Through the Eyes of the Beast Chapter 3
Unwanted Waking
By John Kastronis
In her sleep, she often heard voices. She couldn't understand them. They were not lavos speaking, nor were they any creature she had encountered that had sentient thought. Animals, she figured, burrowing close to my resting spot and chattering meaninglessly, filling my auditory sensors with sounds that seeped into my dreaming. That had to be it.
As her sleep progressed, vague images began to accompany those voices. She saw multitudes of creatures, though the predominant ones were small, with pale flesh and oddly shaped claws. They stood vertically and had much more height than width, which she thought odd. They held things in their claws, small asteroids or things made out of nutritious iron. She'd occassionally glimpse a creature heating the metal objects up, though she never saw them eating it.
Every once in a while she would get a very powerful image. A creature with blue spines coming from it's head, vaguely like the ones that ran down her own back, stood, emitting some high pitched sound, it's mouth gaping open as if it were trying to eat, but held no food. Other times the maw moved and it felt as if the creature looked straight at her. Specific sounds were coming from it's mouth, though she never understood what it was saying.
The lavos dismissed these things. She didn't understand her dreaming, nor did she try to. She only cared about her offspring. Every so often, in her dream, she would feel a shudder pass through her body. Sometimes, these shudders woke her and she sluggishly moved through the rocky underground to get closed to the core, or to eat some soil or rocks.
One day, she woke, and couldn't return to sleep. Something was pricking at her mind and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get back to sleep. She was greatly distressed by this. She felt her young stirring, closer to being mature enough to leave, but still far from ready. She shifted her position and tried to sleep, but failed. Angered by this and the continued plucking at her mind, she began to rise from the ground. The soil and rocks parted before her like they were insubstantial.
She emerged from the ground and moved in the direction the plucking called her. She felt her energy draining away from her. She first dismissed this as the effort it required to move her pregnant bulk, but she soon felt that she was losing far more energy than she should have. She was further enraged by this. She sped herself up, hurtling towards her destination.
Finally, she found it. Several small specks stood before her. Focusing on one, she saw it to be the creature from her dreams. She unleashed a great howl, trying to scatter the specks. Some of them did jump about. One jumped onto her skin, right above her eye. The feeling on her was iritating. Her spines rippled and she tried to push it off, but she couldn't reach it. She cried out again, this time in annoyance.
One of the specks suddenly leapt forward. A stinger flashed as it drove towards her great eye. The tiny stinger plunged into the flesh of her eyelid. The sting was small, but it hurt her deeply. She felt a small droplet of her life fluids come to the surface of the lid. She screamed in anger and lashed out with a small peal of energy. The speck flew backwards and crashed to the ground, lying motionless.
She was happy, but the thing above her eye still iritated her. First, it invaded her dreams, now it provided an itch she couldn't satisfy. She tried to concentrate on removing that from her, when suddenly, she felt another prick on her eyelid. Emitting another howl of rage, she looked around. Three more specks were in front of her. One of them stung her again. Energy crackled out from her and struck them. The three specks fell to the ground, also incapactitated. She didn't think she'd killed them. They were just stupid animals, like fleas, trying to use her pregnant body as a host.
The annoying one that managed to get on her was still above her eye. That really annoyed the lavos and she cried out again. She tried to drag the specks to her eye, using a small bit of energy. She also readied a release of light from her eye, in hopes the specks would be scared off from the proximity to the bright burst. Amazingly, one of the specks walked right up to her eye and stared right into it, with it's two dull eyes, that held no intelligence behind them.
She released the light from her eye, trying to scare it away. Much to her shock, the speck desintigrated before her in the beam of light. She didn't know she could do that with just light. It hadn't hurt the male lavos when she had mated with it. It didn't matter though, the annoying thing was gone now. But the one on her back still remained.
She drew deeply on her reserves of energy and lashed out with them. Swirling masses of energy erupted around her. She closed her eye, so that the flashes wouldn't blind her. When she opened her eye finally, the specks were all gone, even the one on her back. But she felt herself to be very weak. The effort to get rid of these specks had cost her much, while she was pregnant. Had she not been, it would have been no deal. But she felt her young drained of energy as well. She fed what little energy she had left back into them and inched her way back to her resting spot, deep in the earth.
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