---Cavern---

---Haorken's perspective---

The [90cm] man in the thick coat runs ahead of my party through the blizzard.

My (one embassy-provided metal replacement and seven original) feet stab through the snow as I follow.

The miniscule man skitters up a steep slope above a cavemouth, barely [1.5m] tall, pointing down at it to say "Here… She's in here! Been here since last night at least!"

"Thank you, good sir." I answer "You have done the Khawekhan Realm a great service."

Impatiently, he answers "Yeah, whatever. You gonna get rid of her?"

"That's the intention, good sir." I answer curtly, gesturing to the cart we've brought to transport Whalhnek back to the city and trying not to let his kind's seemingly innate rudeness nettle me.

"Cool… I'll be off then. Do not want to stick around for whatever comes next! Barely made it outta there alive last night!" he declares.

I can't really fault him for his cowardice.

I don't know how willing I'd be to reenter a cave I knew contained an addle minded carnivore that was forty four times my weight, afterall, and I'm a woman!

The small man vanishes with unnerving speed into the undergrowth.

I look at the cave entrance and sigh.

"Alright, I'm going in." I state.

"Sister…" offers Karkhal, uncertainly "…perhaps we should ask for Healer Phan and Healer Hatathli to be brought here? They may have some magics that could calm her down?"

Angrily, I turn to the recent graduate from her apprenticeship and demand "And how exactly would they administer them, Karkhal? You want to send the males who've spent more than [a year] on our world, helping countless mothers to live to see their children, into that cave?… With her?! You saw what she did to her broodhusband's face!!!"

Her facial scutes catch the light as they tighten in a frown and, confused, she points at the cluster of stars that appeared in the sky yesterday, visible even through daylight, asking "Well… now that the fleet has arrived, surely-?"

The back of my hand flies to her earhorn, creating a reverberant *donk* as it makes contact.

"Ow!" objects the girl, backing away from me and bringing the flesh of her palm to her horn to rub it "What was that for, Sister!?"

"'Surely' what, Karkhal?!" I demand "Surely, now that we no longer have need of these specific healers, it's acceptable to risk their lives by sending them into a cave with an entirely senseless Vrakhand woman whom they would be utterly incapable of subduing themselves(!?) Is that what you meant?! Is that any way to thank them for the dozens of lives they've spared in that time, girl!?"

"I just thought-"

"You just needed to think MORE, Karkhal! Careless talk like that can start wars! And, as unlikely as it seems, war with the Terrans is not something we ever want to come within 1,331 days travel of provoking!!!" I snarl at the girl "Now that you're a soldier, there's no excuse for careless talk like that! Before, we could say 'Forgive her, she knows no better!' No longer!"

Still rubbing her horn, the girl looks down at the ground, clearly upset.

I take a deep breath to say "My advice, Karkhal? Keep your mouth shut until you have a little more experience behind you. Watch the way your seniors comport themselves. That's the way to improve."

By way of proving my point; showing her how a true soldier does not wait for others to take perilous tasks away from her, does not order others to perform them in her stead and makes no complaint of the dangers she must face, I turn to the narrow opening, bowing my upperbody down low to pass through it.

The extent to which my movement is constrained in such a tight space fills me with a certain amount of anxiety.

I am ready to back away while protecting my front in case the manic woman charges out to defend this hole in which she's taken up temporary residence.

Fortunately, that does not happen. Perhaps she has calmed in the time since she fled Khawekh?

As the cavern widens and I'm able to stand and turn my head to the fireside that sits beneath a chimney, bored into the ceiling by Twigg at some point, I'm able to see that, in fact, the reason she did not attack me is that she was asleep and failed to wake from the noise of our approach or my entry.

Stolen novel; please report.

Whether she's any calmer than she was yesterday remains indeterminate.

I look past the fire and am filled with relief to see what rests there; a long wooden pallet with two rows of eight and one row of nine swaddlings arranged inside.

My eyes fly over the babes to check that all of them are still alive and I am again relieved to see that they all appear to be.

The repulsive smell, however, makes me aware that none of them have been changed since she absconded with them.

I carefully consider my next action.

I could try to take the infants from the cave without waking their mother, getting them out of harm's way before any attempt to apprehend her occurs?

However… if she wakes to see me midway through (as she would almost certainly view it) stealing her babies, there may be no reasoning with her!

The children might be even more at risk than they would be otherwise!

Even her waking up to see them already gone may precipitate a struggle that needn't have occurred…

I make my decision.

"Whalhnek…" I announce myself in a firm voice, standing at the farthest point from the infants in the cavern at which I judge myself to be capable of properly manoeuvring.

The woman starts awake.

She turns to face me, eight eyes blinking hazily before locking onto me, unnervingly.

"…Sister…" growls the living mother in threat.

Weaver damn it…

It seems as if she's still very much in the throes of her postpartum mania.

The impulses (that her nature intended to make her willing to lay down her life to bring her brood into the world) have not ceased with her having brought them into being nonfatally and, instead, have simply transferred, refocusing on the brood themselves and maladaptively manifesting as overprotective paranoia!

Around a third of all post[caesarean] women have shown mania to some extent but this is the worst case so far!

There haven't been any previous cases where a living mother has injured a male to abscond with her own brood besides Whalhnek's that I'm aware of.

Still, if this strength of reaction occurs anything like as commonly as suggested by having happened (even just once) among the 88-110 or so operations the healers have so far performed, we will need some sort of answer to it eventually!

"I'm here to bring all of you home, Whalhnek." I say to the deranged woman, my tone authoritative but calm "Mharvhag does not wish to press charges against you for the injuries he sustained during your flight, no one wishes to punish you, no one wishes anything but the best for your brood … We care for all of you and we just need you home safely!… Will you come back with me, Sister?"

"They're my babies, Haorken! MINE!!!" roars the unstable woman, wildly gesturing to the box of them, the claws of her left hand getting uncomfortably close "Why should I let anyone else near them!?"

"Because you're a woman, Whalhnek… You don't have the first clue how to take care of children. The nursery attendant boys do… No one is trying to take your children away from you, Sister… They just need to be taken care of." I point out, my tone measured and rational.

"I'll take care of them!" she objects, delusionally.

"That's simply not realistic, Whalhnek, and I think you must realise that on some level… You're manic right now and it's keeping you from thinking clearly. Come back to town and we'll get you and your children fed and watered, we'll get their swaddling changed and we'll talk to the healers about whether there's something we can do for your mind, Sister… You like the healers, don't you? Phan? Hatathli? The ones who gave you your life after birth?"

A complicated dance of facial scutes ensues as she considers my invocation of the two Foreigners.

Then, one of the babies, stirred awake by our dispute, begins to wail.

I grimace as the first rouses others who then rouse yet others until the entire pallet is screaming, easily able to guess the effect that that will have on their mother's mental state.

The glimmer of lucidity I briefly saw in her eyes vanishes as she declares "NO! I'm not going back! I was prepared to die for these guys once already! The only way you're taking them from me is if you kill me!" rising to her feet and manoeuvring herself around to face me in the tight space.

I sigh "If we must fight, so be it, Sister…" dropping into a combat stance while steadfastly refusing to move from the point (away from the infants) to which I want to draw her.

Whalhnek stands there in her tattered clothes, looking at me with burning hatred in her eyes… then launches herself forward into a charge.

Just before contact, she rears up on her back four legs, allowing me to see her neatly scarred undercarriage.

Her front four legs all scream towards me through the air, feet aligned with metatarsi in killing stabs!

A much better fighter than the unhinged woman, I'm nevertheless forced into a defensive posture as I parry away the blows with which she means to kill me.

She pierces my clothing in several places but not with strikes direct enough that they're able to penetrate my armour.

Her upper body comes down, arms swinging wildly with claws out.

Again, I'm able to beat the strikes away without sustaining injury from them.

The woman becomes more and more enraged as she tries and fails to hurt me for the imagined threat I pose her children.

I finally spot my opening.

I lunge forward, my front legs and palps occupying hers, bring the fronts of my forearms to the insides of her upper arms to pin them back, reach behind her head to grasp her earhorns and yank them down, forcing her face to look upward.

I spread my fangs and plunge them into the exposed flesh of her throat, emptying my venom glands and praying to the Weaver that whatever is causing her mania isn't, somehow, also making her toxin resistant!

My payload delivered, I wedge my shoulder up against my sister's chin and wrap her body in a bearhug while she continues thrashing, her movements quickly growing weaker.

I push her back into the cavern a few paces, still holding her tight.

Only once I'm absolutely certain that she's lost consciousness do I release her from my grip.

The woman limply collapses forward and hits the ground with a booming *thud*.

Panting for breath, I look from my defeated opponent and, across the fire, over to her crying babies, wondering which I should remove from the cave first.

Remembering the temperature outside, I bend down to grasp the woman's wrists.

Backing out the way I came in, I drag her heavy, limp body behind me.

I feel the biting chill of the wind and snow (able to bypass my insulating clothing in several places through the holes Whalhnek stabbed).

As I drop her down in the snow, Hhlornh asks "Sister, were they-?"

"All alive, as far as I could see. I'm going back in for them now." I preempt before ordering "Someone hand me a blanket to wrap them in. While I'm retrieving them, start getting Whalhnek bound, gagged and onto the cart… We've got perhaps an [hour] before she awakes and [2] before she's in danger of hypothermia. I want to be back at the city before then."

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