“Precious little is known about the Progenitor’s early life. She only ever spoke very little of it, despite her centuries-long lifespan, even to her most trusted consorts and advisors. What is known, however, is clear: Danger was omnipresent. Starvation was a friend close at hand. Betrayal, and heartbreak was the impetus for her ascension, and the reason why we as a people exist today.”

- Oqri, Seventh Grand Talekeeper of Jagalhai.

All-days were simple, in its life. Satisfactory. Rise from quick-sleep. Drink deeply of the wet-root. Eat from the share-stomachs of the repletes. Get to work, for Mother and the family. The scent trails were clear on this routine-- laid every morning by the scout-sisters, reinforced by Mother, they ensured its life was safe, orderly, comfortable. Never deviating from the standard. This-day, though… the scent trails on the foraging path were thin. Sparse. Perhaps most importantly, they did not prepare it for what was to come. They did not warn it in time. The danger-fear-help odor was too scattered, released from too high in the air… by the time its antennae picked up on doom itself alight on cruel wings, it was too late.

The horrid enemy-thing, all sharp-claws and snaring-teeth soared silently above it, the dreadful shadow cast by sky-doom heralding the slow-death which being caught would doubtless bring. In a matter of moments, feathers and wings and pain descended upon it, faster than its legs could possibly carry it even had it not been lugging around the heaviest hunk of round-plant sweet-flesh it could. It felt its limbs creak and shudder in the snatching-thing’s grasp, cracks creeping up along her chitin-flesh, threatening to snap wholesale. Cobalt ichor oozed from the gouges and holes the hated-enemy’s claws left in its armor-skin, the sharp-pain threatened to overwhelm it completely…

But it was of Mother’s children, and Mother was above all. Mother was the greatest of them, the proudest- how could it dare to disgrace her by giving up? How could it lie down and die, to some Mother-less snatching-thing!? And so it fought, and struggled- it tore into the thick-flesh of the thing’s legs, ripping with razor sharp mandibles and tearing with piercing chelicerae. It scratched and scrabbled and struggled with all its might, its work-limbs numbing and breaking at the ends… and after hours of fighting, it was rewarded.

To call its survival purely a stroke of luck would not be unkind- but, surely, such luck was granted to it by Mother. The sound heralded salvation’s arrival; a wailing, wretched scream of uncaring devastation. A rogue torrent of sharp-wind slammed into the snatching-thing, a mid-air collision with ferric dust propelled at speeds dangerous to even its own blessed chitin-flesh, much less the thing’s soft-skin. The thing screeched, eyes lacerated and wings shot through with holes; a sound that filled it with equal parts joy, triumph, and dread. Together, they spiraled, thrown toward the ground at lethal speeds, propelled by their own mass. The panicked-thing trying desperately to throw it off and regain control of punctured wings, as it strove to remain grappled atop the predator which had failed to achieve its death.

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The earth was not kind in its reception. Gore and viscera splashed across the sharp-wind scoured canyon’s bottom, staining its trickling river red. Bone and armored plating crunched and shattered. All-thought ceased… for a time. The canyon’s walls protected the two crumpled animals from the worst of the slicing storm, which itself warded off any predators until its end, lest they be caught in its deadly gusts. After a time unknown to it, it woke… battered, torn, oozing, soft-flesh screaming with pain and exertion… but alive. It looked once at her enemy’s corpse, the only reason it still lived. The animal had softened its fall, and for that Mother-sent grace, swift-death was granted. Now, though, it was unsure of whether or not it was in a better situation than the failed-doom. Lost, frightened, tired, and death-hurt. Sisters did not come back home like this and live, it knew. But there was no home to return to, now, at least not one it knew how to find. No scent trails guiding its way. No root-dew to quench its thirst, or repletes to feed it. No Mother.

It had failed, in the one and only task entrusted to it by Mother. It had been hunted, fallen prey to an inferior thing. Its hunk of sweet-flesh lay where it had been dropped. No way home existed here. It was, in all, the very worst thing a thing could be; it was alone. Motherless. And yet… it lived. And it did not want to stop living. It was not sure what, exactly, that meant for itself. How could it be anything but part of the family? How could it betray Mother by living without Her? Nervously, it groomed itself as best it could, straightening frazzled antennae with chipped and broken comb-hairs. The familiar action soothed its frayed nerves as much as it burned its broken chitin-flesh.

Calmed after repeating its cleaning several times, it gathered its wits, and looked toward the sky of this strange dark-world. The glimmering-lights that were so different from the bright-world it knew while foraging. The missing round-light-hurt-to-see. It then looked around itself for any signs of shelter. And it looked back once again at its enemy.

The dark-world was chilling-cold. The canyon was barren, devoid of safety-holes. The enemy would soon rot, bone-breakers and marrow-suckers doubtless coming to claim the corpse with all the strength and alacrity of the snatching-thing itself. When they came, they would certainly bring death to it; a morsel, a lucky survivor that would make a fine snack before their meal.

It, though, was no mere survivor- it was a born burrower, in a land of brittle sandstone. A child of its magnificent Mother, stranded in a place not so dissimilar to its home deep underground, save for the lack of a ceiling. So, as it did all-days, it got to work. Much-time would pass before it could cut thick-flesh from the enemy, to hold its wounds together-tight and expose the succulent soft-flesh hiding beneath the fetid skin.