Ebony's Fable

Lillith unknowingly trusted the voice in her head. She tried to look out for herself and her parents, using her eyes and ears like the voice told her and understanding how to gauge another person's hostility.

Who to avoid.

Why avoid them?

Who to look out for.

There was so much depth to understanding body language, shifty eyes, words that don't mean what they say.

She hardly realised that 3 months had passed just like that.

The community accepted them in without open disagreement. What made them do that, according to the voice in her head, was the fact that the 2, now 3 of them could survive for 2 years. That meant they had the bare minimum ability to feed themselves, to some degree. The snake skin was another.

Eating bugs and eating proper fleshy creatures was a different story altogether.

Lillith believed her father's story more as time passed. This community thing was nice. They could sleep longer when the skies grew dark, only sometimes staying awake to look for danger.

They had these large animal pelts, supposedly from the 'camel' creatures that were HUGE. Best part?

They were warm. So, so warm.

Nights were as dreaded within the community as without. They did have to share the pelts, but since they took turns keep watch, there were just enough pelts for all of them, even with the inclusion of the 3 of them.

Lillith didn't know how helpful a bit more sleep had been in helping her travel in the day.

The only part she pitied was how the second voice in her head was gone two days after the snake capture. She still dreamed of this weird life as a different person every so often, but never heard the voice while she was awake again.

Lillith and her father did their part. They gathered bugs and tiny creatures, the second voice in her head called reptiles, lizards and geckos that are from the same 'family' as snakes. There was another breed, mice.

But she failed to catch any of them.

What she found herself doing more often was looking up whenever a moving shadow crossed her line of sight. She never stopped staring at the creatures that could move in the air. Such freedom of movement, such speed and agility.

It became one of her habits.

When Lillith succeeded in another snake capture, this time without injury, she had assumed it would raise her family's status. She did, in fact, get cheered. If only the second voice had never told her to study expressions and body language, she would've happily accepted the open praise and ignored the hidden disgruntled expressions.

Why?

She didn't quite understand.

The greater anyone's ability, the more food they get, the less hungry they will have to be.

The second voice called this place a desert. It was not abundant in resources, but not a dead zone as there were still creatures and a few small water sources to support life. They avoided larger creatures. These are the scary ones.

They were the ones who controlled the scant water sources in this desert.

There was no hope for the community to be able to stay near a water source without being targeted, hence their nomadic nature.

From the stories she gathered, these camels were still safe enough to share a water source from time to time. Then there were a couple of other creatures she was told about their features, but haven't seen.

Twice in these months, they heard calls in the night that made the entire community wake up and run without seeing what the creature making the call was. The community didn't have a name for these creatures, but she got some answers in her dreams. They were possibly coyotes or hyenas or some ancestor variant that the second voice was unaware of.

She even saw what these creatures looked like within her dream.

Recently, she started to dislike these dreams.

She'd been waking up in cold sweat. Mostly because she got eaten by these creatures.

A nightmare.

She was afraid of these coyotes. It was the right move to escape and hope to never see these creatures.

Lillith continued to grow, and it didn't take long for her to be the biggest contributor. Being the only one who brought snakes occasionally, and even starting to succeed with mice, knowing things that no one could have taught her. She was labelled as the bravest. There was an old mouse hunter within the community, and she was already on the way to succeed the man.

Her father no longer needed to gather food or scout, he was allowed to learn how to handle the camel. Her mother oversaw the childcare of 2 new babies, along with another older lady. There were not many ladies who survived and even brought up a child by themselves, so there was no better job for them. Once they were a little bigger, Lillith would be the one to teach them her ways.

Lillith's throat rarely hurt. Her bones had some muscle on them. She was taller than most, bigger than most.

Everyone treated her with respect. They 'buttered' her up for she was feeding them, she was providing.

She held the power over their livelihood.

It felt good.

Lillith was considering more. To take over a water source that could completely remove the pain in her throat. She alone couldn't do that. The nightmares of dying haven't stopped.

One sunny day, as she found herself staring in the skies at the moving shadow her attention was caught by an inconspicuous cry.

The growing babies were already half her height. Perhaps due to how her mother talked to her, she also acted the same way with them. Gentler?

"What's wrong, Seth?" Lillith asked the boy.

"My feet hurts…"

Lillith was going to tell him to suck it up and get used to it, till she smelt something familiar and looked down to see red.

"You're bleeding?' Lillith quickly got Seth and the others to move aside. There might be those 'scorpion' things under the sand. She should've checked the wound for the bite marks to determine what the danger was, but she prioritized getting their next food gatherer and protector to safety.

What she found after sweeping her feet at the sandy floor was pain as a large area of hardness was under the sand.

'Its huge! Is it something other than a snake?' Lillith hopped back after seeing the grey skin she uncovered.

It turned out to be rock.

Some of the older community members laughed at her reaction.

"Lillith, we've reached Rock Hole."

"So this is the Rock Hole? The entire floor is rock?" She wasn't that ignorant.

She'd seen rocks.

But a rock big enough to cover the entire floor was a first.

A rock so large it had space to run inside?

That was the legendary Rock Hole she'd heard all about. Rock Hole was their destination even before her parents split up from the community.

Legends from their prior generations was that there was clean water inside, dripping from the rock skies.

Its been…a couple of generations. At least a few decades since they were last kicked by a more numerous creature.

Their community hopes that these had run away or died out since there was no food inside Rock Hole. Snakes and mice still appeared once in a while but it shouldn't have been enough to feed the more numerous race compared to their community.

Back when their community numbered less than 10 people.

Food was not abundant, but they weren't starving to death. Lillith and her community never had enough water to completely quench themselves.

It was said that water didn't run out even though the people of that time stayed in Rock Hole for almost a year. Hard to believe the stories, but here they were.

Lillith had figured the 'legends' had mostly been true so far. Though there were many more than hadn't been proven, the stories hadn't completely lied to her. Be it how nice it was in a community, how nice it was to have the 'cart' and camel to carry stored food and other items of interest.

This camel was hard to keep alive, but it had been worth the trouble and resources. It carries the pelt they use to keep warm at night. The weird containers that kept water were made of the dead camel's stomachs and other internal organs. Lillith couldn't visualise these if it wasn't for her dreams. The second voice noted that there were no 'pots' or 'jars'. Whatever those were, they were used to contain water.

These stomachs, bladders and intestines were passed down through the generations and their communities' greatest treasures. After all, they would die without water. Over time, some were lost and some broke, so they didn't have many left. It wasn't every day that one found a camel corpse after all. Their current camel was hard fought for, but not too difficult when the animal wasn't aggressive and they had the numbers to threaten the creature.

It shouldn't be dying anytime soon, but if it did, their community had people who still remembered older teachings on how to make use of the dead camel. Pelt, stomach, meat and more.

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An extremely valuable skill to have.

Lillith initially blamed the second voice for all the nightmares and asked why she could no longer talk to her while she was awake. If there was something she learn from the second voice other than knowledge and skills, it was how to read people a bit better. The second voice had trouble even talking to her and was in terrible pain somehow.

This Rock Hole was also known as a cave to her and her only. She had learned some of the dangers that could be found inside but it was also a good place to use as shelter.

The whispers and cries began when Rock Hole was found.

"It's real," Her father knelt before the cracked stone mouth.

The cave, deep and cool, with a dripping ceiling vein of water that once fed a generation. They had been driven out long ago by creatures no one ever named — only feared.

But that had been generations ago. Surely now, the creatures were gone.

It was quiet.

One of the oldest members of the community, Vel tossed a rock inside. "An age-old tradition to startle the creatures within, if any remained. If it stays quiet, there should not be any large creatures inside or they are sleeping.'

They moved in carefully. The heat of the dessert faded quickly, replaced by cool, damp air that smelled unfamiliar. The entrance passage widened into a vast chamber, its ceiling lost to darkness above, its floor uneven with rubble and sand.

Then the real exploration began. The entrance passage widened into a vast chamber, its ceiling lost to darkness above, its floor uneven with rubble and sand.

There were corridors, natural and twisting. Some sloped steeply downward. Others veered sideways or narrowed to crawlspaces. Lillith led one of the scouting groups — silent, focused, moving like wind through stone.

There were no signs of any movements or living creatures so far.

Then, deeper still, the air began to change.

They moved in carefully.

First, they heard it. Faint at first. A soft, rhythmic drip... drip... drip echoing from below.

A few ran ahead, hearts pounding. But the corridors kept winding, folding into themselves like the bowels of the earth.

They descended for what felt like hours. Lillith was confused when it got brighter. A weird colour of light...she'd never seen anything like it if it wasn't for her dreams. A blue tinted light?

Finally, lit up the edges of a wide chamber with walls smoother than the others — worn by water, time, or something else.

And at the centre of it:

A pool.

Still. Cold. Clean.

Fed by a vein of stone above, where water seeped steadily — drip by drip — into a clear well no wider than she was tall but deep. It reflected their faces like a mirror. Not stagnant, not muddy, not brackish. This was water untouched by sun or sand, clearer than memory.

They knelt.

No one spoke.

They just drank.

And the taste of it — so cold it burned, so pure it hurt — made old men weep and children gasp. For many, it was the first time their bellies had known what real water tasted like.

For a time, it was bliss. Water dripped into the endless well like a dream made real. Inside, the temperature was bearable even on a burning hot day.

Until Hanan disappeared. From the same generation as her father, they were close friends.

He went to relieve himself in the far back tunnels. All they found was a single streak of blood.

She took lead and returned to that back corridor. The air was damp and cold — too cold. She found scratch marks along the walls. Low to the ground. Clawed. Patterned.

They were not gone.

They had only waited.

Panic hit them before caring to look for Hanan, they exited where they came.

Sitting near the entrance of the Rock Hole for shelter...a sandstorm was in season today.

Hours passed and they were forced back into the Rock Hole. Sitting near the entrance, staring into the dark depths in fear.

"We have to find Hanan..." Lillith wasn't sure who muttered that, "We can't sit here forever."

Lillith looked into the lightless hole, then back out. She couldn't see outside anymore and they were getting forced deeper in.

The sandstorm didn't appear to be on their side as so much time had passed that someone got thirsty already.

It didn't take long after that to have all of them back at the well, deeper under the sand and rock.

The pool wasn't the end. Surrounding it were narrow shelves of stone — places to sleep, to sit, to store things. A hidden system of drainage cracks prevented flooding. It was as if nature had once prepared this place to be lived in.

"This was their home," Lillith whispered, running her fingers along grooves carved into the walls — old symbols, worn nearly invisible.

The group moved quickly after that. They carried in supplies. Set up their sleeping arrangement at the opposite corner, where Hanan disappeared wordlessly, silently.

It felt like a home reclaimed. Except no one felt safe.

After some rest, they had no choice but to face it and went to investigate where and how Hanan disappeared so silently, in a cave that echoed every one of their words and any sounds they made.

They never figured out where the light was coming from, but they did find a crack where the blood led. A hard to see hole. Hanan must have cut his feet on a sharp rock, and somehow slipped into the hole. However, Lillith felt that something was weird. He should at least have time to scream for attention if he really fell.

"HANAN!" Her father yelled into the hole. There was no body, hence some hope the man was alive.

There was no reply. They did...run away immediately after his disappearance.

Still, nobody dared to go into a dark hole that they can barely fit into. Not even Lillith, with all her dreams and questionable knowledge she was fed.

Quietly, the disappearance of one of their people was left unspoken. They acted as if it never happened. Treated as if he fell to his death.

Lillith felt a chill run down her back. That's it?

They were going to act as if nothing had just happened and continue living here?

And they did.

In fact, life was not that bad for a few cycles.

Till some of them encountered what made those claw marks.

Lillith immediately recognised them to be bats.

The resident mouse hunter spoke as if he had heard of these creatures too. These were what kicked out their predecessors.

With her dream-given knowledge of bats and the mouse hunters' familiarity.

The unknown became known and no longer scary.

Then all went to a blur, as if time sped up.

The hunting went well...so...how did the killings start?

When?

Why?

Why were her parents blood all over the rocky floor after returning from a hunt?

Why...were their faces bent inwards...

"Tha--those creatures were on them." Lillith was deaf to the weak excuses. No one was near when she found them. These people blamed the bats while she was away.

Lillith couldn't see anything.

Nor does she remember.

And neither does Xin knows.

They came to when the community was slaughtered with the exception of their camel, Lillith, Seth and the other baby, Nocturnus.

Drops of blood tasted, toched her tongue. Her thirst exploded. She drank and drank.

Euphoria.

What blood was this? Whose was it?

It didn't matter. It was the best tasting thing she'd ever laid tongue on.

❅❅❅

Xin woke up back to the evolutionary space as if nothing had happened but only Red was present and most of her mind was currently under great stress.

"You were supposed to be an observer. Our compatibility is beyond my initial assessment." The Blood Saintess looked transparent.

"Was that your origin? It's not as 'primal' as you make it sound to be." Red pridefully scoffed but the rest of her inside were still shaken by the last outburst of unimaginable bloodlust. They could not recall what happened at the end there.

"No. My origin is a thousand other lives before this. I was going to let you hop on all of them, but you skipped them."

"You have memories of times you were a cellular organism?"

"Not initially. Heh…bet She didn't think her people would have someone so young manipulating Numen. I wonder what Providence will classify this as..."

"What did I do?" Red acted tough and rested herself against the bloody ground, her mind shaken.

"I designed the experience. You affected 'me', changing the experience I designed. Ubiquitous Providence will see it as a Grandmaster who altered the skill of…Me, something Gods struggle to do. I'm guessing Providence will classify it as a Unique Skill, or a feat and pour Potential into you for showing it that there is something new that it can benefit from by observing you."The Blood Saintess sounded mildy amused.

"Even if you were the one who allowed me to?" She was prideful but was well aware that she was not that capable.

"No. I did not. The experience was supposed to be just like the other 7 you experienced. You were only supposed to experience not interact and affect."

"What changed? Did I get what you were trying to show me?"

"You decreased the bloodlust I was trying to let you drown in since you made me…expectant of such happenings. But things went about the same except that."

'Decreased? That was a thinned bloodlust?' Red didn't mutter her surprise out loud.

"Out of time. Your temporary exit pass is running out. Once you're back in Providence, your change will be noticed. Unique Skill or not, the effect will be the same. You'll receive Potential. Your evolution is incomplete, but surviving my Ordeal will be taken as the completion of the evolution trial. On second thoughts, I believe I recall a deceased Demi-God who did the same back then so likely not a Unique Skill."

Despite the knowledge, despite the dream trainings, Xin apparently didn't change the fate of the young girl she was trapped inside. Whatever had happened, still happened. Whatever didn't happen, still didn't happen.

At most, Lillith might have gotten a bit fewer injuries, a bit more well fed and a bit more respected in her community, but no result changed.

'She's definitely stronger than she could be, but it made no difference?' In her opinion, she failed to change fate even with as much interference as she managed to cause.

'Ting' 'Entity Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin entry detected. Provisional Suspended Entity, entry approved.'

'Ting' 'Completion of Dawn of the Primal – evaluation of experience type trial...Trial type - Experience prelude.

'Trial evaluation....Entity Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin wholeheartedly believes she's better than the Entity ---redacted---'

'Ting' 'Detected internal influence on Experience-Prelude Trial type. Ubiquitous Providence bestows Natural Potential of equivalent value an Echelon 2, Order 7 occurrence bestowed upon the Ubiquitous Providence.

'Ting' 'Ubiquitous Providence is studying your experience. It has been recorded. Echelon: 2. Order: 7. Twelfth instance of Entity influence on Grandmaster-King Experience type trial. First instance through Numen usage.'

'Ting' 'Ubiquitous Providence notices you.'

Hmph, one phoenix who wants to eat her and take over her body and now a Saint that wants to create a copy of herself by drowning Xin in her origin's emotions and experience. Red knew that this 'prelude' was just step one.

But living through her experience?

They sure liked to override her sense of self.

'So this is Ubiquitous Providence? Is it amused?' Red realised this energy that originated from the Altarbound Kin was what allowed her to show Lillith dreams. She could never talk to Lillith directly after the first attempt and only through what appeared to be dreams.

This 'Numen' allowed Xin to feel Ubiquitous Providence 'emotions' more clearly. It was seemingly amused by the arrogance of Entity Xin, who thinks they are better than Entity Blood Saintess. At least, that was what Red felt.

It felt like a lot of time had passed. She missed her husband, and her stomach was growling.

The Potential poured into her as they fit themselves where they were most comfortable. She mentally hastened the picking of upgrades to her Physique and baseline as she felt like she was going to be dragged into slumber.

The thought of her husband's figure….the thought of his immaculate body.

The thought of his cooling sweet, sweet blood.

She couldn't wait to slice up the bag that held the sweet nectar.

Her mind exploded into imagination on how to tear into that skin bag before she even fell into dreamland.

When she wakes up, she can tear the bloody bag open for the delicacy hidden beneath.