I always wondered about what the first genera could truly do.

-From Canticles: 10:1

The world spun slowly above the neonate, or she thought it did, she could only see the bundled reeds.

She lay on her back, drifting. Not really sure how long it had been. It was at least the next day… She looked over to see where the rous she had collected had gone, and was met with only bones and pelts.

Two days?

She looked more and spotted some strips of meat hanging already, but not as much as she would have expected.

Need to stop getting hurt… Had she thought that before?

Yes… Her Instinct lulled in her mind, giving the impression that its tongue was hanging out, belly to the sky.

Or find a different way to chew the leaves.

She regretted that thought instantly.

More! Her Instinct whined unhelpfully.

N-no… She placed a hand to her forehead. She could taste the feeling of her claws tapping softly, hear the dry sandy taste in her mouth.

She had tried the ugly fruit from the herb plant, only nibbling off the tiniest piece. She had thought it might have different healing properties than the leaves. Perhaps help heal her bruising from the fight with the smoothskins.

Idiot curiosity. Her Instinct slurred again, her emotions a vibrant spiral. She growled back at herself.

Curiosity or no, she had been stubbornly careful about it. Just nibbling, and it had been so incredibly bitter that she had convulsively spat it out.

She had taken a lot of time to wash out her mouth with rainwater to get rid of the taste, she remembered that. And even then it hadn’t gone away noticeably. As a last resort, she had turned to chewing some leaves as well to help rid herself of the flavor.

HA! Big mistake kiddo. Though she knows it was now I suppose.

Either the berries had interacted with the leaves, or the extra herb that she had used was affecting her more than usual. The fire sparked, and it was like the glittering motes were undulating like nightcrawlers for her. Stretching. Pulsing. Wiggling.

Need to move… Can’t just lay here.

She hefted herself up, body tingling pleasantly, and the little predator scooped a handful of the berries up as she did.

Bastard things…

Her Instinct whined.

Quiet.

The neonate staggered through the rain to the thorns, stopping just short of them. She didn’t want to fall into the things, even if that would be funny. Standing there, wiggling her toes in the smooth mud, she scattered some of the berries along the edge of the clearing.

There. Maybe they’ll sprout… It would be one last thing to head out through the thorns to get if they did.

She could feel the ideas floating around in the general fog, but they just kept slipping out of her claws.

She looked over at the shelter with one eye, lifting her head. Rain ran along her scales, soothing if cold. She opened her mouth, letting the rain patter into it, tapping on her tongue with cooling wetness.

She kept her jaws open, letting the water slowly submerge her teeth as she took a small gulp, focusing on the shelter with difficulty.

Bigger walls.

She could do that. Simple repetitive…

She gulped the water.

Thunder rumbled.

Huh? Oh yeah… walls. Simple repetitive work.

She had noticed that taking in liquids sometimes lessened the effects of the drug. She took another little gulp, not sure if it was just her imagination or not.

She lost sense of time, but when it snapped back she moved over to the pile of stones, deciding that this time she would move the whole pile so she could be closer to the fire the whole time. IT was slow work, and she hissed in frustration, and accidentally bit her tongue.

Really overdid it this time.

… Agree… Her Instinct admitted groggily, sounding frustrated that it had to concede the point.

The last stone was too large to lift, but she found that she could push it easily enough. It slid over the muddy earth with little effort, cutting a furrow into the ground before it suddenly became much harder to push. There was a grinding sound, and she could feel it scrapping something under the earth as she pushed. She paused.

Grinding?

She checked the path she had taken. Beneath the furrow, under a relatively deep coating of soil turned into mud, was a regular pattern of square stones, exactly like Tok’s camp.

Unnatural. Her Instinct hissed, dragging her eyes to take note of the squared edges of the stones.

She blinked, confused by it. She pushed the largest stone over to her base, leaving it next to one of the poles. Inspecting the construction from ages past after.

What is it?

She traced the edges of one stone with her claw. Squared stones, like the other ruins.

That’d make a wall easy! She reached down and pulled.

It didn’t budge.

She looked closer. Is it wedged? The rain washed some more mud away, and the Greenscale’s eyes widened.

Her hand tightened around her knife.

Each square stone had a rune carved in it. Like the glowing symbols of the bag, or the ones along the blade of the knife. They were carved. Chiseled into the rock. Still sharp and distinct as the day that they had been made.

Each and every one of them.

She suddenly remembered other sections of ruins having the same symbol across the island. She had just never thought of it before!

The neonate scoured away the soil and detritus, needing to be sure. She eventually found a thick mat of roots and buried vines underneath that sped up the process greatly, letting her pull up a big swath with one tremendous heave.

She had seen such structures all over the island. With everything that had happened to her, she had yet to have a need to take note of them until now.

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Could they be utilized somehow?

Did they have a secret purpose?

Her tail lashed once as she squatted in the rain, thoughts becoming clearer as the peak of her high started to erode, the work helping to force it through and out of her system. Or at least, it felt that way to her.

Why just the one mark? And why all the same?

Simple purpose? Her Instinct guessed, once again in her eyes.

It was so different from her knife and her bag, which were both festooned with many different runes and symbols. Like the knife, however, these didn’t glow.

Perhaps they are decorative?

Her tongue slid out, flickering slightly, and she also sniffed at them as well.

No, this is… She wasn’t sure exactly.

It wasn’t quite a smell. She wasn’t sure what to call it. Whatever it was, it seemed to waft from them. It was similar to the strange leaf magic that the smoothskins had used, which now that she thought of it, hadn’t really been a smell either.

Aura? Her Instinct suggested.

She didn’t think so. It was something crisp. Dry. Dusty.

Ancient. Both halves of her psyche realized.

She carefully touched one of the shaped stones. She couldn’t feel anything, but rather it was like she remembered them vibrating under her fingers. Or she expected the feeling of their warmth after the sun shined on them for a whole day.

It was nothing that was currently happening or that looked possible to happen in the rain. She would have blamed it on the effect of the herbs, but the chill of the rain had done a wonderful job sobering her up.

Magic… her Instinct whispered from the tip of her tail. It was as if it had backed away in the hopes that if something happened, it would be safe.

She pushed down her own fear. She had the bag, it was magic, and probably broken.

It hasn’t killed me yet! I can’t be the first thing to walk atop them, surely.

Survive! Her Instinct whined, focusing stubbornly on the yet. Her hindbrain thought of the tube weapon magic. That would have killed her.

But it didn’t. Besides, this is my territory. I need to determine what their purpose is. If I am going to stay here, I need to know what they do.

And more immediately, she needed mud for her wall. She scooped up some and placed it on the top layer of one of the walls.

Smooth. Clay. Good for building. Her Instinct agreed from between her fingers as she squeezed the handful of earth through them.

And it lets me inspect these. She traced one of the symbols with a claw.

Her Instinct grumbled, but her curiosity was seeping into it, and it grudgingly started pointing out where the large deposits of clay were.

Lightning flashed and thunder clapped.

The wall grew, and she started using her knife to gather more reeds and some thorns from the edge of the clearing. The stones had run out, but she had realized she could weave the reeds in between the poles and then cover them with mud to plug any gaps.

Good, quickly done. More fire. Dry it out.

She was cold again too. She was also keenly aware that any more wood would either have to come from the tree or be dragged through the thorns.

I shouldn’t do that, tempting as it is.

She balked at the idea.

She couldn’t expend the resources on that just to speed things up. The wall would have to be content with taking some time to dry, same as her.

It felt good to be doing something to improve her situation, to work her muscles, to see the progress. To enact a plan, no matter how small, with little fear.

And even without extra wood, the fire did contribute to drying the wall.

The fish was still smoking, and there were slices of rous drying as well. She oscillated between her construction project and tending the food, testing it for doneness with her claws.

The neonate had found that she could hang the strips up in the rafters where the smoke gathered, and so she moved sets that were done farther away from the fire to make room for the next. The little predator ate a few while they were still hot, fighting back a groan of pleasure as she ate. Drool spattered out of her maw, sizzling in the coals as she hunched over the fire.

Finally. More hot food.

Not smokey enough. Her Instinct whispered from her tongue, the sibilance of the thought almost hidden by crackle of the cookfire.

She remembered the state of her grubby log.

Rot is wet. Her Instinct agreed.

Then I’ll keep the fire and the smoke going. Easy.

Taking some time every so often to warm by the fire, she continued her work, the strange feeling almost leaving completely as she did.

She made a point to only take the mud from off the top of the shaped stones, and soon she had a large section of them excavated. They frustrated her though. They were frustratingly uniform, unnatural, and unfathomable. Holding their secrets close.

Focus! Her Instinct hissed.

She couldn’t help it though.

The path was four lengths of her body, including her tail, wide, and continued all the way to the tree. Possibly it even went under it, though she couldn’t reach any further with the roots in the way. It didn’t matter what she did to try and dislodge the carved stones, they wouldn’t move.

She even found the edge of the construction and managed to dig under it. And the stones stubbornly stayed in place, even though they should have fallen or at least budged when she pulled on them. She didn’t understand what the purpose of the path they made was. It was clearly old.

The roots of the tree where she could dig followed the right angles of the stones at times, even filling the symbols here and there. But even the tree was foiled by whatever magic or power the construction had.

Why though?

Distracted idiot! Focus.

She snapped her jaw in frustration and got back to building the wall, knowing she needed to make more progress than she had. The day was waning fast under the dark blanket of clouds.

It wasn’t until the wall was half done and night fell that she realized why she was so frustrated.

She had been hoping to get some answers.

Something simple like this might give her insight into the workings of her bag. It was a curiosity that had been repressed from necessity, and now she was let down by the lack of answers. What was worse, it had only added to the number of questions she had.

She glared at the knife at her side.

One of the runes carved into the black blade was the same as the one in the stones, she had looked through them all carefully and that alone was enough to make her wonder.

I need to know. I need to know if there is some hidden power to this. All of it.

Her Instinct grunted.

She stared at the blade, not remembering when she had drawn it. She slid it back into its sheath again.

That night she was distinctly warmer, the complete holding the warmth of the fire close and blocking the chilling wind and rain.

She also found that it acted as a heat reservoir after a while, which made it wonderful to snuggle up against in the night. The best part, the small area where she had made her little bed was finally dry too.

She ate some of the pilfered and cooked fish, delighted by the taste, though it wasn’t as smoky as the dried meat that she had taken before the others had access to it.

The worked stones though, they vexed her to no end. They were about six feet across, and traced a straight line down the hill that the clearing was on. Forming steps in a couple places, unnatural in their uniformity.

They also seemed to go the other way as well, going under the tree. The other side went straight for the thorns. That was about the extent of her discoveries though.

She growled and ripped a piece of fish in half, chewing.

That’s it. I am figuring this out.

The neonate returned to the stone she had tried to pry free, needing to try again. She used a pole for leverage, dug out the mortar, and expanded the excavation to try the neighboring stones as well. Nothing. None of them budged.

She pounded it with a river rock, which only made a terrible racket. She kept it up anyway. When she looked at it after she was worn out and tired, there was not so much as scratch on the unnatural thing. It had jarred her hands terribly. In a fit of rage, she hefted the river rock over her head and hurled it into the thorns.

It snapped and crackled through them, sounding like a startled rous. She didn’t pay any mind to the sound, she had been making something of a racket for a while now. It ended with string of loud hollow sounds echoing dully before there was a splash like a diving mawfrog.

She froze.

Lightning lanced across the weeping sky.

Cave?

She scrambled to the end of the organized stones, trying to peer through the thorns.

Can’t see! I need to get in there!

Careful.

It was too dark, the rain too thick now. The black blade was a lethal shadow in her hand. Unable to stop herself, she hacked through the thorns. She did her best to avoid cuts, mostly using her claws to pull the vines away.

Dangers.

She couldn’t be careful, she was almost there!

Ambush.

She slowed. She had made a lot of noise for a long time now.

Idiot. I can’t let myself get too comfortable here.

She became much more deliberate with her knife. It wasn’t really suited for such work anyway. Too light, too narrow. She thought about making a new hand axe, but then she would get torn up by the brambles.

A handle! I could attach one.

That would require her to figure out how to do that though, and she wanted to find this out now. It was worth looking into though. She could see it making it easier to chop down more saplings. Make her more efficient in getting wood and the materials for cordage.

Deadly weapon. Her Instinct hissed with delight.

It would give her something to put in her other hand if she had to confront one of the oth-

She broke through the thorns.

Distracted by her ruminations, the neonate almost toppled into the dark abyss before her. She snarled and planted her foot, extending her tail behind her as well, using it as a counterweight.

Danger. Her Instinct reiterated, a scale’s width from smugness. She wasn’t sure why she was so hard on herself.

The neonate could see the rain pouring down the path, cascading down and into the strange structure. There was a constant roar from the water flowing down into the dark, each step making its own little waterfall and adding to the cacophony.

It doesn’t explain why it is so loud though.

Her Instinct grunted in agreement from the tip of her tail.

Now that she was there, she wondered if she really did want to go in.

Crackabroom!

Lightning burst overhead, bellowing thunder coming instantly, making her jerk and duck, almost slipping on the wet stone down the steps. It echoed weirdly, dopplering back and forth in the pitch black. The unknown filled her with dread, her imagination populating her thoughts with terrible nebulous things that she was worried might just exist in such a sinister place.

Open now. Have to see. Her Instinct gulped.

She hated that it was right.