He was back where it all began. Facing a monster. The monster, which killed his parents and a dozen other villagers in its rampage. He was alone, trembling in the middle of the street while his enemy prowled towards him; its bloodshot eyes demonstrating its sheer rage and lost reason. The drooling maw stated its intention toward the young kid. Then suddenly, as if waiting for an unseen signal, it lunged, the vibrations on the ground reverberating in his young bones. The monster was getting nearer and nearer, the giant maw making him realize how utterly powerless he was at this moment, and getting bigger and bigger and about to close on him, the teeth ever closi—
Valen woke up with a gasp, breathing quickly. His panic-induced state caused by the nightmare still clouded his mind, but he didn’t dare move yet, as he was lying on his back and his whole body ached. It took several minutes for the panic to reduce, and it allowed him to close his eyes and take slow, deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. It went on for a while, even after he knew he was no longer panicking but he wanted to truly be in a calm mind, no matter how much taking deep breaths hurt.
When he felt that he was calm enough, he finally allowed himself to open his eyes. The first thing that he noticed was that he was in a cave, and not on the grass like he thought he would be. That was only the first thing. The second was that, now that he could focus on his body, it mainly hurt in two places: First was on his right leg, where he remembered the scale sliced the muscle. Second and more importantly was on the left side of his head. ‘This is new. Oh right, I felt that sharp pain here before falling unconscious, maybe the Seregios threw a last volley.’ It felt like something was missing but he wasn’t sure what, so, ever so slowly, he raised his left hand towards it, the motion not hurting like he expected, so that just meant his whole body was just sore… But then raised the question of how long he spent unconscious.
When he finally reached his left head, the first thing that he noticed was that the skin was rough, bumpy. He suspected he had a nasty scar here, it was still a bit raw so he supposed it was still healing. However, when he reached his ear… There was nothing there, not even a hole where it was supposed to be. He then realized what it was that he was missing: He was hearing nothing from his left side. Sure he could hear the wind that sang outside of the cave… But the sound only came from his right ear. ‘Ugh, that will take some time to get used to.’
He sighed, at least it was something he could deal with, contrary to a missing limb or eye. But it was still going to take him some time to adjust. However, inspecting the ear a bit more made him note something was caked over… But it wasn’t blood, it was something that had dried over, some remnant of a mega potion? That was why the scar directly around his ear had healed more than further away. Then he noticed that the pattern the flesh healed on was irregular. First, the burn didn’t make sense until he realized somebody must have tried to cauterize the flesh if that was another scale that sliced his ear off.
The fact it was cauterized on such a wide area instead of being localized to his left ear must have meant somebody either had only a big flame to work with or was trembling so much during the procedure it bled over everything. He wasn’t sure which one was the real reason. ‘I’m getting worried about the significance of this, a Felyne would normally be pretty careful and they have steady paws usually.’
Taking his mind off the ear for a moment, he examined the rest of his body. His torso had nothing to report, just his back being sore because of being on the ground, same for his arms. His back creaked a bit once he raised himself, but it was just what he expected from it being stiff. He took some long breaths to wait for the bones to settle up, then he looked at his legs, and what he saw surprised him.
His left leg was fine, but the right leg of his pants had been completely torn off, like somebody had to remove it in a hurry and just decided to tear it off… There was also a bandage where his leg had been sliced by the scale but what was more curious was that it was only wrapped around his leg once, and held firm by a couple of big stones on the sides, a couple of holes were in it as well. That was as if somebody didn’t know how to wrap it around the leg and rigged a way to maintain pressure on the wound. A hint of a green stain among the dried blood also meant that somebody applied another mega potion there.
There were a couple of smaller scars that he didn’t remember were here as well, one pair that went towards the side of his leg where his armor had been torn off, and another pair above his knee that went along his leg. They were the more curious ones, as they weren’t inflicted during the hunt, and were not old scars, so they more than surely came from his rescuer… Maybe it was a Lynian that was so overwhelmed that they couldn’t control his claws. ‘Definitely getting weirder, was that Lynian so worried for me that his nerves got the better of him? Also, where are they, then? Haven’t seen anything that denotes this as one of their nests either.’
He decided that his inspection was enough and that his first order of business was examining his leg wound, and redoing his bandage if possible, so he took a deep breath, then slowly tried to peel off his bandage, and as he expected, the dried blood stuck to it, which meant that removing the bandage directly would reopen the wound. Deciding he needed something sharp to deal with it, he looked around to see if his utility pouch was around, and indeed it was right next to him. Digging into it, he immediately noticed that a handful of the potions he carried were missing, however, the bottles were also missing, but a couple were still full, so he immediately grabbed them and applied a bit of it to his raw scar on his left ear, and drank the rest of this bottle. Immediately he felt better as his ache faded away.
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‘Now, to look for my carving knife…’ He dug further into the bag until he found it. He checked the blade’s sharpness, then once he was satisfied it was good enough for what he was about to do, he took a deep breath and started cutting off the bandage from the crusted blood. It was a task that he had to focus on, else he would reopen the wound further. He almost had a couple of slip-ups but he managed to firm his grip enough and steel his nerves to not cut into the wound.
After a tense moment, he breathed a sigh of relief, as he accepted the result as good enough. He then pulled out another bandage from his survival kit that was in his pouch, then applied the last bottle of mega potion he had on the wound and the bandage. Then he wrapped the bandage around the wound, making sure to not apply too much pressure but still make it firm enough.
Once he was satisfied with the tending of his injuries, he finally took the time to examine his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was that his bed was simply made of leaves, and some sponge that he recognized as cut off from a Ludroth’s neck. ‘Why would a Felyne make a bed from sponge? That is getting odder, and I’m starting to think it wasn’t one that rescued me…’
He took note of that fact but didn’t dare stand up, even after the potion he took, as he didn’t have anything to not put pressure on his injured leg anyways. So he just looked around and noticed a few more oddities. The first thing he noticed was the scratch marks that were at the entrance of the cave, being trios of irregular gouges. ‘As if a monster took off from the entrance, so either this cave had a flying monster living in it before it abandoned it… Or it’s still living in, which would be more confusing as to why I’m still alive then.’
The next oddity was reddish scorch marks on the walls near the entrance as if something exploded on it. ‘Fireballs? No, it’s not the usual scorch mark… I’ve only seen this red tint from…’ He widened his eyes in realization. ‘From drawings shown of the effect of a Deviljho’s breath. This is getting even weirder, and worrying. I doubt it was a Jho that lived here but the number of known dragon element monsters is very small.’
There were more jagged lines in the rock, but this time they were singular lines instead of in trios or pairs. Valen didn’t know what to think of these so he moved on, and that’s when he noticed something glinting on the ground, a bit further away from him. He thought about a moment then decided to drag himself to it. He had to be careful with his leg, but he managed.
While reaching the object of interest, he noticed while getting closer that it was a scale. And as he picked it up, first he noticed it was a bit sharp, which, while not that rare among monsters, wasn’t a common trait. He turned it around, it was on the bigger size for a unique scale, but that also depends on the place it came off from. ‘Hmmm, the silver coloration seems familiar… I swear I heard about this specific tone but by the Sapphire Star, I can’t recall where…’ He examined it under all its angles, but after a while he gave up, shaking his head.
Before crawling back to his bed, he figured he would at least see what the outside of the cave looked like. So after a bit more crawling, he managed to reach the mouth of the cave… And what he saw legitimately surprised him. The cave wasn’t on ground level. it was high up on a cliff, and he could see they were high up, the ground was barely visible from where he was. There wasn’t a visible path to climb up, at least not that he could find.
Once he examined the cliffside, he crawled back to his bed and went deep into thought. Because his situation might be much more complex than he thought. As good climbers as Felynes are, they more than surely would not bother having such a high lair. Sighing and shaking his head, Valen thought about the situation from another angle. But first thing, he wanted to try to find out which monster had occupied this lair.
What clues did the hunter have? First, the lair was high up, so that eliminated any kind of ground-based monster. Second, the scorch marks meant that the monster was at least capable of using dragon energy… The most common culprit, Deviljho, was however excluded because of the first point. And it would have been excluded by the third clue, which was the silver scale, meaning that it was most likely that the monster was of this color. But while it might also be only one of the colors of it, or the remains of one of his meals, Valen had a very strong suspicion it was in reality truly one of its shed scales.
He sighed, he felt like he really should know which monster it was. He had it on the tip of his tongue, but it was like he was missing one crucial, obvious piece of information about it. He laid back down on his bed with a sigh, the answer would come to him soon enough at least. Besides, he felt tired after having to drag himself around and fix his wounds, so he decided to take a quick nap.
A constant noise woke him up soon enough. It wasn’t that loud, but… It was a peculiar noise, like a waterfall, but higher pitched and it was getting louder. But then, this noise jogged something in his memory, and he turned and looked at the long lines he had at first dismissed, and suddenly realized just what monster lived in this cave… And he was immediately afraid. ‘It can’t be, Elders are on a “Do not approach” basis if there isn’t a team ready to take them on.’
It all came into a crescendo when the noise suddenly got louder and a silver-scaled Dragon landed in the opening of the case, carrying something in its claws. The monster had trident-like wings, remnants of dragon energy dissipating from their ends, and two rows of fins on its back and tail. This was a monster well known to the guild, and Hunters were warned about it.
This species of Elder was known as the Silver Winged Scarlet Star, the Red Comet, the Star of Disaster, and many other names. But the true name of this elder… was Valstrax.