Chapter 393:What the Dark Keeps III
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One of the men turned in a circle, seeing the wrong sky, the impossible dark breadth, the silence beyond distance, and finally understood that the warehouse raid had not ended in capture by rivals or guards or common killers.
It had ended in being fed to something hidden.
He began screaming then.
That was the worst thing he could have done.
The bats reacted at once.
They did not dive immediately because they had learned better than uncontrolled hunger under Sekhmet’s line. But they dropped lower in fast tightening swirls, red eyes fixed, wings flickering in the dimness. Bat Bat walked among them, and they parted for her.
That made the surviving men even more frightened. Naturally.
She turned to Sekhmet. "How generous are we being."
He looked at the kneeling captives. No use in keeping them whole. No use in wasting them quickly either.
"The bats eat first," he said. "If anything remains useful after, the ghouls get what is left."
That delighted Bat Bat so completely that for a second she looked ready to grow actual wings out of her human shoulders by sheer force of pride.
"As it should be," she declared.
Then, because she had to have one moment of ceremony now that she had a room and an audience and victims and a swarm, she looked up at the gathered bats and spread both arms slightly.
Her voice lowered.
Not louder than the Void Land.
Matched to it.
"Eat."
And the bats descended.
The first wave hit like thrown black knives.
Small bodies. Sharp teeth. Wings beating in violent bursts. The bound men had no way to defend themselves properly. Even the strongest among them could only twist, scream, and try to curl in around his own throat while half a dozen tiny predators bit into exposed flesh, lips, ears, cheeks, fingers, and any place panic failed to cover quickly enough.
Bat Bat did not join them immediately. She watched first. Queen indeed.
She moved through the circling feeding swarm with exact pleasure, pointing once here, once there, redirecting a cluster from a dead patch of cloth to a still-living shoulder, guiding the frenzy just enough that it remained feeding instead of senseless chaos.
The bats listened.
Auri stood with one hip against a rock rise and watched with arms folded. The dark curve of one bat-like wing shifted behind her as she looked at Bat Bat with something very close to respect now, though she would probably rather bite off her own tongue than call it that too soon.
Mira watched too, her face unreadable as she observed how command moved downward from Sekhmet to Bat Bat and from Bat Bat into the swarm itself.
Lily did not flinch from the screams.
That mattered.
Vera and Vela stood on either side of Sekhmet in loose silence, both of them already understanding the lesson without needing it explained. A bloodline was not just women and kisses and private hunger. It was structured. Feeding order. Punishment. Reward. A house that intended to become more had to know how to consume.
One of the bound men tried crawling away on his knees and elbows despite the bats hanging from his back and neck. Bat Bat finally moved then.
She shifted back into full bat form mid-step, shrank, launched, and landed directly on his head. The scream that followed lasted only until she bit into the base of his ear and drank hard enough to ruin all coherent language.
The other bats followed the example.
They fed in clumps, in loops, in tiny spirals of black hunger. Flesh tore in smaller pieces than wolves would have taken. Blood flowed in scattered patterns, spotted and splashed under the wrong sky. The men’s cries weakened, then thinned, then broke apart into the wet half-noises of bodies too damaged to produce proper panic anymore.
Sekhmet watched long enough to know the feeding pattern was stable.
Then he looked toward the still-open gate leading back to the warehouse.
The work there was not entirely finished, but the important part had been done. The enemy goods were sorted. The living had been taken. The darkness was eating the rest of the problem.
He let the scene continue.
Let Bat Bat hold her court.
Let the bats understand the reward.
Let the women under his line see once more what belonging to his world truly meant when it opened its mouth.
When the feeding had settled into a lower, uglier rhythm and the last useful stock had been dragged through the Void Land gate, Sekhmet finally gave the order to leave.
The warehouse behind them no longer looked like a place of business. It looked like something that had been opened from the ribs and stripped with intelligence. The center was hollow now. The side records were gone. Reserve stock was gone. Coin was gone. Even the confidence in the walls seemed gone. By morning, Iron House would walk into this place and understand that the answer to stage one had already come back with teeth.
The game had not been waiting for sunrise.
It had already begun since morning.
Tonight had only made sure Iron House would feel that truth properly.
Sekhmet turned from the wrecked warehouse and led them back through the darker western lanes. Lily walked on one side of him, Mira on the other. The twins kept the rear and side angles without needing to be told. Auri moved above and along the shadow lines when the path allowed it. Bat Bat, finally back in human form and still carrying the pleased quiet of someone who had just supervised a feeding under her own swarm, walked with unusual dignity for almost half the return.
Then, because silence and Bat Bat were only temporary allies, she said, "I think tonight proved that I am a stabilizing military presence."
No one answered her.
That did not stop her.
"I also think my bats showed exceptional loyalty, coordination, and artistic bite placement."
Auri glanced at her once. "The last one is not a military term."
"It should be."
They kept moving.
The city was still in that strange hour before dawn properly took the sky. Lamps burned lower. The merchant roads were quieter, but not empty. Far off, one cart wheel knocked over a stone, and a dog barked at something it did not understand. Dawn House waited ahead in shadow and pale gray.
It was during that return, while the night still held and the blood on their clothes had not yet dried fully, that the system answered the command Sekhmet had given earlier.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: Sorting complete.
Iron House warehouse raid results compiled.]
Sekhmet kept walking, but his attention turned inward.
"Show me."
[SYSTEM Report:
Materials secured: 47 crates.
Food and preserved supplies secured: 19 crates.
Weapons and metal stock secured: 13 crates.
Ledgers and route records secured: 21 bundles.
Chaos stone chests secured: 4.
Special marked items secured: 7.
Damaged but recoverable stock secured: 11 crates.
Boxes of seeds secured: 2.
Low-value stock left behind: multiple.
Enemy warehouse functionality reduced severely.]
[Enemy casualties confirmed: 32 dead.]
Enemy wounded captured alive for feeding: 6.
Known runners escaped: 0.
Strategic assessment: Iron House has suffered material, financial, and morale damage during stage one of Mihos Dawn’s game.]
That pleased him more than he showed.
Not because of the chaos stone alone.
Because of structure.
The ledgers mattered. The routes mattered. The food and metal mattered. The damage to confidence mattered most of all. But the two boxes of seeds drew a separate note in his mind. He did not yet look deeper into them. Not here. Not while walking back through the city with bloodline women at his side and tomorrow still waiting ahead.
He simply stored the detail away.
Two boxes of seeds. It will be useful. Very useful.
He did not let his eyes linger or his steps slow. Some prizes were worth more if they were first understood in private. Seeds could become fields, medicine, poison, bait, or leverage depending on whose hand planted them and whose blood fed them. In the Void Land, with time and silence enough to study them, they might become something much more valuable than ordinary trade goods.
Bat Bat noticed the slight shift in his face and narrowed her eyes. "You are doing secret thinking again."
"Yes."
"That is rude in a group setting."
Lily laughed softly under her breath.
Mira said nothing, but the corner of her mouth moved faintly.
The house had changed. The game had changed. And now the return itself felt different too. Not like a retreat. Like a procession coming back from work already done.
By the time Dawn House received them through the side route, the first pale light had started gathering at the edge of the sky.
The night had gone well.
The morning, however, would bring the next pressure.
And this time, Iron House would wake to learn that stage one no longer belonged only to them.