These people were dangerous. He could practically feel it; every bit of their demeanor radiated confidence, aggression and power.
The instincts of the mightiest species on Eclite kicked in, and he lunged at the foremost human’s neck. He didn’t make it further than a single step, however, before he was suddenly slammed into the ground by seemingly nothing. It felt as though he weighed a thousand tons, but the humans moved unimpeded towards him.
His muscles strained, and he managed to get his legs beneath him, but there was no feasible way for him to truly stand. And so, he could do nothing even as the two humans got to either end of him and, ignoring his desperate thrashing, shackled his legs and bound his maw.
And then, the weight on him disappeared. With ease, one of the humans lifted him from the ground, holding him for the three seconds that it took the other to wheel in a cart of some sort.
He was placed inside, and then sealed inside. He breathed heavily, pained everywhere. His eyes darted around, but there was nothing he could do. Spreading Aether through his body, as he had done before, he realized that straining his muscles had made hundreds of micro-tears in his muscles. He also noticed that, when the Aether passed over the tears, they very briefly began to heal rapidly.
He also noticed that little bits of the Aether that passed over those wounds were missing, but that didn’t matter to him. He circulated the Aether throughout his body again, slower this time, and after only ten seconds, his muscles felt a bit better again.
After that, he released his grasp over his Aether and tried to figure out what was happening. Clearly, there was no point in resisting the humans. He could do nothing but hope they weren’t going to do something bad to him.
After a few seconds of mental silence, he wondered: ‘Is it because I killed their bug?’
He could hardly think. His muscles were so tense from fear that they were already beginning to feel sore. After a few seconds more, in which he knew nothing of what was going to happen to him, he heard a loud ‘Click!’ from beneath him, and then he was uncomfortably jostled around for a second or two before being slammed down.
Silence… He almost wished that he had been yanked out of the container and tossed about. What were they going to do to him? He couldn’t get the idea of electrocution out of his mind. He was hyperventilating, and a few tears rolled down the side of his face. The vague corner of his mind where the words came from was completely silent to the tears this time, and he allowed himself to cry a bit more, free from its judgment.
The container opened, and while he didn’t move a muscle, his eyes darted around, examining the room fearfully.
Surrounding him was a group of unarmored humans, and looming right above him was the same pair of armored humans that had captured him.
Interestingly, the unarmored humans… weren’t so unarmored. One of them had a metal hand, another had an entire metal arm, and yet another had two metal arms; one had a metal foot, another had an entire metal leg and yet another two metal legs. One had a half-metal head; another had tubes poking out of its neck, et cetera.
The armored humans grabbed him and lifted him from the container, carrying him a few feet and setting him into an enormous metal room with only a single contraption within. On the longest wall was a long pane of glass where he could see the unarmored humans moving about and fiddling with metal counters.
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He moved deeper into the room in order to get away from the armored humans, but only a few seconds after the humans exited the room, they returned, this time with what looked to be a wolf.
No; it was a dog. A large dog, roughly the same size as himself, although he was clearly bulkier and more dangerous.
They released the dog, and he didn’t move an inch, even as the canine confidently walked towards him. His instincts urged him to kill, but he feared what the humans would do. All of this was probably because he killed their bug, after all.
And then, the dog passed him. It hadn’t been coming towards him at all, but had been going towards one of the many contraptions in the room. He watched as it made its way to a treadmill, hitting a button on the floor with its paw. The treadmill turned on, and the dog ran on it for a while before going to a corner of the room and staring at him.
One of the armored humans, who had stayed in the room with him, gestured at the still-running treadmill, and he realized what they wanted.
Reluctantly, he moved towards the treadmill, giving a wide berth to the armored human, but the human didn’t do anything to him. He did as the dog had done and pressed the button, but before he could try to get onto it, the armored human whacked him with a heavy metal rod and pressed the button again.
His scales protected him from the brunt of the damage, but it still hurt. On instinct, he almost bit the human’s leg, but restrained himself and hopped onto the treadmill.
At first, it was easy. It had been moving significantly faster for the dog, but right now, it was so slow that he only had to walk to keep in place.
Soon, however, he had to trot, and soon after that, he had to run in order to keep up with the treadmill. It continued to steadily increase until he was moving twice as fast as the dog had been. It stayed at that intensity for several minutes, and when the speed increased again, his body was aching, but he still broke into a sprint.
His body worked at an intensity it had never endured in his admittedly short life. His hearts pounded within his chest and his four lungs struggled to take in air. The muscles in his legs felt like they were aflame, but the memory of electrocution kept him going.
He couldn’t stop, or the humans would hurt, injure or kill him. Even with this motivation, though, after only ten more seconds, he was on the verge of collapse. Any moment now, his weak baby legs would give out. He could feel it. His lungs felt like they were about to pop, and his hearts were pounding so hard that it seemed possible that they’d break his ribs.
He remembered how the Aether had healed the tears in his muscles, and started circulating the Aether through his body. It did nothing to cure his exhaustion, but it did help with the pain.
‘I’m doing it wrong,’ He thought, but he didn’t know how to do it right. He only knew that there was a better way to go about it.
Another second passed, and he finally couldn’t take it anymore. One of his legs gave out, and he was propelled off of the treadmill and into the floor. He simply laid there for a few seconds, until his eyes stayed closed for a bit too long and his consciousness slipped away.
***
He awoke with a start, a golden token the size of a human’s palm lingering within his mind for a brief moment, a fleeting remnant of his dreams.
It felt important, but it slipped away and he forgot about it almost immediately.
Instead, he stared at the ceiling of his cell. He knew, now, that this was not his territory, nor was it his room. It was his pen; the shackles clinging to his body even now made it impossible to forget. His burning hatred settled for getting revenge once he had grown, and his fear settled for leaving the bugs alone.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since the humans had kidnapped him, but his body felt only lightly abused.
His nose twitched, finally recognizing the smell of food. His stomach growled loudly, and he quickly made his way over to the slimy red substance, wolfing it down with ferocity.
He finished quickly, and then moved onto his next task: figuring out the trick to Aether and Ether. He held no hopes that he could protect himself from the humans within the next ten years even with Aether and Ether, but there was no reason not to become stronger, especially when he had nothing else to do.