-From Neonatum Provisae: 2:13-14
The hunter sprinted through the tall grass. Heading south.
Faster! Her Instinct snarled, helping to yank her legs along as she closed in on her intended target.
It felt like as the moon set more of its weight was pressing down on her, slowly crushing her until she completed her goal.
She came across three corpses. All were thin, small, weak. All had the same look of terror and surprise in their staring eyes. The look of prey.
All used to be people. But not any more. No, they never were people. None of us are, yet. But they were something even less, something even more base.
Failures. Defeated. Unnamed.
The predator refused that fate for herself. But she would condemn her prey to it.
She checked the corpses for supplies, turning them over with a nearby stick before moving on, discarding the temporary tool. She didn’t want to touch them and have their scent cling to her.
Yes! Hunt! Kill!
She came across a camp, long abandoned. She slowed spotting the remains of a fire. Dead coals there. Black as her knife. Grabbing those she scrubbed them on her club and left. Hiding the bright wood with it.
Hickory. Her Instinct finally named the wood. Strong. An understanding that it was a hardy wood flowed into her.
She found that with the root-ball on the one end she could slide it into her ax loop of her rope belt.
Good, like the knife. A yellow thought. She could have both hands free if she wanted.
She gripped the knife tighter, running up a fallen tree onto a stretch of ruin that formed a wall. Wide open arches at regular intervals slightly hidden by vines, shrubs and moss.
He’ll be expecting me… She slowed, not quite to a jog. Her muscles ached with the continued strain. If he hears me, or realizes I am coming for him… She couldn’t have that.
Flight! Her Instinct agreed. And with her this tired, he might just get away.
So I must be as stealthy as I can. She leaped from the wall onto a vine, climbing up into a tree and reapplying some moss that she tore free and discarded. That’s if he isn’t already dead. She thought of the death-cry she had heard in this direction.
The closer she got, the slower she went. Pausing more often at sounds in the waning night. She heard a kingbill’s rattle. The wail of a skirnet.
“N-noooo! I will survi-” SNAP! “ghrk!”
The neonate stared towards that cry for a moment. But it came from far to the north. Echoing in the night.
Biter, hunting. She dismissed it from her mind. I am on the other side of the island, don’t have to worry about that. She returned to listening.
The sigh of the wind through the leaves.
She started to recognize the area, and slowed down even more, starting to creep. Checking the moon.
An hour. Maybe two.
Two.
She had to get there soon. Not just to get to him. But also to make sure he was still alive and was an option.
Design was over here. He might have been waiting for me, but Trapmaker might have been his backup prey. She was surprised that, after hoping that he hadn’t killed her prey, that she hoped he found his own before the night was out.
Her Instinct snorted with derision. Good competitor. Not as good as I.
She slowed at the edge of the territory. Spotting something below. A Greenscale, a male, had been hoisted by a snare by the neck. The rope was tied to a tall sapling. His head was at a strange angle, and there were wooden spikes shoved into the rope. Blood still dripped to the ground below.
She hissed, eyes narrowing. New traps. That wasn’t what was making her angry though. She was angry at herself. Angry that she hadn’t seen it before now.
The traps and pits were all random. Undirected. Uncaring. She reached a deeper understanding of Tok’s lesson. It tied back to something she felt instinctively, part of why she had hated Trapmaker on sight. Wasteful, imprecise, and passive.
Her Instinct hissed.
The corpse showed signs of good musculature. Not an apex, but at least a lesser. Not starved, good size, what would have been a reasonable addition to the brood.
“No brood needs clumsy fools.” The Providers words resonated again within her.
Her Instinct growled from her hands in agreement.
The whole tree groaned softly. Crackling.
What? She didn’t know what to do!
It jerked to the right, nearly flinging her out of it. It stopped almost immediately after.
Glaring she inspected the now leaning plant, and spotted that something or someone had hacked away at the trunk, hiding it with bark and mud.
Sabotaged. She looked at the other trees.
Now that she knew what to look for, she could see that just about every single one of them had been similarly sabotaged. And not just the whole tree, but limbs and branches too.
She snarled quietly. She would have to try and make it there on foot.
Through new traps like that. She looked at the corpse again.
Hunt!
She didn’t have a choice.
So she climbed back down, having to take an annoying amount of care so as to not topple the tree. Even if she survived it would alert Trapmaker.
Even as her feet touched the ground it dropped out from under her. She hissed as she became weightless.
Frantic, she snatched at the roots. Her claws dug in. She felt one of the spikes scrape against the tip of her tail.
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Worthless coward!
She pulled herself up and out, jumping to a clear space and moving forward slowly.
Her foot sank in! Hissing she yanked it back as a spiky noose snapped closed and whipped upward. As she planted her foot behind her it sank again.
There was a groan to her right.
She whirled.
A trio of wooden arms swung at her. Spikes lashed to each. Bursting from a pile of brush that looked exactly like some bushes moments before.
Live!
She dove forward, rolling. Her foot burst through another cover to another pit and she yanked her knife free to ram into the ground. The spikes just barely missed impaling her head as she managed to keep herself from falling into another pit.
She had been right about the amount of traps returning to her nest. Just not their location. Her tongue flickered out, and she growled. He had been harvesting the supplies from the Ropemaker tree alright.
Need a new plan.
Her Instinct grunted.
She made her way back out to assess.
The neonate stood outside the territory looking in, fermenting with anger and frustration.
She simply couldn’t think of how to get to the main nesting sight without chancing death. Everything was different. New traps were added, old traps were moved. There wasn’t a single tree that wasn’t compromised structurally.
The only things that she could see that weren’t new or moved were the…
Her eyes widened then narrowed as yellow flickered through her scales.
Ruins.
The neonate moved closer, leaping from where she was, not to a tree, but to one of the ruins, just barely landing on the stones, her claws finding purchase in the cracks between them.
Good. It was taking too long anyway.
She sped along, yellow eyes peeled for paths, obelisks, walls and stairs. She trusted them all. They were like all the other ruins on the island, they look worn down, weathered, but something held them in place. They were the one thing that Trapmaker couldn’t change or move. A path for her knife to find his veins.
She would have wondered more about that, but it wasn’t long before she was getting close enough to need to slow down.
There he was, pacing, muttering to himself next to his fire.
Her prey.
His hands shook terribly. There was a massive pile of the herb, and he was chewing as well, and it looked like he was swallowing whole leaves.
Her Instinct stirred, but she focused her forebrain on the kill, on the hunt, and it aligned with her desire easily. She blinked. That had been easy.
She crept closer, staying low to the stones, pulling her club and the black blade free.
Kill! Now!
He looked up, too quickly for her to close her eyes. The moonlight must have reflected off of them, because the coward went pale like the prey he was.
“N-no! You should be dead! No!” He tried to sprint away, staggering with a squeal as he almost stepped into his own fire.
She snarled and charged forward, leaping down. He looked over his shoulder and squealed again. “No!”
Pulling out the club and holding it in both hands, the predator hurled it at her prey’s legs.
Thubumpra-kumk!
The hickory haft tangled in them and he crashed into the dirt, snout cracking against a stone as he yowled in pain.
The hunter strode forward, pulling the matte black blade free of the scabbard, looking at the carved runes in the strange unreflective blade before focusing on the sky again.
It was getting brighter. The stars were gone, Zasa’avi’s eyes closed.
Faster.
She closed the distance, sprinting forward with a growl.
He scrambled, trying to get up.
She slashed with the knife, hamstringing him. Blood sprayed out, coating her. He yowled and fell again, trying to pull himself away. Crawling like an insect. One that needed to be crushed under heel.
She glared at his back and grabbed his tail yanking him closer.
“No! Why me? You are the runt! You are the-”
Incinerating wrath billowed from her lungs as she snarled.
How dare this… this… thing call me that?
Her matte black blade rammed into his back, bursting a lung as he hissed out a howl. More blood sprayed, coating her already grimy body.
She had expected the excitement.
The joy of the kill.
Instead there was only frustration.
Disappointment.
Necessity.
Where is it?
She kicked him over and he weakly lifted his arms. A futile attempt to prolong the inevitable as crimson blood mocked the ugly fearful white-yellow of his pattern. The runic knife slamming into his other lung. Blood misted into her face. It was sweet to her tastebuds.
He stared at her. Chest heaving, punctures bubbling wetly. Trying to breathe with destroyed lungs.
She saw him mouth the word ‘why?’ one last time. She didn’t answer, glaring into his wide eyes.
The neonate hated the fear she saw there.
Hated that they filled her soul with indifference instead of triumph.
Hated him, even as she shut his wagging mouth for good as she stabbed up under his chin, his eyes bulging, then spreading wide in an almost comical expression.
She twisted the knife. Scrambled his brains. Pulled it free.
Trapmaker was dead.
And she was… unsatisfied with her kill.
The neonate stood there, panting, tired, and hurt. And completely denied the catharsis of glorying in her success.
Too easy…
Idiot. It was almost a comforting expression in the middle of her frustration. Live. Her Instinct grumbled, though she could tell there was no conflict within herself about this.
A twig snapped and she spun, roaring, locking into the black and red and almost eager for something more now. A challenge!
It was only Design, his hands bloody, both lifted palms out. She let her tongue slide out. He smelled like the blood of someone else now.
“What?” she snapped, turning back to the corpse, cutting into it. She hacked through the ribs, pushing the deflated lungs aside.
“Do you need help… sister?” he asked. Prefixes serious, cautious, but not sarcastic.
She felt a little trickle of pride enter the fast depths of her disappointment. She pulled out the heart, wanting proof so that there was no question that she had killed Trapmaker.
“No. No cooperation from anyone until I know I am right. If I am wrong it will be my decision alone.” She looked at Design, not trusting him, despite his tone, colors, and prefixes.
His face was coated in blood. She wondered who he had killed. And what his justification was.
There was a moment of indecision, an acknowledgment that the Provider wouldn’t know if he just killed her there. Then, Design nodded.
He paused as he was turning to leave. He looked back at her. “The night isn’t over until the sun rises, sister. Stay vigilant.”
And then he was gone.
What was that supposed to mean? She knew that already.
Ignore. Provider. Now!
The neonate didn’t take long. She collected her club from the ground, then she sliced strips of hide from the corpse, using it to make a crude pouch to put the heart in. The skin kept shifting colors.
Doesn’t know it’s dead yet. She tied that to her rope belt. She’d rather not have needed to do it.
She grunted, still needing a catharsis.
Making her way out had been difficult but also in a way that was unfulfilling.
She was at the middle of the temple now, and only halfheartedly bowed to the Gods, holding her knife and the heart in one hand, the hickory club in the other.
“Thank you all.” She forced herself to use prefixes of gratitude. She didn’t feel it in her heart though.
The neonate snatched her bag of things from the pile, brushing off a loop of the yellow earthbone with strange spikes on one side off of it to clatter with the rest. That was all that was left, her bag and the junk from Gix’s grave.
She stuffed the bloodoak handle into the bag, not having a place for it on her belt now that she had the club, and hoping to make another ax head later to replace the one she lost.
Her tongue flickered out. Fisher. She could smell that the other apex had been through here now. Probably swam the first time. The scent was old though, so she didn’t have to worry about her.
She didn’t have to worry about much anymore. It was over.
She tried to let it sink in that she had passed the trial. But it didn’t. Almost like it couldn’t.
She thought of Design’s words to her.
Sunrise. Maybe I will feel joy when the world does.
With all of her things on her person, she jogged towards the log exit.
At least she would be able to spend some time watching the sunrise with the Provider.
Maybe ask him why his name doesn’t have a prefix.
Things were really starting to brighten now. The edge of the horizon she could see through the trees was starting to turn a purply red.
As she trudged to the nest, pressing a hand to her wounded side, she didn’t bother with hiding. Corpses were strewn everywhere. The blood had churned the soil into mud once more. And not just blood. Intestines tangled between her toes at one point. She saw that brains had splattered against a tree. The true fight had been up here.
She was glad she had avoided all of this. And yet she still felt cheated.
She had realized why. Trapmaker was an easy kill. It didn’t prove her right to live. Not really.
Not to me.
Careful. Her Instinct warned. Don’t tempt the Gods.
“Remember our deal, nothing interferes.”
I am aware. He glared at me with hemostatic hate.
She made it into the clearing where the nest was, and was surprised that it was untouched.
Tok sat in his old spot. The one where he had taught them their lessons. His lazy eyes regarded her. They shifted to the Greenscale skin pouch at her side.
Bright robins-egg blue tongue sliding out.
He grunted.
She had so many questions. She still had so much to learn. And she realized that he hadn’t said anything about what was to happen to them after the trial anyway. But she had one last thing to finish first.
Might as well get it over with. “Provider, my justification is-”
He lifted his hand, stopping her. “The Trial is not done, little one.”
“Even me.” I continued, and I grinned at the shocked look on His face as He whirled to look at me.
I believe in you Kiddo. Show me you can use the weapons I gave you.
She looked to the east.
The sun isn’t up.
The insects stopped buzzing.
Her eyes widened in the silence. She didn’t need her Instinct to realize something was terribly terribly wrong!
SNAP!
PATREON! It is also 15 chapters ahead, and I am working hard to get it up to 20.