Chapter 11: The Threat in the Shadows

More injuries have been sustained. The test subjects seem less interested in their normal food sources and more interested in the feeders. I keep telling them to follow the prescribed safety measures, but the neophytes won’t listen to me!

She smelled something. That scent. That scent smelled familiar. It was him. The one that found her. The one that awakened her. She quickly rose up from her meal and gave a territorial hiss. She knew she could not devour him. She had tried. He was too strong. She could not absorb him either. He was too different from the other hosts. Still, he was intruding. He should not have done that. This was her nest. The home of her children. He was unwanted.

With her sightless gaze born of her enhanced senses, she perceived the figure, his appearance unchanged as when he first awakened her. He was about the size of an average humanoid. He wore a dark robe over a blue vest. His upper torso was that of a humanoid, but he had no legs as he slithered on a white-scaled tail like one of her elder children, yet he was not one of her children. She could remember ... something. Something about his species. Lamia, sometimes called Gorgons. Yes. Demihumans that resembled snakes. But he was different from the other Lamia. She could devour the other Lamia, but she could not devour him.

Beneath the black hood, she could only see four glowing blue eyes as he spoke in a form of speech that was even stranger than most hosts. “Enjoying your meal, fraulein Horde Mother?”

She hissed again as her children emerged from hiding among the rocks to attack the newcomer. Before the children could be warned, the newcomer’s head grew to the size of a Colossal, and he devoured them all in a single bite. His head shrank back instantly as he consumed her children, chewing on their blood and guts greedily. He swallowed loudly, orange blood dripping from his mouth. Then he gave an angry hiss of his own, and the other children could feel his strength. They cowered before him, whimpering as they retreated behind their mother.

She moved her tentacles about her children protectively. She had felt him eat her children as they died. She always felt it when her children were killed, and it never ceased to anger her. The host she had been devouring, a former human male, quickly got up to return with the other reborn children. Blood seeped from the bite wounds in his gut, but he gave no complaint. She had been careful not to eat more than what was necessary so that he could continue to function normally. The human host was young and durable, allowing him to serve the horde for many years to come by providing meat and brainwaves that sustained the hive mind.

She slithered forward to face the intruder, stretching out her long arms in displeasure as she forced herself to do the unfamiliar task of speaking. “YOU DARE DEVOUR OUR CHILDREN!”