Garden snip

Right now you are small, right now you are hunted, and right now you know that danger lurks in every shadow. The second week since your birth has been... eventful and it did not seem to your small body that it would be getting much better very soon.

The first days of the week had been fine, as you fell into a routine of foraging, utilizing what you’d figured out to tap the ‘safe’ seeder path for as much biometal as you could gather, then scurried back home before anything else could find you. It became a comfortable rhythm as you made the run, letting the delicate mechanism which served as your scout and warning system flew off into the distance, making low frequency directed chirps of information bursts to you whenever it could.

You worked diligently.

Even as you drew away it’s biometal now, you couldn’t help but pay more attention to the way in which the seeder reacted to your thefts, watching as the thick biometal ooze rushed from it to seal up the damages which you were doing to it with fascination. It hadn’t taken you long to realize that the outer defenses of this seeder-path vorid were strangely soft and reactive to your touch as you formed the biometal of your hands into a dense claw form and hacked your way into the seeder’s hard yet yielding flesh.

Eagerly the biometal gushed from the wound, where you would use your spell to extract the active portions of it from the gel suspension which surrounded it.

You hadn’t really paid close attention before, though you had recently noticed that it was a fairly sticky substance which hardened quickly. You hadn’t actually allowed it to fully coalesce with the active portion of the biometal though, but the residue left behind gripped anything it touched quite solidly.

Renovations to your hovel would go as they had before, though without much in the way of a specific plan for it, you simply worked to expand the area which it covered, slow going in and of itself but you’d managed to take some of the soil which you shifted using your extraction spell and reinvest it as a hardened paste all along your finished walls, reinforcing them as you moved. Pure instincts guiding your design... though once or twice you’d caused sections of your excavations to cave in accidentally.

You learned quickly what not to do.

It would remain a mostly calm week for the most part as you forage and reinforce. Stockpiling more Biometal, scurrying about, your business.

This changed almost all at once.

The attack was sudden, vicious and brutal. Only the flash of warning from your Wondering heart managed to alert you to the danger before it was too late, the crashing claws of a hunter, scaled from clawed wingtip to tail as it fanned out blade sharp wings in an effort to tear into your soft frame.
It is only narrow fortune which saves you from incident, as the long wedge shaped creature missed its first attack, slicking hard into the surface of the seeder from which you’d been taking Biometal... your fear spiking hard as you retreated, drawing as much magical pressure from its body with your spell as you could even as you tried to correct yourself from the spill you’d taken throwing yourself aside...

Only to realize that not only was the other vorid no longer trying to kill you, it was itself screeching and crying out as the slow oozing flow of biometal laced substance stuck to its wings, and didn’t stop flowing. The predator tried with mighty heaves to tear itself free from the inexorable ooze which slid about its body at a growing speed, each inch taken, a scream of intense bewilderment was loosed, the seeder’s biometal laced defense actively seeping into the predator, and pulling it back against the seeder’s trunk.

Ever so slowly flowing about, shredding, and silencing the other...

You run back to your shelter carrying all you can... it isn’t until the next week that you are brave enough to step back out.