The Split

I woke up stiff. Not sore the way I had been last night, but stiff all over, like every joint had been left out in the cold. When I tried to stand, my legs took a long second to agree with me. The lag was back. It wasn't as bad as the first day, but it was there, and I hated it.

Hunger Clock: 71%

The Clock was fine. My body was not. I flexed my scythes and felt the plates along my back grind against each other. The seam down the middle felt even thinner than it had last night. I pressed it gently against the branch, and it gave a little, like the skin on a blister.

"Stay home today," the Echo said. "We're hurt. Rest."

That was the old me again. Stay in bed. Call in sick. Wait until it stopped hurting. But I had done the math yesterday, and the Clock didn't care whether I felt good. If I sat on this ledge all day, I'd wake up tomorrow hungry and still stiff, and then I'd be hunting from a worse place. Better to eat now, while I still had some room.

"No," I thought. "I eat first. Then I rest."

The Echo didn't argue. It hadn't pushed back on much since the cave.

I climbed down slowly. Going down was harder than going up, because I couldn't trust my legs to catch me if I slipped. At the bottom I stood still for a while and just listened. With my Sense this high, the forest floor was loud. Water. Wind in the leaves. Something small chewing inside a log. And something else, a dry, ticking rustle moving through the dead leaves near a rotten stump, slow and steady.

[Sense]
Target: Litter Centipede ~ Lv.3
Threat: Moderate

It came out from under the leaves, and I counted its legs without meaning to and gave up at forty. It was longer than the skink, flat and red-brown, with two curved fangs at the front that dripped something clear. It didn't have eyes that I could see. It moved by touch, feeling the ground ahead with two long feelers.

Level 3, one above me. On a good day, I'd have liked my chances. Today, stiff and slow, I wasn't sure I could catch it if it ran.

"Leave it," the Echo said. "Please. Not today."

I thought about it. Then I realized I didn't have to catch it. It hunted by touch. It would come to me, as long as I gave it something to find.

I picked my spot carefully, a flat piece of bark, hard and dry, right in its path. I set myself behind it, let my body settle, and went still.

[Stillness] active
Ambush Rating: charging…

The centipede came closer. Its feelers swept the leaves left and right, tasting everything. When it was two body lengths away, I did something I would never have done in my old life. I offered it a leg. I lifted one of my walking legs and brought it down on the bark, hard, once. Tap.

The centipede struck at the sound instantly, faster than I expected, fangs first. But it hit bark, because I had already pulled my leg back. And while its head was down and its fangs were stuck in the wood for half a second, I struck.

Both scythes closed behind its head. I had it.

Then it wrapped around me. I hadn't planned for that. Its long body whipped up and coiled around my middle, all those legs digging into my sides, and it squeezed. The pressure went straight into the sore plates on my back, and the pain was so bright and sudden that for a moment I couldn't see anything at all.

Something hot rose up inside me. It wasn't the Echo. It was older than that, and simpler, and all it wanted was to bite and tear and keep tearing until nothing was moving.

[Will check]
Frenzy resisted.

I held onto myself. I knew what that heat was now, and I knew it would make me sloppy. Sloppy got you killed. I breathed through the pain, kept my hooks locked, and did the only thing that mattered. I bit down behind its head, once, hard, and held.

It took a long time to stop squeezing. When it finally went slack, I peeled it off my body one loop at a time, then sat down in the leaves and shook.

[Kill] Litter Centipede ~ Lv.3
XP gained.
Shell: -3

"That was close," the Echo said, very quietly.

"Yes," I thought. "But I won. And I didn't lose myself." I was surprised by how proud I was of that second part.

I ate. The centipede was bitter and tough, nothing like the fish, but there was a lot of it.

Hunger Clock: 93%

Afterward I found a flat rock in a patch of sun by the stream and climbed onto it. The warmth soaked into my shell, and the ache in my back eased a little. Without thinking, I lifted one scythe to my mouth and started cleaning it, working along each spine with my mandibles, slow and careful, getting every bit of centipede off. Then the other one. Then my face, and my feelers.

"That's gross," the Echo said. "You know that's gross, right?"

It wasn't. It felt right, like brushing my hair after a long day, or washing my hands. My body had been asking for it, and I'd finally listened.

"I miss having hands," the Echo said after a while.

I thought about my old hands. Soft, always cold, good for typing and not much else. I looked at my scythes, clean now and shining a little in the sun.

"I don't," I thought.

The Echo didn't answer. For the rest of the afternoon, it didn't say anything at all. I noticed the silence and found that it didn't bother me. It felt less like something missing and more like a house getting quieter as people went to bed.

The light was going orange when the seam on my back split.

It wasn't much. Just a crack about the length of a claw, right down the center. I felt cool air touch something underneath that had never touched air before. And this time, the System had something to say.

[Body Notice]
Molt imminent.
Estimated time: 1 hour.
Shell integrity: critical.
Recommendation: secure location.

One hour. I climbed. My legs were slow and every step pulled at the split, but I climbed anyway, back up to my ledge and then higher, out onto a branch where I could hook my back feet into the bark and hang. I didn't know how I knew to hang. My body just knew, and I'd stopped arguing with it.

I hung there upside down while the forest went dark around me, and I waited for my old shell to let me go.