She knew the answer without having to think too hard. They would be enemies. Everything in the Gods forsaken forest was her enemy. She didn't like the idea of Quatori gaining more ground, they already had a surprising hold on the forest and the races didn't have the knowledge necessary to counter their advances.
Knowledge, as Scet had pointed out, that they might gain if they risked investigation. It felt like a battle was closing in around her, but she didn't understand the reasons and she didn't belong on either side.
Her jaw clenched until her teeth threatened to crack with the pressure. No! She did belong on a side, the side against the Quatori, the side that would fight to keep evil at bay. She had to remember that. She was good...she was right, and all she had to do was get rid of Nex.
Determined, she stalked across the remaining open clearing. Wafts of black ash rose, disturbed by her passing. They floated up until the breeze caught them up and blew them to the side. The division between the campsite and the forest was a clean dramatic line. On one side, rough ash covered the ground and the remains of roots jutted upward, their tendrils like some underground creature trying to escape its lair. The other was healthy standing undergrowth, if a little charred along the bottom. The division was more dramatic for the stems and stalks pushed to the clearing's edge, creating a kind of natural barricade. Unfortunately for the occupants of the camp, Adda imagined the arrangement might have provided more of an impairment to their escape than protection from things that lurked in the forest.
Yet there was, as Nex had suggested, a break in the brush, one that looked to be hastily made. She moved closer, some internal instinct sending off alarms within. A few of the long, skinny trunks had been pushed inward, their branches, in return, sticking out farther into the clearing than those nearby. And there were other signs, as well, the scent of humans, and fear, and, nearly as strong as the stench from the fire, blood.
She didn't expect the delirious urge that took her and it took several breaths to remind herself that blood was an unhappy finding. This was no pack hunt, this was murder, pure and simple. Her hunger didn't seem to care. She knelt, running a finger along the ground and staring at the tracks there to hide her internal struggle.
“Six sets, maybe seven or eight. They all wear the same boots, so it is difficult to tell,” she swallowed. The clamoring in her head was so loud it was hard to imagine Scet could not hear it.
“There were seven dead on the road, and three more burned in the clearing. That's nearly twenty women, with no sign of any purchased protection, Shifter or otherwise. What in all hells are they doing out here?”
“Maybe they thought they didn't need protection,” she touched a dark spot in the trail, her finger came away wet and sticky. Someone grievously injured had passed through there. “They might have thought themselves proficient with weapons.”
Scet grunted. “That is the other oddity. None of those that I found have had any weapon, at all.”
Adda perked up out of her stupor. That was odd. Who would be stupid enough to camp out in the center of the forest without weapons?
No one. Which meant that someone must have taken them, but that was strange. The creatures, the possessed, certainly didn't have the intelligence to gather them, so there must be something other than Quatori at work here.
And that is why your races have become easy targets. You judge my kind by your experiences with the newly born and those gone mad over a thousand years of hunger. Even given your personal experiences, you assume the Quataliki-armu-doseth are not but hunger and destruction.
Quataliki-armu...what?
Your kind have named us Quatori, a simple name for what you perceive as simple beings.
So you are saying that something possessed did this? And that they gathered any weapons?
I didn't say that.
Gah! Adda rubbed at her face. She was spending far too much time talking to the demon. She forced her attention to the surroundings. The trail was difficult to spot, even with some tracking experience. The humans wore boots, so every so often there was a marking where the edge of one sole had cut into the dirt leaving a sharp delineation. Though they didn't attempt to hide their trail, they did walk in a line, to hide their numbers. But try as they might on the visual side of things, they could not hide their scent, and with at least one member shedding a great deal of blood they might have been walking casually down a well-marked road.
She moved quietly, balanced on the balls of her feet and stepping forward toe-first, careful to keep her movement smooth and constant. Sudden stops and starts created slightly more noise, and drew the eye that might overlook a tracker otherwise. The robe tangled around her ankles as she moved; it was not a hunter’s dress, which would have had two simple panels with slits far up the sides to enable movement. She didn't regret it though, she had spent far too long behaving like an animal. It would be good for her to remember herself and the dress was a constant, if annoying, reminder.
“This is a lot of blood,” Scet whispered. He, too, practiced the stalking movements that Shifters learned when they first joined the hunt. “Too much for just one human, or we would have found the body by now.”
“Maybe they carry the injured?”
Scet shook his head. “See the tracks? None indent deep enough to be carrying anything so heavy as another human.”
Adda grunted acknowledgment. A tingle of anticipation ran across her skin. Every hunter knew that injured and cornered prey were the most dangerous.
It was for nothing, though. The trail led a little farther, to the base of the cliff that spouted the waterfall. There, an ambush had occurred.
“Quatori, nearly an hour ago,” Scet confirmed her unspoken conclusion.
Three bodies, or what was left of them, lay within view of where they stood. Desiccated, their flesh torn and removed, bones and hair and the remains of the same torn robes, all that signified who they were. One had been so eagerly consumed that it lay partway up a sapling, ribcage caught upon one of the lower branches.
These were the Quatori Adda knew, the invisible spirits that ate with an insatiable hunger and little thought, creatures only Shifters could sense, and only Dragons could harm. Maybe she should have protested Strale leaving.
“More over there,” Scet passed her and approached the rocky outcropping of the cliff. Adda followed warily. Another two bodies lay there. It might have been her imagination, but it seemed they had been running for the rocks when they were overcome. To climb? And why run at all? Where were their weapons? Even these, escaped from the camp, had nothing but what the Six gave them for defense, and for humans, that was precious little.
The breeze shifted, floating along the rocks, bringing the scent of water from the pool to the south. Water and blood.
“That's odd,” she murmured. The blood from the injuries, when the humans were still alive and fleeing, made perfect sense. But blood from a body overcome by Quatori did not. The spirits were nothing if not thorough and starving. They did not leave blood unconsumed and they would not eat blood that was not fresh, so there was no chance they had become full and were saving it for later.
“I smell it, too,” Scet stood from where he was kneeling next to one of the bodies. “I am not certain,” he hesitated, running a hand through his hair and looking from one pile of remains to the others, “but I believe these might have been an attempt at luring the Quatori in a different direction. Away from the pond.”
“Like self-sacrifice?”
“When the Quatori feed, they are quite active with their prey, but all three are facing North. That is too much of a coincidence to be random, I think.”
Scet turned toward the South, toward the water.
“So what were they trying to protect?” Adda looked, too, but the undergrowth hid its treasures well.
“Let's go and find out.”
Of course he would say that. She held her tongue. There were so many confusing thoughts and emotions jumping around in her mind that she couldn't have come up with a reasonable protest anyway. Hunger and fear, and a dark feeling that she was missing something important, hammered at her. She wiped sweaty palms on her hips.
This time, Scet led the way, raising his face to sniff the air every few steps. Adda wasn't sure why; perhaps he was scenting for more danger? He couldn't have been worried about losing the trail, the metallic tinge to the air promised that they were getting close.
At last, they found it, a small space between three towering trees and several ferns. Blood soaked the earth, staining the protruding rocks red. So much blood....and...
“Is that an...eye?”
Scet had stepped into the kill sight, deftly avoiding the deeper puddles and chunks of flesh. He turned at her question and followed the path of her shaking finger.
Dark brows raised at the gooey chunk in question. “Indeed.”
“Why would the Quatori waste in such a way?” she coughed, trying to clear the squeak from her voice. She had spent seven days with the creatures, or the possessed aspects of them, anyway, but never had she seen anything like this.
Only because you were spared from your own fate.
What? Adda shuddered, and looked away from the organ.
“The Quatori didn't, or they didn't waste, anyway. This is the result of a possession.”
She blinked. She had seen many possessions, including her own, and nothing had ever been so brutal or horrific.
Yet the possessed Shifters that had occupied the cavern had large chunks of their flesh torn out, and always their eyes. Why?
I have explained this, it is a fast and effective method.
Evil. For all Nex tried to protest the label, it was the only explanation for such thinking.
“I have seen a scene such as this, once before...,” Scet's head swung back and forth, his gaze roving the ground as if searching for something. Though he was talking to himself, his words brought a feeling of dread upon her. If this scene really was a possession, it was not the kind that resulted from being bitten. Adda thought quickly about her own experience; she had not been bitten, either.
With a sudden jerk, Scet pounced forward, pulling something up from beneath a fern that had been trampled into the ground. A piece of metal, identical to the symbol that had held Nex, identical to the symbol that had burned into the fabric that lay in the trunk. Adda shuddered. Nex was not alone.
“A glyph,” Scet grunted, nodding as if to confirm his suspicions.
A deep sigh filled her mind, one that was not her own, and not a happy sound, either.
I would think that this would please you.
It does please me...only I wish another had risen first. Nex must have sensed her confusion, for he continued. That is the vessel of my sister. Somehow Adda could feel his focus, like a nod toward the symbol. She is very powerful, and she does not like to share such power. And as always, she has taken the easy route, a human, the easiest of possessions, which means it is likely she has her full power already. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I am at a disadvantage. It is no surprise she is awake, however, I thought I sensed her when we entered the camp.
Adda could only assume that, by disadvantage, he meant not having control of her.
Quite. It would be best for both of us if you avoid her notice, now that she is free.
“The master has been here,” Scet said. Adda startled back to what was going on outside her head.
“Master?” Why was she the only one who didn't know what was going on?
“Grim, or what is left of the Dragon Lord, before he was possessed by whatever was in another of these.” Scet shook the metal so that it glinted in the sunlight.
A deep chuckle echoed in her mind. Your brute is so far from the truth that it is comical.
Nex's dark tone made her flinch.
Morakamouth is no more a master of anything than I am a bird of the sky. In fact, he is the least of us. Nex had taken on a haughty note.
So he had an arrogant pride. She filed away that knowledge. If she was lucky, she might think of some way to use it.
How he managed to acquire the body of a Dragon is beyond my comprehension. Nex was grumbling now. But the Queen will be pleased with him.
Queen? You said there is no master.
A deep predatory blackness filled her thoughts.
I did not say that, mortal. Test the boundaries of insolence while you can. You are witnessing the rise of your downfall. The beginning of your world's end. Three of the eight have awaken, and soon my Queen will have the strength she needs to awake, as well.
Adda forced the overwhelming rise of dread down and away. She needed to know one last thing, and quaking in her skin would not help her learn it.
What Queen?
She could feel Nex grin, it was decidedly a horrible sensation.
The Dark Goddess, Adda. Still think you can beat me?