Lure

By afternoon, I trusted my legs enough to climb down. I went slowly, testing each step, but nothing shook and nothing lagged. The poison was really gone.

Hunger Clock: 68%

I wasn't going to eat anything from that pond without looking at it twice. So instead of hunting, I went down to the water's edge, found a spot in the reeds with a good view, and watched. That was the lesson I'd paid for. Learn the rules first.

For a while, everything seemed ordinary. Dragonflies hovered, water striders skated on the surface, and small fish moved through the shallows in loose, nervous groups. The red frog was still on its lily pad, as usual.

Then I saw the worm.

It was on the muddy bottom in a patch of shallow water, not far out. Pink, plump, and wriggling, it was twisting back and forth in a slow, steady rhythm. It was exactly the kind of thing a fish would want. It was exactly the kind of thing I might have gone for myself, if I'd been hungrier and dumber.

But the longer I watched it, the more wrong it looked.

It never moved from its spot. Worms crawl. They go somewhere. This one just wriggled in place, over and over, the same rhythm, the same twist. Nothing else in the water went near it, either, except once, when a small fish drifted closer, closer, curious. Then the mud around the worm exploded.

I saw it for maybe half a second. A huge hooked beak, wider than I was long, came up out of the mud and snapped shut on the fish with a crack I felt in my chest. Then it sank back down. The mud settled. The pink worm was back, wriggling in place, as if nothing had happened.

It wasn't a worm. It was a tongue.

[Sense]
Target: Mire Snapper ~ Lv.7
Threat: Extreme

I'd never seen "Extreme" before. I stayed exactly where I was and didn't move for a long time.

What got me was that I understood it. I knew exactly what it was doing, because I'd done it myself. I'd dragged a leaf across a spider's trip line and made it look alive. I'd set my leg out for the shrew like a mistake. That thing in the mud was doing the same thing, just bigger and better and with a whole lifetime of practice. It was a hunter that baited. Like me.

Yesterday, I would have learned this the hard way. Today, I'd learned it by sitting still and paying attention.

Then I had an idea, and it was either very smart or very stupid.

The worm brought fish. Every fish in the pond wanted it. The snapper only struck when something got right on top of the worm. But the fish had to swim past the reeds to get there, and the reeds were where I was.

I moved along the edge, slowly, until I found a reed bent out over the water, a little to the side of the snapper's patch. Close enough to the path the fish took. Not close enough to the beak. I climbed out onto it, set my back feet, and let Stillness take me.

[Stillness] active

Then I went fishing beside a monster's lure.

The first fish came by in a few minutes, heading for the worm, and I hooked it out of the water before it got there. The snapper never moved. The second one I missed, and it shot away. I ate the first one fast, right there on the reed, and waited for more.

Hunger Clock: 68% → 74%

It was the best fishing spot I'd ever had. The fish kept coming, one after another, all of them staring at that wriggling pink worm, none of them noticing me. I took two more and wedged them into the reed stems for later. Each time, I watched the mud under the worm out of the corner of my eye, waiting for it to shift, and each time it stayed still. The snapper didn't know I was there, or didn't care. As long as I never touched its worm, I was just another reed.

Then a much bigger shape slid in from the deep water, long and narrow, with a jaw full of needle teeth, moving straight for the worm with its eyes fixed on it.

[Sense]
Target: Pond Pike ~ Lv.5
Threat: Moderate

It was almost too big for me. It was also coming right past my reed.

I waited until it was directly under me. Then I dropped with both scythes out and hooked it behind the gills.

It went crazy. It was strong, far stronger than any fish I'd caught, and it thrashed and twisted and dragged me off the reed and into the water. Suddenly I was being pulled through the shallows, hanging on, with the pike heading straight for the deep water. And straight for the snapper's patch.

I saw the worm get closer. I saw the mud start to shift.

I dug my back legs into the mud and pulled sideways, with every point of Might I had, and turned the pike's head away just before it got there. We crashed into the reeds together. I found the soft place behind its head and bit, hard, and kept biting until it stopped.

[Kill] Pond Pike ~ Lv.5
XP gained.

[LEVEL UP]
Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.5
All stats +3
Skill points: 4

I lay in the reeds next to the pike, half in the water, clicking so hard I shook. Behind me, out in the shallows, the mud settled again. The pink worm went back to wriggling. The snapper had never struck at all.

I pulled up my stats.

Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.5 ~ Mantara
Might 18 | Agility 24 | Shell 17
Sense 21 | Will 18 | Insight 19
Skill points: 4

This one was easy. Everything I'd learned these last three days, I'd learned by looking. The toad that looked safe. The worm that wasn't a worm. The fish that came to the lure. Seeing things clearly, and then thinking about what I saw, had saved me more times than speed or strength ever had.

Sense 21 → 23
Insight 19 → 21
Skill points: 0

The pike and the two fish I'd saved were enough to fill me all the way up.

Hunger Clock: 74% → 95%

I started home upstream in the late afternoon, full and heavy and very pleased, and stopped every so often to listen. It was full dark by the time I reached my tree. The birds sang until the light was gone, and then the frogs took over. No silence anywhere.

That night, back in my hollow high above the stream, I thought about the snapper sitting in its mud, waiting, and the fish that never knew it was there. I'd come to this forest thinking I was the patient one. The one who waited. It turned out the whole forest was full of things that waited, and some of them were very good at it.

I was going to have to get better.