5 Triple Scare

The waters churned under the heavy rain, but somehow they still managed to reflect an image back to Darkscale. It was a very distorted image, disfigured by the numerous waves and ripples on the surface of the shallow pool, but still enough clear to alarm the little creature. The serpent felt immediately sick, almost as something had suddenly appeared in the pit of his stomach.

"What is that?" panicked the little creature observing the decrepit shadow twisted by the pouring rain. It was like looking in a mirror and seeing a complete stranger. No, even wost: not a stranger, a wicked version of yourself. "That's not me", all his being was telling him that his perception was wrong, that that shadow on the waters wasn't him.

He squeezed his eyes, bite his tongue and even put his head under the gelid liquid surface for a couple of second before reemerging.

However, that horrific picture remained there. Looking straight back at him with the same violet eyes that he had. He could also feel the terror that inhabited him in those two small violet flames.

There was no mistake: that was really him.

"How? Why?"

His body truly looked completely foreigner. A simple way to explain it, could be using a single world: skeleton.

He was like a living skeleton. He had never been fat or anything before, but the way he looked right now was exaggeratively thin. Unhealthy. The true face of sickness.

He simply didn't have any flesh remaining in his body.

Lustrous black scales were seemingly attacked directly to his bone structure, without any element being present between. He literally looked like a creepy little skeleton trophy on which someone had painted some very realistic dark scales.

"But these are not drawing… this is mine!" He could sense them, so they were clearly parts of him. " Where is the rest of my body?" wondered the creature trying to calm himself.

Although he looked like a walking dried corpse, he wasn't in pain or weakness. Not at all. Once the panic and the bad feelings emerged from the fright that that sudden discovery passed, he realized that his body felt great. A little strange compared to before, but in a good way.

He coiled down near the water, trying to remember what had happened before his awakening in that strange form.

The first thing he recalled was having a Dream, then awakening and trying to execute a technique he learned from the King. He remembered trying for a long hour before managing to do it. Then the pain, and…

"Oh…" Darkscale remembered that the first thing that he felt when the technique seemed to work, was a strange energy flowing inside his skin and flesh.

"Maybe that's how all cultivators look when they start to cultivate…" wondered the little reptile.

He gave a long look to his body, not in the water, but simply turning his sight on the emancipated short figure of his. The first thing he noted was that the color of his scales was even more deep than normal, and that wasn't because of the lack of light around it.

His scales seemed almost to emanate some kind of bright light, in those parts that weren't completely dirtied by mud and stinky black viscous substance.

He attributed the latter to his earlier careless run to drink, even if he couldn't tell precisely what plant or animal had left behind that disgusting glue stuff.

Another thing that he noted was that the scars he previously had, completely disappeared. Those signals of pride that he gained throughout pain and life-threatening situations were gone. Completely.

" What the hell?" immediately after having made this discovery, he started feeling somewhat angry. He always took great pride in how those marks signaled to the world around him that he wasn't a newborn silly snake. They said to whoever looked at him that he had experience and could defend himself.

It wasn't just a personal thing: it was survival.

That aura of maturity and experience was a life saver as much as having claws and fangs in the dangerous habitat were he lived.

Now he had nothing to distinguish it from the newborns. He even became smaller thanks to the technique he used.

"Oh no.."

Now the other animals would think that he was an easy prey. When he was younger he didn't have the intelligence to understand the dangers he was in, but now the sole thought of it terrified him.

It was at that precise moment, that he heard a loud hoarse sound, coming from the skies.

"Craaa"

A profound sense of danger arose inside Darkscale. Every cell of his body was telling him to run and hide as fast possible.

He slightly moved his head and caught sight of a descending monstrosity right in the moment it landed next to him. It was an angry looking creature, with dark feathers all over its body and cruel red eyes.

His mind reeled. "How could I've been so careless?" he knew that now he could only prepare himself for a battle that he probably wouldn't win. Not against a flying devil like that.

A sharp grey beak moved forward, making Darkscale blood run cold as he immediately responded by screaming with all his strength while he dashed away.

The sound that came from his voice wasn't the usual hissing. No, for a second time it was a deep, magnificent roar. Weaker than the one he used against the humans, but still enough strength to make the creature stop in its tracks.

The crow's eyes enlarged in shock. It looked around itself for a second, its red eyes meeting two demonic violet flames coming from what previously had been just an ugly and dirty shed snake-skin randomly laying around.

The avian beast's body froze in fear, his feather ruffled, while its beak was still halfway to the small pool of water.

The demonic figure stopped roaring, and then disappeared with astonishing rapidity towards east. Nonetheless, the bird was already completely terrified: it started stumbling around grotesquely while it tried to fly away.

Its wings, however, didn't manage to move at the same rhythm: one always making more movement of the other. That made it fall down on the mud each time it tried to fly up, until almost all his body was livid with pain.

A deep sense of despair appeared in the red eyes of the creature: this was supposed to be its first adventure outside its family lair. The crow only wanted to reach the pool of water and take a sip or two. Instead, it ended with him being so terrified that some of its feathers were starting to lose their dark color, turning white.

Darkscale didn't assist to any of these events: he was long gone.

Buried below a small cavity formed between large ancient roots of a tall oak, he was still shaking from the fear and adrenaline.

"That was really close... But I made it!" Sighing heavily he congratulated himself on his rapid reflexes even in such a dangerous situation.

"He didn't even manage to land a blow on me, that stupid crow" a wide smile appeared on the little serpent face until he remembered that maybe it wasn't such a good thing that he didn't land any blow at all. "Maybe if I waited for a little bit I could have got some new scar…" considered dubiously the creature.

That line of thinking lasted for only a couple of seconds before he immediately changed idea. "No that's crazy! He was going to kill me!" he knew how vicious birds could be. They were cruel and overbearing, especially those who feasted on flesh.

In his time in the forest, he had seen some animals trying to fight against their tyranny. They usually ended up being taken up in the skies and then left to fall. Bloody disjointed pieces were the only things that could survive such a treatment.

The rain continued pouring down on his body, only in part blocked by the old roots that covered him. It wasn't completely a negative thing though: the water was getting rid of the mud and the black gluey substance for him, revealing his lucent new scales.

"I really need to find a new shelter" thought the serpent, looking up at the angry clouds. Probably the storm wouldn't last much longer but the winter wasn't that far. He really needed a new lair.

He was starting to think about where to go search for a good spot, when a shadow appeared from the south and crashed heavily on a near tree.

"???"

His body tensed up, ready to give one of his save-life roars and then run away when he noted that it was a heavily wounded human. The short hair made it him, a male human.

From its clothes, he was clearly a hunter, someone at the very bottom of the human society. Not only he was at the bottom of the human society, probably he was also at the bottom of the hunter society!

He didn't have any weapon with him, other than a small little knife bound to his hip. There was no long spear, no bow or sword on his back, making him the least equipped human Darkscale had ever seen.

Also, on his torso, there was a fairly deep wound and his left arm was twisted in a very unnatural way.

A vicious glim appeared on the reptile eyes. He didn't have any weapons and was heavily wounded. "The heavens really want you dead stinky human…" he started to slowly move towards him, remaining hidden in the shadows and between the long large roots.

When he was at a couple of meters from him, still deeply in hiding, the human suddenly opened his eyes and looked around himself with suspicion. He tried then to move, and he made for a few seconds but his body felt down immediately after.

"Hahahahaha"

He started to laugh maniacally, startling Darkscale and making him wait before committing to the attack. The human seemed incredible unstable and unstable things were dangerous.

"Forest Will Tribe, you dare to imprison my grandfather? Do you dare to try to force my little sister to be the concubine of that disgusting young patriarch of yours? Hahahahaha, I will kill you all! Just wait and see!"

The human continued to talk to himself in a very creepy way, not internally like normal beings did, but talking straight at nothing while looking at the dark clouds in the sky.

"Hmmm, seems like he hates other humans, maybe I should let them kill themselves ehehehe" his way of saying things were a bit strange, but what he was conveying was like music to Darkscale's ears: humans were killing each other? That was something that needed celebration! Especially if they were humans coming from those odious hunter tribes!

The human was clearly in pain, his voice broke numerous times during his monologue. However he steeled himself and forced his healthy hand to search inside a little pouch he was holding on his person.

When his hands emerged, the wary Darkscale saw that his finger was closed around a little object. It was a gray hollow circle of metal that the human looked at for a few seconds in doubt, before gritting his tooth and sliding a finger inside it.

"If I need to become a monster to get my revenge, I will!" continued the human. " I will kill whoe…"

Yet, halfway through his phrase, he disappeared completely. Darkscale was frightened out of his mind for the third time on the same day. He looked around the space occupied by the wounded human just a few seconds ago and saw that it was completely empty.

"How?... is was a...Cultivator?"

He knew from his dreams that strong cultivators could teleport, reaching places far away from them in a single instant. However, that human was clearly a hunter. He didn't even realize that he was being stalked by a little snake, how could he have been a great Cultivator?

"Heavens, good thing that I didn't attack him" thought the reptile. No matter if he was a big or small Cultivator, he was clearly someone who had strange powers. No, it was too risky.

" Cultivators" longed the little reptile.

Thinking back at the technique that he tried the day before, Darkscale felt a bit gloomy. Should he try it again? What if this time it killed him? He didn't have any more flesh to sacrifice.

He stared at the space where the human disappeared, then thought about how that crow had almost killed him not long ago.

"No, I need to try!"