Bites-at-Air walked on for a while, her confident steps giving way to a slow shuffle as the relief from her healing breath earlier gave way to her still present wounds, the dim pale light from the circling orb above waning as its power weakened.

The area around her still silent but for the occasional ‘thwump’ off in the distance as something did…something in the darkness ahead.

She had been listening for a while now and had still not been able to fathom what, exactly, the source of the sound had been up to. It was not walking, nor was it dragging itself, so what was it doing? Maybe…a flying creature landing and taking off again? But why would a flying creature be in the tunnels? Sure, they were large tunnels, but not large enough that a winged beast could move without endangering itself, at least, as far as a creature large enough to make that heavy a ‘thwump’ went, that is. There were obviously smaller colonies of the shrieking skin-wings near the entrance to the underground, but they were far too small and she could not imagine any of them being heavy enough to make the same ‘thwumping’ sound that had just now echoed out again in the distance.

It may have been considered reckless to let herself become distracted so easily, but without any sign of actual danger, Bites-at-Air had grown bored and had lost herself to her thoughts as she shuffled ever forword to meet her destiny.

Straining to keep herself moving, she breathed out the last spark of her gift to keep herself going, a small blessing health to help her live long enough to not suffer the shame of dying without having done something to quell the fires of vengeance that were even now burning through her soul, driving her on to confront whatever destiny had in store for her within the shadows beyond.

Her journey was brought to a sudden halt when the shadows unravelling before the light above her revealed the body of one of her people. One might have wondered what it was doing so far from the rest of the tribe and why it was all alone, but Bites-at-Air was more concerned with the ‘who’ rather than the ‘why’. The fine quality clothing, or as fine as could be with them being made from the skins of the underground’s varied mutations, the various bits of jewellery, the garish scale paints, all adorning a female who, even from behind, was breathtaking to behold. Even by another female. Even one who had no interest in such things.

Bites-at-Air’s slowly shuffled bit more forward, a bit more closer to see what she could already see clearly.

She breathed in deeply, taking in the stale, damp air of the cavern to suppress the rising bile at the back of her throat out of sheer rage, a sudden and disturbing waft of something that stank worse than anything she could have ever imagined momentarily distracting her from her anger.

But the distraction was short-lived as her fury arose anew an instant later as her focus returned to the body before her.

She had found the Matriarch.

Her corpse lay there before her, still as the dead, Bites-at-Air thought before chiding herself at the unfunny joke, the body bearing no signs of combat as far as she could tell. Being this far away from the battlefield, Bites-at-Air imagined that the Fool-Matriarch had chosen to run rather than stay and die alongside the young warriors that had loyally followed her to their bitter end, but she could have easily also imagined that the meat-headed fools willingly sacrificed themselves to allow her escape.

Idiots.

With a shaking claw, Bites-at-Air reached down and grabbed hold of the body to turn it over, knowing full well what she would see but still needing to confirm that the body before her was indeed the woman that had brought her so much suffering. The limp form fell back as she eventually let go, it's scaly flesh still soft and pliable, the body’s end having been too recent for it to have gone stiff…or had that stiffening already come and gone, she wondered? Without knowing exactly how long she was out for, it was impossible to tell.

But more important was that Bites-at-Air’s curiosity had been answered.

There she lay, the arrogant female that had promised a grand fruitful future under her guidance, the still as shiny and gorgeous as the day she had been elected to become the Matriarch, completely unmarked by any wound or sign of confrontation aside a strange blackish-grey substance that covered her mouth and nostrils. The same substance that had covered the mouth and nostrils of the dead beasts that littered the floor of the cavern when they had first entered it.

The sight of the substance should have put Bites-at-Air on her guard, but her mind was overcome by an uncontrollable rage.

Seeing the Matriarch’s body, knowing that any hope of vengeance would forever be denied to her drove her to the edge of insanity. Already she had been denied the betrayer who had sacrificed herself in a manner almost noble, she had been denied the power to save her people, she had been denied the ability to even look on as the only person she had ever respected, Two-Tongues, was executed before her, his dignity and courage more than any of them deserved to have borne witness to, and now…now she had been denied again! Denied the filth that had led them to their doom, with the matriarch’s death, she had been denied any possibility of redeeming herself.

Bites-at-Air did not scream, she did not cry out in fury, she merely lifted her only usable arm high above her head and then she drove the crude dagger within her left claw down with all her strength, driving it deep into the matriarchs corpse again and again and again, the tough scales of the Matriarch eventually giving way under the endless barrage, the tender flesh of the pristine body beneath soon turning to mush under Bites-at-Air’s relentless assault.

She did not know for how long her rage continued, her efforts leaving the body of the Matriarch as an unrecognisable mess, but finally, no longer possessing the strength to continue, Bites-at-Air let out a weak, raspy scream before falling backwards, the gore covered stone-weapon dropping as she no longer possessed the energy to hold onto it.

Laying there, exhausted and breathless, she felt her body surrender.

The fire was dying, the embers of her soul cooling as her few seconds of life slipped away. The only thing seeming to have been keeping her going was the broiling torrent of rage that had taken possession of her being. A rage that, while still present, had just given up. Surrendering to the knowledge that her need for vengeance would remain forever remain unfulfilled. Denied.

A brief eternity passed as Bites-at-Air lay there.

She could not move, an intense cold encompassing her as she lay on the earthen floor. She did not even possess the strength to shiver.

A small part of her was screaming that she would die if she did not move, that she could freeze to death, that her injuries were far from healed, that she was vulnerable to attack from any beast that might have remained, but she ignored it all, wanting to chuckle at the stupid determination of her instinct to survive.

She was dying…no…she was already dead, her body had just yet to realise it.

She exhaled, letting all her worries leaver her. A lacklustre peace came over her as she felt her essence flickering away.

Having thought her suffering was at an end, Bites-at-Air was given a shock as something far worse suddenly assaulted her. A foul stench, an all pervading odour that violated her senses, making her want to burn her nostrils shut, to bite her tongue off so that she could no longer taste the vile taint pervading the air, to let her blood of it flow down her throat to cleanse her palette of the very memory of that horrendous smell.

Her eyes shot open, the irises moving back and forth as they searched for the source.

There, out of the darkness came that thing that would end her, a strange, shapeless beast that melded with the shadows, almost imperceptible even to her sharp eyes.

The thing was far from being the terror from her nightmares, at least as far as its looks were concerned; that stench, on the other hand, was still threatening to drive her to the depths of madness.

She had expected it to attack as soon as it realised that she posed no threat, but it hesitated for some reason.

The thing stared at her for a moment, its form a hard to define lump within the dim light cast from the fading orb above her.

After what seemed like an eternity, the thing seemed to make up its mind and began moving again. Not towards her, instead, turning away towards the Matriarch.

Bites-at-Air felt herself overcome with a demented sort of joy as it did so.

Even now, she thought to herself, at the very end of her life, she had failed again, failed to meet whatever the expectations of a simple-minded beast that had crawled out of the depths of this stink-hole could possibly have had. She had no strength to laugh, but she wanted to, the urge rising deep from within her gut, marvelling at the absurdity of it all as she lay there

Her attention returned to the creature from the darkness, but she could no longer see it as had moved beyond her line of sight, it presumably moving to the Matriarch, Bites-at-Air having neither the strength nor interest to move to look and confirm. It mattered not what the thing did, nothing mattered anymore.

She wanted to laugh at the pointlessness of it all, to scream with all the fury that she could muster over her own insignificance…she wanted to cry…but she could do nothing; her body had given up, died before her mind even knew what had happened to her…she felt herself slipping into the final darkness, her body rising and sinking at the same time while an impossible wind began caressing her entire body. No, not her body, her spirit, she was being delivered, taken back to the source of all things by the breath of life itself.

As her senses failed her, giving away to nothingness, her true senses, those of her essence allowed her to see for the first time.

Before her lay the fire of creation, an unfathomable luminescence that burned before her. Greater than she could take in all at once. Yet, despite that greatness, she could not help but think of it as being far too small, far too fragile. As she began slowly floating towards it, her being was suffused by a cascade of gentle, shifting vibrations that left her with feelings of peace, contentment, an overall sense of acceptance.

It was an honour that she was undeserving of, of being in its presence, failing at the only task required of her. For all the warnings that gifts of creation had given her, she had not just let her people die, she had led them to their demise.

Her despair was brought to a halt as something had made its arrival known to her; she no longer had ears to hear or flesh to feel, but she sensed an odd vibration resonating out from behind her. The waves of it crashing into her over and over, gently sending her essence slowly spinning into the unresistant ether.

It was a foreign thing, an unnatural thing. Something that did not belong…anywhere. But it especially did not belong within the realm of the source.

As she turned over, she could see it…or possibly hear it, the senses of one’s essence were not something that had ever come up in any conversation that she could ever recall, and here in this realm, she could recall every insignificant thing in her life…before her broiled the vast, misshapen cloud, a storm of blackish-grey puffs shooting out from an even darker mass, like tentacles of a water beast grasping for its prey.

Who the prey was, in this case, was more than obvious.

She did not know what it was, or what it wanted her for, but it could have her, she was unworthy of returning to the source, her shame unforgivable.

She did not know how to willingly consigning her immortal self to whatever damnation the mass belonged to, this being her first experience with the hereafter, but she ‘willed out’ her rejection eternal source that was mostly behind her, but was slowly coming back into view as her tediously slow spin had yet to cease.

She failed once again, but she did somehow manage to slow her speed somehow…or at least she thought so, space and time were different in this realm, and she was not really sure of anything she was sensing at the moment, but the blackish-grey mass did seem to be catching up to her. The possibility that near-death hallucination was haunting the back of her mind, threatening to once again make her a fool.

But she was certain that the dark cloud was real.

And as it approached, incorporeal tentacles reaching out for her, grasping for her, she finally felt a true sense of acceptance, coming not from the realm around her but from within.

As the unnatural cloud washed over her, the realm beyond it disappearing as the mass surrounded her, she ‘willed out’ her full acceptance of whatever it wanted, a feeling of her complete and utter surrender.

As she was drawn into the true body of the mass, a flood of feelings overwhelmed her, all different, but all the same, an extreme gratitude for her acceptance of her demise?…death?

…NO! LIFE!

She did not want to live. To suffer, yes, to pay for her sins, but not life. Anything but that.

Bites-at-Air began to thrash at the cloud-like tentacles that clung to her, their number too many to count, not that it mattered, even if she could dislodge them, the mass had already invaded her very being, her fate already determined, but still, she fought.

Her suffering had been over, she deserved more, yes, but not that of existence, not that horrible thing called life.

Anything but that, she screamed with all her being as the last of her essence was tainted by the cloud.

In her final moments, she thought she saw a small glimmer of the source that, mere moments ago, she had rejected, a cruel farewell of all that she had rejected.

Her final thought before being fully consumed was not of despair, not of her failings or foolishness, but of how she desired nothing more than to walk up to that bloated spark of creation and live up to her name by biting its face off.