The hard-soil in this accursed place was soft, softer than it ever could have hoped. That softness would likely save its life- an exposed sister is a vulnerable one. And yet, that very same quality was now presenting it with a significant problem: the hard-soil crumbled far too quickly, and the many particulates of dust and rock were sticking to and aggravating its wounds. Even if it finished this burrow-home, if the particles remained in its wounds, the injuries it had sustained would likely never heal… or worse, it would be overcome with the hot-rot, and die in great pain as death ate away the flesh beneath its armor-skin. Thus, it had to make frequent stops to painfully groom itself, losing more and more lymph with each hour wasted, and filling its mouth with foul sand.

Eventually, though, it had carved a place for utself in this desolate world, a single-chambered hovel dug from the side of the canyon wall and camouflaged with what soft-soil and ruffage it could pile up around the entrance.

Now, though, came the difficult part… moving its assailant inside. The dead-thing was far larger than it, and though its kind were stronger than their spindly limbs might indicate at first glance, this was simply beyond the scope of what it could do alone. Only one solution presented itself to it; and so, it was many hours of crude butchery and separating limbs before the broken-down corpse was fully stashed within its burrow-home, in a chamber deeper within the canyon wall where the air was ever so slightly cooler. It was an instinctual thing, this impulse, a latent urge unspooling itself from its DNA and ordering it to do as such, lest the meat rot quick-fast. And in this larder-room, it began to peel leather from flesh and muscle from bone, feasting upon the foolish-thing that had dared to harm one of Mother’s children, helping itself to the succulent soft-flesh within. It scraped the bloody-mess from the hide and used its mandibles to slice skin into strips, bandaging for its wounds. It could find no broad-leaf in the canyon to place in between its wound and the hide… un-ideal, but workable. It washed the hides in the river-water, and bound its wounds as best it could, primitive knots creaking and struggling to come undone. As dawn crested upon the world, and radiance streamed in to the canyon, it lay in its new-home, exhausted beyond belief and in more pain than it had ever felt before.

The entrance was hidden and blocked with bush-limbs, the beast was butchered and consumed, its wounds were sealed… and it had nothing left to do. Finally, it could rest.

Its sleep was fitful- the pain of its wounds faded, but an aching, swelling fullness in its head replaced it. It dreamt of awful things— the worm-eye sickness that would burst the heads of any who got it, the creeping-mold that would split the skulls of those in its clutches. It felt, in its subconscious, as though at any moment its own head would simply pop like an orb-fruit squished too hard. Unbeknownst to it, a small, spherical, clear gem within its brainstem pulled something from its stomachs— an intangible energy from the dead-thing’s meat, condensing and wrapping and shaping. The gem seemed to feed off this energy, growing in size like a cancerous nodule. When all had finally been absorbed from the drone’s paltry meal, the energy settled within the gem’s center, swirling like nectar within the share-stomach of a replete.

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She awoke in a liquefied puddle of chitin and lymph, almost miraculously healed, but in more agonizing pain than she had ever experienced. She could not possibly know that as she slept, the gem had changed her utterly, reshaped her body into something more befitting its unknowable designs. Unfamiliar hand pressed to one wall, she staggered to her feet, taller than ever she had before. Her limbs were now robust and tipped with far more digits than they ought to be. Where once she had had no weaponry besides her mandibles, chelicerae, and sharp claws, now she was equipped with a deadly stinger, and a long, sharp needle-tongue for sucking the fluids from her prey.

She marveled at her new form, both frightened and in awe, taking the time to familiarize herself as best she could with her new form. Were her brain more developed, she may have broken down. She might, as a human would have, screamed and sobbed and torn herself to shreds with the knowledge that she was no longer what she was supposed to be, that she had been changed without her knowledge or consent. She was not, however, human. She was a tough thing, in a tough world-- a bit of gristle lodge between the teeth of a thing far greater than she, greater than even her Mother, and she remained unbowed... if, admittedly, shocked and uncoordinated. She stood upright, now, not hunched and scurrying on several sets of limbs now. And, perhaps most importantly, her armor-skin was far tougher than it had previously been- unblemished and a hard, reflective brown, matching the walls of the canyon.

As she shook herself from her reverie, she took notice of something perhaps even stranger than the changes to her form. It practically screamed at her to pay attention to it, the scent-speak overpowering and cloying. A strange rectangle of cobalt blue, dotted with lines of white she could not read, but still understood. It floated in the air before her, a slice of un-reality that she could not possibly comprehend the presence of, but which asserted itself on her senses nonetheless. As her eyes darted over the lines of white, imagined scent-speak filled her spiracles, conveying the information held within.