GROWTH - From a Speck to a Titan

Perhaps none of these options. You were patient and cautious and there were plenty around who would be tempted by a tasty bit of flesh. Looking around, you picked up a good piece of torn meat, blue and fresh and walked away. Afterall, the trap wouldn't be effective if they saw you setting it up.

You wandered for a while before coming upon a particularly deep crater, perfect for obscuring vision. Three legs braced, two legs directed and you slid down the muddy slope. The land still hadn't fully recovered from the storm, especially around craters. There was a small puddle of water at the bottom. No matter.

You reached out and dug, splashing it to the side. As you dug, you made one limb hold the meat in a safe place above your body, you didn't want it too dirty. Finally, you dug a suitable hole for yourself after a while, you went inside and put the bait on top.

Thankfully, you knew that day cycles here were long, the two suns would take quite some time to fall. You spread your hairs to detect for vibrations. Tuned your ears. Now to wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wa-something.

A small vibration, slowly growing louder. A sibling was heading towards you. You froze in place, not moving even a single inch. Closer, closer. He was right above you, heavy and lean yet still defeatable, not like the Brutal One.

Just as he picked up the bait, you pounced with a preceding rumble of earth. Exploding out of the ground, sending soil everywhere. Two limbs restrained four of his and the other three went to tore eyes out. Your jaws crushed into his central mass, grinding through chitin to dig into muscle.

To his credit, he wasn't slow. Quickly tearing out of your hold, kicking you back with powerful limbs. He hissed a deep sound, blood pouring out of the massive circular would where you had torn a chunk out, he rotated so it faced the ground on all sides while keeping damaged eyes focused on you.

You hissed right back and after a split second of tension, launched yourself at him once again. This time, he was prepared, swiftly dodgin-or rather, trying to. The wound slowed him down and you sunk sharp teeth into his armor once again. He flailed his limbs yet you just kept digging deeper and deeper. The strikes gradually weakened and weakened until he stopped moving.

Your first kill.

You let out an uncharacteristic yip and went in to feast, dismembering him and shoving limbs into your hungry maw. Somehow, it felt even better. You felt like you truly earned it, you set the trap up, you ambushed and fought him. You did it all by yourself. Even better, this was your first true meal, before it was just morsels, and now it was an entire body. On a whole another level in terms of quality and quantity to the point that you felt yourself grow just from eating him.

Your limbs and claws turned even wider, seeming more like paddles or, in actuality, shovels. The vibration-detecting hairs that you used for sensing grew far longer wrapping around your joints, you knew you could extend them if needed.

Your number of fast-twitch muscles increased in proportion. So far, most of your interactions had been quick, brutal fights where the ability to dish out massive amounts of strength mattered far more than endurance. It turned you bulkier as opposed to lean like the sibling you just ate. He likely participated in the Frenzy leading to more endurance. It led to his demise in the end in your prepared environment.

Licking your teeth with many small tongues from the walls of your mouth, you ate more and more until all that was left was a shell of chitin. By now, the Red sun had nearly set however the blue one still seemed to be shining bright. It rendered the sky a deep purple hue.

You climbed the crater to look out over the strands again and you saw little. Some siblings were still around but they were the likes of the Brutal One. Most were probably planning to eat each other, the maniacs. The weaker ones had long since fled the area. Here, there was nothing to eat except siblings and the strands.

The truly weak siblings were now all gone. As you looked out, you saw thousands of craters yet maybe a hundred were left. At that moment, you were struck with fear, freezing. You were still here, strong in your own right, yes. However, compared to some of the siblings you were seeing, you were nothing. They towered above you, all thickly muscled. They hadn't noticed you yet. Too focused on watching each other.

You decided to flee. Thankfully, the crater you were in was close to the edge of the cluster. You quietly stepped out and away. The Strong was still looking at one another. So you simply walked out.

Now, where to go? Extending your short scent sensors, you sniffed the air.

[] DESERT OF TITANS: You smelled a curious lack of water and a whiff of Titans, they likely have many others on them where you could find a home. Along with…sand?

[] ROCKY SHORES: You smelled overwhelming salt from this direction with the musk of many beings. It's a diverse environment of land, water, and sky. Good for generalists and packs.

[] HUMID JUNGLE: There was the distinct scent of water and flora. Something told you, this area would also be highly populated. Great for packs here, even Hives akin to Titan living.

[] BREACH MOUNTAINS: You could actually see your destination. Immense rocky structures rose out of the ground, seeming to penetrate the very sky. It seemed…hard, not so different from the Grasslands.

[] BLACK STRANDS: Perhaps you just want to stay in this environment, just in a different area. There is much low-quality food in the form of the strands here after all.

[] WRITE IN

You smelt a humid scent from the direction of the falling blue sun. A musk was present as well, there were so many that their scent managed to reach even these desolate, windswept, strandlands. Competition, good prey, and opportunity seemed to abound. Your mind was made.

You gazed for the last time at your birthplace. You engraved its image into your mind. The myriad craters where you and your siblings were all born. The innumerable black strands shimmered in the purple light of the twin suns. The open sky filled with auroras.

Then the memories, just a day's worth but you knew they would shape you long into the future. Experiencing the raging storm, seeing your mother's immense alien form, the frenzy, your first kill, and meal. Those memories were all forged here yet you had to move on. For Growth.

With a last blink, you walked towards the setting blue sun to greater things.

Strands were shoved into your mouth along the way to the humid place. They were unappetizing, tasting bland with an unpleasant texture. The thin strands caught between your teeth. Nothing like feasting on proper meat, juicy and filling, you hungered at the very thought.

No matter, you trekked on. The sights never really changed, although, at night, you saw a singular large green moon rise. It was misty, covered in what looked like swirling green smoke. In fact, it was so large, it didn't so much as rise as completely overtake the night sky. At its zenith, it even blocked out what you called the Mouth. A ring of colors, purple, red, and vivid brighter than the rest of the already bright sky.

For you, the night wasn't truly dark. Your eyes could adjust to the darkness but more than that, it was objectively bright. The moon, stars, and nebulas lit the world up when the suns were gone. On rare occasions, when you were tired. You simply curled up and watched the skies. Day or night, just watching the dance of the celestial objects. How they moved was alien to you but alien didn't mean you couldn't appreciate it.

You moved on.

Gradually, the land grew more and more wet. Vast spires of green plant flesh dug deep roots into the soil. Their leaves were black, the exact same shade as the strands. They dwarfed you, as in, you could comfortably make a home inside just one of their branches and those were the smallest spires you saw in your journey.

As you went on, they grew taller and taller. Wider too. Vines with vibrant flowers wrapped around their branches, color pulsing through them. It lent the environment an interesting contrast, pulsating vivid colors next to pitch-black leaves on green flesh. The air was extremely wet, it seemed to burst into torrential rain seemingly every day.

Your legs trod through small mountains of black leaf litter. It was the darkest place you had been so far, you heavily relied on your tendrils. Spreading them to detect movement and brush against obstacles. The black leaves reflected little light and the sky wasn't visible most of the time.

You had reached the jungle.

However, there was something distinctly odd. There were no others you saw, the land seemed empty but that didn't make sense. It was lush with life. You had tried eating plant flesh, it wasn't filling but you got the sense that was because of you, not it inherently lacking nutrients like in the strands. So what was happening?

You never got the answer, as you started to see some beings pop up here and there. Small, like you. They seemed to nest in the spires. They were different from you, still radial yet further along their growth. More, longer limbs, more eyes, a variety of tendrils, and hairs. Most didn't give you any mind so long as you kept your distance.

As you settled in a little dug-out to rest, that was when you truly realized what kind of a place the jungle was. A piercing scream nearly bled your ears, echoing throughout the spires. You started, peeking out a tad to look. Nothing, seemingly nothing had produced the scream. You hid in the very back of your small hollow watching the entrance intently. Your legs were tensed, ready to leap and attack.

More screams, more and more and more. Rising in frequency and loudness, until the jungle resounded with deep screeches. You curled up in fear, your blood freezing in your veins. Twin hearts thumped, your mouth was dry. Hunger was the furthest thing from your mind.

A rumble shook your chitin as it reverberated through the spire. More reverberations, more tremors, more rumbles, it was as if there was a huge stampede. Meanwhile, the screams kept on going. Mustering your courage, you peeked out again, surely there had to be something causing all this. Still nothing.

At that point, you started growing a tad suspicious and even more scared, no, vulnerable, helpless. You itched with rage as you realized that. Your eyes didn't detect anything that your other senses told you was real. There was no source for the tremors or screams that you could see. The real clue though, was the leaves. They were still, there was no breeze in jungle. However, the tremors should've shaken them. Why were they still?

You began to distrust your other senses, withdrawing your tendrils and shuttering your sense of sound. Only eyes, just like your birth. You looked around, utilizing your omnidirectional vision to its fullest. No beings that you could detect although that was no guarantee. It wouldn't be hard to camouflage here amongst the vegetation.

In front of you, though, wrapped around a branch of the spire grew a bland flower. No vivid coloration. No pulsating. Your suspicion turned to paranoia in a split second. You tensed all five legs, bent, and leapt.

Mid-air, you flipped so your mouth and limbs pointed in the direction of that thing. The edges of your vision blurred and you slammed into the flower. Your knifelike claws, designed for ripping through flesh and cracking chitin easily tore into soft plant flesh. Your saw-mouth reached out and dragged it into your mouth. Grinding out your rage and spitting the leftovers out.

To test your theory, you switched your sense of sound back on. No screaming. Your tendrils. No vibrations. So it was the flower, it had bewitched you somehow. Deceived you. In hindsight, it was obvious, the flower was strange compared to its neighbors and you had to manually switch your hearing off. Normally, it stopped when the sound grew damaging. In this case, though, you had to do it because the sound was all in your mind. To your ears, there was nothing except the soft rustling of leaves and the pitter-patter of a light drizzle.

A branch above you snapped. You instantly reoriented your body to attack in that direction. The witch flower had you twitchy. A being slithered to you, the strangest you had encountered so far. Unlike your radial body, this one was symmetrical and long. Tiny, sharp claws attached to small limbs covered her body. A wide mouth ringed with spiked mandibles greeted you.

Language. It took you a second to parse but your flesh recognized it even through all the distance in the body. It was a bit choppy yet you understood.

[THREAT] - [KILL] - [WELL]

She 'spoke'. She was complimenting you on dispatching the flower. You were already on edge, not in the mood for such things.

[REASON]

You asked her. Why was she doing this? She was much stronger than you, you would likely not survive in a fight against her. She could've easily eaten while you were fighting the flower.

[WORTHY] - [SUBORDINATE] - [NEW]

She replied. She was seeking more minions for her group. You were suspicious, you had never been in a pack, let alone with such a different creature.

[REWARD]

Another question. What were the benefits to you from joining her group? She could pressgang you but that was unreliable to produce the kind of underlings she was seeking. You weren't entering as her inner circle but it was close with potential for such in the future.

[FOOD] - [PROTECTION] - [KNOWLEDGE]

She answered again. It was a tempting offer. You were a newborn, barely a couple of months old and that didn't translate into experience either given that you spent most of it eating strands and walking. Just a few days after you entered the jungle, you were almost taken out by what you were now expecting to be one of the weakest here. Not even a Being, just a flower.

[ANSWER]

You said, what did you say or do?

[] ACCEPTANCE

[] REFUSAL

[] RUN

[] WRITE IN