I recoiled in shock and horror, my eyes watering as I stared at the bloodied corpse of the playful Lemori that used to be my friend.

“Meep! Fuck! No! Meep!”

Confusion and anguish filled my heart as my mind spun with incomprehension. What the hell happened? What did Devena do? Did she just kill Meep? How? Why?

I thought immediately of Phee. I’d bonded with Meep in a just a few days, being as lovable as he was, but she’d known him for years. Meep was perhaps more like a child to her than a pet. How was I going to break this to her? My thoughts turned from my own feelings to the tremendous grief and heartache this would bring Phee.

And it filled my guts with rage.

“What the fuck, Devena…” I said aloud, still not able to believe what I was seeing. “Why would you do this?”

Heavy footfalls came from behind me and I glanced over my shoulder to see Phee of all people headed my way, followed closely by Yunni. I sprang to my feet, spreading my arms to obscure her view of what was behind me. “Phee! What are you doing here?”

“We heard Devena scream,” she said out of breath as she came to a stop in front of me. “Then we heard you shouting. What hap-?”

Her words trailed off as she easily saw over my head with her greater height and her jaw fell open.

“Phee, don’t look,” I said pleadingly, buy it was too late.

She pushed me aside and stooped down to examine Meep’s body. I braced myself, expecting her to suddenly scream, but perhaps she was in too much shock to do even that.

“What is it?” Yunni said, stopping short apprehensively and clutching the crook of her elbow. “What’s she looking at?”

I took a deep breath. “It’s Meep, Yunni. I think that…” God I still couldn’t believe it. “I think Devena killed him.”

The Nymph’s eyes grew wide and began to glisten. “What?”

“I…I don’t know what to say…she was here and—”

“This isn’t Meep,” Phee said, cutting me off. Her words were even and measured, untouched by emotion.

I turned back to her. “What?”

“The fur is a similar pattern,” she said. “But this is a different animal. It’s not even a lemori. It’s a cat…I think.”

“A cat?” Yunni said.

My heart soared at the news and I’d never felt so happy to hear that a cat had died in all my life. Poor little bugger. The whole scenario changed in my mind and I breathed a sigh of relief. “So it’s not him?”

Phee stood shaking her head. “No…my bond with Tam Tam is still strong. I would have sensed already if he’d died.”

That made me check her status and sure enough Tam Tam was still listed as one of her pets.

Thank the Goddess, I thought. That perhaps explained why Phee didn’t break down screaming at the sight of the body like I had. I suppose she was also more skilled at mentally reconstructing the battered body of the poor creature as well, being a hunter and all.

“Still though,” Phee said grimacing at the dead cat. “You said Devena did this?”

“Well…” I backtracked my thoughts now and suddenly felt like I was playing a game of Among Us. “I saw her holding it. Then she cried out like you guy’s heard and then she dumped the body here on the ground.”

Yunni shook her head. “I wouldn’t like to think she actually killed that cat. I don’t think it’s in her nature, honestly.”

“I agree,” Phee said. “Devena is a lot of things, but she’s not a killer. In fact she abhors killing. She can’t even stand a trip to the butchers much less to bring herself to mutilate an animal like this. It’s probably why she never joins us hunting in the jungle either.”

I looked between the two of them more puzzled than ever. I know what I’d seen, and truthfully I hadn’t witnessed her killing the animal, yet here it was nonetheless.

“So if she didn’t kill it,” I said. “Who did?”

Phee shrugged. “Who knows? Is it possible she just found it like this?”

I wobbled my head. “Maybe. It’s not like I saw her pick it up or anything. She was holding it when I saw her though. Sort of cradling it. Mournfully almost, now that I think of it.”

“That would match the kind of scream I heard,” Yunni said. “It didn’t sound like rage or hate to me. It sounded more like…like…”

“Anguish,” I said for her, as I thought back now. “Do you think maybe she thought it was Meep like I did?”

Phee twisted her lips to the side. “I don’t know. Devena was never very fond of Meep. Although she’s squeamish about killing animals she doesn’t really like them either.” Phee then shook her head. “Goddess she’s an odd woman.”

“So if that’s the case, would she act like this over some random dead cat?” I asked.

Both of them looked back at me and shrugged.

I heaved out a sigh. “This was getting less conclusive by the moment. Definitely a game of Among Us going on here. I guess we’ve got to skip.”

“What?” they said in unison.

I chuckled. “Nevermind, just another geek thing.”

“What’s a geek?” asked Phee.

“You can ask Yunni later,” I said. “But for now I think we’re done here. The only thing we know is that Devena is acting pretty weird, ever for her.” The dragoness was obviously impacted by that vision I had too, but she was being tightlipped about it for some reason. Perhaps it was all connected to this dead cat somehow, but I didn’t want to bring that up to Yunni and Phee. They didn’t need more reasons to mistrust their Guildmate. Right now we needed unity, not false suspicions that would pull us apart.

“Let’s just let it rest for now,” I said. “We’ll give Devena the benefit of the doubt. If you two say this isn’t in her character then I believe you. I’m sure when she’s ready she’ll share whatever is going on with her.”

Both of them nodded in agreement.

“Now what?” Phee asked, looking down at the dead cat. “I suppose I should take care of this. Although knowing there is someone out here who would do such a thing isn’t very comforting either.”

“Let’s all take care of it,” I said. “We’ll bury it in the jungle. Then let’s get some rest. We’ve all had a long day.”

Deep down I knew I should probably pull an all-nighter and crank out some more designs. Heck maybe I still would, if I felt up to it, but for now this whole incident had really put a damper on my engineering enthusiasm. And not to mention that vision. What the hell was that thing? And why was it trying to speak to me?

Only one thing was for certain…there was a lot more going on here than building a canal.