Someone You Can Build a Nest In

The next morning, the camp is in complete disarray. Baroness Wulfyre sits grieving but furious in a bomb crater. She denies Ode’s death and issues cruel orders that include the execution of guards. Epigram deliberately avoids her mother. Shesheshen attempts to get Homily to safety, away from the Baroness, but their hiding spot is betrayed by the captain, Arnau.

The Baroness confronts Homily directly, verbally abusing her and blaming her for Ode’s death. Seeing Homily’s distress, Shesheshen intervenes to deescalate the confrontation and successfully leads Homily away to a waiting carriage.

That evening at the Red Dragon Inn, Homily kisses Shesheshen, and this causes Shesheshen’s internal heart-like organ to react with intense pain. They discover a mutual dislike for kissing and bond over this shared sentiment. Homily confides in Shesheshen about her traumatic childhood, and she also reveals that Epigram would physically harm her under the guise of playing.

Homily removes her scarf to show Shesheshen a deep scar across her throat where Epigram once slit it. She explains that this abuse drove her to originally flee her family. She also has fresher wounds that are still bleeding, and Homily confesses that Epigram continues to hurt her. Shesheshen comforts her but internally struggles with the urge to confess her own monstrous nature.

Shesheshen plans to return to her lair to feed and regain strength. On the way, she finds Blueberry and removes several lingering skewers from the bear’s hide. In her basement, she discovers that her stored food—pre-digested corpses—has completely disappeared. A slime trail leads from the empty larder to a door that has been pushed open from the inside.

She realizes that the deer-skulled monster is her offspring, which she accidentally created from her discarded flesh. More shocking still, she discovers that the organ she assumed was her heart is actually an egg sac that yearns for Homily to serve as its nest. Overwhelmed by this maternal connection and the implications, she collapses.

Returning to the inn, Shesheshen joins Homily, Epigram, Malik, and Rourke as they plan their next move. To control her reactive egg sac, Shesheshen deliberately keeps physical distance from Homily. Inspired by the supposed curse on the Wulfyre family, the hunters propose using a Wulfyre family member as bait to lure the monster into a trap.

Epigram furiously refuses to participate and implies that Homily should be the one to risk her life instead. Seeing an opportunity to confront her offspring directly, Shesheshen suggests they use a trackable lure to wound the creature in the trap.

Homily volunteers to serve as bait, determined to save Epigram’s life and prove worthy of her family’s love. Shesheshen follows her to a storehouse where Homily gathers supplies, and she tries unsuccessfully to change Homily’s mind. However, Homily explains her desperate need to protect her sister.

Shesheshen recognizes the self-destructive nature of Homily’s kindness. She realizes that if she were to ask Homily to sacrifice herself and become a nest for Shesheshen’s eggs, Homily would agree. Meanwhile, Homily vows this will be the last sacrifice she makes for her family. Unable to dissuade her, Shesheshen resolves to accompany her on the hunt.

The party returns to a newly fortified mercenary camp. A massive explosion nearby reveals itself as a demonstration of a new, more powerful Wulfyre bomb, created using a recipe improved by the late Catharsis. Baroness Wulfyre appears wearing armor and her necklace of steel fangs.

While Homily tends to guards injured in the blast, Shesheshen watches her and realizes the trap is too dangerous for Homily to survive. She resolves to use a bomb as a distraction to lure the offspring to herself and become the true bait instead.

Homily begins walking down the path she has memorized, cutting through a field of disguised pit traps. To execute her own plan, Shesheshen shapeshifts into a guard and enters the armory tent. She manages to grab two small bombs before a suspicious Epigram enters the tent, and Shesheshen escapes by liquefying her form, leaving behind only an empty suit of armor.

She then detonates one bomb in the northern forest, causing an explosion that draws the guards away from Homily’s position. Meanwhile, Homily becomes panicked about Shesheshen’s safety amid the explosion and calls out for her. Shesheshen slips out of the southern edge of camp, presenting herself as bait for her offspring.

When Shesheshen’s offspring appears, it seems smaller than before and comes without its camouflage of bones. The creature approaches her submissively, and as Shesheshen drops her bomb and reaches toward it, they share a brief, peaceful moment of connection. The Baroness interrupts this reunion by attacking the offspring with a rosemary-oiled spear.

The offspring stabs the Baroness in the neck before fleeing into a deep trench. When Malik and Rourke join them, the Baroness is seemingly unharmed, to Shesheshen’s surprise. The Baroness orders them to relentlessly pursue the wounded creature.

During the hunt, Shesheshen isolates the Baroness and asks her about how she killed the wyrm that Shesheshen believes was her mother. Then, Shesheshen attacks and kills the Baroness, stabbing her in the neck and head with metal spikes she was previously using as bones. However, the Baroness’s corpse reanimates, revealing a gray-skinned creature that is Shesheshen’s creator. The creature impales Shesheshen and explains that she planted Shesheshen as an egg in the original Baron; she killed the original Baroness years ago and has been wearing her corpse as a disguise ever since. Now, she seeks Shesheshen’s nutritious egg sac so she can feed on it and prolong her own life. The creature reveals that this is why she, as the Baroness, has been hunting the Wyrm of Underlook with renewed urgency—she has been in search of the egg sac.

The Baroness also reveals her plan to kill either Homily or Epigram and wear one of them as her next disguise. When Rourke appears, the Baroness kills him without hesitation. Shesheshen detonates her last bomb, injuring them both and escaping on Rourke’s horse.

Gravely wounded, Shesheshen returns to camp and decides she must confess everything to Homily. She sees a figure in Homily’s blue robe huddled in a tent and enters, believing it to be Homily. Shesheshen delivers a full confession about her true nature, her initial deceptive intentions, her genuine love, and a warning about her creator, the Baroness.

The figure rises and removes her hood, revealing herself to be Epigram instead of Homily. Epigram immediately shoots Shesheshen with a poisoned crossbow bolt, leaving her collapsed and incapacitated.

Paralyzed by the poison, Shesheshen watches helplessly as Epigram brings Homily to the tent, mocking her about how her girlfriend turned out to be the monster they have been hunting. Shesheshen can no longer hold her human form and lies in a melted state on the tent’s floor. Epigram admits that the story about the family curse was always a lie the Baroness used for political manipulation. She tries to force Homily to execute Shesheshen, saying that Shesheshen only meant to use Homily as a nest for her eggs; instead, Homily uses Epigram’s jeweled knife to slit her sister’s throat.

Holding her dying sister, Homily asks Shesheshen if there was ever a real curse. Shesheshen confirms there was not a curse. Homily declares that the real curse was the abuse their family perpetrated on each other. Together, she and Shesheshen drive Epigram’s knife into the earth.