Book of The Lightborn: Rise

Lost Brother

'Impressive creatures,' Salvete meets the dawn of the third day since the hunt began with the scene of a sleeping shadow lurker. Standing inside a tree, next to her the body of a shadow lurker, she looks at another, a dozen metres parallel to her position. 'I'm confident this one is a male, while the other,' the shadow lurker was at times moving its head, studying the environment, 'certainly a female. She's a lot more cautious, and seems to have mated with this one recently.'. She found it weird that the female was not approaching her or the dead body. While there was no smell, or blood, from killing the creature, she thought they would at least scout their surroundings. 'These ones might be younger. Their bodies don't have the scars of old critters,' pushing its body outside slowly, she wanted to see if she could get a reaction from the other one.

There was only a small twitch of its ears, then Salvete saw it return to its half sleep. 'I'll just get a bit-' before she could finish her thought, as she took a step away from the dead shadow lurker, the other leaped towards her with great strength. The first leap crossed only ten metres, while the second following immediately after, enough to cross thirty. It was meant to tackle her while it could bite down on her. Salvete didn't have time to react, and was close to being killed, but from above, a wopede parasite dropped as if in anticipation. It was an old specimen, some thirty or more years old, many scars of battles across its body. It crushed the shadow lurker some three metres in front of Salvete, its forty metres long body still clutched somewhat to the tree.

Salvete didn't make a sound. Breath, eye movements, even her light for some moments was stopped from moving. The parasite dragged the body up above in the next instant, crunching noises could be heard. In her mind, she engraved the encounter while slowly making her way away from the tree. 'I'm starting to not like travelling alone,' she thought as she ran with silent steps between the trees.

Salvete hasn't seen the encounter between her siblings and the shadow lurker, but the aftermath. She spent the time it took them to recover, scouting the area and taking notes of the changing environment as they went deeper into the Gargantuan Forest. Besides the shadow lurkers, she encountered a variety of other critters. The most prominent ones were the venomous angolins and crown stompers. While smaller less significant critters, like the stormbugs and coldboars, were not worth taking note of. Though, through her morning scouting, she heard loud sounds coming from up above. She knew that crown stompers weren't the kind to make noise, not much of anything liked making noise inside the forest. At first she thought it might be Orvus fighting some of the critters, then she saw flying, large shadows above the clouds, and reassessed her thoughts.

Once she checked on her siblings again, seeing them still recovering, she took another look around the forest. If there was a threat that could impede or hurt them further, she wanted to deal or divert it away from them. 'I left this section for later, it seemed to carry some dangerous airs about it,' Salvete was searching a portion that had blood splashed onto some portions of the trees. 'There was a struggle here, between some of those creatures I assume,' she thought as she licked some of the dried blood from a tree. 'Seems fresh enough to not want to go further.'. Salvete looked at the markings on the trees too, the shadow lurkers only making them when in direct confrontation with another. While she didn't see any of them engaging in such behavior, it was similar to how clawbears scratched at the ground at times before leaping at each other.

'I would love not to do this, but I must make sure there's not much danger left in these parts,' Salvete thought before heading deeper, following the signs of struggle into the forest. What she didn't expect, was for there to be more and more of them. Blood was also more present, in places small frozen pools of them. 'These can't be from a single conflict. There was more than one, and these creatures are solitary, so they shouldn't be walking in groups,' her thoughts were piecing together the scene. Then, upon entering a more exposed part of the forest, she was able to uncover beneath the snow blood that had dried and frozen. 'This happened no longer than a day ago, maybe even less,' she kept looking around, and by following the way the blood got expelled from the body, she was at a certain centre. 'You were here brother,' her eyes lit up with the light, letting herself exposed for a brief moment, as the blood of Orvus' killings surrounded the place she was standing at.