The scent led me back the way we had come, then down a passage we had ignored. Deeper into the ship.

Minna and the guards ran along after me. They were keeping up easily - the Kymari were fast when they wanted to be - but I tried to check back every so often to make sure they didn't stop. Being jerked back by the leash was not a fun experience.

I followed the scent through the corridors and stopped at a room. The door was closed, but the scent had definitely gone into it. I hissed and circled through the air in frustration. Minna came to a stop behind me and looked at me in confusion, then looked back up and down the passage. "Did you lose it?"

I growled again and dropped to the floor. I stood up against the door and scratched at it, then hissed, then looked back at Minna pointedly. Then I scratched at the door again just because - the sicora had gone in there. I was impatient to find it.

"Can you open this?" Minna turned to the guards. He nodded and moved to the side of the door to begin tapping on the panel there.

"Nate, come back." I looked over my shoulder at Minna and hissed at the call. There was a sicora in there. My instincts were telling me to find it, to kill it. Even the calmer, rational part of me wanted to go after it; I did not want to give it a chance to kill somebody else. And she wanted me to back up?

"Nate." Minna spoke slower and covered her fist with her free hand, doing the simple demonstration she had done when she was first teaching me this trick. "Come back."

Her words got through the instincts screaming at me that time. I shifted from side to side, still very much wanting to go through the door, but then I managed to turn away. I flew the short distance back to Minna and balanced carefully on her hand.

She wound up some of the slack from the leash and took several steps back from the door.

The guard messed with the controls for a few more seconds... then the door split open.

The scent of the sicora grew stronger immediately.

So did the scent of blood.

Two of the guards moved in with their spears at the ready while the third stayed with us. I did my best not to jump off Minna's arm and go tearing after them, and I more or less managed to stay put. Seconds passed while my blood continued to boil.

One of the guards came back out. Through his helmet I could see that his expression was grim. "It's clear. Come look."

Minna pulled her arm in closer and followed the guard through the door. I leaned forward to try and get through the doorway as soon as I could.

I immediately wished I hadn't.

This room was covered in blood and body parts, just like the other one had been. If anything this room was more of a nightmare - the sicora had more space to play in this time, and blood and various body parts covered a wider area. I stared at the gruesome sight and felt the urge to kill the sicora get even stronger.

"Is this the last of the crew?" Minna looked away from the body and back towards the guards.

One of the guards knelt down and looked at some of the shredded clothing mixed into the bloody mess. "I don't think so. This doesn't look like the ship uniform. And he took us out of the section that was sealed; we're back in the public area." He carefully rose back to his feet and stepped away. "I think this was one of the passengers."

Another guard spoke up. "Are you going backwards? They sealed the front off when it got the pilot; it couldn't have gone this way. It would have had to kill this person first, then the body we just came from, then go to the bridge."

I narrowed my eyes. No. No, the scent of the sicora was stronger here than it had been in the other room. It was subtle, but I could tell. We were getting closer to it. It had definitely come this way after it had killed the other Kymari.

Minna seemed to hesitate. "I... maybe. I'm not sure. Should we go back, and have him try looking around again?"

The first guard looked back at the dead Kymari for a moment, then shook his head. "No. No, I think he's on the right track. Look; nothing has been eaten. The sicora just killed this person and left; it didn't stop to eat." He looked back to us with a grim expression. "It wasn't hungry when it got here. It had already eaten."

My boiling blood went a little cold at that. I had been right. The sicora was simply killing for the fun of it. There was no point to what it was doing now... and it wasn't going to stop on its own.

I leaned back to chew on the leash in frustration. We needed to stop wasting time!

"But... it's moving away from the bridge. Even a sicora couldn't have killed the pilot, then the other crewman, then done this." The other guard looked back down at the mess. "Not in this short of a time."

The other guard nodded. "You're right. Something is off. I'll check with Ketzel. Let him have a look in the meantime."

Minna nodded and unwound the leash. "Go on."

I flew around the room while the guard stepped back outside. The scent of blood was everywhere, and it made it a little harder to pick out the other scents... but that fetid smell was becoming easier to focus on the more I tried. I kept to the air to avoid stepping in anything as I followed the smell of the sicora. It had definitely come in through the doorway, but it was hard to tell where it had gone after that. The smell backtracked and crossed back over itself a few times, and it kept going back to the corpse it had created... it must have left the room somehow though...

There!

I hissed as I ducked under a low shelf and found where the sicora had gone. A hole had been ripped into the vent in the wall. It was just barely big enough to squeeze through; this sicora must be only a little bit bigger than me. If I hurried...

The leash tugged me back as I tried to slip into the vent. I hissed in frustration and strained against it, trying to pull free. No! We're getting close; let me go!!

Minna grabbed me and pulled me away from the wall. "Shh. Calm down." She calmly began to pet down my back while she held me.

I hissed in frustration... then I calmed a little. I stared back down at the shelf in sudden alarm. Had I really been about to dive into a dark, narrow air vent to go chase after a monster that had shredded two fully grown Kymari?

I absolutely had been. What's more, I still very much wanted to.

Dragonet instincts were powerful. And apparently weren't very well acquainted with common sense.

Minna held me until the guard came back into the room. She pointed to the shelf. "He followed the scent trail there. Something tore through the vent and went out through the air ducts."

The guard found one of the few clear spots in the room and knelt down to check. He nodded. "Ketzel found the last crew member. Dead, near the bridge. He's going room by room with two guards to check for the sicora; he wants us to keep tracking. Everybody else is going to stay between us, and wait to join whoever finds it first."

One of the other guards shook his head. "Four dead, this quickly? Even if nobody had heard it getting somebody else before the pilot, that's still..."

"Yeah. Something else is going on here. This is a small hole, too; this sicora isn't very big. I'm not sure how it could do this much this quickly." The first guard shook his head and looked back at Minna. "I suppose letting him go into the vents to track is a bad idea?"

Minna nodded. "We won't be doing that."

The guard grinned a little. "We'll go room by room then, and see if he can pick the scent up somewhere else." He led the way out of the room, then moved to another door back the way we had come. After another moment of tinkering with the panel on the wall the door opened. The guard did a quick glance through the room, then Minna let me back into the air.

I flew around the room, but nothing jumped out. I landed and sniffed a few things just to be sure. The room looked like what you would expect from a hotel room, except much, much smaller. A bed, a small desk, another door that led to a sink and a toilet. Not many places for a sicora to hide in, and no smell of one either.

I thought about sniffing at the vent to check if the sicora had walked past this room... but I decided against it. I didn't really have a way to tell Minna I couldn't smell the sicora except by acting disinterested, and I was worried that if I went straight to the vent then she would think I had found something. And an animal wouldn't necessarily make the connection between the vent in the other room and the air duct leading past this room. Besides...

"Nate, come here." Minna sat down next to the shelf that concealed the vent and tapped on it. I flew over at her call and made a show of sniffing around, then sniffed at the vent.

The scent was very faint. The sicora had definitely gone into the air duct... but it hadn't come this way. I sniffed a bit more just to be sure, then I looked back at Minna. I tried to put on my best, 'Why are you wasting my time?' look of disappointment, then flew back towards the door out of the room. The leash didn't have enough slack to let me back into the hallway - or was it a corridor, since we were on a spaceship? - but I think I made my point.

All three of the guards frowned as Minna scooped me back up. They could tell what my act meant. "Doesn't look like it came this way. Let's try the room in the other direction?"

One of the guards - by this point I was starting to think he was in charge, but if nothing else he was definitely smarter than the other two - nodded and led the way back down the corridor. We hurried past the room with the dead Kymari and waited while the guard opened the door and did a quick check around the room, then Minna let me loose again.

The scent was slightly stronger here, but still very faint. I did a quick lap around the room just to be sure, then zeroed in on the vent. The sicora had definitely come this way. I landed next to the vent and hissed, then clawed at the vent.

Minna scooped me back up and took us out of the room. "It definitely came this way."

"Away from the bridge." The smarter guard frowned, then pointed down the corridor. "We'll check every other room. We need to hurry."

We stopped to check two more rooms. I picked up the scent of the sicora lingering behind the vents each time. We were still following it. We skipped the rooms in between, and we started past another room when the scent of the sicora grew stronger. I hissed from Minna's shoulder and spread out my wings.

"Hold on." Minna called out to the guard and pointed at the room we were passing. "Let's check this one."

I hissed in frustration but stayed on Minna's shoulder. The scent was obviously going down the corridor, not into the room. It was a waste of time to check it!

The guard quickly opened the door and glanced through it. "There." He pointed to the vent in the corner of the room. The cover had been pushed out, and was laying on the floor. "The sicora must have come out here and then gone back out into the corridor."

"How did it get through the door?" Another guard reached up and poked at the door frame with his spear.

"Good question. The power was still on even after the crash, until we got here and shut it down. The doors would have been open for a few minutes after the crash." The guard stepped back out into the corridor and looked back up the way we had come. "Still. That's not enough time to make it all the way here from the bridge, not while killing at least two more Kymari."

I hissed from my shoulder. It was a stupid question! It didn't matter what had happened before; I could clearly tell the sicora had gone that way, down the corridor. That was the important part. We needed to go, to find this thing! Standing around talking was a waste of time, time the sicora could be using to hurt people!

I tried to calm down, I tried to tell myself it was okay, but my instincts were screaming at me to go. It was like somebody had snuck up behind me and popped a balloon. I was on edge just from knowing a sicora was nearby, and every inhale of its smell only made it worse.

The guard finally seemed to reach the obvious conclusion. "Let's keep following him. I'll keep Ketzel updated."

Minna nodded and unwound the leash from around her arm. I set off down the corridor, and the four Kymari moved with me. The corridor curved around as we went, and we rounded two corners before the guard called for us to stop. "Wait."

I hissed when Minna stopped, and immediately began throwing a temper tantrum on the floor of the ship. The Kymari ignored me while I chittered angrily and hopped at the edge of the leash, and I finally settled for glaring at them in frustration and chewing on the leash.

The guard was just standing there with a hand up. He seemed to be listening to something, but I didn't hear anything. He was just wasting time!

Finally, finally, after what had to be hours, he lowered his hand. "Ketzel says they found a sicora. We're to wait here while they kill it."

Minna scooped me back up again and tried to pet me back into some semblance of calm again, but it wasn't working this time. I knew the sicora was near. I could taste it. I didn't know what Ketzel had found, but he was wrong; the sicora was that way! Its scent was all I could think about; it drowned out the smell of metal, and blood, and Kymari, and even the smells from outside the ship. They were all secondary smells now; the scent of the sicora was a giant neon sign screaming 'THAT WAY!'

I noticed one of the other guards shaking his head at us. The smarter guard caught it, too. "Something you want to say?"

The other guard rolled his eyes and motioned towards me. "The thing led us in the complete wrong direction, and now we're stuck guarding it while everybody else gets in on the kill."

Minna flushed in sudden embarrassment. Her grip on me shook a little.

I vented my frustration by growling at that guard. I felt my claws begin to prick into the thick glove Minna was wearing. The guard took a hesitant breath and actually took a step back from us.

The smarter guard just snorted. "Don't worry. I have a feeling you'll get a chance to fight something soon. And you'll have him to thank for it." He glanced down the corridor and started to say more, then stopped suddenly. He listened for a moment, then continued. "Ketzel reports they've killed a sicora."

The guard held his hand up and began speaking into his wrist. After a moment he nodded to us. "We're good to continue now. The rest of the team is heading our way."

"Continue?" The younger guard looked confused. "But... they got the sicora."

The smarter guard shook his head. "No, they got a sicora." He looked at me, then pointed down the corridor. "Let him keep going."

Minna nodded and let go of me. I flapped back into the air and shot after the smell, angry for the time we had wasted. The Kymari chased after me. I hurled around the corner, certain the sicora had to be there...

I pulled up and flapped my wings enough to kill my momentum, instead just hovering in place. I screamed in frustration.

A jagged hole was in the side of the corridor before us. The scent led straight to it. The outside world was clearly visible beyond, and I could clearly see the light from the shuttles filtering in through the hole.

We had taken too long.

The sicora was loose in the city.