Khall woke, sure that she had dreamed of… something. She yawned wide, her jaw nearly unhinging as she did so, though she kept herself from stretching to keep from tearing the scabs that were she knew currently patterned her back. Just the yawn was far from enough to fully loosen her up, though, and Khall had to fight against herself not to roll her shoulders and loosen up. Though, if she had to choose between a stiff neck and her own blood flowing down her shoulders and back, then she knew which option she was going to choose.
Slowly, she forced herself to stand and begin to eat. Before long, the leftover lavaline disappeared down her throat. After thinking for a moment, she began tearing into the other body that she’d used as a pillow the night before, thick gobbets of flesh quickly disappearing down her throat before they settled as a heavy weight in her stomach. With only a small part of the lavaline’s corpse remaining, even though she was full, Khall forced herself to swallow the last of its torso and rear legs. Involuntarily, Khall let out a burp, and the food settled even more deeply into her torso. A part of her wanted to lay back down and go to sleep once again, but she struggled against herself and decided against it, instead stepping forward and exiting her small temporary burrow.
Looking out in the near distance, the craggy hills could barely be seen through the smog-filled air. Khall imagined she could see masses of lavalines stalking through the stony rifts, just waiting for her to approach. Before she could do anything else, though, she finally needed to acknowledge the thing that always appeared after she slept. With a thought, new words appeared before her eyes.
[Proceed towards the Divine Summit, Ascension awaits. The System guides Stines. Ascend from the Void below. The Stars await you.]
She wanted to do what they said. The words let her evolve, let her get smarter, let her survive… but there was something else about it. Frankly… Khall didn’t like doing what she didn’t think of herself. After all, she was great all by herself! The words hadn’t helped her when she’d been attacked by the birds, or by the bigger fish, or by lavalines in her burrow! All that they needed to do was to warn her, but they didn’t give her anything! The words didn’t do anything by themselves, and so Khall would follow them if she wanted to, when she wanted to, and how much she wanted to. That felt nice and volatile, and if she changed her mind, that would be too!
With her mind made up, Khall felt a broad smile crack her face. For now, she needed to keep killing things, to keep growing, to keep learning. Though she knew she wasn’t the strongest creature on the First Step, she was sure that there was no other beast that could immediately kill her with impunity. So, with a spring in her step and her eyes wide open, Khall strode back towards the hills, ready to begin another fight, even if not for eating. Just the thought of eating something else… made her gorge rise.
—----
Her initial hunting attempts had been… Khall couldn’t think of them as anything other than laughably bad. She was stiff, full, and a lumbering fool. Everything she approached immediately fled, and that was only the ones that were so distracted that her quiet grunts and heavy steps hadn’t driven them away earlier. Eventually, she relieved herself and felt MUCH better, good enough to remember to dim her glow and approach the lavalines even closer, close enough for them to think themselves capable of ambushing her. Their attempted ambushes taught her a couple of good lessons.
The first was that the fuzzy beasts remained cowardly, swift, and just generally the absolute worst. Even so, Khall was able to hunt and kill four of the smaller, unevolved ones and two evolved lavalines. The small ones were all “Juvenile Lavalines”, and they’d thought that swarming her all at the same time would let them hunt her successfully. Though they’d, of course, been unsuccessful, they’d still had a lesson to teach Khall.
She’d been simultaneously amused and slightly offended at their foolishness, and their claws had skittered off her scales at their initial assault. Before the little would-be assassins were able to react to their own inability to harm her, she’d smashed her paws into two spines, crippling the lavalines that were hit. The other two turned and attempted to flee, but she pulled on the power from her core essence, the volatility within, and the lava that had exploded from her mouth had coated the fleeing lavalines. They’d collapsed to the ground as the molten stone sizzled through their fur and skin, and Khall jogged forward to put them out of their misery. With that, she’d learned that she could spit lava which was even hotter and more dangerous than flames, and doing so exhausted her core essence very quickly.
Of course, the two evolved lavalines had also attempted to ambush her. The one that had attacked her straight on was another “Flaming Lavaline”, and it was much more aggressive than the “Ashen Lavalines” from the day before, dancing forward into her reach before retreating, attempting to cut into her again and again. When the second, an Ashen Lavaline, had made its predicted ambush, Khall was prepared. She spun in a quick circle, her tail smashing into the pouncing lavaline’s chest and tossing it away. The Flaming Lavaline, incensed by her rebuffal of its companion’s assault, had spat out a line of fire at her. Unfortunately for it, she was wholly unaffected by its flames. After they washed over her for a short time and the Ashen Lavaline had retreated from its companion’s attack, Khall lunged out and settled her jaws around the Flaming Lavaline’s head. With a crunch that sounded with finality, she bit down.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The Ashen Lavaline had stumbled to attempt to escape, but it was too late. Blinded by the gouting flames just before its eyes, it had only begun to react to its companion’s plight as it heard the crunch of bone that accompanied the sudden absence of fire. It stumbled, still slowed by the damage it had sustained from Khall’s tail, and then she swiftly chased it down before slaying it. From these two lavalines Khall learned that she could use what her enemies didn’t know against them, like the Flaming Lavaline’s ignorance of her immunity to its flames.
By that point, she had stumbled and run enough that she began to get hungry, and after using her lava breath, Khall felt that her stomach was well and truly empty, so she quickly ate the Flaming Lavaline’s body before digging out another, new burrow where she deposited the Ashen Lavaline’s body. She was pleasantly surprised to level up Fell Miner as she dug out this new burrow, and after killing all those lavalines today, Moltenscaled Juvenile Drake had leveled up as well. Now, as she consciously thought about how she had grown, the words appeared with all the information about her.
[Khall: Moltenscaled Juvenile Drake.
Total Levels: 12
Racial Levels: 10 Occupational Levels: 2
Juvenile Mud Lizard: 5/5 Fell Miner: 2/10
Moltenscaled Juvenile Drake: 5/10]
Though she was happy to have leveled up, Khall was surprised she’d only gotten one level in Drake even though she’d killed so many today. After thinking about it for just a moment, though, she had forgotten to think any further about how getting the bigger numbers and levels worked. Instead, she settled down and laid on the Ashen Lavaline’s body before taking a short nap. They made such wonderful pillows! With a happy grin, she patted her pillow several times before rolling it over to a more comfortable spot.
Before long, though, Khall was awake again, and after a short second’s consideration, left the body behind in the little burrow. After all, she wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t want to make herself miserable by overstuffing herself again like before. However! She had learned! She knew that things could smell food, so she buried the entrance to her den, hiding the smell of her hidden food, cleverly chuffing to herself in pride the entire time. As she walked away, Khall couldn’t help but lightly bounce from the feet on one side to the other, her tail flailing wildly to try to keep her balanced as she danced along.
Though Khall continued to scout and try to find something else to hunt, something else to continue learning from, she couldn’t find anything else close to her stored snack. Once or twice, she saw a bird circling up above, but no matter what she did, they didn’t seem willing to come down. Even when she’d laid down on her belly and cried out as if she was dying! What was wrong with the Void-begotten birds? Why couldn’t they be tricked? Stupid birds.
Then, even more frustrating! There were frequent noises nearby, of skittering stones, rustling bushes, and quiet calls, but whenever she rushed closer, the sounds disappeared! No matter how fast she was, by the time she was close enough to see, whatever prey had been there before was gone. Maybe it was flying away? Khall couldn’t be sure, but it was making her so angry that she couldn’t control the fierce glow of her shiny parts, and along both ribs, her tail, and various other spots, the luminescence below her glasslike scales shone brightly. As she got angrier and her body responded to her anger, she got hungrier, until finally she decided to return to her burrow for the rest of the day.
Khall felt the anger bleed from her body as she remembered what was waiting for her back in her burrow–an easy meal and a comfortable den. With each step towards her den, she felt her step lighten at the prospect of a full belly and no more mysterious noises evading her approach. Though, as she walked to where she thought her burrow was, she realized she must have gotten lost, which had her hanging her head in disappointment. After all, there was a new small hill where she’d thought she’d buried her meal. With a sigh, Khall continued on towards the hill, hoping that if she climbed up on it, she could at least see where she’d gone wrong.
When she stepped closer to the hill, Khall heard a weird snuffling noise, and turned her head to see what was going on. The sound… was coming from the hill. And the hill was alive.
Looking at it more closely, the hill was breathing, but she hadn’t thought it could possibly be a creature. After all, it had no scales, no fur, no feathers, not even the weird kind of scales that the antlion had. There were occasional hairs that were more like bristles than hair, and they just stuck up crazily every which way. When she stepped closer, the “hill” realized she was there and whirled around, surprisingly quick for something so large.
The not-furry, not-feathery, not-scaley thing turned around and Khall saw its face for the first time. Its massive snout spat dirt out as it breathed out angrily, but more intimidating than its snout were its furious eyes and massive tusks that stood proudly out of its mouth. Its mouth... That was chomping down on her food! With a screaming hiss of rage, Khall charged the hooved thief.