The answer comes as soon as I am done thinking about it. And that answer is that the god doesn't know.

Wait, huh? I prod the being for further explanation, which is easily forthcoming. As far as the god knows, while it is indeed true that all soulless litare are born male, it should also be true that all litare can meditate, regardless of sex. The two facts are unrelated - it was my own mind that made the connection. If there are a large number of females in my tribe who cannot, the cause of that must have occurred sometime between our species' creation and the present moment. And what that event was, the god doesn't know.

Unease grows within my chest. Does that mean that our kind is more flawed than I originally thought? Or is there something wrong with my tribe in particular? And... which answer would be worse?

Well, there is nothing to be done about it now. If I am going to investigate this line, it will have to wait until I am awake.

[Kliminryu]

“You didn’t have to stab me…”

Her voice breaks my concentration, my focus in the dark collapsing.

“I would have given you the pill I had on me if you had just asked.”

I don’t really care to respond. It was hard enough to walk through the tunnels in the dark. I could barely make out her position from the sounds of her movement. Was she trying to mask the sounds of her steps. She seems friendly enough, but I felt like her introduction was more sinister than her current actions, I had a question about her introduction. Was there a better time to ask?

“Why did you tell me to despair when we met?” The words slipped my mouth before I could think not to ask.

“What? Seriously?” she sounds confused, “I can’t be the first person who’s said that to you.”

“I don’t talk to a lot of people.”

“No one ever taught you Kliminian?” her voice, one of disbelief.

My skin burned with embarrassment. I remain silent.

“In Kliminian Lutlil is a future tense verb meaning ‘to despair’, not a bad name for a child of Kimon City if you ask me.” Her dry laughter echoes in the tunnels for a second before the silence returns.

“You don’t-” I cut myself off as the clatter of movement echoes down the tunnel from far behind us. We both freeze. My mind races, maybe our passage had disturbed an object that we had passed. It sounded pretty far away. I couldn’t see anything.

“Follow me!” her voice whispers through the air as she moves down the tunnel, the urgency in her words is unmistakable.

I stare down the tunnel looking, listening, for movement. Maybe it was nothing...

“Lutlil!” her voice is farther away now. She is moving faster than I thought, “RUN!”

I turn my body to face the sound of her voice but I keep my gaze over my shoulder. I still see no movement of any kind.

“La-Mari!”

How could she know that?

“RUN!” her voice was really far away now.

I finally start moving, the muscles in my legs protesting loudly at the sudden motion. As I struggle to gain speed I feel my breath rattling out from chest. My body shaking as I strain to move. The fear in my heart casting the image of a monster chasing me in the dark. I’m not scared of monster or the dark, what was going on?

I felt as if the fear of this darkness was a remembered one. I realize that I had forgotten the pain in my legs. It is replaced as my chest tightens, as I picture the attackers choking the life out of me. Why would I conjure up such an image? That was a dream… right? I shook my head trying to focus. The reality of the situation came to life as I corrected these erroneous thoughts. I knew exactly what the La-Mari were. I knew what they were capable of. But... Why were the La-Mari in Kimon city?

The medicine coursing through my body had repaired a lot of the fatiguing damage that radiation causes. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t really run at all. I pushed my body to its limit but I quickly approached a level of exhaustion where I couldn’t see where I was running. I ended up dragging against the tunnel wall. I held my arm against the concrete to guide me as I hopped down the tunnel.

I still couldn’t hear anyone approaching. My own footsteps only made the faintest click as I hopped through the gravel the base of the tracks. The ground was cold, possibly wet, I couldn't tell it was too dark.

“Common!”

I almost screamed as girl who had been helping me grabbed me by the side and lifted me forwards. Her speech made it clear that she feared the La-Mari as much as I did.

“We have to move faster!” She was basically dragging me.

“I can’t…” I was out of breath, out of energy.

I stumbled forward as she dragged my through the tunnels. My breath tastes like iron and sickness. I suppressed the urge to cough as I strained my ears. Listening for anything aside from the sound of our feet crunching along our route. I could hear water ahead of us. Dripping and trickling.

It wasn’t long before we were splashing through ankle deep water. The tunnel must have started to slope down. I had never been this far into the metro.

She dropped my without warning. I hadn’t realized how much of my weight was on her shoulders until I crash into the water. I don't really catch myself but I quickly get up onto my hands.

“What are we-?” I can see that she is opening a door in the side of the tunnel. Old and ruined like everything around it. A faint light leaking out from inside as she pulls the heavy door open. The water is a foot deep on either side.

“GO!” She yells as she grabs me by the shoulders pushing me through the door.

As I move closer I finally hear the sounds of approach that I had been suspecting. The heavy footsteps crashing into the gravel and water getting closer with every second.

The other side of the room I stand in ends as a small short corridor with no exit. Water had corroded the concrete walls and rusted the metal rebar within. Nonetheless it was a dead end.

She must have seen that I was confused. She shoves me farther into the room. I realize that she is holding a fairly large gun. How did she get a gun? Did she always have that?

“Dive!” she shouts and I realize that the room leads down a path of stairs. Her shove sends me into water deep enough that I am suddenly swimming.

I surface for a moment to get a breath and I hear her shout again, “Dive it only goes one way!”

The sound of gunfire drowns out any questions I have. I flinch away from the deafening storm of fire the gun unleashes diving into the muffled silence and darkness of the water. I can’t remember the last time that I had gone swimming but it didn’t feel too unnatural. I twist my body back and forth snaking through the water and pushing off the liquid with my tail. I bump into the ceiling, floor, and walls as the sounds and lights from the firefight fade behind me.

After a short period of swimming I can feel my chest tighten in need for breath. I feel like I should have taken a deeper breath. The light from behind fades into darkness. I can’t see anything. Floundering in the void I focus on moving forwards. I could be swimming in circles. I try to use the wall to guide me, I’ve lost my sense of vertigo is it a wall or a floor?

It feels like minutes have passed, my body crying for breath as I try to find an exit. I can feel my racing heart against my chest. I finally bump into ridges that I recognize as stairs. This must be the way out! I crawl up them through the water as my chest starts to convulse against my will trying to pull oxygen into my lungs even though I am underwater.

The certainty of drowning is upon me as I finally pull my head from the water. Taking in a powerful breath before the water has cleared my mouth. I start coughing immediately, the motions of coughing preventing me from getting out of the water. I try to scramble up the steps out of the water.

Hands grab me, pulling at my shoulders, yanking me from the cold wet prison and up a few stairs before dropping me on the hard floor. My limbs feel like they are made of cement. I can hear the voices of the people around me, my focus is completely wrecked. The light around me is blinding, preventing me from opening my eyes and understanding my surroundings.

The thought of passing out is forced upon me, but it is not a notion that I agree with.

“Sa-Aria! Where is she?” Are they asking me? “There was someone with you right?”

The hands on my shoulders shake me vigorously. The motion is enough to offset the imbalance in my stomach. I feel the vomit pour out of my mouth. My stomach is too sore to relay the sensation of convulsing to my brain. Even through my fucked vision I can see that the pool of vomit is as black as it’s ever been.

“Damn it!” The hands drop me face first into the mess. “Sorry! I didn’t mean- Can you hear me?”

I nod as I prop myself up onto my elbows trying to slow my breathing. My heart is racing as it pumps fresh blood through my brain the sensation pounding against my skull.

"Where is Sa-Aria? She was supposed to be with you."

“La-Mari,” I pant, my breath interrupting my speech, “Chasing me, and her… Told me to dive… she had a gun.”

They look at me, my eyes adjusting to the light, I look at them. They have faces that I bear faces that I have seen before, I see the comprehension in their eyes. “So they know we are here… and they sent La-Mari.”

I could see the comprehension in their eyes turn into anger, the two people stared at me. Even I could tell that this attack was related to me.

I paused to look around the room, struggling to my feet as I took in my surroundings. The room we stand in matches the entrance on the other side. There is a light above a door at the end of the corridor. The door is robust, it looks like solid metal and has a wheel in the center, presumably for unlocking it. One of the two people who had dragged me out of the water moves to the door and begins to twist it open. The door wasn’t moving so it must control some sort of latch.

“If there are La-Mari coming through the water then we need to lock the door. The Medicine Man...” the one talking looks at me, “uh… Our leader will have a plan.”

I have so many questions but if the La-Mari are on their way then I agree with her. I stand up, my legs shaking under the weight of my body as well as the water and blood in my fur. My eyes wander to the still surface of the water behind me, the door creaks as I watch the surface. I back away despite the stillness of the water. The knowledge of what it contains is enough to imbue fear.

“Move!” The voice causes me to flinch.

I must have been staring at the water in something of a trance because the door is wide open. As I get closer they grab me and pull me into a small airlock. The one at the door hesitates looking at the water. She looks back at her comrade.

They exchange a meaningful look before slamming the door shut. Darkness.

For a few second we sit in uncomfortable silence, pressed up against each other, until the opposite door opens and the full light of the room on the other side meets my gaze. The room houses a strange shanty town. The settlement only has a small amount of buildings made of trash and some slight higher quality components. The room is less that 70 meters in any direction and looks to be circular.

“What is this?”

Neither of the escorts responded. Instead they looked at each other.

“Should we go back for her?” I noticed that they both had guns.

“We both agree that if we try to help her then we die with her. Right?” she didn’t wait for an answer, “Even if we kill one of them La-Mari travel in groups. If we are lucky she will lead them away from the entrance. They may not know we are here yet.”

I moved away from their conversation. The strange town piquing my interest. The buildings were simple rooms with basic necessities littered about the floor and on various makeshift furniture. It all had a very lived in atmosphere, with the exception that I saw no movement. The town couldn’t hold more that 30 people. In spite of this I see zero. No movement at all.

I interrupt the conversation behind me, “Where is everyone? What’s going on?”

“Where is everyone?” The larger of the two repeated the question with a level of indigence, “This is Kimon City, people don’t come here to live. You are in a graveyard, Lutlil. It's you, Krena,”she gestured at the other escort, “me and the Medicine Man. If you have questions you can ask him. He’s the one who wanted to see you.”

“The Medicine Man?”

“Yeah, he’s the one who decided to send Sa-Aria after you.” Her face was one of disgust, “If it was up to me…” She was kind enough not to finish her thought.

Medicine Man sounded like someone I would want to meet, for quite a few reasons, “Where is he, the… uh… Medicine Man?”

Before they could answer I could follow their gaze. They looked at a door on the opposite side of the room much like the one we came through. “That door has an airlock like this one,” she nods at the door, “He is on the other side.”

The look on her face reminded me that she had already directed my questions elsewhere. I slowly walk through the empty town. The dim lights overhead filling the room with a rusted orange atmosphere. I noticed it when I was walking down the tunnels and now that I had a moment alone with my thoughts I realized that the constant affliction of radiation felt absent in this room. Perhaps that is why they are here? It could just be my imagination.

I cross the plaza, finding myself at the other door all too soon. I pause to take a breath. Everything had changed so fast. It felt like days had passed since I fled into the metro. I knew that it couldn’t have been more than two hours.

I twist the wheel until the door swings open. Warm air boils out in a gust as the door cracks open. Just like the other side it led to a small chamber with a door on the other side. I step into the warm air, if anything it's another set of doors between me and the La-Mari.

A small part of me panics as I close the airlock behind me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like everything that has happened of the last 3 hours of my life was completely out of my control. I twist the latch on the door closed, it sounds like this ‘Medicine Man’ might know what's going on.

The door latches in front of me and I pause waiting for something to happen. I sit in the dark for several moments before I realize that I need to open the other side. I fumble in the dark grabbing the wheel and twisting it open. After what feels like an eternity the door unlocks and I swing it open.

The radiation hits me hard enough to feel like a punch. I drop to my hands and knees. -Why?- I stagger to my feet my insides turning in response to the radiation. I scramble to grab the door and pull it shut.

A hand grabs the door holding it open, the hand is shriveled and old. I stumble away from the hand in shock. Letting go of the door I look up noticing the small old man in front of me. His hair is bleached white, his skin blackened and wrinkled. I feel as though I am staring at a corpse.

“No need to despair Lutlil, I am not here to kill you.”

I squint at him the radiation still omnipresent but no longer my only concern.

“Did Sa-Aria already use that introduction?” His face was so old I could barely read emotion but he looked disappointed.

“She did…”

“I bet she tried to convince you that she speaks Kliminian,” he laughed gently, I swear dust came from his mouth, “As if anyone so young would know the language of the stars.”

“What’s going on? How did all of this happen?” I felt a sense of dread in the presence of this ancient man. Maybe that was the radiation?

“I am so sorry for what I have done to you Lutlil. I suppose that is the problem with how I do things…” his face turned to one a sorrow greater than what he was describing, “I meant to contact you, I wanted to seek your help. Well... we wanted your medicine. You have a stash of medicine large enough to protect so many people if they where to hide in tunnels. I'm sure you noticed the radiation is more tolerable in our town?”

“I can tell that it’s here.” I felt my skin burning, I could feel the sensation of burning throughout my body.

“Not to worry! I am called medicine man for a reason,” He stood up and walked back through the room. We stood in a chamber that looked much like my apartment. One room with four corners dedicated to various activities. Bed in one corner and a workbench at the back of the room. The light fixture on the ceiling was some sort of gas bulb occasionally flickering, “This is the last pill in the metro.” He tosses me the pill in a container.

“For me?”

“You can take it now if you want. I would save it for later you won’t need it anytime soon.”

“What?... Why are you doing this?” The canister felt heavy in my hands.

“Lutlil… I made a mistake in trying to contact you. I failed in my attempt to deliver a message and as a result an attempt was made on your life. I don’t know how you survived a La-Mari attack but when we saw you in the tunnels…”

“Wait… What? I wasn't attack by La-Mari…”

“Maybe not La-Mari that you would recognize,” He looked at me pointedly, “None of that matters. The La-Mari know that we are here and they are going to destroy everything and everyone that lives here.”

I cannot envision a world where he is wrong about that.

“I know what you do, Lutlil, I know that you are a killer. I know that you enjoy it. I have never killed and I don’t want to. Honestly I don’t think I have the time left to kill anyone. Well if time were the only factor maybe you…,” He smiled, a joking smile, the kind a demon would disguise itself with, “The call me Medicine Man because the word Medicine doesn't mean what you think it does. The ‘medicine’ that you hold in your hand is not a formula that cures the effects of radiation. It is a programmed chemical compound that actively repairs tissue damage. You may know what a Nanobot is, the concept is effectively identical.”

“What does it matter? Why does any of this matter?” I started to piece what he was saying together, “Wait so that means that you should be called… uh, Nanobot… Man?”

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it does it?” His face held the same smile, “Kimon City has existed for many years and I was born in this city just like you, just like everyone else. I felt that my life here was unfair, I wanted to fix the city, I wanted to help everyone live happier lives. I wanted everyone to have enough medicine so that they could live a life free from the fear running out. I spent my whole life trying to fix this city and in just one day you showed me that there is a better way.”

I stare at him, the radiation eating away at my skin.

“I am made of Medicine,” he must have seen me tense up because he spoke quickly, “and!... before you kill me I want you to know that you have my permission.”

“What??”

“My plan is for you to take my power and use it to fix Kimon City.”

“Medicine isn’t power old man… it's just medicine. Besides this city isn’t worth fixing, I’d sooner leave.”

“We've tried that… their is no escape. We have ventured far outside the city limits, sacrificing the medicine of many to allow for the escape of a few. Everyone who leaves is forced to return the radiation doesn’t stop. Not after 10km not after 10000km,” he paused standing taller than before still somewhat smaller than me, “You are right medicine isn’t power. Power is power, and I have a source of power inside me. It's where you have a heart. Radiation is not poison, Lutlil, it also is power. I don’t have time to explain the history of our rebellion. Suffice it to say we lost, as is evident by the graveyard on the other side of that door. I lost. I don’t care about Kimon anymore. I don’t want you to care about Kimon. I want you to take my power. My heart produces medicine and if you consume my heart you will inherit that power.”

“Why are you doing this? None of this makes any sense?!” I understood what he was saying but I couldn’t figure out why, “Why me? Why are you giving this to me? You have allies… I’m a stranger…”

“You are a killer, Lutlil,” the man spoke with a cold indifference, “I don’t want you to save this miserable city, I want you to burn it to the ground after killing everyone in it.” The power and joy his words gave me was sickening, a saccharine truth about myself that no one had ever seen as good. Everyone I knew distanced themselves from me when I tell them who I am, what I am. This man was different.

I listen to the old man, my attention stolen by his story.

“The device you steal from me will fight you. It very much has a mind of its own and it will do everything it can to keep me alive. I have tried to convince it that I need to die but there are some things that it does not understand.”

“It's alive?”

“Depends on who you ask,” he grins again the darkness of his request evaporating, “I would say yes.”

There is a pause while we look at each other. I draw the knife from my vest, moving towards the living corpse before me. I feel a hunger as I picture what he has described. Never ending medicne and everyone I hate drowning in their own blood. Before I know it I have my hands against his shoulders pressing the knife into his chest. My breathing heavy as I anticipate this new power.

He looked at the knife his eyes filled with a fear that I had seen only hours ago. “You promise to destroy this city?”

I tear into his chest with the knife slashing through his flesh. His blood is laced with lines of milky white as it pours onto my hands. “I’m not one for promises,” I dig my hand into his chest using the knife to chop through guts until my hand wraps around his heart. It beats against my grip as I wrap my fingers around it and tear it from his chest, “but you know who I am.”

I see the life fade from his eyes as I wrap my tongue around the heart in my hands and pull it down my throat. I feel the heat of his heart travel into my stomach. The blood on my hands and face tingling as I look at his corpse.

He made this sound like something would change…

I feel no different. I look down at myself expecting a change. When none came I started to move towards the door. I should get out of this radiation as soon as possible. Before I get to the door my fingers start to itch. The itch was underneath the blood of the man I had recently killed. The tingling of the blood on my skin seemed to grow more intense. The sensation quickly becomes uncomfortable. I try to scrub at my hands wiping them on my vest in an attempt to stop the sting. Was this some sort of attack?

A pain in my stomach punches me out of nowhere. The clawing and biting of a guttural pain as if I had swallowed a blender. I fall to my side clutch at my stomach. I convulse as if to throw up but I fail to force anything out. Heaving at the sickness with not result. The pain spreads through my body reaching up into my chest before hitting my heart. The tingles spreads to my whole body within seconds. Its claws though every centimeter of my flesh before it makes it to my head.

The pain is blinding I garb at the sides of my head struggling to do anything about the pain. Is this how I die?

I lay on the floor shaking against the pain curled into ball. At some point the pain seemed to level out. No longer the only thing I could feel. I felt a cool breeze, the sounds of rushing water?

I open my eyes to see a dense fog around me Maybe I really did die…

The floor is a strange soft bed of ash. I struggle to my feet the action sending a powerful lance of pain through my body. I collapse onto the ground a scream echoing through the fog as if made by someone else. I lay shaking on the ground for a moment carefully rolling onto my feet. My movements are small and I look around to see the the fog completely gone. The land is dark but illuminated by the starry sky. The light occasionally blocked by the branches of dead trees.

I am on a beach the rushing of water laps against the shore the water black and thick more ash than water… at least on the surface. I hear the crash of a large object hitting the ground in the distance. I try to take a few steps but the pain dances through my veins at the slightest movement. I hear the crashing of large structures hitting the water. Looking out to the shore I see the columns of black water thrown into the sky. I see towers in the distance farther inland.

-Where am I?-

[The Litare]

A loud smack tears me from my reverie; a spray of black dust hits me in the fact, coating my eyes with the stuff. Reflexively I pull back and try to shield myself; realizing that the motion is largely too late to have helped, I start trying to rub the ash from my eyes. A few moments later, I can open them enough to see, though my vision is barely useful still, blurred as it is by the stream of tears trying to wash the offending matter out. A huge dark shape looms in front of me - the sound of labored breathing the only noise I can hear. I blink rapidly.

-what's going on?- I ask of the deity, only slightly panicked. It doesn't offer anything in response. Perhaps it can't?

I look around - my surroundings are not as they were a moment ago. The sky is empty now - both of mist, and of the remainder of the circling shadows that were the other gods. I suppose they fell, too.

I feel a massive tendril curl around my ankle, and immediately my mind is flooded with information. The deity conveys to me its own fear and lack of understanding. I didn't know gods could feel fear. It does know one thing, though - this sequence of events was not caused by it. Argyros is eternal - it has no sky but the whiteness, no air but the water that the gods swim through. Its rules do not change. For a god to change them in accordance with a given lesson would be child's play, granted, but nevertheless they do not change. In accordance with the new rules, this god will soon be dead.

Even overwhelmed as I am by the torrent that is the god's stream of thoughts, I find it just a little bit strange that this is what it is reassuring me of. That it hasn't done this to teach me anything, that this isn't some sort of test. What else could it be?

This realm is our sanctum, I hear it tell me. There is no one else here but the gods... and you, Damaris.

-me?-

-is that an accusation?-

The deity's fear is no longer present, replaced by its usual intense probing. Whatever the cause of this paradigm shift, it is certain that there must be something to learn here. Not something that it can teach me, but something I must learn about myself. Because if it didn't cause this, there is only one other possibility.

Its thoughts still sound like an accusation to me, but there is no hint of any accusatory emotion. More precisely, the god doesn't seem to blame me for anything. Actually, as I realize a moment later, it's exactly the opposite. It knows me in the same way I know myself - it knows that I bear it no ill will or resentment. It trusts that I am its faithful servant. All the more reason, then, that I should learn the cause of this phenomenon. If there is any part of me that would wish, even unconsciously, for this to happen, the god trusts me to treat it as the enemy that it is, and purge it accordingly.

You have only one commandment, Damaris. Kill anything that is not litare or a god. Whatever else you choose to do, I believe that you will do it in service of this order.

Actually, that last sentiment is never completed. It is overwritten by the static convulsions of brain death.

I pull my foot out from the tendril's grasp and look around, somewhat lost. Really, I don't feel like I did any of this at all, and if I did it unconsciously, I wouldn't know how to tell, or what to do about it. I wonder if the deity's thoughts were even as coherent as it thought they were. Maybe the fear of losing control of its domain made it delirious, or maybe the lack of air did. I stare blankly at the entity's corpse, feeling vaguely that I should be doing something, but having no idea what that is.

Well, it wants me to purge whatever part of myself is responsible for the rule change. It seemed fairly certain that it is, indeed, a part of me. And it is not my place to judge whether the order was given in delirium or not. Perhaps that, itself, is the test - to see whether I will second-guess a commandment that I don't understand. I sit down uncertainly - I suppose all I have to do is engage in a little self-reflection. That's not really a problem - easy enough - but I can't help but feel like there's nothing to find. Even if I shouldn't, I can't help but feel like the god was wrong this time.

When it inevitably turns out that it wasn't, I can only hope that I will be forgiven for my insolent thoughts.

---

A set of soft velvety wings brushes against my spiracles as its owner crawls inside my lungs. As I asked, it whispers its message to me only once it's in. Target collapsed from exhaustion, it relays in its limited tongue. Seventy meters due east. I breathe a huge sigh of relief as I start to head that direction; one of the biggest things I had to worry about is now gone. Mind, this whole operation has been nothing but stress since I started it, but having to keep close enough to hear my sister's screaming was definitely the worst part of it. I don't bother to walk quietly anymore; leaves and sticks crackle under my feet. I stick to the shade of the canopy to avoid the hot sun on my back.

As far as plans go, I've definitely come up with more cobbled-together ones than this. Still, the whole way over I can't help but wonder if there wasn't a better way to do things. Part of me thinks I didn't need to subject her to the stress of trying to look for me - I should have just stayed by her side and been present when she woke up the first time. Listening to her call out for me - I have to think she learned her lesson a long time before she collapsed.

No, but what if she hadn't? Then I'd still be within arm's reach of her when she woke up - and I'm not confident that my little trick would work twice. It had to be done this way.

This lingering guilt, it isn't going away, is it?

-damaris?- the little one I have coddled under my belly asks. She's unable to form any other words to go along with the name, but she says it with enough anxiety that the meaning is obvious. Is Damaris going to attack us again?

-it's okay little one, she was just confused from being so tired.- I don't really think that's true, though I hope it is.

The baby squirms a little and intensifies the feelings of fear. She doesn't want to go back. Okay, I guess she doesn't believe me. I have to admit, I don't entirely disagree with her. As I get closer and closer to the spot where Damaris lies unconscious, I second guess myself more and more. She did try to attack the little one - well, both of us, really. In fact she's the only thing that's tried to attack us so far.

No, that's stupid, I tell myself. Litare flesh isn't edible, and anything big enough to pose a threat is also smart enough to have learned that by now. But that doesn't mean the various forest-dwellers won't try to kill you for other reasons. You stumbled across their territory, you're too close to their young ones, or, most simply, they know you'll grow up into something that will hunt them if left alone. I'd maybe last a few weeks before something found me and picked an excuse. I'd probably at least get advance warning, but there's a reason most of the hunting parties consist of more than one person.

I can't fully convey all that to the little one, and I can tell she won't really believe me until she sees it herself. But that's what parents are for, right? Making the hard decisions because they know more than their kids. Even if I learned all that stuff in just the past few months myself. Mostly from Damaris telling me.

-we're going back,- I say firmly, catching a struggling leg in my arm to keep her from falling. -it's dangerous out here, and we need her to protect us.-

Nervous wriggling notwithstanding, we make it the rest of the way in relative silence. As we get nearer to her resting place, I can hear her fairies warning - or perhaps heralding? - my approach. They're not exactly shy about it either, but from what I can tell she doesn't wake up. I hop up onto a medium-sized fallen tree, and there she is, face down in the leaf litter on the other side. From how her legs are splayed out behind her, I surmise she must have tripped over one of the tree's limbs and not been able to get up. You big dumb idiot. If she's not waking up even when her fairies are calling to her, she had to have walked herself practically into a coma. What if a predator had found you before I did?

Well, at least I'm here now. I'm sure I'll wake up if something gets too close, and if you don't, I'll pull you to your feet and shake you awake if I have to. We have to look out for each other like that.

I hop down from the tree trunk - that doesn't stir her, either - and curl up on the other side of it, one flank resting against it. Even if I'm not as exhausted as she is, I still haven't slept in over a day. I don't want to get into the same position she's in, so I'd better try to get some sleep while I can. Pretty soon as I stop moving around, I can feel the heaviness in my limbs pulling me down into sleep. Before I allow myself to slip past the point of no return, I issue one last command to my fairies: wake me up as soon as Damaris starts to stir. I have to hope I read my sister's cries correctly, and that she really will understand and be regretful when she wakes up. But if not, I'd rather at least be awake for infanticide attempt part two.

Please, don't be stupid anymore, I plead silently as I close my eyes.

---

AAAAAaaagh! My spiracles haven't formed yet, so the scream is wordless, but it is all that occupies my thoughts for a few moments. I can vaguely feel myself thrashing around on some sort of soft surface, a distant second to the pain. After a minute or two, it stops hurting, and I find I am able to see. Above me is the familiar night sky - wasn't it daytime just a moment ago?

No, wait, I remember what that was. The forming - it always happens when you enter this place. I'm not sure what it's called - the gods here never told me.

Even before I stand up, I can tell that something is wrong. Multiple things. The sky here isn't normally so clear - it's normally foggy. And the forming isn't supposed to hurt so much. Sure, it's kinda disturbing the first five or ten times you go through it, but the actual burning sensation of having your flesh exposed to the air is supposed to be greatly muted. I'm still breathing heavily from this time. My skin feels itchy - I curl my legs under myself and shakily bring myself to my feet, pulling out a few tendrils to examine them. A thin film of ash is sticking to my skin - stained black with blood. Is... is that my blood? I guess the stuff must have gotten stuck to me when my muscles were still exposed, and I guess my skin must have grown in underneath it. Mark that down as thing number three - the ash isn't supposed to stick to anything. I absentmindedly brush at the especially itchy parts, knowing full well I'm never going to get it all off.

The place is oddly quiet - no, that isn't quite right. It's as quiet as it normally is, I'm just more conscious of it than usual. Usually everything feels... muffled?... but now it feels sharp and vivid.

I look around to try and get my bearings, noticing four and five as I do so. Four, there are no gods anywhere in sight; normally they're the only reason for this place to even exist. And five, there's a new structure toward the center of the island. A group of curved, vaguely rib-shaped towers, maybe ten meters high and formed out of some kind of dull black substance. Some of them are collapsed; the ones that aren't are arranged randomly. Maybe there would be a pattern if they were all intact.

"Not even gonna try this time, huh?" I call out to the absent gods. That's fine; can't say I'm disappointed. Waste of time anyway, if they aren't going to say anything intelligible. I'm more curious as to what that structure is anyway.

As I walk toward it, I can't help but feel like this is some sort of test, and that the gods really are here after all, watching from just out of sight.

[Kliminryu]

The stale air curls ashen dust against my face as I shiver against the side of a large tree. It's completely burnt out, the blackened surface staining my fur as I steady my breath. The pain that wracked my body seemed to have subsided, in its absence there is a weakness. A aching tired weakness that leaves a stumble in my step and a shake in my hands. This wasn’t the first tree I have stopped to lean on, my sooty figure a testament to number of stops. I stagger forward I feel as though I must keep moving.

The ash crunches against my steps as I move forward again. Not driven by anything in particular I look towards my destination. The ominous black pillars seemed to call out, ushering my arrival. I could hear faint voices drifting through my mind as I gazed upon them. Silhouetted against the starry night sky the almost looked as if they rose forever.

As I stumble across the ashen forest I gaze at the stars, I am stricken by a feeling of familiarity. The presence of stars chilled my heart as I recalled what creatures roam beneath them. I feel a tightening of my chest as my breath draws short. Confusion and fear coddle my mind, stifling rational thought as I gazed at my surroundings in fear. I see nothing but trees and ash. I see the towers and I see the stars. Nothing else. There is nothing else, and yet my heart races against my chest as I stumble forwards.

---

Fatigue slams me into the ground startling me awake as I lurch back to my feet crying out in surprise. My limbs struggle to obey commands as I frantically look around, the tired ache has only gotten worse. Nothing new and nothing the same. I seem to have moved much closer to the pillars as they loom overhead. I stare at their massive grandeur I am close enough that it almost looks as if they are in danger of falling on me. The illusion that they are leaning over me one I am quite familiar with.

With a sudden violence the voices crescendo around me. I spin, reactivity, trying to locate the source of the sound. My movements swirl ash about as I search for the sound. The only word I can make out echoes with a certain finality.

“Murderer”

-are they talking to me?-

I spin again, the voices remaining just behind me as they murmur in discord. Again the cacophony retains it overtones of anger this time I can’t make out any words at all.

I stop looking for the voices. I don't know what they are. -They must be part of this place. Part of these pillars? I don't have anywhere else to go...- I hop towards the structures, locking my legs and kicking up tufts of ash with every leap. Panic wells inside me, my breath growing shorter as I struggle to move faster. My mind fills with thoughts of predators and monsters reaching from the darkness to devour me.

I close my eyes and sprint.

-this isn’t real! none of this can be real!-

I open my eyes hoping to wake up, hoping for the world to change. To my dismay this nightmare persists. Its darkness seeming to close in on me as I run.

The adrenaline surges through my arms and legs. Reaching my fingertips and pounding through my mind. The voices remain undeterred by the sound of my breath or the pounding of my feet against the forest floor.

“Monster!” the voices scream at me accusatory and fierce, their tones pierce the empty night shaking my composure.

Finally, with my chest pounding and my body shaking, I scream back, “Leave me alone!” skidding to a halt I spin in circles looking for the source of this assailant. I screech aggressively broadcasting my anger as loudly as I can. The bestial sound surging from my chest as I puff out my mane standing tall.

“Where are you!” The dust settles around me, the world empty but for the ash and trees. Slamming my tail against the ground I scream again forcing all the air from my lungs the dust moves in response.

Nothing, nothing at all.

I can’t help but giggle. The diffusion of fear and adrenaline leaves me laughing and shaking. I try to stifle the laughter but I just end up giggling into my arm. Laughter quickly consumes the fear and soon i'm rolling in the ashen dirt giggling and screeching as I realize its all in my head. The empty world of ash and me. -maybe i died?-

The voices seem fade in the presence of my laughter, I can barely hear them and in this moment of silence I manage to hold back the laughter as I look towards the sky.

Lying on my back I stare at the many specks of light littering the sky. I never really get to see stars at home. Looking up at the sparkling collage I can’t help but think I that I wouldn’t really mind living in such an awful place if I got to see the stars every now and again.

[The Litare]

Single target straight ahead. Fifty kilograms. Sixty meters.

Hexapod.

My fairy chirps the warning from atop one of the pillars, where it has flown ahead of me to get a wider view. As soon as the first sharp-eyed scout calls out the entity, several more confirm it, each sitting at the apex of one of the rib-like structures. From comparing their descriptions of its distance and direction, I can get a sense of where it is relative to me. Doubtless moving toward the pillars, just like I am.

Like long red-and-white serpents with six legs, partly covered in fur.

My sister's description flashes in my brain. Wait, that's right. Come to think of it, the fairy did say six legs. It took me a moment to register the call-out, unusual as it was. What else has six legs? Nothing I've seen before. Could it be the same creature that Damaris saw?

As much as I tell myself that it's pointless to wonder before I've even seen it, my mind races anyway. I'm still curious about the new structures in the center of the island, but even if I'm not a hunter, my brain won't stop nagging me about the present threat. Target ahead, target ahead, it feels like the message is being waved in my face, and I can't concentrate on anything else. I have to get this creature in my sights.

It's still on the other side of the pillars from me. My fairies keep me informed of that. As I approach the looming structures, a vague sense of unease washes over me, like all my muscles are tensing up at once. I'm not sure if it's from being near the towers, or from knowing that I'm walking into something that might want to hurt me. I know it's a dream, but the Forming I experienced when I arrived here hurt a lot more than usual, and everything feels more vivid in general. Even if I wake up unharmed after it kills me, the thought of having to endure that experience...

Stupid brain. Why do we have to stalk this thing? I'm not like Damaris... I can't actually hunt it.

A loud, animalistic scream pierces the air, and my tympana. I cover my ears with two feathers until it stops. Replaced by a quiet chittering not too dissimilar from what my fairies make. But it is not one of them.

I am standing among the pillars now. The "target" is still out in front of me, apparently having stopped its approach after screaming. I press my right front tendril against one of the black structures as I walk around it. Cold and smooth, like polished stone. This one sits in the center of the others, and is shorter and squatter than them, though still several times taller than me. Shaped more like an elongated plant bulb than a rib bone. There's nothing particularly strange about it, inherently - except why is it here? Why now and not before?

Well, you gave me this brain, I reason to the nonexistent gods. You can't blame me if the hexapod is more pressing.

I pass by the central piece and a few more ribs after it. My fairies flit from towertop to towertop, and once there are no more towers to flit to, climb high into the sky and circle around me. A large, gently sloping dune of ash is now all that separates me from the creature. I dig my feet into the fine powder, trying to ascend it, but it gives way far too easily. I have to go around. I want to laugh nervously at being kept in suspense for a few more moments, but I catch myself. On the off-chance that it hasn't noticed my fairies yet, better to keep quiet.

I round the corner of the dune, and there it is. Splayed out on its back in a shallow bed of ash, its bristly fur covered in the stuff. A perfect match for what Damaris described. The strangeness of its form is slightly unsettling to look at, but overall it's not as intimidating as I thought it would be. It looks to be completely off-guard. Not like something that was able to fight and kill my sister. Perhaps I should be all the more worried because of that.

"Hello!" I call out to it, not daring to approach. I notice that my feet are braced against the charcoal, every muscle in my body tensed to run. "I don't want to hurt you!" I think for a second. "Can you understand me?"

[Kliminryu]

My eyes wander across the starry night sky. The tiny points of light barely noticeable on their own, but unavoidable as the masterpiece that they made together. I feel a calmness in the clarity with which I can see in the sky. A clarity that is missing from the dark woods around me. As much as I want to focus on the stars my attention is drawn to the whispers. Their return is softer than before, less distinct, like the flutter of a moth... barely a whisper at all.

My body chills as I realize where I have heard the sound before. I have heard this same sound under the same stars! I twist my feet underneath me, slamming my eyes shut. I am on my feet in an instant. My plan to listen for the monster is interrupted before I get a chance to scan the area. I hear a sound from ahead and to my left. Distinct and alive it’s not unlike a voice, but unlike any that I have ever heard.

I cover my eyes with one hand squinting between my fingers as I scan for whatever made the noise. To my dismay it is too dark. I can't really see anything at all. The fear and excitement start to force power and adrenaline through my body. The anxiety causes my body to quiver in anticipation. I can feel its tendrils around my throat. I can remember its knives digging into my eyes as I choked to death.

Knife! I don’t have my knife… -where is my knife? why did I have it last time?- I feel my hands shaking, my legs shaking. -can it see me, can it see that I am scared?-

It calls out again, this time I am ready and I lock my eye on its location. Its shadowy form unmistakably the same as before. Stars and monsters… -am I going mad?-

I realize the second time it called out that the sounds it made were longer… different. Why would a creature like it make any sound at all? I stand facing the creature, paralyzed. I wrack my brain for options, for a course of action. If i run it might catch me, I remember the powerful legs slamming against my chest crushing my body with apparent ease... it would probably catch me, if I attack it… well... I don’t care to repeat the last nightmare. I tense my legs locking them and unlocking them. The ache of my body is painfully real, I can tell that I am too weak to fight… too weak to run… I don't have a knife. The only thing I should have is the element of surprise. I know that I have no tools... no options, -have I already lost?-

The thought is terrifying but calming, if I have no options I can’t really make a mistake right? I try to refocus. I need to find out what it's doing. Then the creature makes a third sound. This one like the last, articulate, focused and distinct...

I physically flinch upon the realization.

Its talking.

As soon as the thought enters my mind it infests how I interpret everything I knew about these monsters... these creatures.

-Can they all talk? Can they only talk near the pillars? Why hasn’t it attacked me. Why didn't it speak before? Why did it attack me before?-

I pause my hand has fallen from my face my eyes wide staring at the creature trying to pick details out of the darkness.

-is it possible that there are multiple monsters?- the idea of multiple monsters... creatures is not a good one.

Unconsciously I step closer trying to get a better look at the monster.

The words fall from my mouth before I can stop them,

“Are you talking, are you speaking?”

[The Litare]

The creature vocalizes and takes a single step toward me. I stand my ground and let it approach. The animal's chittering is fast-paced and avian; like a praeselera. It doesn't sound threatening, it sounds hesitant, like it's warning others of its kind that a predator is near. My breathing is calmer now, and I'm not as tense, even though the thing that I was afraid of is closer to me than it was a moment ago. Seeing its head dart around in panic, only focusing in my direction after I called out to it multiple times, I can guess that its night vision is not as good as mine. Even now, its head wavers back and forth as it tries to get a bead on me. It's shivering, and its legs are twitching nervously.

A cruel joke, I think to the gods. You know very well that I'm not interested in hunting this thing. Is its fear supposed to pique my interest or something?

"It's okay," I say to it softly. "I'm not really a predator." The words come out automatically, like baby talk; I am pretty sure by now that it can't understand them. "See, I'm not coming any closer than this." And if I really wanted to attack you, this isn't how I'd go about it, I add silently. I don't want to scare it more than it already is by making any sudden movements, and if I took a step toward it, it might simply decide to flee. But I am interested in it. So I just stand in place and observe the creature's movements, trying to deduce as much as I can by watching. Damaris hasn't taught me everything about this art of hers, not even close, but she has taught me a little. For instance, I can see from the way its legs are structured, and from how it moves them, that it's more of a hopper than a runner. If it and I had a race, it would get an early headstart, but I would probably overtake it in time. Its brightly colored fur suggests either warning coloration or sexual display. I wonder if it's a male or a female. That mane looks pretty protective, like it's for sparring - I'd guess male? That goes with the bright coloration too.

My self-indulgent musing is interrupted by a sudden movement in my peripheral vision. A silhouette on the charcoal ridge behind the creature that wasn't there a second ago.

---

Ah, I see now. Seeing the two beings before me, it is all so clear. Of course it would be. That is the way of things - inevitably I find myself rejecting the words of the gods, and inevitably I turn out to be wrong. I consider myself blessed that this time, the revelation was a quick one. I didn't have to live with my own heresy for very long.

Of course heresy, however brief, must be atoned for.

I give Ciara a long, hard look, then hop down from the ridge, turning my gaze to the monster in front of her. Utterly unafraid.

Kill anything that isn't litare or a god. A command that I'm sure my little sister would take issue with. But, of course, that's the whole point, isn't it? I remember her asking me not to strike at the serpentine beings when we were awake, so naturally the gods remember it too. If there is any heretical part of you, find it and purge it. I am glad to know what part of me that is. The part that valued her request as higher than the command of a god. There is nothing to be gained from killing in a dream? Ha. That's not how it works, little sister. The gods demand utter devotion - of body and spirit. I wavered, and now I accept my punishment gladly - having to get past you to access my real target. Fitting practice for the waking world.

I unfurl my tendrils and unsheathe the blades at their tips. You will play your part, won't you, little sister?

---

I meet my sister's gaze, and falter. I can't help but look away. The pain in her eyes is evident, along with a great number of other emotions that I can't place. The doubt from earlier comes flooding back in full force; the guilt from forcing her to scream out for me, and not answering, gnaws at me like a fairy trapped in my stomach.

Alright, alright, I'm sorry! What do you want from me anyway? I look back at my sister, and force myself to hold my gaze as she drops down from the ledge. Somehow I feel like I'm supposed to. Like I expected, the pain quickly becomes unbearable, and I have to say something to relieve the pressure. I really, really want to tell her. Even if her real self won't hear a thing.

"I came back, okay! I wasn't really going to leave you! I... I just..." Forced to explain the rationale behind my actions, I find I can't get the words out - it just sounds too cruel. Even though I know she attacked me - us - even though I know I had to do something. The thing I actually ended up doing was just so cold and manipulative - I can't possibly justify toying with her emotions like that.

I forced you to consider the possibility of losing me forever by pretending to run away. Say it. The voice - it sounds like mine, but I feel that it speaks the sentiment of the gods. You guys really love your atonement, don't you? Well, it's too bad. Only a strong person can force themselves to atone. As usual, you've got the wrong girl. I can't say the words, but the guilt from seeing Damaris like this is still threatening to overwhelm me. So I rush toward her, arms outstretched to embrace her. More to comfort yourself than anything, right?

And then she kicks me in the skull. As my view goes black and I plummet to the ground, mind reeling from the shock, my last thought is something like this: Ah, I guess I fell for your atonement after all.

[Kliminryu]

The strange insects do not make their presence known but I can occasionally hear them. In the branches above, in the air around me. I move my head slowly... carefully flicking the fins on the sides of my head back and forth. My eyes fail me but, for the second time in recent memory, my ears make up the difference. I close my eyes… listening as the world moves around me. The sound of the ash moving along the ground in the gentle currents of air, a sound not unlike rushing water. I hear the ground crunching beneath my uneasy stance as I shift my weight from foot to foot and hand to hand. Amidst the gentle array of sensations I can hear the creature move. Its body’s motions slithering and breathing against itself.

As the center of my focus I could see the movement of the body alone in a void of silence. The voice of the creature soft and cautious. I hear every sound it makes. The words it makes are slow and dilberate, but they are words. Without a doubt it is talking. It speaks to me as I might speak to a messenger roach. Quiet, slow… perhaps I am attributing emotion to its words, emotions that it doesn’t feel.

I flinch as my thoughts are interrupted by a new sound. Instinctively I open my eyes and spin to search for the origin. -what now?- Behind me a larger and more familiar shape drops from the ridge. My heart plummets in my chest, and cold sensation as I gaze at the approaching form. In the seconds that I spend staring I know that I have seen it before. By extension the smaller creature was one that I had never met before. The larger newcomer had, without a doubt, turned this dream into a reunion. It's silhouette pale against the black landscape, the strange skin reflecting more light than the ash that surrounds us.

I squawk in surprise as the smaller creature shouts from behind me. My fur jumping to attention and puffing around my neck and chest. I can't help but feel embarrassment even in this moment for having been caught off guard. My heart continues to race in my chest. I realize had bad this situation might have become.

-is this two versus one? I don’t stand a chance!-

The darkness continues to mask the image of the two creatures. In this moment of silence I struggle to calm my breath as I close my eyes. The fins along the sides of my head moving slowly as I listen for movement from the newcomer. I can almost feel its sinuous from move through the air as it steps forward. I can hear it drop from the ledge before it touches the ground. It lands in the ash with disturbing grace for a creature of its size. The ash swirling about with the sound of a crashing tide. the tide is joined by the sound of slithering as it extends the tendrils that I remember all too well. A sound I can feel as the memory of our fight brings tension to my neck and chest. I can even hear the blades snick from their hidden position as the tentacles twirl through the air.

The blood drains from my face, my eyes clench shut despite the threat still standing far outside of engagement range. I can only see one timeline as I try to plan my next move.

Once again I screech in shock as the smaller one darts past me. I fall over as I scramble away from the cacophony the creatures creates as she rushes towards the larger monster. I can feel sweat roll down my back as I imagine it tackling me and crushing me from behind.

-I cannot be so lax around these… people. they are people right? otherwise they wouldn’t talk.-

I realize that the small individual hasn’t stopped. It is still rushing to meet the larger one. Is it attacking it? Can’t it see the blades? The cry slips from my lips before I can stop myself.

“Look out!” The darkness and my shout mask what I can effectively see. The results are not so difficult to discern.

I see the small creature lays crumpled on the ground in front of the assailant. Dead or perhaps worse, as stare at the corpse seeing myself reflected in what just happened. It is clear that these creatures should not be rushed. That is unfortunate since that is pretty much the only way that I know how to fight. My mind goes blank as I stare at the scene before me. -what can I even do here?- I want to run, I want to hide. I know that the chance for such a course of action is long gone. I opt to pause and wait for the creature to make its move. Perhaps it is worse at starting fights if I don't jump into its arms... tentacles. I close my eyes and listen for movement. I know that it will kill me. I know that it can’t be stopped. I know that couldn’t stop it with a weapon and now I am unarmed.

I step back from the creature instinctively. I don't have any course of action it would seem. And so I gaze at the ridge around us and the trees nearby. Looking for something... anything to change my understanding of this situation. I am sure that I could hide in a tree that it couldn’t climb… but they look like they are about to fall over anyway. What is to stop it from smashing the tree down with those insane legs. Maybe it wouldn't be smart enough to try and know the tree down?

Surely it's smart enough to figure that out if it can talk. Maybe the larger ones can’t talk? It didn’t seem to respond to the smaller one at all.

I can feel adrenaline channel through my veins as I stare at this approaching storm. I can still see the tendrils snaking through the air. One for each of my own limbs and a few extra for my throat. As if that weren’t enough it has legs almost as large as my whole body. Why am I dreaming about this monster?

I have so many questions. I have to many thoughts and voices cascading through my head. The river of information is disorganized the confusion it creates swirls in my mind, the damned whispers still faintly dancing in the rapids. They mingle with my thoughts as I quiver before the monster, completely paralyzed. Amidst the fear of what's to come, a thought dances through my mind. Emerging clearly from the could of whispers and questions. I know that it is not a solution. In spite of this I find myself so mesmerized by the idea that I act as if hypnotized. I stare at the monster, eyes open, my posture close to the ground, I don't have my legs ready to jump. I cower like a cornered animal. Submissive I am not ready to pounce I am ready to die. I speak as softly as I can, my voice shaking barely audible were it not for the complete silence of this world.

In the best mimic of the smaller creature that I can muster I repeat the phrases that it uttered to me. I don’t know what it said. I don’t know what it meant. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe it can’t speak at all and it is only meant to sound soothing to disarm its prey.

Its not like I have any other option.

“It’s okay, I’m not really a predator,” I don’t know what the sounds mean, I only remember the patterns and pauses that they held, “See, I’m not coming any closer than this.”

[The Litare]

Heh. You really know her well, don't you? What am I saying - you know her just as well as I do. Rushing forward, arms outstretched as if to embrace me. An embrace of death, I'm sure.

I lash my foot out with no hesitation. It impacts her skull with a sickening crack - the sound of permanent damage. She smashes into the ground at my side, the force of the kick enough to redirect her momentum around me. Her body kicks up a cloud of ash; droplets of blood splatter onto me as she flies past. I dig my toes back into the dust, feeling the stuff congeal on my bloodied talons, and face the monster once more.

I take comfort in the fact that it cannot read my expression.

---

A sharp inward gasp wakes me from my sleep, and I bolt to my feet in an instant. Breathing heavily. My mind races, albeit incoherently, for a few moments, before I realize that my surroundings are calm, and there is nothing more to fear.

It was just a dream.

Damaris is still sleeping peacefully a few meters away.

An unfamiliar weight in my arms reminds me that I am still holding the infant. I can't help but smile at this - is it a mother's instinct to grip onto her child, no matter what? Despite my nervous awakening, she seems not to have been perturbed - at least not enough to wake up. Hmm... probably a good thing. If she knew what I was dreaming about, she'd probably be even less willing to trust me about Damaris. Apparently even I don't trust myself that Damaris is worth trusting. Well, I guess I already knew that. Really, it'd be more worrying if I didn't have my doubts.

Little baby - it occurs to me that the time you're most separated from me is when you're asleep. The only time when we're not sharing our thoughts to some degree. I wonder what you're dreaming about right now? If you even are dreaming. Or can. I settle back down into the leaf litter and close my eyes again. Hm, not really tired, even though it can't have been more than a few hours. Well, I hope Damaris wakes up soon. I really want her to know that I came back.

---

My puppet-sister does not get up, or even move, in the few seconds that I spend staring down my prey. I am glad that my single action was enough to please the gods. It was, of course, my willingness to strike her down that they were testing, not so much my ability to. It would serve me well to remember this in the waking world. The fight was short because it was symbolic - not the real focus. The real Ciara would not necessarily go down so easily.

If the dream before this one was anything to go by, the monstrous entity which I am now approaching at a leisurely pace is the real focus. It may not look like much, but it is clever and adapts quickly. There is no easy way to kill it, not without sustaining serious injury myself. For whatever reason, the gods do want this fight to drag out - probably for no grander reason than to punish me for my hubris. If I were being charitable, I might also suppose that they want to give me experience fighting an enemy more threatening than anything I might encounter in the waking world, to hone my skills, but such an interpretation is not necessary. I know the gods, and I have no trouble believing that they simply want me to associate defying them with pain.

Well, that's fine. I accept my wounds gladly. A short-sighted soul would I have to be, to not see that such a thing is in my best interests as well. The eye of heaven is ever-watchful - it knows well the errors I make. Yet it will not prevent me from making them - that duty falls to myself. I am grateful to be helped along in my diligence.

Come then, beast. Carve the lesson into my flesh with your blade.

But the monster does not spring at me as it did before. Instead it cowers before me, refusing to make the first move despite allowing me to get uncomfortably close to it. I stare down at it. At first confusion, and then a vague feeling of disappointment, flow through me. What, are you waiting for a casus belli? Did I misinterpret the will of the gods? These creatures had little hesitation fighting me before.

As I get closer, I notice that I can see all of its hands, and they are all empty. It doesn't have a knife this time. Ah, I see. The gods didn't intend for you to fight me this time. My confusion returns again as I am forced to retrace all of the logical steps that took me to the conclusion that they did - a conclusion that I am now forced to admit is probably wrong. I take a step back to examine the creature. If you have not been summoned to be my opponent, then why are you here? The lack of a weapon, the unwillingness to engage me, it's all so very different from last time... why?

Ah, I think I know. The gods already know that I am happy to fight a willing opponent. Whether from my actions in the waking world, or from my actions during my previous dream, there would be ample evidence of that. And they know that I am willing to chase down a fleeing target even if it makes no attempt to injure me. Perhaps they simply wish to know how I will act in this third case - when my target puts up no resistance at all, and simply begs for its life.

Please. As if you don't already know. I step back in toward the animal, a pair of tendrils curling toward the back of its neck. My hand is stayed only when it speaks aloud in my own tongue.

I pause, and retract my arms. Its voice is the voice of the gods - if they are reassuring me, I must listen. It frustrates me that my interpretation seems to have been wrong a second time, but there is nothing I can do about that. "If you are not a predator, then what are you?" I ask in a level tone, looking the beast in its eyes.