STRANGE SHAPES | Open, Discovery+Join

[Luciferr]

I ADMIRE IT'S PURITY

The Pitt residents were perhaps somewhat unaware just how much of their precious pyramids were unexplored - oh certainly perhaps they'd scouted the surface levels and the area surrounding, but the deeper depths of these ancient structures? no - and perhaps if they had, they might've been more cautious in their step.

Inevitably someone triggered something, sliding away into the oblivion maw below - before they could so much as cry for help, but perhaps the Pitt didn't care overly much for a missing slave.

it wouldn't matter - it was too late for the scraggly one eyed feline - consumed in the dark below where something much more insidious lay in wait and ancient hidden mechanisms groaned lowly from misuse as the same rituals of so long ago ground into gear once more - for one last time.

only one insidious seed flowered - the others long dead after the stasis failed and with no queen, no more were forthcoming, only this lucky survivor - or unlucky perhaps for everything else at large, for the ancient scourge of the stars was better off dead in the minds of those that knew better.

the slave was old and slow, the inevitable.

hours later a reedy wail - and days later with a corpse torn asunder and eaten - the chittering low wail of something newborn and strange calling for kindred that wouldn't answer.

he was alone.

there was no comradery - no soothing ever present link to others kin to him, no commanding maternal thrum - and the little newly moulted creature chittered quietly to itself, small ears flicking forwards and back even as it crouched curled beside the decimated carcass - what food there was gone, just bone and even then that wouldn't last long.

the child creature turned its head, this way and that - eyeless? yet seeing - before it's small ears, holdover of the genetic template, caught the faintest traces of voices coming closer.

inevitably it seemed - the pitt residents had grown curious of the many hidden spaces and darker underhells of the ancient structures, for now seemed they came to investigate and stake a claim on what they found.

of course, to the still growing creature - barely out of its first moult - this meant danger, meant threat and in greater numbers - exoskeletal fangs snarled revealing jaws beneath it as the small creature hissed quietly, awkward limbs carrying its form into a half arched standing position, layered scales near its throat flattening against the exoskeleton as he turned scampering into the shadows,

tiny claw gripped massive human sized slats as he clambered upon one - past the desiccated decaying remains of an egg that once would have spawned a sibling - a brief pang for that missing link - alone, alone, alone - a thin quiet wail at that, he knew intrinsically there were supposed to be more - a sense of hive - but there was nothing, just a gaping absence.

the voices got closer,

small ears pinned backwards against the black carapiece and he turned searching for refuge - to many to take on, danger!, must survive! - spotting a small alcove above, he bunched small but powerful hindlegs and leapt - claws gripping the carved reliefs of the wall as he scrambled upwards and vanished into the alcove's shadows, his bladed tail the last thing to follow him in before he turned and sunk down, watching where he was safely concealed.

maybe the pyramid traps would trigger - separate them, then he would have food again, pick one off, survive until another opportunity - the creature that would come to be known as Blacktide found those ideas preferable, he couldn't fight them all - but separate one and there would be food enough to last awhile.

/longer than I thought it was gonna be - but yeah the intr kinda insp by the AvP movie where the pyramid in antarctica was rigged up to be a breeding ground for these things so I thought it'd fit c;
he's gonna end up imprinting on esklav.

© MADI