Moving among them were drones, males with the same mark upon them. All of them stank of the blood ties the Wrayth used. This geistlord was vast in number and the most dangerous of the Rossin’s enemies and kin. The great cat’s eyes narrowed, and his head sunk between his shoulders. He could charge down now among all those peons of the Wrayth, but there was a chance they could overwhelm him. He had rage, but they certainly had numbers.
The Rossin bathed in blood, grew strong from it, but for the peons and their geistlord blood was more than that. It was a web that bound them together in a vast network of people. Each child born here became another peon and carrier of the enemy. This was one opponent that the Rossin could not easily destroy—even with all his strength.
So instead, he chose to leave them. His host would have been greatly surprised; but the Rossin was more than a mere Beast. He had his own plans and means, and when he was sated by blood he could think and act as clearly as any of the other geistlords. It was the restriction of being tied in blood. The Wrayth had found their own way around it, and that rankled.
Still they had to breed constantly lest the geistlord within them weaken. It was a vulnerability that the Rossin could not yet think of a way to exploit.
Letting a little huff of annoyance escape through his gaping mouth, the Beast padded around the room of silent and pale-eyed peons. The Wrayth’s attention was not here—not yet. The Rossin could feel it above him, flitting about among other higher-level peons.
Deeper into the hive, the warmth was now so extreme that the great cat felt it laying like a blanket on him. He let his mouth droop open and began panting. New noises filtered from below, sounds that drew the Rossin; the echoes of human pain. Despite his caution, the geistlord found himself caught by curiosity and followed the sounds.
That was how he found the cells. Swinging his head from side to side, carefully placing his massive paws down as delicately as a house cat, the Rossin peered into them. These were pregnant women too, but not happy in their servitude to their Wrayth overlord. Even the Rossin felt something close to pity for these scraps of humanity tethered to the wall, their swelling bellies attached to wasted and wretched bodies.
The smell of them was strange; not merely just the reek of shackled humanity, but an odd mixture of Wrayth and something else. The cat stood at the bars of a cell and tilted its head, regarding the woman within, for a moment confused. She carried a Wrayth child, but was not of the Wrayth herself. She was something more trained, more powerful. She looked blankly back at the geistlord, broken inside and out, but there was a flicker of her past in there.
The Rossin’s growl was deep and threatening as all trace of pity was wiped away. The prisoner’s head jerked upright. She’d been a Deacon. Though she had no Gauntlets or Strop anymore, she still nursed a tiny spark of the Order within her. Many Deacons were presumed killed by geists, but obviously not all of them had been. Intriguingly enough, it appeared the Wrayth was occupied in some kind of breeding program—though to what end the Rossin could not tell.
If they had met in different circumstances he and this Deacon would have been enemies, now they were the same; trapped in the Wrayth hive. On the Otherside the geists consumed each other and the souls of the dead, but they did not shackle each other in such a way. The Wrayth had obviously learned some new skills in this realm.
The woman lurched forward, wrapping one hand around the bar while reaching out with the other toward the great cat. “Kill me,” she gasped, her voice a rasp of horror. “Take my blood. Take me!”
The Rossin flinched back with a snarl. However other women in the row of cells had heard their fellow prisoner’s call. Soon a dozen hands were thrust through the gaps, opening and closing in supplication.
“Take me!” one howled.
“No, me,” other unseen women screamed.
“Have pity,” the first woman said, and her fingers actually brushed the fur of the Rossin.
Despite his love of blood and violence, there was something repellant about what had been done to these women. He backed away, hissing and growling in disgust.
Then, from down the corridor, came the sounds of many people coming toward him. He could hear feet slapping on the stone, and smell the Wrayth coming toward him.
It damaged his pride to turn around and run, but on the Otherside the geistlord had learned to do what it took to survive. The Wrayth were coming, and the Rossin fled down the corridors in huge bounds, yet he snarled all the way.
He burst out into another main room, and realized immediately that this was where the Wrayth wanted him. The cat spun about growling and roaring at the surrounding peons. They reeked of the geistlord, and they held sticks and polearms. Every one of them was pale and blank-eyed, but there could be no mistaking their intentions.
“Welcome, mighty Rossin.” A voice high in the vaulted ceiling caused the cat to jerk his head up; the female creature his host’s sister had been talking to. She was beyond even his reaching, leaning out to talk to him from a balcony of stone, decorated with lapis lazuli.
“Thank you so much for visiting.” The peons below bent like wheat in the wind at her voice, responding to the whims of the Wrayth.
The Rossin crouched, and even though he knew the pointlessness of it, sprang among them. He bit and raked his claws through their flesh. He broke bones and tore muscle, and even while he did, they did not scream. It was like cutting grass or biting water, and just as fulfilling.
Even though their blood flooded his mouth, it offered him nothing. Humanity should not be like this, and every part of the Rossin was disgusted by it. No strength came to him; the Wrayth’s power slipped out of the peons before he could absorb it. Finally, he stood shaking bits of rent peons from his jaws, blood splattered on his patterned fur, and a growl emanating from his mouth.
“Are you done?” the Wrayth above asked, her voice stained with amusement. “As always you are limited, and as you can see, we are not.”
The peons that were still capable formed up another circle. Some were dragging broken limbs, or their own eviscerated bowels, but they still moved to the controls of the geistlord in their bodies. At the same time, fresh peons from the rear came forward. They were carrying polearms, and on the end gleamed weirstones.
It was always this way; geistlord competing to devour geistlord. The Wrayth would have him and all the power that remained from Hatipai. However when the woman spoke, the words she let loose were not the ones that he expected.
“You will make an excellent experiment. Once you return to your host, we will find out what new lines he can form with our female peons. What interesting creatures might be made with your power and ours.”
She turned, and his host’s sister appeared on the balcony as well. She looked down on the snarling cat with such hatred that even the Rossin felt it.
He would not change. He would not surrender himself to that. He would breed nothing for the Wrayth. Then the peons were on him, pushing him with the weirstones, and where they touched, they burned. In this way they drove the Rossin out of the main hall and down into the hive.
Though he battered at them, charging, snarling, ripping an odd one or two down, they kept coming in a relentless fashion that he could not match. Eventually they pushed him, just by sheer numbers and determination, into a cell, much like the one their female prisoners occupied.
It was a tiny space for the massive feline, and he could barely turn around. The door was slammed shut behind him, and the Rossin let out a roar that shook the vile nest of the Wrayth. Yet, he would not release the form. If he did, then his host would become like the women, used for their breeding.