Death isn’t always simple.

-From Canticles: 1:8

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Such a shame. Your weakling will die.

I almost lashed out at Him, but I like living sooooo, I didn’t. I got crafty instead.

“Care to wager on that?”

For what, thief? You have NOTHING!

After wincing into next century at the volume, I realized I had to tempt Him, so it had to be risky for me.

“Oh, bragging rights. And all of my followers.” I made a point to list two things.

DONE.

Got to love a meathead like Maruc, agreeing before I even said what I would get out of it. He didn’t even give me a chance to change my mind. I wouldn’t have. You’d think with the Fae being a thing… whatever, anyway… I believed in the Kiddo. Hells, even Gods have faith in some things. She had the key to my release, after all.

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The neonate slammed the ax down, jarring the one set of talons free, cracking the exoskeleton. Blood gushed out of her, but she fought to stay conscious.

The matte black blade sparked against the shell of the forearm. She stabbed again, seeing the mandibles tremble. The point found a gap, sliding in easily into the first joint.

Thick wet translucent ichor spattered onto the idol below. The little predator fell, the monster flinging her against the war god’s idol, nearly knocking the blade from her hand.

The abomination’s body flickered into opaqueness, dark brown for moments before going clear once more. The Ichor did the same, the translucent dark green ooze spattering onto the ground, remaining visible after.

The reek of death billowed from the monstrosity as it writhed in agony.

“Weakling.” She spat, all the more frustrated when it didn’t respond to the taunt.

The neonate knew pain well now. She glared as she picked herself up from the ground, staggering only once as blood mixed with the ichor. Her chest heaving painfully as she gasped for air.

Chipped ribs.

She ignored that. Diagnosis was only important if she didn’t die. Besides, she knew what to do now.

It’s the knife. Not the ax. On the joints. She glared at the stuttering heart, knowing it was her target.

Kill!

She hopped backwards into the center of the statues, landing on the dais. The neonate winced in pain as she landed, careless of the earthbone trinkets and disks that she scattered onto the floor.

As the disks and shiny stones bounced and clattered along the floor, the creature’s head shifted and twitched. Its uninjured hand shot out to snatch at the ground, the fingers so wide she had to dodge in between a pair of them or be grabbed once more.

More earthbone scattered to the floor and its eyeless head darted towards them, mandibles snapping.

Like the mushrooms!

What?

It had only twitched towards them before, what was different now? It was blind so it wasn’t the color. Then she realized.

The earthbone is heavier!

The taunt. Her Instinct hissed from her own ears.

It can’t hear? Then how- Sudden understanding flowed into her. How it twitched at each blow, the way it sensed things. Noting collisions.

Vibrations! Like a spider.

She understood! Forcing her body into action, wounds screaming as she stumbled in the pile of shining earthbone, foot pushing through to the solid dais below. The beast spun, lashing forward. She had to leap over grasping hands.

She landed higher up on shifting drifts of earthbone, and staggered even more. She didn’t lift her feet, but shuffled them, knocking over drifts of the treasure. She hoped it would be like hiding in the foliage. A cacophony of colors obscuring her movements.

The swipes of the monster became less accurate. It landed a thin slice along her one shoulder. A nick near the tip of her tail. But she got closer to its torso. She lashed out with the matte black blade. The tip sliced along the fleshy chest of the beast.

It writhed in pain, its body once again flickering into opaqueness, the ichor that touched the blade staying that disgusting dark green.

There! Between the back and the centipede body!

She rolled around one of the hands, which slammed down blindly into the pile of treasure, staying low. She stabbed into the gap there, forcing upwards. Uncoiling herself as if she were a viper bursting out of the ground. The blade sank in deep.

The abomination coiled around itself, almost catching her. She had to leap off of the plates of its back to get away.

The neonate stumbled and fell flat as she landed, her one toe screeching in pain.

Damn you! Stand!

She snarled, forcing herself back up again. The reek of her own blood joining the ichor. She wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. Not until that thing was dead at her hand.

Thunk!

Something stabbed deep into her shoulder. The neonate bellowed, back arching away from whatever it was. She couldn’t see it. There was something else to the monster! Something was pumped into her shoulder! Searing pain followed by horrifying numbness.

A third limb with a sting.

Venom!

She was going to die.

Kill!

Unresponsive fingers dropped the ax.

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I won’t die quiet. Not down in this useless hole!

She snapped her head towards her shoulder. Jaws wide.

All my work, wasted.

Her teeth bit into the invisible weapon. She could feel its shape.

I haven’t even been named yet.

She bit farther down, past the armored bulb, finding the joint. The neonate yanked and wrenched her head back and forth, snarling.

Even if I live, I might lose this arm.

The stinger she couldn’t see slid out of her with a fresh spray of blood.

Rage boiled inside. No, righteous fury! Her skin snapped into the red and black, the patterns the most complex she had ever made. Patterns that were for her and her alone.

It isn’t over. Not until I say so!

Snarling, the neonate hacked down again and again and again with her knife. The pain lancing through her injured left arm ignored. Chitin sparked. The beast flickered, writhing, her body getting jerked around because she wouldn’t let go.

She snarled, spotting a gap in the armor in the crystalline refractions. She wrapped her legs around the sting, dug in her toeclaws. Her knife hacked and hacked, chopping at the joint.

The bulb, splattered with her blood so she could see it, twisted and turned, trying to find an angle to pump in more venom.

Snap!

Her jaws clamped down on the pointed bulb at the joint, pinning it. It wouldn’t sting again. Her left arm was bleeding, her right arm was dangling nervelessly, flopping about. Somehow painful even while the injury was numb.

Fight! Her Instinct howled, blazing like the morning sun with pride.

She plunged her blade in deep, sawing, cutting through dense connective tissue. The odd tail-limb tried to fling her free. And she did. But only after sting did, still pumping venom the color of stale urine. Completely visible now that it had been removed. Her grip slipped, and the neonate smashed into the stairs painfully.

Stand! Her Instinct screamed.

It was hard to. Everything hurt. She was so tired. Luckily the beast was distracted by its own pain, writhing about and slamming into the massive painted idols. Spraying ichor out of its tail.

She had no way of knowing just how much had been pumped into her system, but if she was this dizzy… She started to fall off of the dais.

No! Vibrations!

Clarity returned in that instant of terror just as she jerked to a halt.

The rope she had on her bag had caught on a statue made of the yellow earthbone. It was in the shape of one of the brood, reaching towards the sky. The rope had tangled around the arms of it, its weight jerking her to a stop when she had run out of line.

She could see the abomination writhing in pain, jerking back and forth. Then it started grabbing great handfuls of the earthbone trinkets and tossing them out of the octagonal central space.

It can think… Her Instinct said drunkenly from her shoulder. She looked at the wound, expecting to see herself standing there in the oozing orange pus. She almost thought she did.

Her Instinct jibbered in fear at the amount of venom in her system. She would probably die. She felt sleepy, her eyelids heavy. Fighting to stay awake, to not just flop backwards, to die right there, it was hard for the neonate to find hope.

She saw the creature get control of its rage. She struggled to focus on it. It swept its hands from side to side, searching for her. The mouthparts clacked angrily, its drool joining the spattering liquids on the floor. It was heading right towards her, away from the earthbone figure, Ropemaker’s rope trailing over the central dais to her bag.

Live fool!

She drunkenly appraised the space between the figure and the dais. She took the rope back up again in her one working hand. The abomination was closer now. It was being methodical in its search.

I’m the smartest one in the room. She felt the shadow of sunshine yellow fill her thoughts at that.

She pulled as hard as she could, feet sinking into the treasure, pulling even harder as they reached the bottom. The abomination twitched, mandible snapping loudly, coiling. She gave one last heave!

Clang!

The yellow earthbone figure fell with a loud ringing chime. The beast redirected and lashed forward towards the decoy. She dropped the rope and pulled her feet free of the disks and earthblood stones.

Her vision was wavy.

Succeed! Fight!

She forced herself to focus. The knife was inverted in her hand, point down, her thumb on the pommel.

She leapt one last time.

She crashed into its back. Her teeth latched onto its neck, not piercing the flesh. The mandible snapped loudly, mouthparts clicking.

This close it had a familiar smell.

The long hands moved towards her as the stump of its tail smashed into her back over and over, trying to use venom it no longer had.

The talons found her, scratching painfully into her back to try and pull her off.

The matte black blade slammed down into the armpit, towards the beating heart of the monster.

It writhed, becoming opaque as it threw her off with enough force to bounce her off of one of the idols painfully. She thought that her shin was broken. Her blade had sunk deep into the armpit. The tip piercing the pumping organ.

It continued to writhe. The elongated form knocking all the piles of oddments aside. Each time it did so the claws swiping and sending more things scattering about which only made it swipe in even more of a frenzy. Attacking the movement while she quite happily laid there, wallowing in her pain.

It started to slow, its back end curling as the torso fell onto the dais, and finally became completely opaque. The flesh was a sickly green color, dead, rotting already, starting to slough off of blackened endoskeleton.

Pain scraped against her very soul.

She whined, one hand pressing to her one side.

The other she couldn’t move.

It did nothing to abate the pain.

She could smell her own guts.

Infection. Dull fear tried to compel her. It was all too much.

Punctured internal organs. Broken bones. What little sense of accomplishment ruined by her own idiotic need to win.

Feeling is a good sign right now… worried about your back. Guts too.

She focused her attention to her back, which didn’t feel great, but nothing felt great.

Toes. Wiggle them.

She did, stretching her neck uncomfortably to see. The one wouldn’t but it was crooked in its brokenness.

She looked at her left arm and shoulder, both swollen and discolored. Even her fingers bloated to the point of immobilization. They had become unrecognizable grubs with only one mandible.

The eyes of the doomed neonate slid in their sockets. The horrible corpse was still there. The flesh of it had sloughed off of the shell, and she could see that there was an endoskeleton underneath some of the plates.

All oddly visible in death. Realization filling her tired mind.

It had camouflage.

Her Instinct snorted. The thing was dead, why care? She had major injuries to-

It had camouflage… She had to know, had to see.

Not like me. The snarl of her Instinct came from her nostrils.

With a terrible effort she forced herself to her hands and knees, crawling to the monster. The smell was unbearable, making her gag. A fetid almost fermented reek. Yeasty. Sharp. Overwhelming.

Familiar.

The head and shoulders of the corpse hung limply over the edge of the dais. Her answers lay there, but she needed to gather herself first before dealing with that.

The sense of being watched, that judgmental set of eyes out of the wherever, was gone, fading behind the veil of reality.

There was a jangle. She looked up, seeing another pile of the earthbone disks falling over on the other side of the dais. It was sinking. It had been waist high when she first saw it. Now it was only as high as her knees. A slow soft grinding sound that was hard to discern with the cacophony of the rainwater. She kept crawling, needing to know.

She reached the head of the beast. The unnatural decomposition had made the shoulders and head break free of the main mass.

The mouthparts and pincers were still horrible. The saliva was sticky, shining in the weird blue light. As she picked it up with her good hand, her claws sank too easily into the shoulder. The flesh of the skull oozed off.

The rotting soup wriggled. Writhing. Full of maggots.

Familiar maggots.

No! Why?! It was strange to have her Instinct ask a question. A question her forebrain had suspected the answer too when she had time to wonder about it.

The thing had been eyeless, but underneath that flesh she could see the shape of two eye sockets. She stared into them. One socket was cracked, a neat thin hole piercing the skull. The other had the mark of a claw, gouging out the bone.

The claw of an infant.

Her claw.

“One-eye…” She whispered and her Instinct reeled in horror.

She flopped over to the stairs, panting as the dais continued to slowly sink. More and more of the abomination rotting away.

It was too obvious now. The shape of the top of the head. The dimensions of the torso even stretched to the absurd degree they had been. The placement of the eyes. Even what was left of the snout under the new growths and joints.

I have killed him twice.

She looked up at each of the painted idols. Work she had done because she had felt like it. She wondered if this was a punishment for her killing him the first time.

A runt like me denied life by the gods? Could that be so?

Water roared all around her. Pain throbbed in her wounds.

Survive.

She closed her eyes, body aching, burning, bleeding. She wanted to rest, to not have to deal with the pain anymore. To not think about her punctured intestine. Her shattered ribs. Her mangled toes. The bloated thing that was once her shoulder.

So, she let the darkness swallow her, just for a moment.

Just to rest… to take a break from the pain.

Yellow eyes shifted, unfocused, vision swimming…

Was that… the abomination… melting into the dais?

No… I’m already dreaming…

Black, dominant in all things, swallowed her world.

Adapt.