Chapter 306: Baby steps
The tiny ember that just thought of herself as me, rushed through lava, sensing where she was going based on the ambient soulforce. All alone, far down in the depths, her instincts told her she had to be very careful about predators.
She, a term she'd learned recently after her form solidified even more. Her base thoughts had started moving from animalistic and instinctive to proper thoughts, something she didn't really understand but was very happy about. Due to this, she'd understood one very important thing.
Something was very wrong.
The first years of her life were a blur of moving around from hot spot to hotspot, playing with the other embers, and staying out of range of the lumbering large brutes that were the earth titans, not that she knew they were called that at the time. And even if she had, she enjoyed how the old one called them more.
Stupid stonefishies!
The thought was clear and sharp, as many had started becoming. Each time she passed through a certain type of shimmering soulforce, her thoughts seemed to become just a bit better, and her form a bit more set.
It was much better than before.
A year ago, she and the others had gone back to be with motherheat, only to find she had changed. She had a dangerous extra something to her that scared off the embers. Me hadn't understood and almost fled.
It had taken the motherheat many cycles of the great heat to explain that she was not sick and dangerous but had become stronger in another way. The cold inside of her was nothing but fuel. Me still didn't understand what that meant, but she believed the heatmother. Sadly, by the time she did and might have convinced the others, two of her heatsisters had already gone missing, and no matter what me had done, she just couldn't find them.
She'd been searching below, in the deepest parts she dared go, for a long time, but she couldn't stay anymore. Where the silly stonefishies had been mostly content with swimming in the depths, sometimes coming up to where she was to try and eat her, it had always been calm. But at some point, things had changed. Now, some of them had come up, agitated and angry. They kept hunting her and other embers, chasing them!
Me had sensed something wrong with them, though she didn't know what. Just wrong.
A wobble ran through the lava around her, and she felt the ambient soulforce surge as one of the stonefishies moved down.