As night fell, I became more conscious of the stars and moon overhead. The moon was a crescent, though I had no way of knowing whether it was waning or waxing. Okay, I guess I could have known whether it was waning or waxing if I had been paying attention on previous nights, but my night had been preoccupied with other things. Something to pay attention to going forward. The fact that this world had a moon at all was notable: given that I was no longer on earth, the existence of a moon was, like many things, something I could not necessarily take for granted. That being said, it wasn’t all that surprising that this world’s creator had decided to include a natural satellite to go along with it. Not only were moons a fairly common feature of terrestrial planets, but there was so much mythology wrapped up in the moon that it was hard to picture a world that featured fantasy races without including a moon. After all, what were wolves supposed to howl at without a brightly-illuminated natural satellite overhead?

I didn’t intend to do any howling, but I was grateful to the moon for providing some slight illumination, which made it possible for me to see even after night had fallen. In fact, my eyes seemed to be doing a pretty good job of making out shapes, despite the lack of sunlight. I was aware that many reptiles were nocturnal and possessed the ability to see at night, and it would be quite fortunate if this proved to be a feature of my biology. That said, it did seem like my visibility was greatly diminished -- not much of a surprise there.

After climbing down from the plateau, I decided to head back to the place near where the ants’ lair seemed to be, the craggy area where the shape of the rocky ground served as a distinct reminder that “igneous rock” was just a fancy term for “dried lava.” If the ants liked the ground there for having lots of nooks and crannies that were easy to hide in, chances are that they weren’t the only ones. Maybe some nocturnal critters were also hidden amongst those folds of rock, waiting for sundown when they could come out to play.

As I arrived at the craggy part of the valley, I moved slowly, fully aware that my best shot at spotting potential prey with my limited vision would be by looking for movement. The challenge, I quickly realized, was that the craggy and uneven terrain was extra hard to navigate under the cover of night. Most of the time, it was easy to walk without constantly watching the ground in front of you to avoid tripping, but that wasn’t something you could take for granted when the ground was so uneven and unpredictable. The more I considered the prospect of trying to chase prey, or even pounce on a creature that I had managed to catch unawares, the less confident I felt.

There was, I supposed, another issue: if my goal was to look for prey, did it really make sense to try and look for them so close to home? After all, if there were critters that could safely sleep here, and they could also safely find food among the cracks in the ground, it seemed unlikely that I would ever have any chance of catching them: by the time I spotted them, they would have probably moved from one crevice to the next. On the other hand, if the critter slept in the comfort of the nooks and crannies of these rocks but found that their preferred food source was located elsewhere, they’d have to travel -- and it was likely that they’d have to travel, since areas dense with igneous rock did not seem like the kind of place where one would easily find an herbivore’s food source. Granted, what little plant life I’d seen in this valley had been sparse: the only bits of greenery I’d seen were small tufts of grass and shrubs that seemed to offer more in the way of sticks and twigs than leafy vegetation, but they’d been in the sandier parts of the valley. That would be an easier place to find prey -- or maybe I could intercept some on the way there.

I moved further from the craggy ground to the sandier ground, wishing that I had paid more attention during the day to where I had seen those small tufts of grass: they would be much harder to spot at night, since the main thing distinguishing them from the rough ground was their green color. Still, I must have been moving in the right direction, because I saw rapid movement in my peripheral vision. My head swiveled in the direction of the movement, planning to track whichever sprinting varmint had just caught my eye, but there was no movement -- until there it was, sudden and short, like the movement of a creature that wasn’t walking or running, but jumping from point to point. The third time my eyes saw the leap, I managed to catch sight of the creature and, more importantly, where it landed. Rabbit.

I felt the corners of my mouth turning up in a grin. I wasn’t sure whether it was the prospect of a new food source, or just the surprise of seeing a creature so mundane and familiar. When I pictured “nocturnal animals,” rabbits certainly weren’t the first thing that leapt to mind: the word “nocturnal” brought to mind creatures like owls and bats. Of course, I was aware that plenty of ground mammals were nocturnal: after all, those owls had to have mice to hunt, and as I thought about it, I could even recall times from my days in university when I had found myself walking on the campus quad after dark and spotted rabbits on the grass. It made even more sense for mammals to be nocturnal in a desert, since foraging for food by moonlight required considerably less energy than doing so under the blazing sun, and it wasn’t as if the grass was going anywhere. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if most of the valley’s mammalian life was most active when the sun was hidden.

I crept up on the rabbit, trying to get within striking distance, but as I got nearer, its ears twitched, and it hopped away. I was surprised by how quickly it moved: not only was its movement abrupt, but even after the initial hop, it was covering ground pretty quickly, to the point where I questioned whether I’d be able to outrun the rabbit even while using my sprint ability. After putting some distance between us, the rabbit stopped and put its nose to the ground, and seemed to resume nibbling, having found some new tuft of grass to munch on.

Again, I approached the rabbit slowly, making sure to avoid any sudden movements, but yet again it hopped away before I could get within striking range. I wasn’t sure whether it was reacting to my movement or some noise I was making, but it seemed that this rabbit was not going to let me sneak up on it. Apparently subduing this rabbit wasn’t going to be as simple as making a strategic pounce. I debated for a moment whether it was worth attempting to chase the rabbit with my sprint before deciding that it was worth the stamina investment. This was part of why I had kept some SP in reserve, after all. Even if I wanted to save a couple points for a potential emergency, I had come out for the purpose of experimenting.

I got as close to the rabbit as I could before it started jumping away, and I sprinted after it. The rabbit changed course to the right, and I swerved right to chase it, but it took me a moment to adjust course, and by the time I had, the rabbit had already changed direction again. I did my best to keep up, but every time I thought I was catching up with the rabbit, it would change course, forcing me to take a moment to swerve before I could resume sprinting at full capacity.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Seeing that I was getting no closer to catching the rabbit, I stopped sprinting, staying motionless as the rabbit continued hopping away before finding another bit of grass to snack on.

I should have expected this. Catching a rabbit wasn’t a matter of speed, but rather a matter of agility. I assumed that the rabbit had an abundance of fast-twitch muscle fibers, but I didn’t need to know anything about animal biology or anatomy to understand the basic physics of the situation: larger objects (or creatures) had more inertia and took longer to change direction. The tiny rabbit had no problem with making quick, jerky, erratic motions that I couldn’t hope to match or keep pace with. Even a baby dragon was massive compared to a rabbit.

I looked down at the grass that the rabbit had been making a meal out of earlier, and I picked at the grass in annoyance. Here were completely viable calories, growing directly out of the ground, and I couldn’t eat them simply because I was a carnivore. To get any nutrition from these plants I needed an herbivore who could serve as a middle-man to metabolize those plants into meat, and understandably, there weren’t any herbivores eagerly applying for that position. As I started wistfully at the grass in front of me, I sat back on my haunches, entering what had become my dragon-form “thinking pose” as I contemplated my place in the universe. Or, more specifically, what ecological niche I was supposed to be occupying. While I did have the ability to sprint, my body probably wasn’t optimized for that type of predation. My body was pretty far from being “cheetah-like.” Of course, there were some ways of pursuing prey other than chasing it down with pure speed: some predators traveled in packs and used the advantage of numbers to corner their prey. The hyenas seemed to be quite fond of that strategy, and come to think of it, so did humans who took down large beasts like mammoths through the power of teamwork. That didn’t seem like a viable path for me, considering that I was without friends, and if my [kin sensitive] trait’s description was to be believed, I was the only member of my species in the area.

It seemed that my dragon body wasn’t built for pursuit. That left ambush predation as my hunting strategy of choice. I wasn’t sure if I was a reptile, and I suspected I wasn’t, based on the availability of the [hot breath] skill I had yet to master, but it did nonetheless seem as though my form had plenty in common with a crocodile or a viper, the type of creature to silently lie in wait until prey got within range and lowered its guard. Maybe I needed to work smarter, not harder. Of course, while ambush predation had the advantage of consuming less energy while passively lying in wait, it had the downside of being extremely boring. I wasn’t sure I had the patience to just sit back and wait for prey to approach me. Plus, there was the question of how to attract prey. You couldn’t just sit any old place and hope that some unsuspecting critter would walk right into your trap -- or, I guess you could, if you were a spider or something, but part of the reason that ambush predators like crocodiles stuck to the water was that water was inevitably where mammals had to go to drink, and the water served as both a lure and a place to hide in concealment. But how could I conceal myself -- and maybe more importantly, what kind of bait did I have to offer a rabbit?

As if answering my question, a rabbit -- this one larger than the previous one -- hopped toward me. It waited for a moment with ears canted, before hopping directly onto the tuft of grass in front of me and starting to nibble. Apparently, I had been so still and silent while lost in thought that this rabbit didn’t register me as a threat. I wasn’t sure what I looked like to this rabbit under the moonlight -- maybe the dark of night was the only camouflage I needed.

The rabbit was so close that I could have reached out and touched it -- so I did, with a quick swipe of my foreclaw. My claw immediately pierced the rabbit’s side and it let out a cry.

[Cottontail rabbit defeated! 2% exp toward next level]

I sat in stunned silence for a moment. Mostly, I was just surprised by how little effort it had taken on my part to kill the rabbit. I wasn’t sure what I had expected -- maybe I was hoping to injure its leg with my swipe, allowing me to easily chase it down, but apparently, my claw, even at level 1, was enough to instantly kill the rabbit. Is this what they called a “critical hit?” Or was the rabbit just naturally that fragile? It seemed plausible, given the paltry amount of exp it had given. After sitting a few more moments in stunned silence, I bit into the rabbit, and finished it in two bites. I grinned. There was something about the gamey texture of the rabbit that was delightfully familiar -- even in its uncooked form, there was no mistaking that this red meat was in a different class from the turtle meat and ant remains that I had eaten to this point. I had never been one to order my steaks bloody to the point of bordering on raw, but apparently, raw rabbit meat was something that my baby dragon biology found absolutely delightful. Not only that, but the rabbit, despite its modest size, was filling, bumping my satiety up to 29%.

Now this was good living. Why bother running myself ragged during the day when all the good stuff was out at night? Daytime might be a good time for cold-blooded reptiles to be out and about, but the hot-blooded rabbits waited until night to come out and play. And why wouldn’t they? There were probably all kinds of mammals that stayed out of the sunlight, coming out when the valley was cooler and they could find food without the glare of the sun beating down on them. What other mammals might there be?

I scanned around me, looking for movement that might give a hint, and without even having to turn my head, I saw a dog-sized creature walking slowly. I watched it, moving slowly to get closer while attempting to make out its form in the moonlight. There was something about its four-legged silhouette and movement that seemed...familiar. Almost like I had seen it before.

And in my peripheral vision, I saw several other creatures of similar size, walking at a similar gait, almost as if they were circling toward me. Oh, I realized. These were indeed mammals, but they were of a sort I had encountered previously. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had gotten the idea to go out at night to hunt, and as I swiveled my head left, then right, I could see more of them approaching, once again interrupting my fun.

I was beginning to get really tired of dealing with these hyenas.

Class: Baby Dragon Level: 3 Progress toward next level: 34% HP: 16/23 SP: 3/11 Satiety: 29% Claws: level 1 Scales: level 1 Mouth: level 4 Wings: level 0 Traits: Carnivore, Kin sensitive Abilities: Sprinting, Noxious Breath