"Really?" I grinned widely as I stood up in the bath. The Great Hunter's spawn I'd killed didn't bleed, but its essence felt sticky, and cleansing my body was taking much more effort in time than I'd expected. Regardless, I was mostly clean by now, and I looked at Vefir and Shemira while they walked in. As they both flared their frills in confirmation, they stepped into the large bath that Sybil and I sat in. Our children were each in their own little basket beside the sand pools, each large enough to ensure that they wouldn't slip entirely under the sand where I used my sonic magic to vibrate the baths.
"Then they all will have a new friend to play with, eventually," I smiled as I placed a finger inside of Ragzak's little "bath". He noticed my hand's intrusion and rolled towards my finger, which he began to chew on fiercely. The sound of his growls filled the air as he fought my hand and was, of course, victorious. I very carefully curled my fingers into my palms to ensure that my claws were nowhere near him as I let him gnaw away on me. His little fangs scraped against my scales, and a part of me wondered if I was babying these three little ones too much. They could walk now, and though they didn't talk in anything more than babbles, they were obviously becoming more and more of little people instead of just squawking creatures that I fed and loved.
"I've seen the way they play among themselves," Shemira laughed. "I don't know if I would say that, with two years of age difference between them, they'll be the best of playmates."
As if to answer her statement, Thia clambered out of her basket and towards Ragzak's. She very frequently was the instigator of any fights between the three of them, though the girls still always fought on the same side against my poor son. This was shaping up to be the same as always, my primarily white daughter coming closer to my copper-scaled son that heard her approach. He quickly left my hand as the weak threat it was and instead stood on his hands and feet before throwing himself out of his basket at his sister before she could get all the way to him.
A storm of claws and scales ensued, and Hashthi came to her sister's rescue as Ragzak turned the tides against Thia. At least, that was what she seemed to think it was, though her sister had started the fight. As always, Sybil and I allowed the fight to continue for as long as they weren't actually hurting each other, and though he'd started off ferocious and with an upper hand, Ragzak very quickly found himself overwhelmed and being harried by his sisters until he was forced to give up with a whimper.
"There is no shame in loss," I comforted him as he turned to me with sullen anger. "Superior forces exist and inferiority in numbers is difficult to overcome. Sometimes, to make a retreat is the best option available to us."
The irony of me saying that when I knew I would have acted much worse in his position wasn't lost on me. Regardless, some measure of comfort was due to the poor little one, and I didn't feel the need to deprive him of that support. In truth, despite him always losing these fights, every time that he was subjected to the tyranny at his sisters' claws, he grew stronger. He understood how to escape from being pinned and what parts of himself he most needed to protect to continue to fight, and he never displayed cowardice. Those were lessons he'd learned from pinches and tiny scratches instead of broken bones and dead friends.
Despite that, I wanted him to experience victory as well, and filed that thought away for now.
"Nothing is going to be different for you both while you're gravid," Sybil spoke up. She had grabbed both of our daughters by their tails and was idly wrestling with them, tickling their bellies as they snapped at her fingers and fought back uselessly. "The war will require your utmost devotion."
"Oh, Sybil," Shemira laughed. "Of course that is your concern. Be assured, as you know, this changes nothing. It's only good news before I ride out once more against our enemies."
"Yes, it is good news," Sybil said, holding Thia and then Hashthi down and nipping at their necks before picking them up and placing them back in their baskets. "Congratulations."
The conversation continued from there, but I couldn't maintain my focus on idle chatter when the war had finally begun. Already, from the moment it began, the Misti Hawar had shown that this conquest of ours wouldn't be as simple as I'd always thought. Taking time to reinforce our numbers had been necessary, and I didn't regret it, but now, I wondered what our enemies had been able to do in those years. How many more of those spawn would there be, and would I be able to deal with everything that came?
"I saw your fight with the strange shadow creature," Shemira said, pulling me out of my thoughts. "They're quite the strange beast."
"Nievtala tells me that their creations from the god that the Misti Hawar worship. And that they'll get stronger the longer they remain alive."
As I delivered that hammer blow of information, my three allies all had slight variations of a negative response. Brutus, who lingered nearby and kept his eyes peeled for any suspicious shadows, turned slowly to listen to the words I spoke.
"And how are we gonna take care of them as they get stronger?" Shemira maintained as calm of a tone as she could manage. "It seemed to me that a single Keel could take care of one of them without issue now, but if they grow too much, then won't we be in a pretty bad spot? And how many of them are there anyways? If there end up being hundreds of them, I don't know how we'll be able to defend against them. They'll whittle our numbers down until we can no longer defend ourselves against their siege."
"There need to be experiments regarding how to pierce through their magical defenses," Sybil said. "Zaaktif, what were you able to learn from your hunt? Were you able to learn their weaknesses? What can we twist against them in the future?"
"I know you heal very quickly," Vefir spoke before I did, "but allow me to inspect you to ensure that they didn't manage to leave any remainders of venom or magic in your system."
"Everybody, shut up." The room went still as I said it, the excitement of the night getting the better of some of my most levelheaded allies. "We know very little right now, that's true. Sybil, speak with Took. She faced one in, to my knowledge, single combat without magical assistance. Vefir, you're with her on that, I want you to investigate if there's anything left in Took's body. I know that I'm fine, I don't need any inspection right now, but she might be suffering in some way, and we all know she wouldn't say anything if she was.
"As for what we will do about them moving forward:" I bared my teeth in a smile as I finished, "the same thing we were already planning to do. Kill every one of the bastards that broke our eggs and call us prey. Tomorrow, in the light of day, we'll strike back."
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