I rolled my neck, satisfied. The wolfstags and I had ended up conducting four successful hunts, eventually changing it a little to have two more wolves with me to lame and gimp as many of the goats as possible, instead of just me throwing them down the face of the mountains. There were no issues with any of the hunts themselves, but two of my accompanying beasts slightly injured their ankles trying to clamber up the steep slopes, so we ended up going back to the swarm slightly earlier than I’d wanted to, carting the bodies as best as we could as we went.

As I loaded myself up with several of the corpses, I finally took in what they looked like. They had long white fur, black horns, and thick shoulders and hindquarters. The goats as a whole were surprisingly large, considering how little vegetation was visible from below, but I’d seen vast swathes of greenery even higher up the mountains that we’d traversed, hidden behind the stony outcroppings that populated the entire range. I couldn’t help but wonder why the goats would come down from their much safer grazing grounds to this relatively desolate and less protected location, but I figured I’d count myself grateful and move on with the meat to feed my swarm.

When I returned, I saw that the rest of the swarm had been busy, slowly moving onward while collecting the kills from the various hunting parties. Took was out with a three to one population of gummies to fangs, and the team seemed to be doing well–they’d brought back just about as many goats as my team had. The triplets and the new spawnlings were off doing some creative endeavor headed by the possibly wise leadership of the girls. Iituli was just along for the ride and enjoying sending spurts of flame wherever he wanted to, since we were out of (apparently) claimed territory and the reach of the Veushten. It was sad to see him without Histy’s guidance, but good to see him let loose, but the thought made me think of Ishtar’s lack of a response thus far to Wisterl’s death.

I shrugged and continued dragging an exorbitant amount of meat back to the swarm when I realized, quite belatedly, I had felt cathartic and pleased by the wanton slaughter of creatures. Not from a successful hunt, not the thrill of combat, but purely the idea of having wrenched the life out of many creatures. The taste of their lifeblood, the knowledge that I was strong and they were weak, the feeling of superiority… and it didn’t feel like a surging of khatif pride, but from me personally.

After just a moment’s thought, I decided I didn’t much want to think about that in depth and stopped thinking about it, instead throwing myself into directing the swarm, using [True Dominance] to subdue keelish that had continuously been strong-willed and resistant to Sybil’s “ministrations”, organizing food distribution, and whatever else to occupy my mind.

Fortunately or not, Farahlia was one of the most stubborn and least influenced by Sybil’s magic, which was concerning for everyone and off-putting for Sybil. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the type of convincing that Sybil used or if it was just that Farahlia was particularly stubborn, but whatever the case was, we kept on our toes. The fortunate part of it was, however, that Farahlia was absolutely under the influence of my [True Dominance]. My word was law to her, no matter when or where, she submitted to me. Which was also annoying.

It did do the trick on distracting me from the troubling thoughts of what exactly was happening to me, and before too long, the swarm resumed travel back to the east.

…

Our method for traveling changed after parting from the Moonchildren’s kamory. Instead of having some range ahead, hunting, while the rest followed the instructions and directions of the Moonchildren, instead we sent the majority of the swarm out to hunt and do whatever it was that they wanted, under the condition that they brought some of their hunt back to the camp before true night fell. The camp moved forward about 20 miles a day, and Sybil and the “supporting staff”, as I thought of them, made the core of the camp. On the second day, we skirted around a large salt lake, which we decided to call Mumhal, and I didn’t participate in the hunt this time, consciously making the decision to not hunt anything that wasn’t noteworthy.

There were smaller flightless birds with large, almost axelike beaks on the shores of the lake, and when threatened they either rushed forward with their heads chopping, or fled to the surface of the lake, where they began swimming away. In the first case, the members of the swarm who had been give our primitive halberds all those long weeks ago that had somehow been able to keep them whole through the chase, the escape, and the ensuing exodus, they simply chopped the heads off of the axebeaks before they could get close enough to pose a threat. If they fled to the waters, then we sent in the Sibilant Guard, as I called them (much to Sybil’s distaste). In the water, the axebeaks couldn’t muster the leverage necessary to strike true and deep enough to damage the wolves, so they would harry them enough to strike a killing blow and drag the corpses back to the shore.

The third day we left the lake behind us, and the goats that had been commonly seen below the rocky bluffs that hid the vegetation were nowhere to be seen. Additionally, we’d only seen the axebeaks around Mumhal, so there weren’t any of those to hunt. So, after nearly a full day’s travel without any good prey seen from anywhere we’d looked, we finally turned our eyes to the peaks.

I gathered a group of the most agile and strongest of the swarm, making sure to include Took, Foire, Silf, Joral, the triplets, and some others. We took most of the fourth day to ascend past the shelf of sheer and crumbly rock, when our group finally crossed over into the hidden land, we were amazed by what we found.