Pov Eclipse
This is starting to get stale.
I thought for what seemed like the tenth time, I looked at the same flower I was once engrossed in for two sun sets, as the humans called them, the flower was a vibrant purple and had hundreds of small petals which increased in size nearing the end.
Even though the flower had so many petals, it was still small which fascinated me to a great extent considering all the flowers I saw had 4-10 petals and still they were bigger. Even using [Appraisal] on it just said I was ‘too low level’.
Another thing that fascinated me was the small glowing white lines which scuddled around chaotically with no destination in thought. Alea was thankfully with me when I was entranced by the flower and gladly explained it.
“This flower is from my homeland, it’s a rare flower created when a spirit dies. It's called the [Eternity Flower] as it never dies from natural causes. This one I picked up around 30 years ago I think.”
The human had a smile that showed sadness, yet happiness. I know, confusing right? At the time I didn’t bother to try understanding the complexity of human emotion or dwarf emotion, it was just too confusing and random. I didn’t know what spirits were, so I flapped my wings three times showing my curiosity. Every interaction I had with Alea made me like it more and more considering its great ideas. She first created a language that it could kind of guess on what I want, it basically worked like this.
Flapping wings once – Yes.
Flapping wings twice – No.
Flapping wings thrice – what?
Walk in a circle – follow me.
And it understood when I pointed stuff with my legs!
Rod was alright, it told me stories of what it called the ‘Great Dwarven War’, where the dwarfs fought against a creature that it described as a ‘big rat’ walking on two legs. I barely understood half the words most of the time, but thankfully Alea was with him. Sadly, Alea was not good at explaining things, so Rod had to step in...
Rod was terrible at describing anything living.
Anyways, after a bit of no's Alea found out that I was curious about spirits. Alea then tried its best to describe what a spirit was.
“So, spirits are basically creatures made from pure mana. No one knows how they come to be. Most Elves see spirits as sacred beings, I personally don’t see anything sacred about them though. They are more of a pest who suck the surrounding area dry from mana. And they get nasty when they take in some mana types, like fire, which causes them to burn the surroundings, or demonic which causes them to go insane and turn into powerful demons that can’t be harmed physically. A demonic spirit is considerably worse than an any other spirit as a demonic spirit gains an ego.”
Though I did not understand a lot of the words that left Alea’s mouth, I understood one thing, spirits are not good creatures and I’d rather not meet one personally.
Amongst the many new words, I thankfully somewhat understood what mana was from the two times I was told about the Great Dwarven War.
It was an invisible force that affected the entire world. Mana wasn’t good, nor was it bad, it was just there waiting to be used in either nature’s plans, or a living creature’s plans. And that’s how a spell is cast, which Silven was doing back in that large empty ant nest! Well, Alea said it was more complicated than that, but that’s all I know.
The [Eternal Flower] was starting to bore me, I hope something new and interesting comes up.
Suddenly as I examined the flower once again, Alea burst through the door of the room I had made into my nest with a weird thin block in one grabbing appendage, and a black box.
“Eclipse, do you want to learn how to write?”
Alea seemed really excited, and I didn’t understand why, yet I was wanting something other to do other than stare at a plant or run around. I had already explored my nest well enough and was about to leave it for the outside world, yet this seemed more interesting.
I flapped my wings and Alea quickly went closer to the ground and placed the two objects in front of me.
“Alright let’s start off with letters, if you’re confused about something, instead of flapping your wings, just tap the floor.”
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My body has been shaking with excitement as I once again put one of my front legs into the ‘ink’ before moving over to the ‘notebook’, the oil adding to the small creek already on the floor. A blob fell with a splash onto the filled paper with scribbles, but I continued. I drew chaotic shapes and created the word, Eclipse.
It was messy, yet after what felt like forever, I have written my name!
I hurriedly looked over at Alea, the excitement continuing to cause me to shiver. Yet all I saw was the ‘sleeping’ face of Alea. Rod had come by earlier, not that I paid any attention to it as I was engrossed with writing, yet I do remember Rod gave Alea a ‘blanket’ and a ‘pillow’. I think Alea was using the pillow wrong as it did not place its head on the pillow, rather its head was resting on the ground instead. Strangely a clear liquid was coming out of Alea’s mouth, but I paid little attention.
Stolen novel; please report.
Rather I was interested in how much time has passed.
I quickly looked over to where the ‘window’ was located, and my shivering increased drastically, and an awfully familiar feeling invaded my body.
Oh... I’m hungry.
In my excitement of learning human communication, I have forgotten about time. With a worried skip, I made my way to where the glorious moon welcomed me.
I felt its comfort envelop my being, the comfort was like how it felt being around my mother, yet not close enough for me to mistake the moon as my mother. I wonder when I will see my mother again.
The moon reminded me too much of mother, every time I looked at it, I felt desire to be with my mother again. I have thought that maybe through death I will see my mother again, yet I know that’s not what I want. As much as I desire my mother, I desire a world filled with colors, not one without them.
It is sad you go away when the sun comes, I wish you could stay with me.
Without the moon I felt a small amount of hunger, not enough to cause any problems, yet it caused an uncomfortable feeling.
Did I not have a [Skill] that had moon in its name? What was it called?
I remember my [Status] slightly due to me not caring about it before as much considering it gave me a useless [Skill] which doesn’t even explain anything.
Reader... Where would Rod or Alea put a Reader... Oh I know! Jack has many Readers in the ’storage’ area in its... elevated surface?
I had no name for it, yet I know that humans give most items different names for an odd reason. I thought about it for a moment. Last time I left Silven’s nest, I was brought to a strange gathering of strange humans. I have also learned a lot today; I did not wish to experience too much information as I did when I was with mother.
But knowledge!... No, I can wait another day.
I decided to instead practice my writing, right now my writing is barely readable, compared to Alea’s it was nothing. With some eagerness I took a step out of the moonlight, and the intense sense of hunger returned, yet it felt worse this time.
Ah... I forgot about that... all right I think I can do this.
With a leap and a small flap of my wings I was on course to the notebook... scratch that, I was about to collide with Alea. Panicking, I unconsciously twisted my body and my wings flapped once powerfully forcing me to collide with one of the bed’s support blocks.
Taking a single moment to reorientate myself, I looked to where the book was. It was farther away than before. But I wasn’t discouraged, rather I started moving quickly to it due to my hunger.
My hunger was at an all-time high and it seemed it was starting to affect me considering how I kept looking at Alea. What was strange was how my hunger spiked when I looked at it.
Just as I was about to reach the book, Alea suddenly turned over and its appendage was right in front of me, I stopped completely and couldn’t move.
! Forced Evolution Detected !
A red box appeared in front of me, yet I ignored it, for an odd reason I could not pay attention to anything other than the appendage in front of me, I did however somewhat notice the tearing sensation far under my eyes, yet the stream of translucent grey blood I did not notice.
I felt something growing inside of where the tearing sensation was, yet I ignored it as I lunged downwards on the appendage, stretching the bottom part of my head.
I felt my prey shift below me, it had said something, yet I couldn’t make it out.
I couldn’t relish the feeling of tearing apart my prey as darkness overwhelmed me.
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Pov Alea
Eclipse was being cute today; I couldn’t help but let out a small giggle every time it tried to write using its legs. I had thought it would’ve given up soon considering how many attempts it took to write a single letter.
Yet I was proven wrong as a couple of hours later, it could constantly write letters, abide they were quite messy. We had moved onto simple words.
I was starting to get tired, yet I prevailed. And I am glad I did, I got to see first-hand Eclipse asking me a question.
‘My name’
There was no punctuation, yet I understood what it wanted. So, I wrote down its name, sadly I was not able to see it finish writing its own name as I had fallen asleep at some point.
I felt something clamp down on my arm, my old mercenary instincts kicked in and I reached for my knife that was supposed to be on my thigh, yet it wasn’t there.
Not panicking I decided to just use my fists to solve the problem, after all my strength was high enough to kill orcs barehanded.
Then I paused centimeters away from Eclipse’s head. Then I noticed no pain coming from my arm, only that Eclipse was nibbling on it quite ferociously...
Wait when did you get a mouth? More importantly, why are you trying to eat me...
I quickly looked over to the window and noticed the starry sky.
Shit.
With a simple sleep spell, Eclipse stopped nibbling on me, and I hurriedly moved it in front of the window. Now that Eclipse stopped nibbling on me, I could finally take a second to inspect what happened. I felt something drip down my arm and noticed a translucent grey liquid present.
Oh, it's just saliva.
“Rod get in here!”
I yelled out loud, seconds later the sound of running was heard and then the door opened.
A few seconds passed as my husband observed the room, that’s when the both of us noticed the small puddle of the translucent grey liquid of the floor.
That’s too much saliva...
“Why is there blood here?!”
I quickly looked down at Eclipse and saw the same blood flowing from its new mouth.
“Rod bring a healing potion!”
I quickly went onto my knees and inspected the new mouth Eclipse had, a simple light spell flared to life as I forcefully opened Eclipse’s mouth, and to my horror I watched as the inside of the mouth slowly opened downwards, I watched as a hanging vein was ripped apart before both sides snaked their way back into the inside of Eclipse's flesh reconnecting near the end.
I didn’t even notice Rod appearing by my side handing me a rich green potion. Carefully I poured small amounts of the potion into its expanding mouth.
“... I think Eclipse is evolving...”
Rod suddenly said.
“I’ve seen something similar happen with a damned leaper, it was a horrid experiment where a multitude of leapers got their legs cut off to see what would happen. One of ‘em turned into a monstrosity after a couple of days.”
“Are you telling me Eclipse is going to turn into a monstrosity for no reason!?”
Rod stayed silent for a few moments; I felt my heart drop.
“Where did yah find Eclipse?”
“...Where the pool of blood is.”
“I think Eclipse was starving, think about it, it must rely on the moon for food, and it was forced to feed from a small window. It has nothing to eat when it’s awake as the sun is up. But why a mouth? I don’t see anything edible here...”
I stayed silent for a moment.
“I woke up to it trying to eat my arm...”
An awkward silence filled the room.
“Shit... We’ll deal with that later. I’m going to go grab a healer.”
The sound of dripping blood filled the room as Rod left.