We beat a hasty retreat to the treeline. I gestured for some of the swarm to gather up the corpses left behind from our fellows and victims, since we didn’t know how easily we could find prey in the next leg of our journey. The disgust I once would have felt at the thought of eating my fellow kind or a sentient creature was nowhere to be found. Instead, I found myself still seething with frustration at the idiotic actions of the “Misti Hawar” Atik. As we walked, a part of me that I was pretty sure wasn’t purely khatif simply wanted to rip him to pieces and make him suffer even more than he already was, but I calmed myself enough not to.

Instead, I busied myself with finally acknowledging the flashing [System] notification.

[Organ: Improved Sonilphon has evolved into Exceptional Sonilphon. Skill: Crippling Cry has been generated.]

An improved magic manipulation organ. What exactly does that mean now? The magic flows minutely better than before. That it?

[Most of the skills you have experimented with that you have found yourself unable to achieve have been primarily inhibited by the evolutionary level of your magical manipulative ability. Your sonilphon was at the cusp of evolution and lacked solely a strong enough impetus to force itself into evolutionary growth.]

For a moment I paused, before sending my magic literally thundering down my arms to my hands, where the vibration shuddered to life and sent my fingers into reverberations. Idly I touched a claw to the trunk of a sapling as I walked past, and with a creaking crack, the sapling began to crumble and shatter where I’d lightly pressed my fingers. I subconsciously expected a [System] notification to flash, letting me know I’d gotten a new [Skill], but apparently this was just a deadly application of my magic, not a [Skill].

Nonetheless, a smile spread across my face. Finally. And what does [Crippling Cry] do exactly?

[Skill: Crippling Cry–blasts a wave of magic and sound in the direction of the shout, scream, or yell of the user. In user’s experience, is similar to the sonic attack suffered at the hands of the Nanuk.]

The grin that had already cemented itself on my face grew wider, threatening to crack my lips. Finally, I could do what I’d always wanted to do with this magic and blow my enemies away with my voice.

“... Kill you…”

My pleased musings were interrupted by Atik’s weak voice. I glanced down at the rousing idiot as he continued, “You… should kill me… I’ll kill you… if you… let me survive…”

Somehow, his cocksure attitude didn’t inflame my anger, but instead dampened it, giving rise to mirth. I couldn’t hold back the chuckles as I got my face low and close to Atik’s. “You really want to make sure that the rest of Shandr comes after us, huh? Enough to sacrifice yourself?” In his addled state, Atik couldn’t hide the surprise. “What a misguided, self-righteous, ignorant, deluded idiot.”

“We are your–”

“‘We’??” My emphasis on the word was punctuated by a subconscious layer of sonic magic. “Make no mistake, Atik, the Misti Hawar cretin. There are no more ‘we’ in your group. You are the last one, the rest slaughtered and made ready to be eaten by the swarm. You will survive solely because only I between the two of us has some sort of a functioning mind. Your death is a sacrifice I am willing to make to ensure that Drolick, an apparently wiser leader than you, doesn’t follow me.”

“Chaska, Kuna, and Qispi have sacrificed their lives to further our divine purpose. Nothing you would understand.” Atik spat the words at me, his large canines garbling the speech as he attempted to look down his nose at me.

My amusement rose and expressed itself in a sneering peal of laughter. “Then riddle me this, you speaking cesspool. Your three friends will be eaten by your supposed prey, their strengths added to our own. They have so ‘nobly sacrificed’ themselves for what? The deaths of just a few of my rabble, those whose names I never knew and wouldn’t have known. These three friends of yours followed your commands, trusting in you. Now they lay prepared on my dinner table. You, a practiced warrior lay shamed and crippled in your foes arms, stripped of your magical armor and your pride. Have your gods given you something I’m missing? Because it seems that your furthering your divine purpose did nothing more than inconvenience me while behanding you.”

I could feel Atik’s body stiffen in rage as my tirade beat down on him relentlessly, and I knew he was about to lash out at me either verbally or, more likely, physically. With a laugh I threw him forward, his back smashing into a solid tree before he slumped painfully onto the ground.

With a grunt I sat back on my haunches as I lowered myself to look into Atik’s eyes as I firmly gripped his muzzle and held it closed. He lashed out with one arm, forgetting his lack of hands in his rage, and did nothing more than smash his bloodied stump of a wrist against my armored shoulders. A whimper of pain hissed out of his nose as I finally began speaking again.

“This,” I said, dragging a vibrating claw across his snout’s width, “is so you always see me. Your hands are gone, but you will get used to that, eventually. You will ALWAYS see this scar, always be reminded of your friend’s ‘noble sacrifice’, always remember that you were weaker than me.”

I lifted my hand away from Atik’s face, his spirit nearly broken, and began to walk away. With a moment to rouse his courage, he called to my back, “I swear, I will kill you.”

Looking back, I grinned with bloodlust obvious in my eyes. “You couldn’t when you were whole. What makes you think that crippled you will be able to do what whole you couldn’t?”

Somehow, I knew that those final words broke something inside Atik, and walked away proud… and still unsure if I could call this something that the khatif in me had done.