Zongatis wasn’t pleased.
“You should have captured it,” the elder daemoness said, frowning down at the oozing carcass of the beast. Her Gennoth swarmed it, taking samples and doing who knew what. Whatever it was, from how often the assistants wailed under their scourges, they weren’t having the results they were hoping for.
Ulvanach despised them. The Gennoth were cowards, huddling in laboratories and wallowing in indulgence. Worse, they fought from afar. They knew nothing of the glories of the hunt, of the raw, blood-splattered delights that made a life worthy of living and brought the blessing of the Haunter In The Dark. All they knew they snatched from cold flesh and vile arts, a mockery of the beating, visceral thrill of victory snatched with tooth and claw from your opponent’s guts.
Zongatis turned her chin his way. Barely a movement, but not for Ulvanach’s well-trained senses. The slight tightening of the cordon-like muscles in her neck and shoulders. The minute addition of iron in her scent. The slight sharpening of her aura that turned into a small increase in air pressure. A bunch of details that drew a picture of warning and the chance of aggression.
Ulvanach handed it to her: she was good. A less perceptive daemon would catch those changes out of instinct but not understand, feel something had shifted toward danger and react accordingly, likely confusing it with his own thoughts and shying toward caution and acquiescence. It took unflinching control to manipulate one’s body on all levels of daemon perceptions. A product of living in the Black Court, no doubt..
Idly, Ulvanach wondered what he’d find with the Ninth. Fate shifting subtly toward possible confrontation and disaster? Maybe the reason why Kiarak hated their supposed leader owed more to this than to class differences…
“Too strong,” he growled. “Couldn’t take it alive.”
Zongatis shifted fully, watching him inquisitively. Ulvanach didn’t look away. He always despised the double-crossing, intriguing ways of the daemonlords and their pathetic courts, one of the many reasons for his choice of the Wild side of the Urnath. In a way, standing before someone who could find out if he was lying was refreshing, since it meant he had to be honest. Supposedly. He was no slouch at lying either.
“Do you fear me, Ulvanach?”
Ulvanach’s six eyes narrowed at the sudden shift in topic. He decided to err on the side of caution. “I hear and obey the Darkness’ voice.”
“A diplomatic answer,” Zongatis judged, serious. She never smiled, Ulvanach thought. “You play the part of the brute, but you’re anything but, are you?” Not a question. Ulvanach just looked back.
Zongatis turned her eyes toward the palanquins, where the Zubari were fanning and fussing over a Zubar slumped over his throne. The loss of a valuable batch of slaves always brought that kind of reaction out of him.
“The Tyrant,” she said. “He who blesses us with enlightened chains, so that we can be shackled to the proper way and shackle others to our own.” Her tail flickered toward where the Kiaraki cheered and jeered at two of their own rolling around, squabbling over a trophy. Kiarak, he noticed, lounged on a Tolgran, long tail dangling slowly back and forth while slaves massaged her body.
“The Ravener,” Zongatis said, a flicker of something that could either have been irony or annoyance in her words. “He who blesses us with thirst and hunger, and tooth and claw to slake them, who puts iron in our hearts and fire in our souls so that we can fill the world with it.”
She glanced his way. “The Haunter,” she said plainly. “He who blesses us with cunning and disdain and fury, so that we can devour our enemies and grow strong by feasting on the flesh of the unworthy, so that our bodies be marked by the scars of worthiness.”
She fell silent. Ulvanach waited for her to mention the last guise, the Dominator, but after a few moments, it became clear she wouldn’t.
“So we follow His Guises, so that we may dominate in His image,” she completed.
“So that we may dominate in His image,” Ulvanach repeated the ritual phrase. It was a phrase every bairn and every daemon knew and repeated, before and after a kill, a hunt or any act that would please Him, the domination of others and the affirmation of one’s self.
“It’s a variegated troop the Father himself entrusted with this mission,” Zongatis continued, turning back to watch the Gennoth, “one that will take more than force to bring together and to success. And the Father tolerates only success.”
And that may have meant everything, from a warning to behave, to an implicit declaration of trust, to a subtle request for assistance. Whatever it was, it pulled him into a mass of problems he wanted no part of. Ulvanach kept his expression carefully neutral.
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“Must I gather than the Haunter’s favor decreases?” She asked, true irritation creeping in.
Ulvanach was almost relieved for something direct at last. Don’t mind that it was as close to an insult as an insinuation could be, and one that if answered yes would mean demotion at best and excoriation by the Order of Shadow at worst.
“We are ash on the Father’s claws,” Ulvanach grumbled, planting his fist on the ground and lowering his head. “We slave and we fight to assert ourselves in the cruel world, for what is but a moment in His eternal gaze. We are rocks among the flow, less than rocks. We are dust. And what better fate for dust but to dance in such a marvelous way that even He has to take notice and remember?”
Zongatis watched him, expression, scent and body unreadable. “Dust attracting a God’s gaze? You speak of attaining the impossible.”
“Yes, and yet…” Ulvanach grinned, looking straight into her eyes, an offense if they were to be subordinate and superior. “Isn’t the impossible a worthy ambition? Worthy of the Father’s gifts?”
“That it is… then why has this seeker of the impossible failed to capture a unique specimen?”
Ulvanach shrugged. “The impossible isn’t so easily reached, is it? And that beast was strong.” He grinned. “Next time, I’ll do better.”
Zongatis watched him. “You set for yourself such ridiculous expectations,” she said slowly. “I’d call any other daemon foolish or insolent. But that’s what you want, don’t you? You truly want to achieve what you say, and by saying such, you try to make sure I’d use you for just such things.” Her body language became more thoughtful. “Not a brute. Maybe a fool, yes, but not a brute. The Haunter’s favor wouldn’t leave one such as you. And that makes you far too valuable to punish. For now.” She turned and walked away, cloak billowing in the breeze. “Make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
As he watched her go, Ulvanach cautiously relaxed the tension he had confined to her inner muscles. Well, that went as well as it could go, he supposed. Or wait, maybe it was what she wanted, declaring his allegiances again after an alleged “failure”, get a better read on him and give him the awareness that he was watched, at all times. And about that first bit about the various factions, maybe it was meant to make him feel he needed to up his pace not to fall behind the others, or just to wong-foot him with the awareness that the Father was watching. Or maybe it was about a whole other thing, and he was thinking too much.
Already feeling a headache brewing, Ulvanach did what he always did: he just stopped thinking about it altogether. He got away from the courts just to avoid all those messes. He had always made sure it was clear where he stood and what he was good for, and if that was good enough for the Father, it should have been good enough for any daemonlord. For what he was concerned, as long as he got to hunt and kill, he was satisfied. The rest was a lot of bores and nothing else.
Shaking away the lingering impressions, Ulvanach looked where Kiarak was lounging. Now that was a chick he could go along with. No veiled actions and inscrutable motives, only jealousy, anger and a mountain of viciousness. With her, you knew what you were getting, and as long as you didn’t get in her way, you were safe from being stabbed. Mostly. That she had the body she had was just another delicious addition.
Noticing him, Kiarak waved lazily, and he grinned wider.
Shame that Zongatis wasn’t more like Kiarak. He could almost bring himself to like her if it was so.
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Losing the specimen was a tough blow, especially after the Gennoth declared they were reasonably certain it couldn’t be the Mother the dwellers were speaking about.
With that, Zongatis decided to give the Kiaraki free reins. The going had been too slow for her liking, so it was time to resort to a time-honored daemon strategy: unleash the hounds and see what they found, or what came out in reply.
The chaotic daemon warriors obeyed with relish, spreading across the Garden in a flurry of gluttony and devastation. The Xaglar kept back, spying on their kin as they gorged themselves and razed, waiting for any reaction.
And reactions there were.
A crack of thunder shook the whole Garden, drowning daemon screeches. Gennoth and Thilgra converged, only to find the broken, burned-out remains of a daemon warband. They had barely taken their bearings when another tremor hit, and a Xaglar brought news of a patrol being annihilated by sudden lightning.
Gennoth were dispersed to compound Xaglar’s hunting senses, and more Kiaraki bait was unleashed, to a shrugging Kiarak. There always was a market for strong daemon warriors anyway.
Three more groups were annihilated before a pair of badly burned sentinels described a massive avian form, its stony wings sheathed in shining metal. The resemblance to the dwellers bar the size wasn’t lost on anybody. That had to be the Mother the Father was eager to capture.
The chance to accomplish a quest pleasing to the Father himself put wings to daemon feet. The Kiaraki scum was recalled and then massed in three baiting forces. Zongatis guessed that this Mother reacted in response to damages brought to the Garden, so she deployed one bait close to the Great Tree, to try and chop it down and one deep into the forest to continue razing. The third she deployed after conferring with Zubar, and forcing the scowling daemon to relent his grip on a dozen of the little monsters. The Kiaraki she handed them to were among the most savage, and they carried the little beings in a glade close by.
The rest of her assault troops, Xaglar, Gennoth, Thilgra and elite Kiaraki worth enough not to be sacrificed, she divided between surrounding the baits, ready to move in and keeping them back, to avoid any surprises from overzealous inferiors. A plane away, even the threat of the Father couldn’t be fully thrusted to keep them in line.
They didn’t need to wait long.
The first attempt to damage the Great Tree ended with the offending Kiaraki lifted by talons wider than its torso. A scream was quickly silenced, and the broken body was thrown against the rest.
Kiarak and her elites kept the place, and they were quick to attack. And they died. Dozens of daemons, each as strong as a chieftain. Dozens, burned and crushed and slashed to ribbons, and then a hundred. A monster, from whose wings arose the storm, whose cry called down the lightning.
Kiarak challenged it, angry and spitting and wreathed in flame. She took a talon and came out of it with the left half of her body burned to a crisp.
To her credit, Zongatis would admit, the inferior had waited the right moment to make her play for power. The one emerging succesfull from that quest would meet with the favor of the Father, a priceless treasure, and who better to take the role of leadership than the demigoddess who wounded this fearsome monster? The telling of things could be then manipulated in all kinds of ways.
Shame for her, Zongatis never did and never would trust such a traitor-soul. So when a whimpering, half-burned Kiarak gestured weakly for her to get close, so that she may use her few remaining breaths to tell her of what she had seen, Zongatis had expected the moment to be ripe. What she didn’t expect was for Kiarak to try and stab her with the same golden talon she had claimed. Inferiors’ preference for ironic justice, she expected.
A well-wrought little scheme, if ridiculously traitorous. Zongatis smirked a little at the realization dawning on Kiarak’s expression as the talon scrabbled uselessly against her shield.
Killing her would mean acknowledging her as a rival. Slapping her and leaving her there to wallow in her failure and the pain of self-regeneration proved exactly the difference between them. And as the furious scream chasing her as she walked away attested to, even inferiors had enough intelligence to understand as much. Let her wallow in it. Zongatis would make sure the Father knew who to call traitorous and who to trust.
Putting the matter out of her mind, she turned her attention to this elusive Mother that already cost her a hundred soldiers.
Kiarak was useless, and Ulvanach could only be trusted to kill. No, to capture, she needed the expertise of those who dealt in chains. She summoned Zubar to her.