Soft Places

I woke up on my ledge before the light, and for the first time, I didn't have to wait for my body to catch up with me. I just stood. My legs were there when I needed them, and my scythes were folded under my head, ready. I blinked once, slowly, just because I could, and watched the gray come into the trees.

Hunger Clock: 72%
[Body Notice]
Hunger capacity increased.

I stared at that for a while. Seventy-two. Last night I'd gone to sleep at eighty-five, and a night like that would have cost me seventeen points before the molt. This time it had cost me thirteen. A bigger body burned more, but it held more too. A full stomach would last me longer now. It also meant the same fish would barely move the number. I'd have to hunt bigger, or hunt more.

"Bigger, then," I thought. That suited me fine.

But not yet. First I wanted to know what this body could actually do.

I climbed down to the clearing by the stream, where the ground was flat and the morning light came through in long bars. A tall weed grew there with wide, flat leaves, and every time the wind moved, a few of them broke loose and spun down. I set myself under it and waited.

A leaf came down. I struck, and missed. Too early. The next one I hit, but with the flat of the scythe, and it just bounced away. The third I caught on the hook and tore it in half. That wasn't what I wanted either. I wanted it whole, pinned, held.

So I did what I used to do in my old life when I was bad at something. I broke it into pieces. Watch. Wait. Strike. Close. I did each part on its own, slowly, over and over, until my body stopped needing me to think about it. Then I put them back together.

By midmorning I could pluck a falling leaf out of the air with either scythe and hold it without a tear. By noon I could do it with my eyes on something else entirely, just by listening to it fall.

[Scythe Hook] Base rank 1 → 2
Effective rank: 5

Something in my chest clicked, quick and pleased. Six days ago I couldn't even stand up. Now I was catching leaves blind.

I was hungry again by then, and I knew the leaves wouldn't fill me. I went to the stream to find something bigger. On the way I passed a slope of packed dirt where little round lids, each the size of a coin, sat in the ground with silk threads running out from under them, and I noted them without knowing what they were.

I found it in the shallows under the bank, where the water slowed and the bottom was all flat stones. A crab. Not a little one, either. It was as wide as I was long, dark blue-black, with a thick, bumpy shell and two claws. One of them was nearly the size of my head.

[Sense]
Target: Stone Crab ~ Lv.3
Threat: Moderate

It saw me as soon as I saw it. It raised that big claw and opened it slowly, like someone flashing a knife. It wasn't going anywhere. It didn't need to run. It had armor.

I tested it first. I struck straight at its back, fast, and my hook hit the shell and skidded right off, like I'd struck a river stone. The crab snapped back at me and caught the tip of my left scythe in that big claw. It squeezed. I felt the pressure all the way up to my shoulder, and for one awful second I thought it might break.

I didn't pull. Pulling would just make it squeeze harder. Instead I went still and let it hold me, and I looked at it properly.

It was armored, but it wasn't all armor. Nothing could be. Where the claw met the arm, there was a joint. Where the legs met the body, there were seams. Soft places where the plates had to bend. I knew exactly where they'd be, because I had them too. I had found my own seams on the very first day, lying in the leaves and feeling where I was soft.

My right scythe was still free.

I brought it around low and slid the hook into the joint at the base of the big claw, right where the shell gave way, and pulled. The crab's grip went loose all at once. I yanked my left scythe free, and before it could raise the claw again, I went for the place under the front of its shell, where its eyes sat on their little stalks and the plates didn't quite meet.

It fought. It was strong and stubborn, and its small claw pinched my leg hard enough to leave a mark. But it couldn't stop what it couldn't protect, and I didn't miss twice. I held on, found the soft place, and finished it.

[Kill] Stone Crab ~ Lv.3
XP gained.
Shell: -2

I sat back in the shallows with the water running past my legs, and I realized I was grinning, or doing whatever my face did now instead of grinning. That fight hadn't been about speed. It hadn't been about strength, either. I had beaten something stronger than me and better protected than me by understanding it. By knowing where it was weak because I knew where I was weak.

That was mine. That was what I'd always had, even in the old life, sitting at a desk, noticing things other people didn't. It had just never been worth anything before.

The crab was hard work to eat, but the meat inside was sweet and rich, and there was a lot of it.

Hunger Clock: 89%

Then the System gave me what I'd been hoping for.

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

Nestling Mantis ~ Lv.3 ~ Mantara
Might 10 | Agility 16 | Shell 9
Sense 15 | Will 10 | Insight 13
Skill points: 4

I thought it through. I was fast now, and I saw well. The things that kept almost getting me were the moments when something got hold of me: the centipede wrapping around my back, the crab's claw on my scythe. I needed to take a hit and still be standing, and when I had something in my hooks, I needed it to stay there.

Might 10 → 12
Shell 9 → 11
Skill points: 0

I flexed my scythes and felt the difference right away, a heavier, surer grip. The shell along my back felt thicker somehow, as if it had been waiting for permission to harden.

I climbed back to my ledge in the late afternoon light, full and tired and very pleased with myself. Down in the stream, the crab's empty shell sat on the stones, cracked open, the water running through it.

Tomorrow, I decided, I'd go looking for something harder.