“Listen to it wheedle and whine! Listen to it die! Is it not beautiful Drudge?” the high-pitched piping of Nox rent the air. Drudge merely grunted in reply, for he was concentrating on stifling the will of Kneph, who struggled dismally with his own conciousness, shivering at the horrible crime he had just committed. To kill without heed is not the way of the wolf, the way of the hunter. It is the way of the murderer, the demon and the ghost. He clawed and bit and thrashed, but to no avail. Every time his jaws twitched, as though he were in control once more, the Others brought him down again, drowning him with their intermingled desire, suffocating him in a fathomless pit of hate. And all the while the squirrel screamed its pain to the forest, its hope as futile as Kneph's own.

Just when the wailing was becoming unbearable to hear, it was abruptly cut off, ending as swiftly as it had begun. The silence rang with the echoes of its screams, but Kneph did not turn around. Instead he continued to face away, out into the murk of the swamps, his eyes rolling wildly as he muttered under his breath. Only when she had tossed the prey at his paws did he deign to look at her, taking in her large, ebony frame without a single stirring of emotion. She spat a few words at him, upset at his maltreatment of the small creature that lay dead before him, its sightless gaze seeming as utterly terrified as Kneph felt, trapped inside his skull.

Nox, always the talkative one, was the first to speak to the female, “Not prey, ignorant one. Not prey, no, but art! Did you not hear it? Was it not enchanting? There is nothing so sweet as the song of death, especially when the mouth that utters it is an innocent one!”
His weedy lyrics were enough to send a shiver up the spine of any self-respecting lupine, especially when they were coupled by that unsettling white gaze that seemed to peer straight through the eyes and into the soul beneath, causing it to squirm and writhe in a nameless torture dance. Drudge took the liberty of replying to her barrage of questions, his deeper tones more easy on the ears, but just as unsettling, “Seen us? No you haven't seen us, and we haven't seen you. A name for a name, ignorant one? I am Drudge, dog of the darkness, that was Nox, nightmare of the night...and underneath us? Oh you would like to know who is underneath us, wouldn't you?”

A chuckle resounded in the heavy silence, sounding very much like the roar of an alligator, and obviously made by many mouths at once, despite the noise only spilling from one set of jaws.

“Ssshhhh!”
“But let her know, Nox? Why not?”
“I'll say”

A few growls and then the wheedling tones of Nox, “Underneath us? That is Kneph. Shush, don't call to him, he may hear and waken. See how he shivers beneath us? Look into our eyes and see how he quakes? But he can't scream, no, he can't even whine. He has no voice!” Triumph was apparent in his features, every muscle taut with excitement, “He thought he would be safe here, thought he would be happy with that Aithne and their alligator kill. But all the blood and blood and blood. It called us back, yes. We found him in the fog, we did, and now he's here and underneath and shivering like a newborn.”

By all accounts he was a madman. Foamy salive speckled his jaws and coated the fur on his chest, still baring the pinkish tinge of the squirrel's blood. Had his eyes been a different shade, the whites would have been apparent but, as it was, they were merely twin, black points of darkness in a milky alabaster setting, like two great chasms yawning to swallow the world. He had risen from where he stood to pace back and forth, pausing when he spoke, staring at the stranger as if she weren't even there. On his fifth pass, his attention was once more drawn to the stiffening corpse of the rodent and he fell upon it, devouring it noisily, savouring how the bones cracked like twigs in his jaws. Only when he had licked up every last innard did he finally turn to the stranger, grinning manically, “Do you want some, hmm? Still scrumptious tail left, and jawbone and meat. Just no liver anymore, ey. Sorry, yes, we are sorry, but liver is too precious to share.”