Never underestimate the value of a lesson learned. Double the value if it is learned with minimal guidance. For both the scaled and unscaled.

-From Canticles: 4:10-12

The days passed quickly, and the hatchlings developed even quicker.

Those that survived, anyway, and the neonate felt lucky to be one of them. Many of the smallest of them starved, too weak and too slow to get enough food in the crucial first few days. But not her, the smallest of the hatchlings.

Though she was constantly hungry, her tail thin and visibly bony compared to the others, she managed to make it through. But she knew determination and stubbornness alone could only take her so far.

The neonate relied heavily on her camouflage in the beginning. But she also tried to rush in and back out again like the other smaller hatchlings. She needed the practice, seeing as flight was her only chance of avoiding injury if caught.

She had liked sprinting. The freedom of it. The speed. The action. And it only took two days for that to be stollen from her by the claws and teeth of the rest of the brood. Especially the male she had tried to strike the day she hatched.

He showed a cruel streak towards all of the smaller hatchlings. Always striking one more time when the others would back off. Always targeting existing wounds. Always searching her out to show dominance.

She hissed thinking about him. Him and his hate filled eyes.

Her stomach gurgled. Another pain to endure.

Need food. Growth! Her Instinct insisted. But she didn’t know what to do about it.

The neonate tried to use her camouflage even more than before, taking her time, finding a shadowed space to start at. But it wasn’t foolproof. The others could smell her. And if she was ever caught eating out of turn…

She cringed.

She remembered ruthless clawed feet, kicking her over and over again as she tried to crawl away. Scales torn away from her hide. Bruises that left her limping the next day. Teeth knocked out. Pain becoming her constant companion. Her pride shredded into ragged tatters.

Her teeth grew back. Her bruises healed. But that was time, resources, and energy wasted. And her anger only continued to grow. With the others, with the world, but most of all with herself.

Fight! Her Instinct snarled, frustrated.

That wasn’t an option either. The injuries were only getting worse as the others grew faster than her. It forced her to rely more and more on her camouflage. And the more she used it, the better she got with it. But it was never enough since the others could smell her.

She felt trapped. Trapped in her own tiny body. Useless. Weak. Pathetic.

Live! Her Instinct snarled, smashing against her depression with the vindictive pride of an apex competitor.

The neonate bared her teeth, growling as the cicadas buzzed.

I hate them all.

Learn.

She grunted. She would try.

Feeding became a part of her instruction, if only for her to squeeze more use out of it. The neonate watched the others, seeing how they moved, fought, ran. All of it. She started miming the movements she saw at night. Hiding her practice at the behest of her Instinct.

Hidden skills are a surprise. Use that.

She did the same with her camouflage. Straining to increase how long she could maintain it. How quickly she could alter her pattern. How accurate the colors were. And while it did yield some results, it never seemed to be enough. It was like she was missing something.

She continued to observe from the shadows. Searching for something, anything, that might help her survive. She found that she was able to understand and analyze their techniques much more thoroughly after eating. It was like hunger stifled her thoughts too, not just her growth. She took note of techniques that worked well, but also what ones did not. Finding both very instructive.

Good! Learn!

During this time, it did not take long before the basics of their language sunk in, mostly through their interactions with Tok. None of them wanted to interact much with the others, their Instincts calling for competition, pushing for solitude.

But Tok forced them to spend time together. To learn their language and culture. He explained that if an outside threat came, he could rely on the fact that they could all understand his directions.

“This trial is for you each to prove worthy of a place within the brood and earn a name. It is a struggle against each other, not against the apex denizens of the swamp. You are not ready for that. Not yet,” he said.

In the days that came, while they gorged on the food provided, or tried to not get beaten, scratched, or bitten again in her case, Tok also spoke of their culture. In particular, his sacred position as their guardian and the observer of their trial. It was less about the instinctual things that they understood and more about the why of it. Why such things were right.

He held a gulper as he spoke. A large fleshy fish with feelers and a wide thick lipped mouth. Nearly eight feet long.

“Mothers have shown favoritism in the past. Such things are bad for the brood,” he stated, tearing free a great chunk of flesh and swallowing. “Your sire’s caste determined who would provide for their offspring during the trial.”

He tossed what was left of the carcass to the multitude and they all swarmed it.

The neonate was punched in the eye and then tripped by another’s tail. Left to be trampled by the others. She yelped and squealed in pain, curling around herself and trying her best to protect her head. By the time she limped to the carcass, there was barely anything left.

Again.

She could feel the bruises swelling under her scales. She stripped the ribs of the remnants, searching the mouth and finding some tongue to eat. It curbed the pains, but she was in no way full. And what was worse, there was even less than last time.

This cannot continue. I will not last. Need to grow, to catch up, to become competitive.

Compete!

Eating and learning were not the only things that the brood did with Tok. They joined him in basking. She always matched his coloration, finding it warmed her faster when she mimicked his black scales. And she remained the only one to ever climb onto him to sun herself, a relief from the constant torment. A chance to recover if only slightly. His eyes rested on her again, before sliding back to scan the crowd of hatchlings.

His silence pained her. No grunt. No approval. He could see she was dying.

I might not even be worth the effort of eating…

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Live! Learn! Her Instinct snarled, filling her claws and making them clench.

He looked back at her again and she let go of his scales, squeaking apologetically.

He looked at her for a long time. Half-lidded sanguine eyes unreadable. They looked away from her and slowly closed as the sun continued to rise towards midday.

Later, Tok gave a lesson about why challenge was a key aspect of their lives.

“The world that the gods have made gives us all challenges. Trials and tribulations to overcome to prepare us for the Kzik’hassezm.” Tok said with a paternal growl, basking on his belly as his lazy eyes observed.

Why can’t the gods make us ready? She kept the blasphemy to herself. Her Instinct growled in disapproval.

“Kzik’hassezm?” One of the others asked. The big male. The one she had tried to strike at. First amongst her bullies. The one she wanted to die.

The Provider turned to him, “When Haan-Kezk al’Shezd’s bloodlust and desire for great challenges will finally be sated, and yet more will come.” He turned back to face the whole brood, “When Schönezk shall charge forth once again and slaughter the demon Falsescaled by the thousands, only to have thousands more vomited out of their still gnashing maws. When the very seas dry into plains of salt, and Salinnia’s corpse will rot on the earth. When the prey will grow fallow and there will be naught to eat but our enemies and the weak.”

His voice grew in conviction, captivating and terrifying them as it became a snarl, “When even Ravo will despair at the multitude entering her domain as they die. So much so that she may choose to open the faceted earthblood gates to release the worthiest warriors back into the world of the living. A desperate attempt to keep the endless ring, the cycle of cycles, turning.”

The collective grunted and hissed. The neonate could feel her Instinct quiver at that idea. Such unnatural things were not to be.

“We must be ready. It is our duty. The one we have been bred to face. For a thousand-thousand years and more this has been in the making.”

The neonate liked stories of battles. She always hoped for more hints to improve her own methods. But this wasn’t that. It was… anathema.

Calm. Be calm.

The Provider continued with a long hiss, “If the brood is weak, then cataclysm will be the outcome. A terminus to the outflow of life.”

A fish jumped in the river, splashing loudly before there was the hollow snap of an alligator’s jaws. She turned to look, and saw roe floating on the surface, unfertilized, underdeveloped.

Not given a chance to live.

“Not just the brood, but all of Szez’tek Vooznal’s children. All life. Scaled and unscaled, flora and fauna,” Tok lifted a massive, clawed hand, fingers spread, palm towards the sky, “even the eyes of Zasa’avi, the very stars, would be put out. Falling from the heavens to crash, smoldering, into the earth.” His hand shot down, slapping the ground so that the reverberations shook them all with the force of it.

Most of the hatchlings squeaked in surprise.

“Time would cease, all would freeze. And the very construction of everything would unravel.” He looked around the group. “If that were to happen, not even if the other gods freed Baha’an would there be any saving us. No weapon stolen would fix the world then.”

He looked to make sure that the point was made before ending his statement. “So the first genera said, and so it will be if we are not prepared.”

“The first genera do not lie. The first genera do not mislead.” The neonate joined the chorus, and her Instinct also took up the mantra within her belly as it grumbled again. “The first genera were betrayed. The first genera cannot be forgotten.”

“So we fight from the start?” One of the brute-hatchlings asked after the catechism. A male who was a little more than twice her size already. She recognized him, his longer claws, the one who had been squabbling with the female with the overdeveloped jaws earlier.

Slash. Her Instinct named him, which made the female Biter, who she saw already had a healing cut along her broad muzzle.

“In all things.” Tok replied, shifting slightly, shoving a boulder into the river with a slight splash. He could have lifted it, but he instead used a wedged sapling to lever it out of the way. “It does the brood little good to have a weakness in its members.”

This seemed to encourage the largest of the brood, but something about how Tok spoke of strength told her that he didn’t just mean physical might. She looked at the sapling that had been wedged under the boulder.

In all things. She pondered that before bedding down for the night. Curling up right behind the Providers head.

A few days later, he started teaching them what he called ‘The language of the smoothskins’. Apparently, there were beings out there without claws or fangs. They had skin as smooth and rubbery as the massive gulpers that lived in the muddy waters of the swamp according to Tok’s own teachings. They sounded hideous to her, and it was one of the few times that she had asked a question in front of the others.

Worse still, their language didn’t use prefixes to indicate emotion, and was difficult to pronounce at the best of times.

I could be resting. Saving my energy for the next carcass. She ground her freshly regrown teeth.

“Why would we need to learn their language? There are none here to speak with,” she asked, trying to ignore the attention the question placed on her.

Tok’s lazy red eyes slid to regard her. “That is something for you to learn if you survive, hatchling.”

That rankled.

The smoothskins were clearly less than the brood, which could survive from hatching. From the sounds of it, they were parasites even before they were laid. Feeding off the mothers before even being hatched, and then continuing after that. Stuck in clutches of one or two at most.

They were weak!

They were less than all of them!

They are less than even me…

Her Instinct roaring with approval, she spoke up again, her words heavy with dismissive and hate filled prefixes, “But why not use them as fodder? Why not use them as the example of what not to be? Are they not cursed? They are clearly some mistake of Szez’tek Vooz-”

“They are cursed for the stupidity of their forefathers!” Tok snarled, and they all flinched. Worse, the others pulled away from her so that she stood alone, highlighted by a gap of several yards. She fought back a shudder. She hadn’t meant to imply dislike of the Provider. Had she done that?

Fear gripped her as he stared at her.

Hide, run, exposed. Her Instinct rattled her spine as she stood in the open, singled out by the Provider’s gaze, all the bravado drained from her in an instant.

“I-”

“Be quiet, neonate. In your heart as well.” Tok continued, his red eyes no longer lazy as he continued to stare at her, an explosive sigh pouring out from his nostrils.

The attention of an Apex…

She wanted to sink into the mud, to become water and seep into it, to hide. She realized her scales had lost their saturation, going grayish, almost white with fear. She flexed her skin and forced them back to the rich dark black, but the damage was done.

The others were starting to learn to use their camouflage, and she saw orange amusement in their skin. Knowing what it meant just like how she knew the smell of water.

“Once they were our equals. Fellow receivers of Baha’an’s favor.” Tok lifted one massive hand, palm out, wiggling a thumb, and by rote they all mimicked the gesture. “But no longer.” He lowered his hand. “They are to be pitied. They have no Instinct anymore to guide them.” He hissed softly.

The whole group froze. The neonate’s eyes went wide. What?

She couldn’t comprehend that. Her own Instinct gibbered at the thought of being silenced. How did they know what to do? How to do it? How to… anything?

Deformed monsters…

Tok continued with a hiss, “They deserved it at the time, but in some ways, they have proven that they can overcome that blight of their bloodline.” his prefixes signaling his anger at the scaleless.

He sat up, and took out a thing of the smoothskin world, a ceramic… something… It was oddly shaped, had a lid, and a tube-like spout on one side.

“They craft. They build. They are multitudinous.” With one hand he deftly slid a reed over the spout. “They are our holy rivals, and I thank the gods for such fine competitors. Never underestimate them, no matter how much better the brood is than they.”

What is he doing? Making something? A tool? Why?

He wound a vine around the join of reed and spout, before placing the device amongst his belongings with a satisfied grunt. “We lag behind them in such matters for now, but that does not mean that we cannot catch up.” His red eyes met hers again.

A mawfrog croaked loudly in the distance.

He isn’t talking about the smoothskins anymore, is he?

Compete. Her Instinct hissed gently in her mind.

He turned to slide back into the water. To hunt their next meal.

Strength in all things.

An idea struck her. What if she started getting her own food? He couldn’t plan to feed them for the rest of the trial. Not completely. And if she got her own food away from the others, they couldn’t take it from her. At least not as easily. All she had to do was… figure out how to kill something.

The brood has been shaped by the gods for that. It shouldn’t be too hard.

Adapt. Learn. Survive!

She slunk into the shadows, away from the others, mimicking the ferns and underbrush as she searched for something to eat. Her stomach gurgled. She would have to.