Khepri body puppetry

Sifara moved the ball, moving Moord Nag a distance forward. Her pet shadow Scavenger loomed, as large as it had ever been.

And Moord Nag promptly had a stroke. I watched as Scavenger dissipated into smoke.

Wha- what? Why?

I reached out to Moord Nag, and I could feel the damage being done. I moved her back just as I’d moved her forward, shifting more capes onto the battlefield to deliver some ranged fire.

Why? I was stunned, and putting my thoughts together in regards to this was like trying to swim in molasses.

Had to act, instead of thinking. Investigate.

I used my ability to read the physical states of the creatures I controlled, reading my swarm much as I’d check a spider’s level of hunger, its health, fertility or the amount of venom available.

Almost across my entire swarm, people were threatening to lose their minds. Literally.

It was stress, a factor I hadn’t taken into account. I controlled their bodies, but I didn’t control their minds. They were bystanders, watching this all unfold, and even though I regulated their heartbeats, kept their breathing level, the mental stress accumulated.

There were exceptions in every category, but I could assess my gathered army with broad strokes of the brush. The thinkers were coping best, the tinkers nearly as well. The masters struggled the most, followed by the shakers and breakers. The rest fell in some middle ground. Moord Nag… my control over her had apparently tapped into some kind of trauma or phobia she had, so she’d been the first to reach some kind of fever pitch in terms of the buildup of stress-induced chemicals and reactions.

I was killing my own minions.

- Speck 30.5