The Mantis hastily set up camp, forgoing a fire for a lack of firewood, and to avoid any unwanted attention from potential trouble seekers during the night. He’d never heard of folk getting caught along these roads by the servants of the Sea, so far inland, but the possibility was not beyond imagining. Robbers, and the followers of other hostile Gods were in his mind at all times, too, so he could understand the logic behind her decision.

  Daylight was slowly dwindling to Moonlight, and Leroh was surprised when the Mantis ordered his sister to take her tent. She initially refused and thanked her for offering, but the woman was adamant. He received from her a thick woolen blanket to drape on the grass, and so the sleeping arrangements were made.

  The siblings drank deeply until Teela’s meager water supply was nearly depleted, and ate to satiation from a variety of fresh and dried fruits, cheese, and bread, all stolen from his mother’s kitchen. The Mantis gestured her refusal with a hand and shake of the head when they, out of politeness and awkwardness, offered to share what they had.

  She removed her heavy gray cloak in one swift movement and placed it flat on the ground close to the entrance of the tent, then proceeded to sit atop it with her knees pulled up to her chest, her body contorting into a small ball. Seeing her now, Leroh realized what he hadn’t before: the Mantis was miniscule. The novelty of her, fueled by his dulling fear, had blinded him to the fact that she was smaller in size than little Teela, or any other woman he’d ever met. Why hadn’t he heard that about her? The whispers among the men were not few, and certainly not lacking in color. Did others fall victim to the same deception as he, getting distracted by the more dazzling aspects of the monster and failing to notice that weakness?

  From a young age, he’d been terrified of the beautiful abomination sitting across from him. The town boys who’d become his close friends had been eager to share with him the warnings they’d gotten from fathers, uncles, brothers, and cousins. The word went around and spread to whoever might have use for it. News of the Mantis’s last known whereabouts, stories of her victims and descriptions of her appearance were told from man to man, day after day, so that all who might hear be aware of the danger and try to avoid putting themselves under her gaze.

  The need for secrecy was cumbersome in the pursuit to warn as many unwary men as possible, but certainly necessary. The threat that others who shared her vengeful craving might join her cause, that there could exist more than one of her kind in Yriaa, was too large a danger. So the warnings must always remain a secret carefully and widely shared among those who might heed it, and kept from those vulnerable to the influence of her vindictive ways.

  He was lying on his back on the itchy blanket, staring at the menacing sky. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and a myriad of insects chirred to the sticky night air. His sister had gone to sleep shortly after eating, and the Mantis remained seated between him and the tent’s opening, face serious and eyes unfocused. There was a slight furrow to her brow that Leroh found concerning, and a strange tension to her posture. He could see something was wrong with her.

  With that dark thought in mind, he closed his eyes and endeavored to rest. But his mother broke into his conscience. He did not want to think about her. It was all too disastrous, the idea too flammable. Whichever angle he approached it from, it would lead to pain and desperation. But he could not avoid it any longer.

  His mother would know, by now, what her children had done. At some point during the workday, she would have realized no work was being done. No orders would have come in at around the time they usually started, and she would have emerged from the kitchen in an outrage. Eventually, she would have approached a neighbor who’d seen them riding away, and with whom. All of it would have already happened, only the consequences awaiting him upon his return.

  She’d hate Teela, he knew, for disdaining the blanket of safety their community risked so much to uphold. His sister had never learned to appreciate the gift of blissful ignorance bestowed upon her, and his mother had not been able to tolerate the girl’s contrarian disposition. So she was Leroh’s to oversee. That was the dynamic imposed on them all by their circumstances.

  He wondered briefly if she would have resented him more for allowing Teela to take off with the Mantis alone than for what he’d decided to do. She’d certainly chastise him for doing nothing better than to follow after her, despite his intentions of keeping her alive and persuading her to return home. She’d call him a weakling for not defying the Mantis and forcibly bending Teela to his will. She would not afford him any leniency in regards to what had happened. Perhaps, he thought, her reaction would have been more tolerant of his failure if he’d claimed to not have known of his sister’s disappearance at all, if he had just kept working and turned a blind eye when he first realized Teela was gone. And yet the thought of abandoning her, of allowing her to run off with the murderous creature alone was inconceivable to him, after the lesson he’d learned. He’d been a coward, he’d underestimated his sister’s curiosity and nerve and left her to her own resources, and she’d gotten herself immediately killed. She needed him.

  At some point along the distressing line of thoughts, Leroh drifted into a fitful sleep, but was awoken shortly after by the feeling of Rain on his face. Fat drops of water had started to fall, and many more threatened to soak him to the bone if he did not find cover promptly. Far in the horizon, the last few rays of twilight extended their tendrils one final time to illuminate the plains around him.

  The Mantis was intently looking at him, as if taking his measure. Her eerie orange eyes were a frightening thing to wake up to, and Leroh did not not know what to say or do, so he only sat up and raised his forearms above his head to attempt to block some of the drops.

  “You have to ask her,” she said.

  “What?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Ask your sister if you can go in the tent.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, disoriented by the bizarre suggestion. But the Rain was coming on stronger, and he did want to take cover, so he did as she ordered without comment.

  “Teela,” he called softly, poking his head into the small space where she slept curled on her side. “Can I come in? It’s Raining.”

  She peeled one eye open and scrunched her face at his strange behavior. They had shared a bedchamber their entire lives, so asking for permission to sleep in her vicinity now felt arbitrary and unnatural to them both. She looked confused for a time, then muttered a gruff. “Of course. Didn’t need to wake me up for that.”

  He turned to give the Mantis a sideways look before entering the tent, and was surprised to receive an approving nod and a hand gesture to proceed.

  Still puzzled by the interaction, he squeezed into the cramped shelter and managed to arrange his body into a somewhat comfortable position and fall asleep.

  The two souls for the Sea God were not sitting restfully inside Mantis, and the torment of their unsettled stirring was starting to become overpowering. She wished she could have just dumped them at Ombira’s feet, and dreaded the task ahead of her. But even more torturous than all that was her Goddess’s push.

  She’d been nudging Mantis more persistently with every passing breath, and there was a village right ahead to worsen the urge. The target awaiting her there baited and provoked her. She could almost smell him even if she could not see him or sense his aura at so large a distance. Ombira was not happy to see so much of Mantis’s time spent doing another’s bidding, and she was starting to grow impatient.

  Perhaps she could bid the children to stay at the makeshift camp for a while and race ahead to appease her appetite. But she did not like the idea of leaving them alone. Could she bring them and just get it done quickly? The thought disgusted her. The girl should not be brought near the human garbage she hunted, exposed to the depravities of man. Mantis intended to demonstrate the ugliness of the Gods, and the Gods alone, to her. Only the predatory nature of the deities did she mean to teach her.

  Mantis was crouching low and pouring water into her waterskin from the small metal pot where Rain had collected during the night. Her body was soaked, head to toe, from the night downpour, which was both good and bad news. The sensation was unpleasant at that moment, but she knew the damp clothing would keep her cool in the warmth of the day ahead as it slowly dried off. She deemed it a fair exchange. A low rummaging caught her attention, and the girl emerged from the tent’s flap, still clad in the same simple commoner’s garments she’d worn since they’d met.

  “Good morning,” Teela greeted her with a shy smile. “That’s smart. I came out to see about collecting water, actually. We drank most of what I brought.”

  “I filled your waterskin, too.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes widened and she gave Mantis a long, appraising look. “Thank you very much, ma’am. That was not necessary, not at all. I’m very capable of–”

  “My name is Mantis. And I said I would provide for you.”

  “Mantis. Well… thank you, then,” she said and padded over to drink from the full waterskin Mantis had returned to the horse’s saddlebag after refilling it during the night. She had not been able to sleep at all.

  “Would it be all right if I went for a short walk?” Teela asked. Mantis turned abruptly to stare at her, startled by the unexpected question. She was standing by her grazing horse and affectionately rubbing down his flank. She looked a mess. Her shiny locks of black hair were bound back loosely but sleep had tousled a few stray pieces around her face, her simple brown linen dress looked worn and the white smock she wore underneath was, in fact, gray from wear. She had not brought any other clothes, Mantis knew. She wondered why her parents allowed her to look so disheveled.

  “You want to go for a walk, here?” She signaled around them with a sweep of the arm. Apart from a few sparsely scattered tall trees and shrubbery, there was nothing at all to see.

  “I just want to feel the world. I’ve never been so far from Pirn before.”

  She frowned at the girl, utterly confused. There was nothing of the world there, nothing to see or do. Mantis did not want to deny her such a trivial request, but her gut was telling her to look closer, to be wary of the person before her. Something felt off about the girl, and Mantis was afraid to admit to herself that it had started the day she’d killed her. Some quality stood out, peculiar and familiar, calling out to her in a way that she did and did not recognize.

  “Go on, then. I will keep an eye on you.” She stood as she spoke, and walked over to stand beside the child. Teela looked her up and down, a glint of annoyance in her eye, then breathed out a small sigh and started walking ahead. Mantis followed a few paces behind, like a cat creeping toward some detail that caught its attention.

  The girl paced leisurely through the tall grasses, sometimes stopping to admire a wildflower or weed. Her dark brown eyes reflected a spark of warm caramel in the awakening light of the morning, and Mantis watched attentively as Teela’s gaze lovingly caressed the pointed tips of the blades of grass, or the swaying branches of a common bush. It was strangely fascinating to Mantis, to observe another’s behavior for the sole purpose of deciphering their intent, and trying to interpret their perception of so ordinary a sight. She could not look away. Teela seemed joyous, in peace, out there in the middle of gods damned nowhere.

  “Why did you kill me?” she interrupted her trance abruptly.

  “It was an accident.”

  Teela turned to look into her eyes, curiosity and ignorance plain on her face. “You were trying to kill the men behind me.” She neither confirmed nor denied it. It had not been a question. “What was that you used? The black string. I recognized it, yesterday, on Leroh’s throat. Is that a part of your body? From your God?”

  Mantis raised her right hand in front of Teela’s face and unfurled her pointer finger up toward the sky. She waited a moment for her to react, but the girl only ventured closer, absentmindedly, trying to get a better look at the tip of her finger. No instincts of self preservation or alarm appeared to warn her. Nothing inside Teela cautioned her against danger at all. Mantis frowned at her childish carelessness and pushed out the end of her link into the air above her raised hand, approximately a forearm’s length, and wagged it smoothly in a practiced oscillating motion. The protruding fleshy strand originated in the center of her chest, extended through the length of her arm, and emerged from the slitted opening underneath the nail of her forefinger. A familiar tickle, like a flicked nerve, shot up her arm when the slick black limb snaked out into the open. Teela gasped, but still did not retreat. She possibly even drifted a smidge closer.

  “They’re links.”

  “Links?”

  “To absorb a soul, when inserted in the heart.”