I stared at my stats like they had personally offended me.
Strength: lowest.
I had been born with the physical power of a damp twig. Although I wasn't an actual dragon, I was a great descendant of them. Surely this would put them to shame. It was truly embarrassing. However, a small solace could be found in the fact that this was the beginning. This would be the weakest that I would ever be, meaning that the only way would be upwards, well, contingent on the premise that I survived.
A new burning passion, emerging from my competitive nature, arose.
I've got to raise my stats.
Moving on from disappointment, I looked at the other details present on the status screen. The first thing that caught my attention was the skill Tail Drop. It was the evolutionary equivalent of throwing your own limb at someone and hoping they got distracted. And yet, the longer I looked, the more it made sense.
Sometimes situations needed a flight, not fight, response, especially when the opponent was stronger and every little bit helped.Cling meant I could climb and attach to surfaces easily. Heat Tolerance meant I could survive in places others could not. Tail Drop meant that if something grabbed me, I had an emergency escape.I may have been weak, but if these skills were used right, I would be annoying to kill as well.
Harmless, but stubborn.
It's got a little ring to it. The chronicles of the stubborn gecko!
Still, where was the cheat skill? Where was my broken ability? I was not about to accept Tail Drop as my only gift.
I scanned the screen again, eyes flicking with gamer paranoia and there it was, tucked underneath.
[Titles: Early Riser, Void Eater]
I felt my heart jump. There you were.
"System," I thought quickly, "give me descriptions."
...
[Host omitted polite request.]
Of course.
"Please."
[Early Riser: Title awarded to the first hatchling of the clutch. Effect: +5 Speed.]
That explained why my speed was not in single digits. The skill would definitely be helpful, but not life-changing. I swiftly inquired about the skill that had really grabbed my attention.
"Void Eater," I thought, almost reverently. "Please."
The text shifted.
[Void Eater: Unique ability granted by the God of ########. Effect: When Host defeats a creature, Host may extract one skill from that species. Skill is offered as a randomised selection. Only one skill may be obtained per species unless a named individual is encountered in which there is a 50% chance.]
I froze.
Then the grin hit, wide and stupid.
There it was. My cheat.
Not the kind that made me a dragon prince on day one, but the kind that scaled. The kind that turned survival into growth. The kind that meant every fight could make me better.It was broken in a quiet way. In a way that made me want to laugh until I cried.
I was about to get overconfident when a sharp crack sounded behind me.
Another egg broke.
The sound snapped me back to reality so hard it hurt. Right. I was still in the middle of a nest full of my siblings getting eaten like snacks. Cheat skill or not, I was one bite away from becoming gecko paste.
Okay, time to move.
I tightened my grip on the bark and slid towards the fissure, keeping my body low. The spider moved too, faster now that it had decided I was a worthwhile addition to the menu.It lunged. I jerked forward, claws scraping. My body shot through the crack, squeezing into the narrow opening. Bark scraped my sides. Pain flashed through me, sharp and bright, but I kept going.
I burst out into open air. The forest hit me like a wall. Cold, damp wind. The smell of moss and wet earth. A canopy of dark leaves above, filtering the sunlight into green-grey shards. My lungs pulled in air greedily, and my vision swam from the sudden space.
I had made it.
For half a second, relief washed through me. Then something snapped against the bark near my head.
Silk.
The spider had followed.It squeezed out of the crack with a click, clinging to the trunk like it belonged there. Its body was lean and quick, built for ambush. It moved with the skill of a precise hunter, staring at me, head tilted. Then it shot webbing again.
Persistent bastard.
A thin line whipped past my flank and stuck. Another followed, trying to catch my legs.I reacted without thinking.
Cling.
My tail quickly detached from my body, flying towards the spider. My claws snapped into the bark. My body flattened against the tree, and I darted upwards, scrambling in a straight vertical line like my life depended on it, because it did.
A web-line slapped my projectile tail. My stomach dropped. Heat flared in my body as adrenaline hit. My claws dug into the bark, and I climbed faster, ignoring the burn in my limbs. A warning flickered in my mind.
[ALERT: Stamina low. Muscles approaching failure.]
Not now. Not now.
I pushed anyway, forcing my body to keep moving. The bark blurred beneath me. My claws slipped once, and I nearly lost my grip. If I fell, I would hit the ground with three health points and become a dead gecko. The spider compensated by firing more silk, not because it was stupid, but because it was annoyingly sensible. More lines meant more chance of a catch. The air around me became a webbed hazard, invisible until it wasn't.
[ALERT: Stamina critical.]
This was the worst possible timing.
I was not high enough to survive a fall on three health points. I was not strong enough to fight. I was not even strong enough to keep climbing. So I did what my pathetic, sensible body was built to do.I headed for terrain that favoured me. A boulder sat half-sunk in the earth nearby, black and smooth, streaked with old scorch marks. It was small and creviced. Too small for the larger spider to fit in.
I made the jump.
For a moment, the world fell away and my stomach rose into my throat. Then my claws hit stone and held, digging into the rock. My body flattened against it, and I felt a faint warmth under the surface, like the rock remembered fire. The spider landed too but it had hesitated. Its legs shifted. Its silk line failed to anchor properly, sliding on the smooth surface. It clicked, irritated, and tried again, but the stone did not cooperate the way bark did.
I edged sideways, keeping my belly low, using every tiny ridge in the rock. I slipped into a narrow gap between the boulder and the earth, where damp soil met stone and the air smelled stale.The spider pressed forward and stopped at the entrance. It probed the crevice, legs tapping, mandibles clicking, but it did not commit. The gap was too tight.
It sat there for a moment, frustrated.Then an adult spider appeared at the tree's mouth, larger and calmer, and tapped the younger one sharply. A silent command telling it that there was plenty of food in the clutch, and that I was not worth the risk. The younger spider hesitated, angry, and then retreated, crawling back into the hollow like it had simply chosen to let me live out of generosity.
I stayed still for a long time, heart racing, body trembling, letting the world settle. My limbs burned. My stomach twisted with hunger I did not know how to satisfy yet. My skin felt too thin, too exposed, but I was alive. Somehow.
Eventually, I slid deeper into the gap, curling into the damp shelter where the stone held a faint, steady warmth. It was not a home nor safe, just simply the best I had in the moment.
I shut my eyes.
In the dark, images of the nest flashed through my mind. Eggs cracking under mandibles. The quiet, efficient cruelty of nature. The idea that my siblings had never even opened their eyes before becoming someone else's meal.
A cold anger settled in my chest, slow and steady.
Not melodramatic. Not heroic. Just real.
Those spiders had treated my clutch like a pantry... like we were nothing. I did not know if revenge was sensible. I did not know if it was even possible. I knew, very clearly, that I was weak.
But I also knew I had Void Eater.
I had time and I had a very long memory for things that tried to kill me. I made myself a promise, quiet and simple, because grand speeches were pointless when you could be killed by falling two feet. One day, when I was strong enough, I would go back. And the next time something looked at me like food, it would learn the difference between harmless and helpless.