***Please enjoy this special look at the next chapter, now in progress. Thank you for your patience and continued support! – BHS***
Slowly, Naole began to emerge from the white fog that blanketed her. The squirrel’s thoughts were sluggish and muted; she had trouble recalling where and when she had gone to sleep. Strange, she thought to herself. It was hard to tell whether her eyes were open or closed, it was too dark… Whatever it was she was looking at, it certainly wasn’t her bedroom ceiling. I wonder if Zero-
Her brother’s name helped to drag her back to reality. A dull, throbbing ache spread outward from a small point on her neck, rather like an insect bite. Naole’s instinct was to scratch at it, but her arms appeared to be stuck to her sides, her legs pinned together. More of her vision cleared, and she saw that most of her body was wrapped in sheets of shimmering threads…
“Ah, you’re awake.” The oily, smug voice of her captor dispelled her last vestiges of sleep. Stalker was standing above her, his voice echoing weirdly in the enclosed space… She was able to make out hanging spikes of rock looming above her. A cave, illuminated by a soft glow coming from a source nearby.
Naole tried to speak, her lips and tongue were still numb. “Wha-”
A clawed hand brushed aside a few strands of her hair, making her shiver. “I was almost afraid I had injected you with too much venom.”
“Venom?” She tried to squirm away from his fingertips. “You… you poisoned me…”
“Of course. You fought me,” he said, as if that justified it.
She finally managed to look up at him, and moaned in horror at the sight. The wolf’s right eye socket was a swollen, mangled mass of angry red flesh and dried blood. Fighting the urge to be sick, Naole shimmied backward in her cocoon, but his hand grasped her chin and forced her to look upon his disfigured visage.
“Your brother did this to me,” he whispered. “He was the first to cause me pain since my rebirth… I will make him suffer for it.”
Naole swallowed. “Are you going to kill me?”
He chuckled, a sound devoid of mirth. “If I wanted that, I would have killed you back at the temple, or slit your throat in your sleep… No, I brought you here because you have something that I need.”
The squirrel gasped as the wolf tightened his grip and his claws nicked her cheek. A few beads of blood seeped upward through her fur. He brushed them away and stood, walking to where the light was-
Naole’s hazel eyes widened in astonishment. There was a shallow recess in the center of the cave, where the stalactites and stalagmites curved forward around a pool of churning red liquid. That pool faintly reflected the light from a hazy, cloud-like glow hovering far above it, nearly touching the cavern ceiling… More than a dozen smaller lights circled lazily around the larger one, almost like fireflies. The beacon shone with eerie blue-white light, hurting Naole’s eyes when she tried to look at it closely.
“Mother’s revenge will be twofold, my dear…” Stalker said as he gazed into the roiling pool, holding his hand above it. Blood dripped from the claws that had pierced her flesh, falling in to join the contents. “By sacrificing enough souls, I shall be able to call her back from the world beyond, and give her a new body, a stronger one… And from this blood, the blood of every sentient race in Sankami, plus my own… I shall bring forth the first of a new race of her children. A hybrid of every species, a perfect predator!” His voice rose madly as the pool of blood writhed and sloshed at its borders, bubbles forming on its surface… “My Legion…! It and its bretheren shall fight by my side, cleansing this world of the filth that is unworthy to bask in Mother’s presence…”
“You’re insane,” whispered Naole, horrified but unable to tear her gaze away.
“I know.” The wolf laughed, his remaining eye gleaming in the light of the beacon as he gazed lovingly up at it. “Watch, Mother! Watch the first of the Legion emerge!”
No, thought Naole, struggling uselessly in her cocoon. Oh, Shogun and Terra, no! This is wrong, this is sick! Please, let it fail…
The blood pool stopped its churning, becoming eerily still. A dreadful pall of silence settled over the cavern.
Naole’s mind screamed, her voice seemed to have withered away in sheer terror. Let it fail, Gods, please…!
A clawed hand broke the surface of the pool, spreading its fingers wide…
