2 Darkscale? I like it.

A little snake was twisting in his sleep, hidden deep under the earth's surface. His jaws opened and closed repeatedly and his tail continuously hit with vigor the walls of his little shelter.

Unexpectedly, the sound that came out from his small mouth wasn't the usual hissing sound that it is expected from a creature of his race. No, it was something more throaty, more guttural: not even an expert hunter would be able to determine to which kind of beast it belonged to.

Suddenly a loud noise came from the outside, shaking the little snake awake. His mouth opened wide in a large yawn, exposing two little but sharp white ivory fangs. Then, two vivid violet eyes opened lazily, looking annoyed by the interruption of his rest.

The whole shelter started to tremble, but that didn't worry the animal too much. It wasn't a common thing, but this situation wasn't completely . Probably it was some big animal that altered his normal path and happened to pass near his dwelling.

After some seconds passed coiling on himself to stretch his pitch black body, the serpent started making its way toward the surface, using a small tunnel. His eyes controlled the state of the passage with a worried look. He realized that he wouldn't be able to use it for much longer. Probably he would have to find another place where to live before winter.

A sad emotional and very human-like expression appeared in his little rhomboidal face.

This shelter was his war spoil, taken from the most dangerous battle of his life against a blue-tailed mouse. Just thinking back to the fight made his blood boil inside his body.

Now, that mouse happened to be already in bad shape from a previous fight when he ambushed it. Yet, that damn rodent almost managed to take the little serpent's life. In fact, his scales were still broken and deep teeth marks were indented in various part of his long and slender body.

"Still, I won" thought the little serpent.

Finally, the reptile stopped his silent crawling as he arrived on the edge of the tunnel's end. He glanced outside making sure to remain hidden in the darkness of the passage and saw a group of young humans not too much far from him.

His small eyes narrowed while a low rambling began to resound deep in the bottom of his throat. Humans! Damned humans! Ugly, lousy and stinky humans! The serpent hated them, but he didn't always have the courage or the intelligence to do so. For a long time, he simply fled from them in panic. He had been scared to death by their appearance since the very day of his birth. Especially the small humans of the local tribe!

He remembered how one of them easily killed most of his siblings with stones, almost ending even his life, right after he came out from his egg. That human child had found his mother lair by pure chance and started to throw stones at the hatching eggs. He didn't want to take them to eat them, he just found it amusing to kill them. That first moment of fear imprinted in him the instinct of fleeing whenever he saw one of those crazy naked monkeys.

Then the Cursed Night came along, and evil blood started pouring down from the skies.

Most beasts, at least those with some kind of intelligence, remembered that fated night with terror: those who were so unfortunate to be touched by the fiery red liquid died miserable deaths. Their skin fell, pustules ate their flesh and their bones languished breaking in pieces. Even dead, they remained a danger for months, making everything that came near them sick and weak.

The little black snake, on the other hand, considered the Cursed Night like the greatest blessing that occurred in his life.

Yes, he fell sick. Yes, his flesh cracked and bled for days. However, in the end, he managed to survive. Plus, he started to have Dreams.

He loved the Dreams.

In the Dreams, he was someone else, something else. He didn't slither, he ran. He could run fast as the wind, even in the air, flying through the skies. He called himself King, roaring loudly before attacking anyone who looked at him with the slightest disrespect.

There were many things that the serpent saw in the Dreams that he still didn't understand, like why he called himself the father of everyone he argued with, even if it clearly wasn't the case; and why he would feel his body in the vision grow hot while looking at some humans (especially those with longer hair).

However, even if he couldn't make sense of some things, he learned a lot thanks to the Dreams. In fact, he could say that they changed completely his previous behavior: before he acted on basis of pure instinct, but now he could make plans. He could think, even reflect on things.

Sometimes, laying in silence in his den, he thought back at when he decided to attack that weakened blue-tailed mouse. Granted it wasn't the best idea as he greatly overestimated his own fighting capacities, he loved to think of ways that he could have acted better in the fight. He was sure that if the battle had taken place after the start of the Dreams, he would have managed to win way faster and without all those wounds.

Before he didn't know the names of the things he saw and smelled, in fact, he didn't even expect them to have names. Now, he knew them. He knew also the name of his race: he was a serpent, a black collar snake.

He also knew about Cultivation: it was a mystical thing that could make a beast become stronger regardless of its size. Even a toad could trash a mighty wolf and fly in the sky like a falcon thanks to Cultivation. He didn't know what cultivation entailed per se, but he knew that he really wanted to try it out. He wished to become like the invincible shadow of his dreams. However, he never had a Dream about how to start cultivating.

"Maybe one day" sighed the young creature, while observing the humans.

They wore leather and pelt clothing, adorning themselves with tooth necklaces and earrings. Most of them had short black hair and tanned skin. They brought with them lots of carriages and they were working fast, planting down giant sticks covered in pelts.

"Hunters" thought the little serpent. His Dreams helped him distinguish the naked monkeys into three groups: hunters, low leveled cultivators, and high leveled cultivators.

The hunters were the less dangerous group in general, but the most dangerous for him. Cultivators didn't even care if he existed, but hunters would kill him if they didn't find anything else to eat.

"Uh, what are those?" the snake suddenly saw a group of humans that didn't fit in any of his three categories. The first was a young human with short green hair and very pale skin. He was way bigger than the others, with a pronounced belly hidden behind a luscious wolf pelt. While the other humans were working, he sat on a wooden throne looking bored around him. Two slender humans with the same face, long yellow hair and gold circles around their neck were standing near him.

He and the two identical blond humans were clearly not hunters, but they didn't look like cultivators either.

"Hey look, a hole" while the serpent was examining their camp, a human youth seemed to have finally discovered his liar. He started to walk with confidence towards it, his hand already ready to shove his bone spear inside it.

He then stopped halfway, looking back and giving the rest a worried look as if saying "do I do it?". The other humans seemed to grow immediately very interested, especially the one with green hair.

"Moron, that's only a blue-tailed mouse shelter!"

"Came on, do it! I don't want to have a damn rat living next to me for the next two weeks"

"What are you scared of? It's just a rat Third! Go kill him!"

The other humans began to call out the one who found the tunnel, that finally stopped to tease them and started to shove the long spear inside the hole.

"Scared? Do I look scared? I, Third, will become the greatest hunter of the Tribe… just watch and see"

Inside, the black serpent's eye shone with a very dangerous light. These filthy humans wanted to destroy his house? Unacceptable. If this had happened a couple of months ago he would have immediately tried to run away, but now he wasn't the same creature.

"Mph, see? I'll give you something good to see right now"

The spear was still calmly moving toward the little tunnel when the little snake started to move.

A black flash had appeared out from the hole, jumping directly towards Third's face and taking a huge bite at his left eye. The human's face started immediately to bleed profusely, while a mangled remaining half eye started to dangle under his nose. That horrifying scene wasn't something that the group of youths could ever have expected: they immediately descended into utter panic.

The early morning forest's silence was broken by a series of cries and shouts.

The only one who didn't seem to panic was the green haired fatty. Instead, a look of interest could be seen on his face while he watched his companion tremble in pain. He followed the black streak that had just attacked with his sight and saw it stopping for a moment on the very top of a boulder near the clearing edge.

The morning light illuminated a little black scaled little serpent, holding a bloody chunk of human eye and eyelid between his fangs. The little snake raised his little head to the sky, overbearing.

The green haired human laughed, his eyes shining with greed. He took out a piece of dried meat and started walking toward the black reptile, his giant belly jiggling at his every step.

"Hey there, little dark scale, I really like your style… do you want to become friends?"

The serpent looked at the human condescendingly, snickering loudly. Then he disappeared rapidly inside the forest.

" I want that snake! It is mine!" announced the green haired human.

Fleeing among bushes and rocks, the snake thought of the worlds of that strange big human.

"Darkscale?... I like it"