Chapter 152

[Korali POV]

He'd had to fight to get to sleep the night after he'd seen that… beast. Even then, he'd been struck with nightmares of hordes of massive keelish swarming through the streets of his home, of Varali crying for help as he was frozen, of Marata swarmed and felled by the creatures, of himself being torn to pieces while forced to watch his family and his own body be devoured by the insatiable swarm of keelish. He'd woken in a cold sweat, thrashing and trying to get free. Something was pinning him down, something was attacking him, something! It was a keelish! He was under attack!

"Shhh shhh shhh my love. Calm yourself. You are safe. Shh shh shh."

As he'd slowly come back to himself, Korali realized that he'd been screaming in his sleep, and Marata, having woken up to her husband's nightmare-fueled hysteria, had covered his mouth and held him down until he'd awoken. Then, as he'd gasped and shuddered in terror, she'd held him close as his sweat stained through the blankets. Marata had tried to apologize for her roughness in holding him down and forcing him to quiet, but Korali knew the importance of keeping the camp from outright panic. If they'd heard terrified screams coming from the commander's tent in the middle of the night, it may have caused panic among the ranks, if not broken morale entirely. 

In the days since they'd found the results of Farrah's squad's last hunt, Marata had commanded the scouts not to engage and instead simply watch for any approaching keelish and where they were coming from. The most headstrong and fiery tempered of the youths had initially chafed at her command, but once they'd seen the body of the beast, they no longer argued against her wisdom. In the days since, the keelish had begun to range out further and further, and none of the scouts had seen any keelish anywhere near so large as the beast that Farrah and her squad had killed. It was difficult for most of the untrained hunters to see well enough in the darkness of night to keep themselves safe, so Marata herself and Korali had taken on much of the responsibility for actually finding and observing the keelish.

Usually, Korali took Marata's complaints of the weakness and lack of discipline of his hometown's Speakers in stride while internally thinking that she must have been exaggerating. Now that his family's survival depended on the absolute competence and focus of the town's Speakers… he didn't mind admitting that many of their "mightiest" didn't qualify as True Speakers. None of the Earthspeakers except Marata herself could feel a creature's footstep more than a couple dozen paces away, and Korali was the only Windspeaker who could Call lightning or send a windword even a mile away. Varali might have been able to, but she couldn't leave the town, since, due to a technicality, she hadn't participated in the Speaking ceremony that indicated a child's arrival into adulthood. Korali was sure to have a suitably angry daughter in his home once they returned, but he wanted to be sure she was safe. After all, she probably would have been in Farrah's squad.

He suppressed a shudder at the thought of Varali being laid there in that den, her body cold and shredded by merciless teeth. No, he wouldn't allow it.

Thinking of her, Varali had said that she'd seen three of the massive keelish, so there was a good chance that they had already dealt with one third of the most terrifying of the beasts, but not having seen any more was… strange, if nothing else. It only filled him with more questions. How many of the massive ones were there? Why had the stupid creatures left Farrah's squad's bodies? Didn't they eat? Why did they leave the big one with the people's corpses? Why leave them so far from their home, which, as near as the leadership of the campaign had been able to figure, was a dozen miles further south than the den of the defeated wolfstags?

Korali knew that these questions plagued his wife just as much as they did him, but she gave no appearance of worry or stress. She stood tall before every question, and though he could read the tension in her shoulders and neck, he knew that Marata hid her anxieties from the rest of the hunters well enough. Then, she changed the command yesterday. Full double squads of ten, never more than half a mile from each other. A Windspeaker in each who could send a windword to the nearest squads for backup the moment they made contact with keelish. Nine teams in the field, with three more in the base to fill in wherever necessary.

That night's combat had been, as far as Korali had heard, relatively routine, and the teams had begun to exhibit their carelessness already. Then, Marata had given her warning and her command.

"Look, you're not soldiers, but you know what makes keelish dangerous, right?"

Amir, the wisdom-forgotten fool, had jumped in, "Their numbers!" He'd beamed brightly, the ivory of his teeth shining like a beacon on his dark face. Marata had looked directly into his eyes and simply shook her head in disappointment. He'd wilted under her attention.

"No. There are three levels to what makes a keelish more dangerous. First, bigger than usual. Second, smarter than usual. Third, magical. We know that they're bigger than usual. But, even the smallest ones we've seen are bigger than usual, and monsters like that one," Marata pointed with her chin to where the decaying body of the keelish laid for everyone to see, "are something I've never heard of. That means, we can expect keelish as intelligent as a seven year-old child leading these numbers, and I'd swear to the Gran Verat himself that there are going to be magical keelish in this swarm."

With her declaration, the jockeying and joking youngsters went silent, and began to look at her with something approaching fear, if not terror. At last, they were listening.

"Now, they're not smart for a person, just a keelish, so they realize we're killing them. But we know what they're gonna do. You ever play Verat's Guard?" She asked the group of young adults, and there were nodding heads all around, but they were confused. She pointed to Deena, a smart, quiet girl, and asked, "When you were little, and the apostates started to take out a couple of the guards, what did you do?"

Deena looked around herself, unsure, before answering, "I–we would run all together to tag all the apostates at the same time. The guards are too strong for the apostates to face head on, so the apostates need to run away." A flicker of understanding crossed Deena's face. "They think they're the guards."

"Exactly. These 'smart' keelish will think they're too strong for us, so they'll run all towards us while they're certain they'll wipe us all out. They'll expect us to break and run, but instead, we'll be ready for them."