Schmetterling

                                        

                                              
Gideon was dreaming and the eerie fact was that she knew it. For one thing, she knew she’d fallen asleep on the couch of Intake One’s lounge room, but that wasn’t where she was now. But mostly she knew it was a dream because she was staring at herself. It’s actually a common dream for Gids because this was often how she would communicate with her inner Fury.
                              
Hello Killer. Gids felt the words echo around her head as she watched the nearly identical woman across from her start to set up a blank chess board. The game hadn’t started yet and the pieces were still in their default mode but soon enough they’d start to take on the appearances of her Intake and fellow Councillors. Then like every year the pieces would shift along the board and be won or lost as Gideon got a better sense of the people around her. Like the pieces on the board, Gideon’s mirror image was a perfect match, but even as she watched herself casually set up the game, subtle changes were taking place.
                              
Hello Killer. Her Fursyside echoed back at her. The words and intonation were identical to her own and yet there was an alluring richness the doppelganger had that Gideon normally lacked. Madness and chaos were always tempting, like a flame is to the curious moth. We know that something is off, right? Her replica queried, fingers idly caressing the pieces as she precisely laid out the oncoming Game.
                              
I’ve noticed yeah. We’re--- well, I’m feeling on edge. It’s more than just the Mardrom thing, though the offer to Hunt and kill prey is unsettling. Something else is very off. Gideon had to admit. Agreeing with her darkest self was never a good idea. The last time she’d really gotten along with herself, she’d managed to kill a fully summoned Maelstrom and nearly gotten herself killed in return. Thankfully a incognito Loki descendent had used one Major shift in luck to alter her implausible recovery. That kind of luck only happened once in a lifetime and Gideon in all her Furiness knew it. 
                              
Things certainly are accumulating rapidly this year. That is for you to worry about, I’ll just kill the things we aim at. Speaking of killing, that little nightmare is older than we last saw. Her parents were part of that anti human compound that was terrorizing the Truce talks. Kept targeting the humans and setting off bombs to eliminate Portentums who were sympathizers. Selena took us to deal with them all. The filly might have been five at the time, but we made sure she remembered us. Selena always liked that sort of thing. The Fury inside recalled and suddenly Gideon could visualize the memory. She knew that wasn’t how memory worked in other creatures, but since this had always been how she worked, it wasn’t something she really questioned. 
                              
Her mentor Fury, Selena, had taken her into a compound of Portentums. The entered with a silence matched only by the shadows themselves and the violent creatures within never even suspected that death walked among them. There were innocent family members and children as well, but when the time came to handle the issue, only those that did not attack the Furies survived. Gideon and Selena had slaughtered the compound, used a level of brutality that had successfully deterred others for a time. It had gone down in the media and books as a horrific and painfully efficient assault, and Gideon had been all of ten years old at the time. 
                              
And she remembers us well. If she’s come into her Power and is the same natural caliber as her parents had been, it will be quite fun to break her before we will her. The anticipation in the Fury’s voice was disturbing in its gleeful certainty. 
                              
I’m not going to Hunt and kill a child under my care. I’d like to think We’ve moved past these little impulses. Just because someone has come along and offered me their proverbial neck doesn’t mean I HAVE to take a bite, to use a fangers metaphor. Gids wished that she sounded more confident in that statement but it wasn’t just her inner darkness that had been affected by the offer.