Chapter Text
The Seeker learned many things from the world.
It survived many perils, survived many trials. It never saw another familiar face, unless it was of a nemesis, stalking it in the broken regions.
The rain has slowed down, becoming more safe. However, the rain is laced with spores of something dark, something terrible.
The Seeker saw it once, as they hid from the corrupted rain. A lizard was cornered, nowhere to run from it.
They could hide under the roof of the broken building forever, but soon the cold of the rain would…
It ran, not after The Seeker, who was perched somewhere beyond its reach. It ran, desperately searching for its kind, for where their siblings and children were.
The spores dug in, with their sickly blue colour. The yellow lizard’s antennae are filled with soft material and tissue, which was easier to hollow out than its armored skull.
The Seeker avoided that area for many cycles, and after a while nothing remained of both the… thing and its host. Once, it saw it crawl along, still absorbing prey.
So nothing changed with the rain. There was, however, more incentive to cover wide distances.
And halfway through a cycle, running around and carrying food to consume after everything is settled, it stopped and thought. Which was marvelous for such a little creature.
Why was it here anyways? Why didn’t it go down, deep where the rain can’t find it?
To find its kin.
It saw a distant relative fall down, deep into where the rain flowed down into large pipes, with grates so large you had to jump between the grid.
And, stupidly, another one jumped down. To save its kin?
But nonetheless, they both were gone and never found.
It didn’t matter to the Seeker. They were distant. And yet…
And yet when they tread across that same grid, with more anxiety and caution, it cannot help but wonder if there was something else, another reason to jump down.
Another reason to plunge into the depths.
And so, it did.
It reminisced more about the history of its motive, of finding out just what called it all those cycles ago. But it stopped, and its black ear flicked, and twitched.
Hissing.
As it jumped back, away from the source acrobatically, its eyes scanning for something, anything, it looked at nothing but empty hallways. The hissing was further in, amplified by the empty echoes of the past.
It had enough time, and shelter was near. Dragging a lizard into it would be enough food for multiple cycles.
As it tread slowly, silently, fashioning a spear of rebar and picking up rubble, it noticed a lone yellow lizard, hissing at a few indiscernible figures. Most likely lantern mice.
It picked up the pace, but kept low to the ground, and as it was almost behind the lizard, it swiftly jabbed the spear into its side, puncturing various organs, emitting foul and sulphuric scents.
The lizard hissed, writhing. The Seeker calmly pulled the spear out, and stuck it again into its neck, between where the head plating starts and where the soft tissue ends. The black blood oozed out of it, onto the tiling.
It used to have to worry about these lizards, how they rapidly colonised the citadel it lived in. They could communicate, hunt in packs…
And yet pack hunting was a perfect candidate for allowing the spores to spread to dangerous levels.
The solitary lizard writhed for a few more seconds, before it had the glow eventually fade out into a solemn, dark orange.
That wasn’t enough. The Seeker gave one additional jab into the lizard, watching it flicker that yellow before dying out as quickly as it came.
It was dead, and its prey got to live.
The Seeker turned to look at what it assumed to be silent lantern mice, which would be quite a marvel considering how infuriating they are when they sneak into shelters and squeak in your ears.
Instead, it saw pups. Two of them, a light yellow and green. Common colours. But nothing was common here.
The Seeker’s hand was shakily holding its spear. It had enough food, but they seemed malnourished. It would’ve been a struggle to even make it to shelter. It eventually dropped the stick, its claws digging into the soft, pitch black tissue of the lizard.
Pups cannot eat such heavy meat, they cannot digest it. Some even have intolerance for it, lasting up to their whole lives. It would have to do for now, as rain approaches with every breath and the nearest pupae are out of reach with two deadweights.
It watched as they reluctantly ate, unaccustomed to the toughness. It cannot help but agree, as blue lizards are a soft delicacy compared to these.
When the pups couldn’t continue eating the meat it was forcefully gesturing towards, it picked the two up and sprinted to the shelter.
It would be a long haul, and one on its back would definitely add strain, but there was rumbling in the ground and there would be no time to do things safely. It had to ignore the emptiness in its free hand, where its spears usually were.
It saw the rain start dripping from the eaves, as the clouded sky casted shadows on where the safe spots were. It saw the blue tinted rain crash down close enough to them for it to flinch.
It almost didn’t register that it was running into the shelter’s pipe, which was the second surprise of the cycle.
As it dropped the two pups safely in the shelter, it got a good look at them, and finally felt the gravity of such a situation. Pups of such an age are not very mobile.
It found the home it abandoned, and saw nothing. Perhaps they moved.
Perhaps it was closer than ever thought.
The Seeker found kin, and now it must find home.
But for now, it rests.