Octavia supported her weight on her six back legs, with her two front legs held aloft, brandishing the claws that tipped each of her legs. One of them was still covered with some of the remains from the ant that she had just slain, and she waved it, as if inviting the other ants around her to make the same mistake.

I suspected that her action would do nothing to intimidate the fire ants. I knew these ants: these ants were relentless, each of them seemingly unconcerned with its own life. It was as though the fire ants only cared about self-preservation to the extent that their body was a tool that could serve the collective, and if they could serve the collective better in death, they didn't hesitate to make the sacrifice.

Octavia had the benefit of a small bit of preparation: she had managed to spread some web before the ants' arrival, but there was no way she could maintain that advantage: eventually, they would find a way through her circle of protection, whether it was simply waiting for reinforcements, parading through the small gap in her defenses with overwhelming numbers, or waiting for her to go to sleep to strike, as they had done with me.

The longer I wait, the greater the ants' advantage grows. Surely Octavia and I could defeat a dozen ants by ourselves. I rushed into the fray, leaping into the air, and crushing several ants as I landed.

Fire ant defeated! Level up! You are now level 7 Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level

Octavia turned in surprise, but it took only a moment for her to realize what my arrival meant, as she immediately went on the offensive: she stepped forward, leaving the safety of her webbed circle, and struck at the two nearest ants with her two front legs. One managed to evade her — Octavia didn't have the advantage of surprise like I did — but the other was impaled and died instantly.

The other fire ants scattered, and I rushed in the direction of the cave, waiting for Octavia to follow behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and noticed that she seemed to be moving at a rather plodding pace. Was this as fast as she could move? She had been slow in leaving the cave, and if she didn't have the ability to sprint, then the difference in our max speeds was even bigger than I'd assumed: It didn't feel like a long distance for me, but apparently a much more time-consuming trip for Octavia. Despite her long legs; at the pace she was moving, I estimated that it would take her several minutes to make it to the cave entrance. As an ambush predator, Octavia (like most spiders) apparently wasn't optimized for agility, that relative lack of speed being the reason that most spiders relied on webs to trap their prey.

I stopped and waited for her to catch up, and as she approached, I could hear her raspy voice. "Don't wait for me, little one. Go on ahead."

I raised my claw and smacked the ground twice. No. I didn't intend to leave her here. She was my only friend in the world, and besides that, I was the entire reason that she had left the safety of her cave to get involved in what was apparently an ongoing feud with the fire ants. If she was willing to put herself in harm's way to look out for me, the least I could do was return the favor. I moved ahead of Octavia, but never allowed the gap between us to grow to more than several yards.

As I walked, I took a moment to collect my thoughts. In leveling up, I had earned two skill points. Urgency and stress might lead to suboptimal decision-making, so I wasn't eager to spend them now, but if it became necessary…how would I spend my skill points? Scales were my best defensive option, but at the moment, I wasn't concerned with my own longevity: if my own survival was all I cared about, I could have immediately sprinted back to the cave. Claws? My claws were already plenty lethal; unlike their armored counterparts, these fire ants (who seemed to be the only ants antagonizing us) were so fragile that my existing level 1 claws were more than sufficient to eviscerate them. As breath attacks went, not much had changed: [noxious breath] and [poison breath] (both of which scaled with my mouth level) seemed like my most effective options, both lethal and capable of discouraging any ants from entering their area of effect. The temperature-based breath attacks had already struck me as dubious, and while I was still interested in potentially experimenting with them later on, this kind of urgent situation didn't seem like the ideal time to put them to the test.

I rushed ahead of Octavia to where a rock provided a bit of elevation, and climbed on top of it to get a better vantage while I waited for her to catch up. I could already see a group of fire ants moving to intercept us: they were distant, but they were moving significantly faster than Octavia. Would they successfully intercept us? I looked back at Octavia, who — distressingly — seemed to be moving even slower than she had before. I had thought that she wouldn't have any difficulty navigating the craggy ground, given the number of legs, but apparently navigating the terrain was forcing her movements to become even more deliberate and slow.

That was distressing. The distant cluster of fire ants — at least two dozen in number, and growing less distant with every passing second — was moving and on pace to intercept us before we made it back to the cave. Could I make it back to the cave ahead of them if I abandoned Octavia? Almost surely, if I sprinted, and even if they beat me there, the cloud of protection that my [noxious breath] offered would surely allow me to get back to the cave alive. But…the thought of leaving Octavia to face the ant swarm alone was too dark for me to consider. It wasn't a serious contingency option, not as long as I still had resources to work with. A fight seemed inevitable, and to protect Octavia, I needed to make myself deadlier. I deposited one of my two available skill points into [mouth] level.

Mouth level increased: Level 8! You can now spend skill points to learn level 8 mouth skills. Roar (unlearned) Paralyzing breath (unlearned) Poison fangs (unlearned)

All that mattered for the moment was how the next skill point I spent would affect the inevitable battle with the fire ants once they caught up to Octavia. Poison fangs? Not a chance. Ants were such puny prey that any bite would already be lethal. Roar? That seemed more interesting, especially since until now, the only vocalization I was capable of was a bird-like squawk. I liked the idea of intimidating a group of ants, terrifying them all into fleeing — but was there any guarantee that the roar would send them all fleeing? The ants had already demonstrated a willingness to rush into the face of known and certain danger, and while "intimidation" might work against some foes, the ants might think nothing of my roar. They might not even have a limbic system: they could perceive danger, but "fear" might be an entirely alien feeling to them.

Paralyzing breath — that was interesting. But was paralyzing foes really more useful than simply dealing damage over time to kill them, or poisoning them (again, for the purpose of dealing damage over time to kill them)? If a single whiff of the air was enough to incapacitate them, it might be a neat trick, but with creatures that had so little vitality, it might be better to go for damage than any kind of disabling effect.

Before I could come to a decision, Octavia caught up to me, and before I began moving, I frantically gestured in the direction of the approaching ant horde, hoping to alert her to their presence. I wasn't sure if she got the message, but in any case, the plan (and her action) was the same: continue moving toward the cave entrance.

By now, we had covered about half the distance back to the cave, and the wave of two dozen-ish ants was close enough that Octavia surely saw it by now. She stopped moving.

"Go ahead, little one. I can't make it, but I can try to fight them off from here."

I slapped the ground twice. No. I'm not going back to the cave. Not without you.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Octavia began spinning in place, placing a trail of web, and I understood. The ants were close enough that a confrontation was inevitable. If she had to fight the ants, she wanted to do it with at least a partially-constructed defensive perimeter.

"Run ahead, little one. I'll fight them off and catch up with you."

Two taps. No. I would make a break for it if I had to, but I wasn't trusting her to fight off this many ants by herself.

The ants nearly upon us, Octavia let out something that sounded like a sigh. "If you're going to stay, then at least get in here with me."

I eyed her thin webbed circle of protection, which I now realized was only a half circle — an arc that offered a scant amount of protection to Octavia's backside, so she could focus on attacks from a single direction. Apparently, she wanted me to join her within the semi-circle of protection. I appreciated the offer, but opted not to join her: my mobility would benefit me more. Besides, I had my own way of laying down a defensive perimeter. My nostrils flared.

Instead, I took a position behind her. I'll cover your back, you cover mine. I hoped she understood my intent.

As the wave of ants arrived, it seemed fixed to attack me first. Being more mobile than Octavia, I decided to move forward to engage the ants so as to give myself more space to retreat. I struck forward, striking with my claws; the ant formation was so tightly-clustered that it was almost impossible for me to miss.

Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level

As soon as I struck, I exhaled [noxious breath]. Two ants were foolish enough to try and enter the gas cloud to attack me, before briefly writhing and then making an attempt to skitter away. I caught one of them.

Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level

Three down, perhaps twenty more to go.

The ants shifted their focus from me to Octavia, apparently considering her the easier target. Unsurprisingly, they shifted toward the gap in her web a mass of them — half the entire group — launching a coordinated alpha strike attacking all at once. She struck down two of them, but the others climbed on, grabbing onto her legs. I rushed in to help, exhaling and bathing them all in [noxious breath]. The ants all made a swift retreat. Then I heard something that sounded like a wheeze coming from Octavia. Oh no.

Octavia stumbled out of the [noxious breath] cloud, escaping the area of effect, but also leaving behind her semicircle of protective webbing. Stupid. Up until now, I had only myself to worry about, and I was immune to the effects of my own breath attacks. Octavia, apparently, was not. Friendly fire was now a serious consideration.

The ants were giving us a wider berth than they needed to, which was fortunate. I jumped toward them, again going for my approach of skewering two of them before unleashing a round of [noxious breath] before the other ants could retaliate.

Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level

Octavia, meanwhile, was facing a different bunch of ants, the ones that had held back during the alpha strike — they now had her surrounded. She attacked two in front of her, hitting one of them, while I hurried over to cover her back, aiming my claws for two ants that had just reached one of her legs. I struck one directly, piercing it, while hitting the other with a glancing blow that sent it flying away — and directly into Octavia's web. Her web held it in place, while my [noxious breath], still lingering from moments before, choked it out.

Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level Fire ant defeated! 2% exp toward next level

With the ants' numbers now whittled down to perhaps a dozen, Octavia was no longer trying to strike individual ants, and instead swung two of her eight legs in a wild motion that seemed to be intended less as an attack and more as a deterrent, threatening to smack any ants that got close enough. The remaining ants pulled back, and I took a moment to assess the situation. We had drastically thinned their numbers, and they seemed hesitant to make another strike, and in the seconds that they waited, my [noxious breath] attack from before seemed to dissipate. I went over to Octavia's patch of web and squawked, beckoning her to return now that my area of effect attack no longer cloaked the area.

However, the passage of time also worked to the ants advantage: I could see another wave of ants approaching, this one even larger than the last. Maybe fifty? It was hard to count their numbers. Octavia could see them, too.

Two dozen ants, we could handle. Fifty might be more than we could manage.

"Listen, little dragon, I need you to rush to the cave. Right now."

Two taps. No. Same answer as last time.

"I need you to trust me," she said. "I am going to unleash a powerful attack, but you can't be close or you'll be hurt, too. I'm going to give you a countdown. Don't be anywhere near to me when it goes off." She raised two legs, pointing to a rock some distance away, in the direction opposite from the one that the ants were approaching from. "If you make it to that rock, you should be safe, but be careful not to let it hit you. Can you do that for me?"

Was she bluffing to try and get me to go on without her? After a moment of hesitation, I decided to trust my friend. One tap. Yes.

"Good. Ten."

I began moving in the direction of the rock.

"Nine," she said.

I picked up the pace and within seconds I was too far to hear her countdown, but I continued the countdown in my head following the same cadence and rhythm she'd begun with. By the time I reached "three" in my head, I was already at the rock. Rather than continuing to run toward the cave, I perched on the rock and waited.

As the multitude of dozens upon dozens of ants descended upon her, Octavia began spinning in place, and I saw something black erupt from her body, shooting straight into the air, a spout of some kind of black liquid forming a towering geyser over her. As the first burst of the geyser reached its apex, droplets of the black stuff began to fall from the air, striking the area around Octavia. The horde of ants slowed their advance, with some of them continuing toward Octavia while others seemed to hesitate and back away, but it was already too late for them: the black sludge fell from the sky, painting the crimson-red ants black, and drenching the ground around them. A few drops of the stuff landed several yards in front of me, and I took a cautions step back, keeping an eye toward the sky to make sure that none was about to rain on me.

Even the ants that hadn't been directly struck seemed to become stuck in the sticky black muck as they tried to move, some moving toward her and others away, collectively unsure of how to react. Within seconds, they stopped moving. I approached the massive icky black mess, not daring to touch it, when I heard Octavia's voice in the distance. "Little dragon?" she called out.

I squawked and raised a claw. Had she lost sight of me?

"Can you hear me, little dragon?"

I squawked again, and Octavia began moving in my direction, trudging through the sticky black sludge. I squawked in excitement as she neared me. That was awesome!

"Don't touch me," she said. "And don't touch the ground I walk on. Can you lead the way back home?" I tapped once in agreement, but began walking ahead of her.

"If it's safe," she said, "keep making that noise with your mouth. I can't see you."

I squawked again in acknowledgment, and looked over my shoulder at Octavia. I could see now that her many rows of eyes, much like the rest of her body, were covered in the inky black sludge. Was her blindness only temporary? I hoped so.

"Lead the way back home, little dragon."

I squawked, letting out a single staccato syllable as I tapped the ground. Yes.

Class: Baby Dragon Level: 7 Progress toward next level: 16% Starvation penalty: currently suffering a 10% penalty to all stats, including max HP and max SP HP: 21/24 (27) SP: 8/13 (14) Satiety: 26% Claws: level 1 Scales: level 2 Mouth: level 8 Wings: level 0 (wingless), max reached for current class Traits: Carnivore, Kin sensitive, Carrion feeder Abilities: Sprinting, Noxious Breath, Poison Breath, Harden scales Unlearned Abilities (Mouth): Hot Breath, Cold Breath, Poison fangs, Paralyzing Breath, Roar Unlearned Abilities (Scales): Abrasion, Camouflage Active Quests: Say Hello