But he was close to the ground now, as he was used to, and he had the legs he remembered, the number and the articulation. He had his fangs rather than the clutter of feeble human teeth. He had his senses again. The humans were speaking to him, and he could barely feel their words in his belly, but the world’s language was plain: every footfall, every shuffle coming to him clearly.

He turned on them, seeing them dimly, seeing them all take a step away, consciously or not, save for Penthos. Nth’s many eyes made out Harathes’s disgust, and a tightening of Dion’s features. He saw Lief and Cyrene eyeing him unhappily. Then the thief lifted a hand and waved, just a little flourish of the fingers. His lips moved, and the sensation came to Nth through his feet: “You in there?”

He still had their words. He was still human inside, or as much human as Penthos had made him. He wished heartily he did not have their language to anchor him to their world.

And at the same time, he felt a shiver of loss, at the thought that he might one day escape from that world altogether, and return to this shape for real. All those complexities and stupidities the humans practiced… he would not miss them, no. The very thought was… was human. And yet his.

He turned from them and scuttled up to the cave mouth. He gave his attention to the matter at hand because confusion and wreck lay in letting his mind chew over such ideas.

Within the cave mouth they were waiting, many of them. He could feel them massing, ready to strike or to repel an incursion, and for a moment the thought of those bodies pressed together in there made him feel strange, uncomfortable.

But he was at the strings, and he must play. He reached forward with his first limbs and stroked them gently. He felt as though he were starting up a dialogue with another side of himself.

9: Trailblazing

HEAR ME, for I have words for your Mother, he strummed, and he knew that they would tap and pluck his words back and back into the dark until they reached the inner chambers, the brood caverns where the eggs and their layer rested.

Wear the shape all you wish, the answer came back, we know what you are, Man.

I am of you.

He sensed their disdain, brought sharply through to him by the tone and tenor of their tapping. You are of Man. We are not fooled.