Chapter 148 - EVO
***Tirnanog, Raider’s Valley***
***Mary Frost***
I stood by and watched as the night-terror pub slowly expired with heavy, labouring death rattles. The smoke and the heat in the tunnel were too much for the little monster, but it was nonetheless humbling to see that even a creature as feared as a night-terror was just a fragile victim in its infancy.
Its broodmother tried to animate the pub with her nose, pushing the unresponsive body around, but nothing could be done. She was the last of this nest to be taken care of.
I slowly raised the blade attached to my hand, a formidable weapon my filaments had formed once they changed their state to a silver metal. The exact, underlying process escaped my understanding, but I figured it had something to do with nanomachines.
Regarding the sleek weapon, I found the thin blade much too elegant for the job. It looked like a rapier, a cultured duellist’s weapon.
The night-terrors were intelligent monsters. I wasn't apathetic enough to pretend I couldn't recognise they cared for each other on some level, but their very nature made co-existence with humanity impossible. However, it doubted they had a concept of the ongoing war between humanity and Tirnanog’s natural inhabitants. They were just doing what was natural to them as one of the higher-ranked predators of this world. Maybe their intelligence was similar to the drakes’, allowing them a high amount of reasoning in some aspects, but cursing them with blindfolds in others.
Just as the drakes couldn’t conceive the thought of technology, the night-terrors couldn't see humans as anything else than food. It was the reason why collaborating with other intelligent species was a taboo among the clans. There were too many terrible examples in history, showing just how falsely placed sympathy could go horribly wrong for humans since we tended to bond far too easily with members of other species.
Which didn’t mean we couldn't make exceptions like with the drakes. They just had to be carefully evaluated and tested.