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The Spine Doctor moved through Omen quickly, her face a calm blank mask that invited neither questions nor worry. It was a time for swift action, she could not afford to be stopped by the young monsters who'd remained in town when the Elders went to speak with the humans in the forest, either to calm their fears or because of them clogging the road in a panic if they saw signs of how grim the situation truly was in her face. Although it went against her instincts as a doctor to give them no warning that might help them survive what was coming, it was what she had to do. It was hardly the first time she'd had to make this hard choice, to do what was needed to make sure their people as a whole continued on even if it meant sacrificing a great many of them as individuals.
She could not help but feel as if what were coming was her own fault, on some level. It was her job to tend to what was ill, to fix what was broken, and the relationship between monsterkind and humanity had long been sick and wounded; an old unhealed injury that seeped at almost any contact. But she would have sworn on her quills that things had become better in recent weeks. Her people had started to understand that humans were not all dangerous brutes with knives ever in their hands, and from what she'd heard from those who traveled occasionally into Carmen the humans had become less likely to panic or attack if they caught sight of a monster. For the first time in her long life the Spine Doctor had thought that peace might be an option.
Maybe it could have been, if the monster who'd been the one to do almost all of the work of convincing their people that the humans weren't half bad hadn't revealed a madness she never would have guessed was hidden in him by tearing out the throat of the leader of the humans who'd come to talk peace with them. The fighting had started instantly, the humans raising weapons that until then they'd seemed almost embarrassed about half-heartedly carrying to the meeting and attacking without another thought. And the Spine Doctor had turned and walked away, intent on getting back to town before the fighting could reach it.
She stopped in her home for only a moment, picking up a bag that looked exactly like her doctoring kit to any monsters who might see her. Indeed, if they opened it up all they would see on top were the herbs and medicines of her trade. However, if anyone were to get close enough to shove those aside they'd find that underneath the bag was packed with relics and remindera of their kind; pictures of their rituals, a strip of dead skin peeled from a serpent caught for the Snake Moon, a claw from a bear that had not survived its poking. Things that she'd be able to show in the future to help keep their ways alive.
The thing which most monsters, even elders, did not realize was that this would be far from the first time humans and monsters went to war. It was the way of their two peoples; humans feared monsters for their claws and sharp teeth, monsters fears humans for their dangerous steel weapons and seemingly unendingly long lives, and conflict inevitably came in time. Though she had dared to hope that maybe they'd moved beyond that old hatred at last, the Spine Doctor still remembered how these things went.
The monsters would lose. They always did, in the end, when the humans put aside their simpler weapons and found their guns and the will to use them. Monsters fought with their bodies, with whatever weapons the Spawning Vat had given them or that they'd gained as they grew into adulthood. Very few of them could fight from a distance, and their hands were not made to use any weapons stolen from the humans. That inevitably proved to be their undoing.
When that time came her doctoring took on a new form. They called her an ancient monster, old beyond even the Elders, but none save the other ancients really understood what caused that distinction. They'd never known a life before Omen, they didn't realize that there was a before. And they would never realize that she was the reason life continued on after those before times, and from the ones before that, and before that. She was the Spine Doctor, it was her job to make sure that monsters survived.
After leaving her house behind her next stop was the Spawning Vat. Morsels clustered together near one side, shivering and crooning. They could feel the tension in the air more clearly than the monsters left in Omen, too young to have developed the willing blindness of telling themselves 'Everything will be alright.' A few of the braver Morsels broke away from the group when they saw her coming, swimming towards her for comfort. She ignored them, digging a small jar from her bag and dipping it into the slime of the spawning vat. She filled it from the spot where Nash-Gnash had dissolved weeks before, even though she knew logically that the fierce girl's remains would have long since dissipated throughout the vat; their people would need ferocity in the days to come, and she would do anything that might help them to gain it.
She sealed the jar carefully before stashing it away again. It held too little slime to risk losing a single drop, so little that only one or two Morsels would be able to form from it. But that would be enough, more than enough. They would never become Elders, her blood alone far from enough to give them stability, and when their adult bodies dissolved it would create enough slime for another dozen Morsels or more. It would allow them to build another life in a more peaceful place.
She surveyed the Morsels bobbing on the surface with an eye that she forced herself to keep dispassionate before leaving. They were so small that it would an easy matter to keep one or two hidden with her as she searched for that new home, but none of them appeared ready to leave yet. If she pulled one from the slime it would only break apart within minutes, hours at best. "Let yourselves dissolve," she told them, the only thing she could do to help them now, "or devour each other until none are left. There will be no life for you outside the vat, Morsels, and pain is the only thing waiting for you if you're still here when the fighting approaches."
As if on cue she heard a scream coming from near the entrance to Omen, it's guttural tone telling her that it came from a monster throat. The Spine Doctor couldn't help but flinch at the sound; everything in her told her to go towards it, to mend the wounds of whoever was doing the screaming, but she could not. It was far more important that she save their people as a whole than any single monster. She gave the Spawning Vat one last glance, glad to see some of the morsels already allowing their bodies to come undone--it was always difficult to tell just how much they understood at that stage in their lives, and the Spine Doctor's own Morsel days had been far too long ago to even try remembering--then she turned away.
She turned her face towards the mountains, and walked away from the sounds of fighting getting closer and closer behind her. Humans could not climb mountains as monsters could, they did not have claws or spines to drive into the stone and hold themselves in place, nor did they have the strength to do so even if one somehow grew a good set of claws. The mountains were too harsh a place to live, but they were a place to survive in. It was a lesson she'd learned long ago, when the town she'd been born into was attacked while she, her cousin-twin, and their friend now known as The Oldest Monster had snuck out of the Brood Caves to play at goat-taunting on the slopes. It was no surprise the The Oldest wasn't with her this time around, it was his nature to stay and fight but he always survived to find her again, but being without Marinus felt strange and wrong. Her cousin-twin had always been with her when the time came to hide, her wisdom and understanding of the monster mind as important as the Spine Doctor's own knowledge of what things were needed for them to thrive when it came to guiding the newborn Morsels to come in rebuilding their society, but no longer. Marinus had fallen in the first moments of the attack, too startled by what their rogue Elder had done to notice the human targeting her.
That was a sharp pain, one that no amount of milkweed or trout guts could help, but the Spine Doctor did not allow herself to bow beneath it. She walked with her back straight until she entered the forest and only then, once she was deep enough in to not be seen, did she break into a run.
She would reach the mountains. She would survive. And through her her people would survive as well. That was what mattered the most.
It was a mission worth suffering any amount of pain.