As I settled down for the night, I finally took the opportunity to look over my [Status]. The first and obvious point was that my Quest to “hunt, kill, and devour 5 new species” had progressed to 2/5, but the second, more interesting point laid in my new [Skill]. I quickly opened it up and began my research.

[Skill: Pain Tolerance. Allows for the Skill user to ignore pain to certain levels. NOTE: The ability to ignore the feeling of agony does not allow for the Skill user to ignore the repercussions of the damages sustained causing said pain.]

Fairly simple. I didn’t worry too much about it, but couldn’t help but wonder if the skill would actually be helpful, since pain is a sign that you need to regroup and evaluate what exactly has been damaged. Pain is painful, obviously, but there was a reason for that. A life without pain was one without warnings of danger and possible death. One without a complete understanding of your own body… How could I be able to control my body to its limits if I wasn’t exactly sure what my limits were?

I rolled over and found myself looking at Sybil. She had been near sleep, her belly distended from gorging on Nanuk, a surprisingly tasty meat. Sybil cocked her head, curious at my pensive stare. I shrugged and continued looking at her, taking in the flare of the frills around her face, the dull sheen of her scales in the moonlight, the dark pools that her eyes became in the dark. She smelled pleasant, an earthy and somehow attractive odor, like a field just after rain, and she had a coy little smile that couldn’t quite be hidden.

“Really? Nothing to say after looking at me like this for so long?” Sybil had mellowed through the last months, but her biting tongue remained intact, even if it wasn’t quite so barbed now.

“I… didn’t have anything to say. Rolled over, saw you, wanted to keep looking… Here we are.”

“I’m just another member of the swarm. Nothing to look at.”

I sighed. “Do we want to get into this again? I don’t see you that way, even if you do. You appeal to me.”

“And that is why you approached me about who it would be best for you to mate with.” A smirk creeped its way onto Sybil’s face as she spoke.

“And you decided to mate with me after you realized exactly how dense I am, so is there really any room for you to complain?”

A theatrical sigh. “Perhaps not.” A more genuine sigh. “But I must admit that I cannot bring myself to feel anything more or less than guarded and unhappy towards that fork-tongued menace.”

“Farahlia… difficult it may be to believe me, but I’m fairly certain that she means no harm to me, the swarm, or you.”

“And that is the most frustrating part of it! If she were ill-intentioned in any way, I would immediately begin to stamp her back down! But… she instead is genuine in her desire for the swarm to grow, even if in a way that you and I don’t necessarily want ourselves.”

“So you hesitate to crush her.”

“Yes.” The answer was simple, matter-of-fact, and emotionless. It was nothing more than a statement of fact: if there was any member of the swarm that had intentions of harming the collective’s interest and they were discovered, they would be snuffed out.

“On that note… How’s your new intelligence force coming along?

“I am deeply feeling Octavi’s loss. She was a great supporter, and her presence was calming, steady, and her reach surprisingly broad. She is missed, and as of yet, I have yet to find one whose abilities would allow them to fill her spot.”

“And why not Isnanna? She is at least as intelligent and competent.”

“She lacks Octavi’s… subtlety. Her wit is a blade she knows not how to sheathe. She is too passionate, too excited, too quick to enter a conversation. Isnanna wants to know everything and anything of importance, and cannot wait for the revelation to be made to her, instead leaving her inquisitiveness to guide her every step. No, she is a great daughter and asset, but not a spymaster.”

I shrugged. “I trust your judgment implicitly.”

“As well you should.” Sybil’s tail casually tapped at my leg, and we both settled comfortably together, ready to sleep.

…

I dreamed of a vast expanse of warring keelish. The scenery was constantly shifting, from burning plains to rainy forests, to blood-slicked streets to Nanuk infested mountains, In each location, the enemies shifted from Moonchildren to Sunkindred to Veushten to hulking armored armies to other keelish and other creatures unknown to me. The consistency throughout each battle was that the keelish were slain in droves, their bodies piling into mounds of corpses, their blood slicking the ground and turning the earth into a mushy, scarlet mess. Their companions stacked the keelish corpses into defensive mounds, striking out at the assaulting forces from behind the bloody battlements, but before long their own twitching bodies joined the stacks.

Slowly I became aware of the familiar bodies decorating the gory fortress. Took’s face was peeled back to the skull alongside one half. Iituli’s arms were severed below the elbow, his neck twisted unnaturally. Ishtar’s legs were snapped out, the bones exposed to the air. Isnanna’s throat was torn and mangled, her face twisted in horror. Sybil’s chest had been ripped open, her ribs exposed and viscera open to the air. As I looked, Foire buried his face in her guts, and pulled his head out just enough for me to see him begin to swallow the unborn eggs from inside of my mate.

I wanted to scream, defend, attack, anything, but I stood, frozen as the creature taking the twisted form of my friend looked at me. Its face had become hollow, the eyes vacuous black holes, the features flattened and made caricatures of the original ones. The mouth swallowed the eggs, the legacy of my mate and then turned to me. The teeth were long, narrow things, made only to inflict pain, unable to rip and tear, only to maim and damage. The mouth hung open and a hissing, threatening voice began to slither its way up my spine to resound in my head as its tongue split and began to weave between the uncomfortably spaced teeth.

“Beware the forked tongue. The incredulous are the eternal foe of the progressives.”

We all have forked tongues! You mean the duplicitous?

“Beware the primordial adversary. The prey return to the ancient hunting grounds.”

Who is that?

“Beware the gods. They are inconstant and have been since their inception.”

With a gasp and a start, I woke.