Shiv

:From the Journals of Okani, Adventurer Into the Scald:

"...I had wandered too far into the Scald, too far into its starless black, the only light being the shiny reflections on the obsidian outcroppings from my :___:. Huuki had told me to wait 'til day, when luminescence would obliterated the hungry shadows. But I couldn't wait. I just...couldn't. Something whispered in the dark, something called my name. Something Huuki couldn't hear, but pulled at me all the same.

As I stumbled through the pitch night, my wings gaining new scratches from the blade-sharp needles of rock, my head felt like it was ringing, muzzy, like I was walking through an ocean of thickness. My mouth felt numb and my eyes felt like they were melting from their sockets. My gaze tilted down and I saw my legs ending in bloody stubs.

I blinked and the hallucination was gone. I stopped stared around me, the whispers suddenly gone from the back of my mind. Where was I?

A cracking sound drew my attention to a sickly green structure, almost like some sort of sac, an empty, ripped construct leaking glowing green fluid. The rivulets were trickling towards my paws and I stepped back.

A blur of motion to my right jerked my head in that direction, then to the left. The muzziness thickened, the whispers returned tenfold, and I stumbled blindly in a circle, look for a way out.

Red eyes flickered in the dark void and I moved closer to the burst sac, the glowing light illuminating a small area. Too small. The eyes flickered and vanished.

Unease skittered under my scales like flesh-eating scarabs, the sight of those four glowing eyes slicing a fear through me that even the whispers couldn't silence.

Shaking my head from the fog of my brain, I leaped forward to run, only to feel a sharp pressure like a blade dance through the back of my neck at the base of my skull.

Stunned, I tumbled to the ground, then scrabbled to get my legs under me to flee.

I couldn't move.

My limbs wouldn't respond.

It felt like a nightmare, yet I knew, just as I knew the bleeding pain at my spine had been to disable, not kill, that this was not a nightmare. Not something I'd wake up from.

Movement blurred in front of me and the four bloody orbs appeared again, their owner visible in the sickly glow, the light giving its scales a bloody sheen.

My worst fear was realized upon seeing the ravenous, cannibalistic mirror, a hunter of dragons for flesh and food. But where was its pack? Mirrors were not solitary hunters.

The red eyes flickered radioactive green and points on the mirror pulsed with the same diseased light. It opened its mouth and a thick liquid poured from its fangs, a viscous fluid I knew was poisonous.

A venomous mirror.

The whispers grew louder as the acidic creature advanced, its mouth agape. I closed my eyes and pain erupted along my neck, drawing a mangled scream from my ripped throat.

Venom burned through my veins, making my muscles burn and my heart pound to bursting. The whispers deafened to a roar as everything faded to a numb, twisted blankness, the whispers almost crooning like a lullaby of death and life...

...my eyes flickered open...

...and everything was painted green.


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Primary Gene: Vipera (235k {199,750})
Secondary Gene: Toxin (100k)
Acid-tongue Serpenta