Do not.

She heard it. Not a voice, but a confirmation not from her own thoughts. It did not rise in her head, but in her heart.

He is a predator. All predators are the same.

It did not inform her of this. She found she knew it. It was not a message. It was simply a reinforcement of knowledge, of instinct.

Do not scream. If you scream, you will never stop.

And she knew she would not.

‘This one, I think,’ he whispered through his grin.

The moment he rose and stepped back, Xhai swept forward in great, angry strides. She seized Kataria by her arm and hauled her towards the cabin’s support pillar. She felt her muscles tense, protest welling up inside them, only to be quashed by the sudden knowledge that rose within her.

They are all base creatures, uncomplicated. They know weakness and kill it. They know defiance and kill it. Be as the air: light, unconcerned. They do not know the air. They cannot kill the air.

The fear did not abate, but it suddenly felt less pertinent, if no less certain. Something had intervened itself between her and the longfaces, buried the fear deep behind its shadow. She felt her breath returning slowly, even as Xhai slammed her body against the pillar and swiftly bound her wrists to it. He was a predator; she knew how to deal with predators; she could survive.

She knew this because someone else knew this. Someone else told her this through their mutual instinct, their common, racial voice. Someone told her through the Howling.

Another shict. Close enough to hear. Close enough to smell.

‘Not knowing … makes me uncomfortable.’

Her eyes were drawn back to Sheraptus as he stood over the table, running long fingers over a smooth, blackwood case. His hand lingered on it with unnerving sensuality.

‘It’s not right that the pursuit of knowledge should be hindered, that wisdom should be kept from the mind that thirsts for it.’ The case opened at his touch with a bone-deep creaking noise. ‘This is the flaw of most creatures, I find: overscum, underscum, netherling alike. They are all satisfied by what they think they know.’

His hands went to his brow, fingers digging beneath his crown. It parted with him after some hesitation, the glow burning brightly in protest, and then going dark as he set it next to the open case.

‘How is progress made, then, if everyone is sated with gods, with theories, with instinct? No. Progress … true progress …’

From red silk lining, it slid out: a jagged sliver of a blade, as long and thin as two of his purple fingers. Its metal was polished to a high sheen. He turned. The fires in his eyes had been extinguished with the removal of the crown. Behind them, in that milk-white stare, a sadistic glee that had been hidden in crimson was reflected in the blade.

‘Is found deeper.’

Bury your fear deep, the Howling told her. Show him nothing.

It was difficult for her to comply with that as he drew closer, the blade hanging at his side, dangling limply from his fingers. She took it in, along with his stare, his grin, with equal dread as he came upon her.

‘And look at how you look at me,’ he whispered, his voice an edge itself, ‘with such judgement. I’ve seen it before, of course, and it strikes me as so hypocritical. That is the word, isn’t it? Wherein you deny one truth because it seems inconvenient? Yes, hypocritical. It is hypocritical for you to think that the pursuit of knowledge can ever be second to anything. If you think the pursuit of it cruel, then clearly, you don’t know enough, do you?

‘The netherlings know. We were born in nothing. We expected nothing. But this world … it’s so brimming with … everything.’ His tongue flicked against his teeth with each word, unable to be contained. ‘And we owe it to ourselves to know, to find out. We cannot be content with instinct, with what we suspected we knew. It would be disingenuous. We would never progress.

‘This, I believe, is why I arrived here. Certainly, the Grey One That Grins opened the door in his search, but it had to happen for a reason. Divine happenstance, as you might suspect? No, no … it was natural. It was inevitable. Someone had to come, to understand this world so that netherlings and overscum as a whole might progress.’

Show nothing. Say nothing. Do not look away. Do not give him reason.

She felt a bead of sweat form at her temple. It felt her fear as it felt his stare upon it. It fled, sliding down her brow, over her jawline, rolling across her chest, through the fur garment to drip down upon her belly. As it chased the centreline of her abdomen and hung above her navel, his finger shot out, pressed against her skin. At her gasp, the shudder of her stomach, his grin grew as broad and sharp as his knife.

‘But to know, we must dig, we must seek, we must pry and we must cut.’ He lifted his finger, studied the bead of sweat upon it. ‘We must go into the base and find out what makes you work, what makes your heart beat and belly tremble. And you will show me.’

He pinched his fingers together, a brief flash of fire behind his eyes as the sweat sizzled into steam. Grinning all the broader, he reached out to seize her by the jaw, running the tip of his blade down her body, gooseflesh rising in the wake of the gentle, razor grazing.

‘You will show me everything.’

The urge to indulge him rose inside her, the urge to wail and scream in the hopes that someone would hear her before that knife angled just a hair and slid into the tender flesh of her abdomen. In his grins, real and reflected, was a suggestion to do just that, to obey if she sought to survive.

DO NOT. The Howling rang out inside her head. He perverts instinct, destroys reason. Do not scream. Do not show fear. Do not even think.

And as soon as she knew this, her breathing stilled, her eyes dimmed, the fear seeping out of them. His own grin diminished slightly, seeing such a thing. She knew then that he could not succeed, that he could not exploit fear as he had hoped.

‘Get away from her!’

Not hers, anyway.

They both looked to the corner: she with a quick, fervent glance, he with a slow, lurid stare. Asper had found her nerve, sitting up straight in her bonds, staring fire through tear-stained eyes, trembling against the ropes that held her. Her lower jaw was clenched tightly as she leaned forward, baring teeth at him.

‘Don’t you touch her,’ she hissed.

Damn it, Asper, Kataria growled inwardly.

She looked back to Sheraptus. He apparently sensed her thoughts, offering her a lurid grin. The malicious glimmer in his eyes was as unmistakable as the swell of his breeches. Kataria was more horrified than she suspected she ought to be to know that neither were meant for her.

‘Close your eyes, if you want,’ he whispered. ‘Shut your ears as best you can. Just know …’ He swept his stare to the bound priestess. ‘You could have stopped this.’

Asper’s resolve seemed to melt with every step forward he took, her fear becoming more apparent, every quiver on her flesh bare to his pervasive stare, every lump disappearing down her throat heard with painful clarity. Kataria desperately wanted to turn away, to not hear, but found herself bound by his words as surely as the ropes.

She had caused this. Asper would suffer.

For me.

‘It never lasts long, does it?’ Sheraptus almost cooed as he descended upon her. ‘The defiance, the hope, the anger, the sorrow … You can always come back.’

He shrugged. His robe fell from his shoulders. Kataria beheld purple muscle; red lines from which blood had once wept painted a picture of hate and fury upon his flesh.

‘They fight back, at first, but that’s only one of two constants. After that, it becomes so many things: pleading, persuasion, bargaining until finally …’ He sighed. ‘The second constant. Nothing. No more fear, no more noise. They’re … broken.’

‘S-stay away from me,’ Asper whimpered, pulling back. Kataria noticed her shifting to one side, tucking her left arm behind her as she did. ‘Don’t touch me.’

‘Yes, that’s usually how it starts.’ He canted his head to the side. ‘But … not with you, no. You’re wearing a mask, aren’t you? You only want me to think you’re like the others. There’s something within you … something I have felt before.’

‘I don’t know what—’

‘You do. I know you do, because I do.’ Sheraptus raised a brow. ‘Some qualities go deeper than breed. Some qualities, as loathsome as it is to admit it, are inherent. In you, I sense our instincts … that which drives us to kill, to cause anguish and suffering with no reason other than that’s what we do.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she gasped, her voice a whimper. ‘You’re wrong!’

‘Never.’ His eyes flared to crimson life. ‘Never wrong.’

He uttered the alien word, his hand rose and she followed, suspended by an invisible force. She shrieked, the sound ringing in Kataria’s ears, drawing Sheraptus’ smile wider. His hand extended, he took a step forward and staggered. His spare hand went to his brow as he swayed on his feet.

‘Master,’ Xhai said, stepping forward with hands outstretched. ‘It’s the crown. The Grey One That Grins slipped it to you to weaken you. You don’t need it.’ A needy whine slipped into her voice. ‘These overscum women, you don’t need them, either. They’re both making you weaker.’

‘Weaker?’ He turned to her with an expression of hurt on his face, though the fraud behind it was obvious. ‘Xhai … do you think I’m … weak?’

Obvious to almost everyone.

‘N-no, Master!’ she said, shaking her head violently. ‘I am just concerned for—’

‘Unnecessary, Carnassial,’ he hissed with sudden fury, turning back to Asper. ‘I don’t like using magic for this. It dulls everything. What can be learned when all qualities and variables are dashed?’

He growled another word, shoving his hand forward. Asper was flung against the wall of the cabin, her scream choked in pain, her struggling impotent as he strode forward. His eyes were wide, white. His lips trembled, shifting between grin and animal need.

‘Knowledge gained through nethra is nothing. It’s too swift, too open to doubt. True knowledge is found through observation, through experiment. Slowly.’

He waved his hand. Asper’s shriek was cut short as she was flipped about by the unseen force, her belly pressed against the cabin wall, her bound arms presented to him. He reached out and placed a hand upon her naked left shoulder.

‘And here is where it all starts … This is the source of it, the beginning.’ His hand slid down her arm, tightening here, pinching there, counting off each knuckle in her fingers. ‘Such pain in it … I can feel it in you, feel them screaming. But this … this is merely a vessel.’ His hand slid lower, rested upon her buttock. ‘Show me, little creature, where the true suffering lies.’

Kataria didn’t understand his words, didn’t even hear him. She could only hear Asper’s whimpering, the screams choked inside her, the shuddering dread in her flesh. She could only see Asper’s tears pouring from her eyes, over her red cheeks and into her clenched teeth as she tried to shut them against him, against everything.

She could only feel Asper’s fear, her rage at how little she could fight against him, how she could do nothing as his fingers slid up past her loincloth.

To his sigh of contentment, she wished she could shut her ears … and then tear out his throat.

‘Ah …’ he whispered. ‘There it is.’ He smiled, pressing his body against hers. ‘Just takes a bit of trauma, doesn’t it? Everything with your breed does. It’s the catalyst that makes you shift so constantly. Yours will emerge, I think, only after more, only after …’

He paused, looking up and away from her, staring into nothing. Xhai seemed to pick up on this instantly, stepping forward with a furrowed brow and clenched fists.

‘Master?’

‘We,’ he whispered, ‘have company.’

Before she could even form a suspicion, a chorus of screams rang out from the ship’s deck and assaulted Kataria’s ears. The sound of metal clanging, voices chanting, a thunderous roar, alien words. Through it all, barely audible through the wood, she heard a voice screaming itself hoarse with her name.

Lenk.

A human, the Howling answered. Not important.

‘We’re under attack,’ Xhai snarled. She stalked to the wall, seizing her massive metal wedge of a sword. ‘Nothing but worthless high-fingers out there. I’ll be back.’

‘No, no,’ Sheraptus said. ‘That will take a bit longer than I’d like. I’ll handle this personally. Stay here and guard them.’

‘Guard,’ she growled in indignation. ‘I’m a Carnassial. The First Carnassial. Your Carnassial. Let me do this for you; let me—’

‘Unnecessary,’ he replied. ‘Besides …’

He glanced at his fingers, disdainfully wiping them clean upon his robes.

‘I’m in a bit of a mood.’

He withdrew his other hand, his power dissipating and letting Asper slide dejectedly to the floor. He swept across the floor, beckoning robe and crown to his hand with a wave. Slowly, he affixed both and turned to the cabin’s door, pausing only to spare a smile for Xhai.

‘Come now, Xhai, if I trusted anyone else …’

‘I would kill them,’ she grunted.

‘Absolutely.’ He swept his burning eyes back to Asper. ‘I shall return shortly.’

He was gone in an instant. Only then did Kataria look at Asper, lying motionless upon the floor, not enough breath left in her to sob, not enough life in her to stir. Kataria stared at her, the woman who was rendered so still, so lifeless, because she had spoken up for the shict. Kataria stared, mouth hanging open, unable to find words to comfort she who had spoken the words that had condemned her.

The din of battle outside grew louder. Not loud enough to drown out the Howling.