Chimera wasted no time as she spoke to Stonesworth, explaining who she was with and where she was going.

  “Make sure to tell the High General, she should be in talks with the Chieftain. I’m heading off.”

  “Archduchess, it would be against protocol to leave you without an escort of some kind. Please allow some of my men and women to accompany you.”

  The stiffness in his voice betrayed a sense of worry, and Chimera bet it was mostly due to her look that he mentioned the need for escorts.

  Chimera smiled as she shook her head, “if they can keep up with me, sure.”

  Chimera didn’t wait for a reply as she rushed outside, but not before she hit the private with a cocktail to knock him out for a good while.

  Her wings sprouted from her back as she took to the skies, a burst of gravity magic making her lighter than air for a few moments, and soon she was in the air high above the smoke stacks of Anvilage.

  Alright then, coordinates.

  She reached into her mind to pick the direction that the private’s mind showed her, southeast for an hour by shuttle. Rocks in black and red, with a river running through the outer parts of the entrance.

  Another burst of gravity magic sent her forward like a bullet, and it took a bit of manipulation to change her flying form to deal with the new speed.

  If she had to guess, she must have been flying at a speed equal to a land shuttle, and from what she knew from the blueprints that she and Meras came up with, that was roughly two hundred miles per hour.

  The land around seemed to transform from the rather rocky and stone covered city of Anvilage to something much more vibrant. The land held purple leaves in taller skinnier trees, with dark rivers of water that cracked like spider webs across the terrain.

  Chimera had almost thought that the whole of the planet was going to look like the mines and the city. Seeing the nature around her, the wildlife, it brought a small smile to her face. Every now and then, she would swoop down and catch a few leaves and plants she could see and sample them, adding them to her archive of DNA.

  Even as she made her small detours, an hour passed quickly, and soon she found herself near the landmarks in her memories.

  The mines were hard to miss with the now singular river running through the outer edges of the complex. The starport and the general admission structure next to it were manned from what she could tell, and people were walking around with pieces of ore in their hands.

  Chimera quickly flew up into the sky, peering down at the people below as she slowly circled above.

  Her eyes focused around, trying to take in anything that looked suspicious.

  It didn’t take her long, as the people with the ore didn’t bother to put it in any carts or storage, they simply wondered around with the ore in their hands, making themselves look busy.

  Hell, they’re all infected.

  Chimera worried that all of them might be like the private, but it was better to be sure and now she was.

  The only thing she wasn’t sure of was who was responsible. She had an idea, sure, but all of that needed to be confirmed first.

  Is it the Hood? Traika mentioned them having some way to affect people, but this many?

  Whatever it was, she needed to put an end to it without hurting the people below.

  Stealth would be best… not that I’m any good at it.

  The irony that she could change everything about herself and yet, she still sucked at acting wasn’t lost to Chimera as she shifted into her Elfari form.

  Innocent kid mode, activate.

  She landed herself next to a storage unit that held no people as she walked out, a small piece of ore in her hands as she tried to blend in with the others.

  People around her did notice her presence, but it was if they could only look and not approach, worry in their eyes.

  “Is that one of the young… I thought they made it out.” One said as she walked by.

  “No… not the little ones…” another said, a dull noise coming from their mouth.

  Chimera tried to look as dead eyed as possible, walking towards the mine entrance with the ore in hand.

  “Child, no!”

  A woman approached her, a poor desiccated looking one that looked as though she hadn’t had a drink in days.

  Chimera felt a twinge in her heart as she saw her approach.

  “Have… to deliver…” she said, doing her best impression of the people around her.

  “Snap out of it! You can’t listen to the whispers!” The motherly Elfari spoke, a strange conviction in her voice that didn’t match the others in the camp.

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  Chimera turned to her, letting her hand touch the temple of the Elfari woman.

  …It's there, but it’s faint, the pheromone slurry that is rank around here.

  Chimera made it seem as though she was breaking from a trance, allowing the Elfari to drag her away to a small spot away from the others.

  “You’ll be safe here, just focus on my voice.”

  Chimera tapped the motherly Elfari’s shoulder as the slightly intoxicated woman turned to face her.

  “It’s okay, I’m only pretending so I can get inside.”

  This shocked the woman for a second, “No! You can’t! That place is crawling with the scalekin- AHH!”

  She held her head for a moment, and a bit of blood dripped from her nose as Chimera took a moment to check her condition with a tendril.

  Severe malnutrition, and the pheromones are attacking her brain?! What the hell is this?

  Quickly, she forced the tendril into the Elfari’s ear, touching her brain and coating it as she absorbed the pheromones.

  They tried to resist, but Chimera’s master of her own biology simply slapped away their feeble attempts to attack her.

  The body now freed of the hormonal assault, Chimera took a brief moment to check up on the Elfari, who she gleaned was named Pepa.

  She's Pares' mother? Holy crap, how is her body this badily damaged?

  Chimera checked, keeping Pepa sedated as she fished through her body to check.

  Barely any water… no food save for her own fat stores… trauma in her head, hands and feet.

  Slowly Chimera healed the damage as she went through he various areas, gathering the details and piecing the story together from her experience.

  It was clear that Pepa and the other miners were being affected by something they digested, a strange cocktail of compounds combining with their own bodies to create some sort of vicious dependency.

  It also lowered their body’s will to resist and made them compliant to whoever fed them the stuff.

  Depriving them of water made the pheromone’s effect stronger, which was likely why Pepa was so dehydrated.

  Chimera checked her over one last time before she released Pepa from her tendril, allowing the woman to collect herself as she woke from the sleep Chimera placed her under.

  “W-What? What happened?”

  Chimera smiled, “you’ve been under a bit of a spell, though not a magical one. It’s a chemical compound that you were eating, making you more compliant. Luckily I flushed it out of your system and healed you up. I’m Mera.”

  She waved at Pepa with her tendril.

  “Holy Mother…” Pepa jumped back a bit.

  Chimera backed away as Pepa began to calm down, her breathing going from erratic to even paced after a few minutes.

  “M-Mera? How’d you get here? They’ve been screening and capturing anyone that comes to the site and brainwashing them.”

  Chimera nodded, “yup, figured as much when I found one of the guards had the same treatment you had. Don’t worry though, we got the calvary coming and soon this whole place will be saved.”

  Chimera expected this to lighten the load on the poor woman’s nerves. Instead, Pepa gave her a look of pure terror at the news of incoming reinforcements.

  “They can’t be here. If the Hood learns of them, they’ll order the others to… get rid of the evidence.” She looked away as she spoke.

  Crap, gotta take out the leader then.

  “Don’t worry, I’m trained in this sort of thing. Can you gather up the people around here, maybe bring them all to that welcome center near the pad?”

  Pepa nodded, wasting no time to hear the rest as she moved the actors in the quarry area out and into the center.

  Just as the group arrived, Chimera, also among the people being corralled, started her work.

  A flurry of tendrils snaked between the affected survivors, stabbing them each and dumping her own fluids deep into the brains of the miners.

  Almost looks like I’m the one doing the mind controlling, if only they knew.

  Chimera laughed at her own joke as the rest of the people started to come to, and soon she and Pepa were addressing a group of very confused, very freaked out miners.

  “Lasa! Where are you?”

  “Where’s my babies? Marco! Tarma!”

  “I can’t believe they had me picking up rocks for weeks!”

  Need to get these panickers under control.

  “HEY! Listen up!” Chimera shouted, allowing her voice to bounce off the walls of the waiting room.

  That got the people’s attention, some even started to hyperventilate from the loud noise.

  “Okay, great to know you all are listening. Here’s the skinny though, The Verdant Hood’s got the mine under control and I’m meaning to bust in there to save the rest of the miners. Pepa here is going to help you all out while I’m spelunking. Does anyone know where the other miners are being held?”

  One of the hyperventilators in the back raised her hand as she stood up, “My babies! They brough them down near the dig site, where those strange tunnels were found. M-Most of the children are down there.”

  “How far down are we talking?”

  She collected herself before she spoke again, "near the entrance to the mines is a chasm with an elevator. It goes straight down to the site. You can miss them.”

  Chimera nodded, “alright everyone, make sure your here and away from the mines, I’ll be sending the rest up through the elevators. If anyone asks, tell them Chimera is down in the mines chasing after the snakes.”

  Chimera got a few nods with a quick hug from Pepa, “my husband Oras is down with the children checking on them for the Hood.”

  “I’ll get him back to you.”

  Pepa pulled her away from the hug as Chimera waved her off before racing back to the entrance.

  It took her no time at all once she reached the elevator, but rather than use it to go down, she activated the elevator to head down while she slid down the walls of the chasm, slowing herself down so she didn’t pick up too much speed.

  She arrived to the sounds of slithering and hissing, a few of the noises muffled by the sounds of picks hitting rock.

  The elevator finally arrived after a few minutes, allowing Chimera a moment to catch her breath as the scalekin made their way to the now opening door of the elevator.

  Three quick pricks to the back of their necks and the Verdant Hood guards fell asleep amidst the darkness.

  Chimera kept them off to the side, hidden away in the back of a shed near the elevators and knocking them out further with a cocktail of medicines.

  “No mistakes, no mercy for the enemy.”

  Chimera shifted into a Larger form as she readied for combat, her body, tendrils and powers flaring to life as she made her way to the hostages below.