Revenge is to throw a rock at a hornet’s nest and run.

-From Aphorisms: 1:15

Finally.

It had been so long, so wet, so chilled by the precipitation.

Now the sun, blazing and hot, was once more beating down on the world. The neonate took full advantage of it.

Warmth filled her to her marrow. The rays, long missed, soothed not just her body, loosening muscles and letting joints crack back into place, but her very soul, the stillness of mind returning without need of the herb.

She just… was…

Eyes closed…

Listening…

Birds sang.

Insects hummed around her.

The plants seemed to enjoy it as well. The thorns and vines that made the warren flowered. Little bursts of bold red and cringing white, both had a sweet scent to them. The tree flowered as well, its blooms a vibrant and enticing combination of proud yellow and determined purple. Those had a heady, complex scent that she could investigate for hours.

The blooms changed the smell of the very landscape. A fresh scent. A nice scent. One that made her think of warmth and growth. That wasn’t all though, the thorns and vines had sent out fresh shoots, their thorns thin as viper fangs and just as sharp.

They grew quickly, and she could no longer get into the warren at all. She didn’t mind.

Added security. Rest… Strengthen… Her Instinct hissed softly from her warming back.

I can get through the temple for anything I need. And with none of the others knowing the ways in, it is safer this way. She closed her eyes. She planned to pick up her competition strategy again, after she enjoyed the sun for a little while longer. I am sure the others are doing the same thing.

She spent a few days just lying there, basking, only moving to eat and train. The little warrior didn’t hunt, trap, or steal that whole time. Using the supplies and stores she had at hand instead.

She harvested the herbs that she had planted, drying them on the rack by the temple, and the moss was coming along nicely. Just a few more days, and I can harvest it here and not worry about taking it all.

Occasionally there were still light showers, but there were never enough clouds to block the sun like the monsoon. And it stayed wonderfully hot and humid. Thick with moisture and bright with proud hues.

She stretched her limbs and wriggled slightly, finding a more comfortable position. The neonate lay on the uncovered stone path leading down into the temple.

She felt a spot by her tail cool ever so slightly. She cracked open one lazy eye.

A shadow loomed over her.

Kingbill! Her Instinct screamed.

Both her eyes snapped open all the way.

Claws gripped the bloodoak ax and her knife as she scanned upwards, her scales shifting from black to light gray to match the stones. She even managed to copy the rune carved in each. Searching the sky.

The neonate spotted what it was.

Not a Kingbill, but a hawk flying high over her head. She relaxed.

I’m too big now for them to hunt, anyway. She was still smaller than one of those truly massive birds, but now she would come up to the creature’s shoulder at least. And she probably outweighed it by more than fifty pounds as well.

Let one try to hunt me now. She almost wished it as she slowly relaxed back into basking in the sun. She wondered what one would taste like, adding it to a list of things she wanted to hunt and eat, if she earned her name.

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I worried about the Kiddo tempting Fate like that. Especially given the expression Maruc had at that moment.

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As she lay there, the neonate could feel the humidity clinging to her. There still was a ridiculous surplus of moisture in the air. The return of the sun eventually turned it into fog, dense and muffling, like swimming in cloudy water.

It was to the point where it was hard for her to see the entrance to the temple from where she lay on the exposed stone path of the ruins, let alone from her shelter. It wasn’t a bad thing though.

She scratched her side, snagging some remaining dead skin with a claw and pulling. She hissed contentedly as a long strip peeled away. From her hip to her armpit. The moisture and the fog made it easy.

All the rain had also washed away a lot of the topsoil around the entrance of the temple, exposing sand, making the removal of her old scales around her hands and feet a very simple process. Scrubbing with the grit.

She was glad to shed as always, a physical sign of her growth. She wished she had grown more though, she suspected she was only something like four feet tall. The neonate was starting to think that she would just never catch up to the others. She would always be small. And she was fine with that.

I am competing against them regardless. They hadn’t broken her, the Island hadn’t either. She had been knapped into a sharp blade instead.

Her Instinct grunted in approval. Honed.

Heal. Rest. Her Instinct hissed from her back, which she had shifted to be black. She found that the color more readily absorbed heat.

There were undertones of this being temporary, of there being a need to return to the competition. But she already knew this couldn’t last forever.

Which is why I should enjoy it as much as I can.

After some days resting, she started to plan again, and she ramped up her training even further. Using the temple, the neonate sprinted everywhere. She did laps spanning the length of the temple, going back and forth. She also occasionally jumped onto the broken pillars within the place, forcing herself to leap farther and farther.

She needed to stick to the trees outside the warren, and to do that she needed to be able to rely on herself to leap from branch to branch.

In the temple she could train for that in relative safety, the only issue being that she got wet if she missed her jump. The water had drained, but only slightly. Now all the paths were dry, but it was an easy enough thing to get onto them out of the water.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I wonder where it drains to. She looked down at the multitude of submerged stairways and passages below.

Down. Her Instinct intoned helpfully from her stomach, making it gurgle.

She made several dummies, remembering her tussle with both Axmaker and Fisher, and practiced her fighting as well. And not just with two dummies either.

As if the world would let me fight only two of them. It was a bitter green tinted thought.

There was something relaxing about it. The physical exertion, the planning, the strategy. It was pleasant.

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Mmmm… Good.

Maruc stretched out his hand. Surprisingly subtle this time. I looked again at the only help I could manage to give. The hickory. Good luck Kiddo. I think that might be the last thing I can manage before this is done.

At least, without cashing in that unnamed wager I won, but I want to save that. Just in case.

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But never was it enough.

Not really.

More than once she found herself staring down at the matte black blade. Her clean scales irking her.

Compete! Her Instinct hissed.

Perhaps that was part of the reason why she started to practice running through the canopy outside the warren. If that was the case, than the other, more reasonable part of why was because it was simply not the same.

Going through and training in the place where she would use the skill seemed to her to be more effective than just training on her lone tree within the warren.

Running out of supplies anyway.

Feed. Consume! Compete!

She didn’t go looking for fights, though. And if she was being honest, there weren’t many fights to be had. None that were worth her time.

Nesting site after nesting sight lay abandoned or destroyed, many by her. Each materialized out of the fog, ghostly remnants of what had been, in the same way as the ruins of the island.

Satisfaction filled the neonate.

Revenge. Her Instinct hissed. The chaff that had tormented her. They had died. There couldn’t be more than seventy of the hatchlings left now, probably less.

She moved through the canopy, forcing herself to shift her coloration on the go, forcing herself to be silent as smoke above all else.

Surprise is my only ally. I need to be the whisper of death! She would be a monster like Tok.

Yes. Good.

Her sprints in the temple had made her legs powerful. Now her arms were trained as she raced through the vines and boroughs, grabbing onto some to swing to the next. One foot in front of the other, not even scraping her claws when she didn’t need them.

The fog remained, and she took advantage of it. More than once she heard a surprised snarl below as she raced past, startling whoever it was and gone before they could clamber up to see.

I need to be even quieter! None will hear me! This was how she could help the brood. Strike from hiding against their foes. Patrol for poachers like those Smoothskins. But to do that she needed to memorize the terrain. Every nook and cranny.

She mapped the pathways in her head, and she had the resources to justify dedicating time to this. The Island became a web of paths and routes in her mind. Multiple layers and paths, denoted by landmark, scent, and even in some cases, by the neonate herself.

She carved marks into trees in places where things got particularly complicated. Not using script, none of them had been taught that yet, but abstract symbols that were for her and her alone. Diamonds, squares, triangles, lines, and dots. All were used. None were pictorial.

The runes on her blade had given her the idea, though the ones there were combined in different ways than her own.

The little hunter inspected every pine tree for resin, gathering all she could, but staying away from Design’s grove. In spite of this, some nights she brought home several bags full of the stuff, and she took to using some of the extra skins that had finally dried as pouches as well.

When there was none at a tree, the neonate cut small notches into the bark with her knife to let the sap seep out. She then would return the next night and used pillarwood fibers and the like to sop up the sticky sap. It clung to her scales and claws, but it didn’t cling to her bag. And she planned to use the sap-soaked fibers to make a bunch of torches.

She had decided that, so long as she was careful, she could use fire to compete once more. And she would have to be more careful. Fire would be a much more powerful tool now with the heat of the sun drying everything out.

The last thing she wanted was to have it get out of control and burn down her territory and shelter too.

It was a few days later that she was thinking about how to best use flame in this way. The sun was hot once again, and the fog continued to hang about the swamp. It was surprisingly beautiful from up in her tree. Especially at night.

She thought she could see the little ruin that was Trapmaker’s nest.

Is that him? She squinted, trying to see in the moonlight. It might be him.

Hide idiot! Her Instinct snapped, her skin getting shoved into the colors and patterns of the bark and leaves.

She stared over at him, or who she thought was him. Something glinted in the night over there. His eyes? Reflecting moonlight? She decided to climb back down.

It might be better to use fire sooner rather than later. It was the following morning, and there had been a light drizzle for an hour before the sun returned.

Fire. Consumes. Care. Her Instinct reinforced for what felt like the ten thousandth time.

That should be handled for the most part, with everything being so wet. She would be able to better target what she wanted to burn, using the large supply of resin and sap as fuel. The fog and occasional rain would damp down the underbrush and she would make sure to not use the strategy anywhere where there were pines nearby.

It was more a matter of getting close enough to enact a plan while remaining undetected. The fog would help here as well, she could blend in, take her time, and the fog would basically make her invisi-

A roar echoed!

Birds leapt from trees, their own squawking tumult drowned out. She heard several splashes around the island as snapping turtles, tikabo, snakes, crocs, and gators slid back into the river. The ducks over in bowmaker’s territory were a dull rumble of quacks.

The bellow echoed across the island, emanating from the powerful lungs of the Provider.

She sat up, looking towards the original nesting site, and scrambled up into the tree to get a better look only to find that she could barely see anything except the tallest of trees.

Not a battle cry, a warning, or a denotation of territory. A summons.

A gathering.

Can’t ignore this! Her Instinct filled her limbs, yanking her out of her basking spot.

She knew, even her forebrain was aware. The final test! The climax of this ordeal. And then… She felt the tiniest sliver of sky-blue hope tint her thoughts. The naming.

She scrambled back down, tearing a fresh patch of moss off of the tree as she went, scrubbing herself with it.

If she could, she wanted to remain hidden during this gathering.

Posturing. Determining caste. Her Instinct agreed.

It wasn’t something she wanted to engage in, especially if they were nearing the end of the trial. Best to let her be forgotten until after only the winners were left, where her deeds and not her size would determine everything. I’ll have to dominate where I can though.

Compete. Her Instinct grumbled from her hand, making her claw tap the handle of her knife.

She dashed through the shelter, grabbing a piece of meat and snapping it up as she stepped around the little pedestal of stones she had constructed for her idol. She had her knife and ax, and grabbed some rope as well.

Grab some more pillarwood on my way back. She needed it. She wanted to make a lot of torches. She thought she had enough rope from Ropemaker’s old nest, but it wouldn’t hurt to see if there was any left to take.

Take it all. Her Instinct hissed, yellow-green greed dripping from the thoughts. Hoard it.

She liked the idea of not letting the others have it. Force them to make their own rope. She had found a faster way to make her own as well.

If she pressed the two bundles of fibers to her thigh and ran her palm along them in the same direction, they naturally wanted to twist into the cordage. Doing that had sped up the process greatly, and made her bright as a sunrise with pride.

She had figured out something Ropemaker hadn’t.

After making her usual pause to honor the gods, she headed northwest. To the log entrance. The neonate took her time, not wanting to be spotted using it.

There is an edge on both sides of this obsidian.

Her Instinct grunted. One entrance, one escape.

The Provider let out another roar.

Go! Hurry now! Her Instinct snarled, yanking at her limbs. Compete!

She struggled against the impulse burst out of the Log entrance. The calling had that much of an effect on her.

I can’t just rush out! I need to take my time. If there was anyone out there, in the bright light of the day they would see her, and then her secret would be known.

Even fighting that impulse though, her hands were moving the tiles of the puzzle. She forced herself to linger on the final movement, listening. The neonate waited for as long as she could stand, then slowly, carefully, she slipped out from the temple.

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And here. Maruc reached out again, ever so subtle.

Shit, hope He doesn’t question… nevermind. Good luck Kiddo!

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Even as she left, the snarling and gnashing of a fight blundering towards her assaulted her senses. She froze, desperate to not be discovered with the door to the temple literally open.

Shit!