I stared upon... looked up... thought upon? I don't know how to describe it properly in many words, much less only a few, but I'll try. It was like when you put a paw in front of you and you should not be able to see through it, but somehow you can see beyond your paw. Not just that either, it wasn't something I was seeing, I was... remembering it? Like when you stare at a squirrel and then close your eyes and envision it. You can see the squirrel with perfect clarity, but in the end, it is just a memory. It was like that but not. I digress. The words appeared to me, perfectly understandable despite my lack of language skills. I could also tell these were mine, they not only described me, but they also did much more, though what that was I could not tell.
Name: Artemis
Age: 0 (Sixty-one bi-helios rotations)
Race: Primordial Wolf
Lv: 0 Experience: 0/ 100
Stats: Locked.
I ignored this part because what interested me most was not redundant and pointless information, though I did look again at my Race.
Skills:
Layer Zero Skills:
Lv. 0 Internal Mana Sense: Detect the mana flowing within you.
Lv. 0 External Mana Sense: Detect the mana flowing within objects around you.
Lv. 1 Snow Stomach: Consume snow attuned mana for nutrients.
Lv. 1 Perseverance: Use Mana to increase Stamina.
Lv. 1 Sound Recognition: Perceive sound as images.
Layer One Skills: None.
Even these seemed bland compared to what I was staring at.
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Layer Two Skills:
Lv. 0 Biting Frost: Fueled with raw hatred and cold attuned mana, a violent frost emanates from you and consumes all in its path. Those targeted live in an icy hell, unable to move; They're burned alive while frozen to death. Created from hatred and emptiness nearly two millennia ago, this Skill is steeped in the hatred and mana of generations of primordial wolves. Call upon this ancient hatred and let it consume your enemy.
These words were calling out to me. The pull from them, almost inescapable. I stared upon them and saw worlds destroyed, civilizations in ruin. Everything in a frozen landscape, statues of humans and animals in ice. The thing was, my heart beated faster, my blood coursed through my body at an unimaginable speed. My claws extended, my teeth exposed, I was...excited, but also angry. My veins were barely able to contain the magma that is my blood. When I stared in the statues' eyes it was only spiraling out of control faster. Maybe in a last-ditch effort, I could hear my inner voice calling out to me, yelling at me to stop. It slowly transformed until it was no longer mine and soon my face stung.
I looked around where I've been standing and everything on the ground was long gone, turned into nothing but small ice crystals, including my mother's body. The only exception was the wolf in front of me. A bit bigger than me, maybe one and a half times, and blackish fur, he stared me straight in the eyes with his big dark blues.
"HEY!" He hit me again. "WAKE UP!" His voice was really soft and childish.
"Huh?" I said, still confused about what just happened, and what is currently happening.
"I SAID WA...ke up?" He lowered his voice mid-sentence and donned a confused yet relieved face.
"Geeze, you were about to kill me. No way am I going to let some baby white fur kill me today," He said in annoyance.
I was so confused, many times over. 'I was about to kill him?' I looked over his body, and when my eyes met his feet, they were almost complete ice. Any longer and he would never walk again. The guilt was about to overtake me when I processed what he called me. 'Baby white fur?' It was so incredulous for me to be called a baby. I mean sure, I wasn't an adult by any standard, but I'm hardly a baby.
But then I thought about it. There were a lot of clues to point towards me being a baby. Probably the most glaring was that I had baby paws, but who knows, I was starving for a while, I could just be really thin. I also got tired really easily; I could only move for about an hour at a time. Tied for most glaringly obvious though, was the words in my head saying Age: 0, though that could be wrong, an illusion, or misinterpreted. Maybe zero is the new hundred in years. All these clues pointed to me being either a baby or an old woman. I choose to believe the first even though I don't want to be either.
My train of thought collapsed when I saw him limping away.
"Hey! Wait!" I struggled to bark, but only little squeaks actually came out.
It wasn't for naught though because the wolf did turn around. Though not because of any goodwill towards me. I could hear him talk to himself, "Geeze, It really is just a stupid baby. I almost got killed by a baby. I won't hear the end of this if they find out. Guess what they say about white furs are true though; they're scary."