FREE USE in Primitive World

The evening air in the Eastern Zone had shifted from a cool breeze to a heavy, damp stillness that seemed to cling to the matte-black scales of Sol's cloak. And slowly the forest was coming alive with the sound of his own leisure, Sol moved through the undergrowth, his mind still savoring the echoes of Seluna's fuming rage and Vurok's final moments and his body humming with the soul power of the Striders and Dagger-Mouths. He felt invincible, the king of the jungle.

He was halfway through a jaunty, dark whistle when he stopped.

He looked at a cluster of bioluminescent, purple-capped mushrooms clinging to the base of a gnarled tree that he didn't recognize from his previous explorations. Then, he looked at a rock formation that looked suspiciously like a crouching beast. He turned in a slow, 360-degree circle, his eyes scanning the silhouettes of familiar looking trees, but they all seemed to be wearing the same mocking, silent expressions.

Sol realized something, actually something very important… that hadn't quite registered through the haze of his "soul power overdose."

"Well," Sol muttered, a small, dark chuckle escaping his lips. "This is awkward. Seems like I'm lost."

It seemed like the predator instincts he'd absorbed from the Blue-Neck Striders and Dagger-Mouths were excellent for killing, but apparently, they hadn't come with a built-in GPS.

He'd been so focused on the high of the kill and the entertaining rage of the Ice Queen that he had wandered far off the established hunting paths.

He stood there for a moment, the bone dagger twirling idly between his fingers. A normal man… the old Sol… would have felt a cold spike of panic. Being lost in the Eastern Zone at night was a death sentence. But this Sol? He just tilted his head, a dry, psycho-edged smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"Well… let's try my luck, then, what's the worst that could happen?" he whispered.

He randomly picked a direction that felt "villageward"... or at least, a direction that looked like it led the tribe… and continued his leisurely stroll.

As he pushed deeper into the unfamiliar territory, the forest began to change. The usual background noise… the incessant chirping of nocturnal insects, the distant rustle of small rodents etc…slowly faded. Of course, It didn't happen all at once; it was a gradual withdrawal of sound, as if the forest itself were holding its breath.

And very soon, the silence became absolute. It was a heavy, eerie vacuum that made the sound of his own pulse feel like a drumbeat in his ears.

Sol stopped again. He closed his eyes, activating his heightened senses. He searched for the vibration of a predator's heartbeat, the heat signature of a lurking lizard, or the snap of a twig.

Nothing.

The area was a dead zone. No insects. No birds. Even the wind seemed to have died.

"Well, this is a bit spooky," Sol noted, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the void.

He waited for the "prey instinct" to kick in... that primal shiver down the spine that warns a human when they are being watched by something beyond their comprehension.

But didn't feel anything.

He scanned the immediate brush one last time, saw nothing but shadows, and gave a casual, indifferent shrug.

"Whatever," he murmured, the whistle returning to his lips, even lower and more haunting than before. "Not like there's anything left in this woods that I should be worried about. If it wants to play hide-and-seek, it's going to be a very short game."

Sol continued his stroll through the unnatural stillness, his shoe sinking into a carpet of moss that seemed to swallow the sound of his footsteps. The air here was colder, holding a metallic tang that made the hair on his arms stand up. Even though he was joking around, but he still didn't relax his guard and his eyes constantly spun around, struggling to find any heat signatures in a place that felt like it had been leached of all life.

But still not finding anything, he shrugged helplessly and continued forward,as he pushed through a thicket of white, skeletal bushes that felt like brittle bone under his touch, and stepped over a gnarled, root, that seemed to be stuck with lightning, he saw something, that made him stop dead on his tracks.

Nestled in the hollow of a massive, ancient white-wood tree was something that defied the primitive, brown-and-green palette of the Eastern Zone. It was a single flower, but it looked less like a plant and more like a masterpiece of celestial glass.

The herb stood about a foot tall, its stem a translucent, crystalline silver. At the top, five long petals curved outward like the delicate claws of a phantom. The petals themselves were clear as diamond, but through their center ran thin, intricate veins pulsing with a rhythmic, silvery-crimson fluid. It didn't have a scent of nectar or earth; instead, it radiated a smell like something entirely different, something that hadn't ever smelt before.

He gulped and cautiously looked around and still didn't find anything, and slowly inched forward, as for his previous rule of not coming closer to anything colorful or shiny? What rule? He didn't have any such rule.

Coming closer, he knelt near it, his eyes wide with genuine predatory greed. He didn't know what it was. The village elders had never mentioned a flower made of glass and blood. But his instincts were screaming at him…. this was definitely not something ordinary. This was something that didn't belong in the hands of mortals.

"Well, well," Sol grinned, his lips pulling back in a dark, jagged expression. "You're far too beautiful to be left out here in the dirt. Let's come with daddy, daddy will take you to a better place.

He reached out, his fingers brushing the petals. They were freezing, a sharp chill that traveled up his arm and vibrated against his marrow. But he didn't care and carefully plucked the bloom, tucking it into his leather pouch. He felt a strange, phantom tingle in his chest, a resonance with his Ash-Gray energy.

But just as the pouch closed, the eerie silence of the forest was shattered.

It wasn't a sound at first; it was more like a pressure. The air grew heavy, thick with a scent of crushed pine and old, dried blood. A massive shadow stretched over the white-wood tree, eclipsing the light and plunging Sol into total darkness.

Sol froze. He knew that he had fucked up. He gulped and mechanically tilted his head back, his Charcoal eyes widening as they traveled up, up... and up.

Standing over him was a titan of fur and muscle. He didn't know what it was, nor had he ever heard about it. It was a beast that made the Garth-Boars look like piglets. It stood twenty feet tall on all fours, its fur a matted, oily black that seemed to absorb the light. Its eyes weren't the red of a crazed beast; they were a deep, molten gold, burning with a terrifying, ancient intelligence.

Meeting his eyes, the beast huffed, a blast of hot, carrion-stinking air that was powerful enough to ruffle Sol's hair and send a cloud of dust swirling around his boots.

Sol let out a dry, awkward laugh that sounded like glass breaking. "So... it was yours? Hahaha..." He held up his empty hands, a gesture of peace. "Cute. Really. Big guy, isn't it? Hahaha..."

The beast lowered its head, its golden eyes fixed on Sol's pouch. The low, chest-rattling growl that followed felt like an earthquake in Sol's whole body.

"Look, I'll just leave it right back where I found it," Sol said, his voice rising in a nervous trill. "You can continue your nap, and I'll just... scoot along. No hard feelings, right? It was all a misunderstanding."

He reached into his pouch, pulled out the glowing flower, and placed it back in the hollow of the tree. "Look, it's new just like before," the beast didn't respond, his eyes were locked on the flower, and under their gaze, the flower tilted and fell to one side, as if he was performing in a bad comedy.

"Hahaha, a little bit of movement doesn't matter much, right. You do remember the five-second rule, right? here, you can have it, it's still absolutely fresh and just like new." He stepped away slowly, one agonizing inch at a time, his hands still raised. The beast tilted its massive head, watching the flower on the ground, then watching Sol. It let out another huff… that was less like a huff and more like warning of an impending storm.

Sol gulped, and without warning he turned and sprinted with all his might, muttering prayers to every god he had ever known in his past life… God, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Bhagwan, Shiva, Vishnu, Kali, Odin, Thor, Freyja, Zeus, Hades, Apollo, Ra, Anubis, Osiris, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Amaterasu, Susanoo, and countless nameless spirits of earth and sky and shadow, please bless this lost lamb.

The beast roared, a sound that shook the very marrow in his bones and lunged.

"I HAD ALREADY LEFT IT! WHY ARE YOU STILL CHASING ME?!" Sol cried out, the "leisurely" persona finally cracking into a manic, adrenaline-fueled sprint.

He didn't wait for the beast to reach him. He bolted and bolted, his legs… pumped with the soul power of the Blue-Neck Striders… propelling him forward like a shot from a bow. He dived through the skeletal brush, the massive beast crashing through the trees behind him like a runaway carriage. The sound was absolutely deafening, making Sol sprint even faster, the beast behind him wasn't navigating the forest, it was fucking deleting it. Trees splintered, trunks shattered, the ground itself seemed to buckle under its fury.