She leads me to a simple wood door, and I find a room full of women breastfeeding infants. Some are newborns, while others are just starting to walk. The women are either members of the church or random women who are unable to take care of themselves and their children.
I could feel the heat from the fire long before I reached the black door at the end of the room. The fact that the women shied away from it and that none of the children would even go near it told me everything that I needed to know. And yet my partner walked as if she had been here before.
I watched as she pushed the door open, her leather glove nearly blended into the door. My body moved long before my mind could process what I saw on the other side, and before I knew it I was being held by not just my partner but a but a sister of the church and a member of the city council.
I could feel my sword cracking as the ethereal energies surrounding the blade crashed into the councilor's shield. The councilor's shield seemed to bend as it resisted my sword's attempts to piers through it.
"Monsters, I'll kill you." I said to them, as I listened to the cries of pain, that the infants let out when the priestess used the bloodcoverd dagger to kill them.
My heart beat faster as I heard each child scream. The scries of pain drowned the world around me until the only thing there was, was the priestess who stood over a pair of tiny hands and feet, the blood of the dagger dripped as the infant in front of her reached for her.
The weight of the councilor, the sister, and my partner became nothing as I slowly forced my way toward the priestess, who killed another infant. I felt something hit my face, but I might have imagined it, and if something had hit me, it didn't matter. The only thing that matters is killing the woman in front of me.
I lift my sword, but something forces my hand to stay in place so I can't use it. With no other choice, I lift my left hand and point my gun at the priestess's head, but before I can pull the trigger my partner puts herself in front of the monster.
"Look." I hear her say, as I pull the hammer back.
"Move," I order her, but she just closes her eyes and stays in place. "Please look at the cribs," I hear her say to me. Her voice is trembling and so small that even I can barely hear it.
I look past her and the monster and find something disgusting, the creature is the size of a Human newborn, but it's wrong. It's as if something took the body parts from different creatures, and used them to make something unnatural.
The world comes back and I suddenly realize that the sister is trying to break my neck, and the councilor is using his shield to keep me from moving closer to the priestess. The burning sensation on my head tells me that someone must have hit me, and if my face isn't swollen, it will be soon.
"They need to be put down before they can grow." I hear the priestess say as she tries to push my partner aside, but the woman doesn't move.
"I see that you came back to your senses. The children are the victims of someone, or something plot to destroy us and everything we created." I hear the counselor say but I ignore him and put my gun away.
I ignore the look in the priestess's eyes as I lift my free hand and force the sister who is still trying to kill me off my back.
"Why hasn't the guard or any of the other groups been told about this?' I ask them, but before anyone can answer the priestess turns and pushes the cradles into a furnace.
The fire seems to bend as if rejecting the infant's bodies, but after a moment it goes back to normal. I want to close my eyes and look away, but the sound of animals screaming is too hard to ignore. Those things were never Human.
"Explain?" I say to them and I feel the weight of the councilor's hand lift freeing my right hand.
"The guard found a glowing rock. I won't bother saying its name because doing so, somehow makes the mutations grow in number." The counselor says his hand points at the furnace.
I look at my partner who who looks down as if in shame. "You didn't tell them?" I ask her but she doesn't answer.
"I ordered her not to say." the priestess says to me, my left-hand covers her mouth and I pull her past my partner and look into the woman's dark brown eyes.
"You are lucky that I didn't kill you for admitting your crime."I say to the priestess, as a metal click from my side tells me that the sister is pointing her gun at my head.
"Kill her if you want but she's your wife's sister.": I hear the counselor say to me but I can't see the resemblance between. My partner pulls the cover off the priestess's head and I see the woman's long red hair.
I let go of her, if it wasn't for the eyes, they would be twins. No, the priests are older, but besides that, they are almost exact copies of each other.
"Where was the oldest rock found? I don't want to know where the first one was found, but where the one that looked as if it was there the longest.' I said to them.
"On Earth near the water filtration system." the sister answers.
"Is this everything that you wanted to show and tell me?" I ask them but my eyes are on my partner. I don't know why she looks at me like that, why her eyes are full of pain. No, that's not true, I almost killed her sister, who was doing the right thing, to her I must look like a monster.
"Yeah." the counselor answers me.
"Three more questions and then I'll decide what to do."
"Does this have to do anything with what we ran into a few weeks ago? Does this have anything to do with the expansion project? And why is the council trying to expand the lands when we are facing one problem after another?"
The councilor lowers his shield and relaxes his expression, the tension that was there is gone.
"No. The group that we killed were the ones who tried to destroy the walls. We thought that they might be involved in this, but nothing connects their group to this."
"We are planning to expand because we don't have any other choice. Fish and vegetables aren't enough to feed all of us, and if they were, the amount of space that we have isn't enough to grow the amount of food that we need."
"One for crops, one for grass, and one for animals. The lands are to be rotated. We let the grass grow let the animals eat the grass and then we go and plant what we need, then we do it all over again."
I look at the counselor and before I can ask him anything he answers the b=obis question.
"Farmland regardless of the kind is a lot bigger than people think. We are already dealing with those that just want to hurt us. If they knew what we were planning they could sabotage everything before we even start or worse take it over after we made the land fertile."
I look at my partner again but the woman just turns her head, I guess this is the last time we will see each other.
I walk past the counselor and out of the door, I ignore the frightened looks in the woman's eyes, but I stop when one of the babies crawls in front of me. I lower myself and lift the innocent and delicate child, he smiles at me, his eyes are pure and full of life. His mouth doesn't have a single tooth and yet it's so big that...
I slowly and carefully put him down so that I don't hurt him, there is still good in this world. I have to remember that smiling face. I have to remember that I'm still human.
The problem is that I need to be a monster and for that, I might need a monster.