Chapter 97: Started Hunts

Chapter 97: Started Hunts

Rihsu hissed against the shadows.

They clung to her, heavy and pressing, the twisting weight that blended with her scales and twined around her claws. Hid prey from her, hid her from prey; they balanced, but they were still at odds, and she didn't like them.

She was finding that she didn't like many things, now.

Lord Seros was still slumbering a floor below her, awash in the changing light, that shining, glimmering, brilliant light—not that he needed to be changed, he was Lord Seros, but she knew that he wanted it. That he welcomed it.

So she welcomed it too.

The platemail bug slipped off her claws, hitting the ground with the crack of splitting shell; a boring hunt, something to test herself once she'd awoken. Without Lord Seros, she hadn't been able to practice her swimming with him, and for all that her claws now pulled her through water and her tail adjusted how she swam, she still didn't know how to do it. She was still trying, because she wouldn't fall behind, but it was hard. Many things were hard.

But it had been hard to rip the head off the turtle monster, and she had done that, so she would do this, too.

She kicked at the bug, tail lashing at the walls. It hadn't put up a fight, only curled up and tried to protect itself, but there was nothing against her claws. Still, there was a reason she hunted in the morning. She bared her fangs at the algae-whips, vines retreating away from her begrudgingly, and sat down, tugging the corpse into her lap. It was easy to shred away its chiton shell and search for the meat within.

In the darkness, sitting across the width of the tunnel with her towering height, tail flicking, she ate her morning meal. Perhaps later she would go to the fifth floor, hunt some of the flying beasts—if Lord Seros had no wings, she had no need of them either, but perhaps this changing light of his would grant him wings, in which case she needed them yesterday—or up to the third, to swim through the murk and find a sturgeon for her claws. She ripped a leg off and crushed out the meat, power thrumming through her with its kill.

But then she paused. She looked up, and there was something calling her, a little ping in the back of her mind, where normally only the call of her Lord Seros sat. Her eyes went up, peering past the darkness and the twisting curl of the vines. Past the tunnels of training.

Something had changed.

She couldn't quite tell what—for all her senses had improved, this was on an entirely separate floor, and all she could do was point her muzzle up and warble at the ceiling. Something changed, something big—there was a lingering pressure in the back of her head, something with words.

It said tribe.

She didn't have a tribe. Hadn't had one since she'd seen Lord Seros, rising from the water, and knew what he was.

But there was a tribe, she remembered, dozens of other scale-kin smaller than her and fiddling with the tools she'd been interested in until she learned that her own claws were tools enough. Somewhere up above, stuck on those powerless floors and scrounging for scraps.

But something had changed.

And within her, back to those Big Thoughts that had pushed her so far, she felt something.

Curiosity.

What had changed? What could they have unlocked? They did not have access to Lord Seros, sleeping as he was, and that meant that whatever they would be changing to would be lesser than her own change. Less meaningful. But for them to have changed at all. Well.

Perhaps they had gotten their own Big Thoughts. Not dragon thoughts, but Big Thoughts. Those beyond what they had had before.

She had not expected them to have Big Thoughts.

She didn't know if she wanted them to have Big Thoughts. Those had been hers and hers alone.

Or were they? How long since she had gone up to the second floor? There were monsters and power on the fourth, water on the third, Lord Seros on the fifth; she had been entirely content to stay there with them, where things were more important. This was where she was strongest, where she would only grow stronger. That was what she needed to do.

He was there to protect them. He would always protect them, and before, he had been protecting them by cowering in corners and living in fear of the War Horde—no longer. It was time to give them something that they could actually live in.

Akkyst would make sure.

-

She awoke.

It was a slow awakening, twisted, but as she breathed in, she inhaled with something inside her, not just leaves and branches and roots, and she knew things had changed.

There had been the Before, where there was nothing, just a life, hunting for blood for sustenance. Then there had been the After, where she had discovered that she was she, had looked around her, hunting for not just blood but information.

But this.

This was more.

This was the Beyond.

She was more.

Bark, surrounding her, dark and comforting. But she could feel the bark, both against herself, and also as the bark; she was the tree and she was this new part of the tree. They were together, they were one, they were separate, but they were new. She was in the bark, but she was also the bark surrounding her.

But if she was in the bark, then there must be something outside of the bark, and though it was dark, she had eyes that could see what the outside was. No longer was she limited to only vague impressions of shapes and sizes by the information spread through the web of mana. This was more.

She wanted to be outside.

So she reached out, and knew she had limbs to reach out with, with something sharp on the tips, and there was movement, easy, shifting forward—four limbs, two on bottom and two on top, feeling oddly like those two-leg things that came through the dungeon. Less upright. Less tall.

But similar.

The bark bled away, freeing her from its comforting embrace, and she was in a new world.

Wide, open, free—it spread before her, sprawling, brilliant. There were—things were different, different... appearances. Colours, her mind whispered to her, they were colours. Things were not limited by how they felt, whether rough or smooth or soft, but by colours, too. She watched them, watched the world beyond.

There was bark behind her and she was bark, and they were one—her Ancestral Tree, she knew. The source of her life and her love; she had to protect it, but also to feed it, and in her mouth, which she had now, she could feel something sharp. Something hungry.

The world opened now. No longer was she limited by the grasping crawl of root and thorn, trapped within immobility and the difficulty of movement; there were limbs—feet—that could move and walk and learn.

Sensory organs on her face. They picked up something, distant but present. Something wet. Something red. Blood.

She was in the Beyond, now.

She was more.

It was time to hunt.