The Perfect Specimen

Alistairs' consciousness is barely hanging on from the sudden traumatic force he sustained. When he opens his eyes to see his surroundings, he is met with dark blurry blotches instead of his usual clear vision.

"W-What is going on? What was that? Why can't I see anything? Ugh... My legs aren't responding properly. "

He takes a few quick looks around to see if he can make out his surroundings with his impaired vision, but to no avail. What he notices though is that his stomach is fiercely ravaging his insides.

He tries to call out for help but when he opens his mouth, the suction force from his stomach is so strong that it begins pulling in debris from the area around him. The dirt and dust clog his throat as he struggles to make sense of the situation.

A few moments after opening his mouth though, the suction from his mouth pulls along with the debris, a few bits of monster flesh into his stomach. Afterwards, he sees the distorted images in his vision clear up and provide a clear picture.

A picture of desolation. The trees and dead patches of grass that was surrounding him previously is all gone. What shocked him the most though is that, there are no traces of explosions or damage at all. The layout looks as if someone were to just delete the objects from existence.

Even the holes for the grass and trees are still left gaping in the ground. It is only until looking around for a few seconds that he suddenly realizes that the drab grey lighting and occasional flashing of light are missing. What replaces them is a warm and delightful brightness shining on the area.

He looks up into the sky slowly and sees a hole perfectly cut open in the thick blanket of thunderclouds that rest above them. With the hole being ripped open, nothing blocks the sun from proudly displaying itself before him.

"AH! Dammit!"

Unfortunately for him though, his increased weakness to sudden intakes of massive amounts of light damages his eyes once more. He throws his head back down to the ground in an attempt to recover himself.

Luckily only one of his eyes got damaged from the sun. The damage became so bad though that the edges around his eyes started to bubble and caused his eye to pop out of his skull.

It is only now that he realizes the serious implications of what he was subjected to. He looks towards the pile of the corpses that the baby scralebit was floating in. After verifying that no more fluctuations or movements are coming from the pile, he stands up unsteadily.

He quickly disregards the sun above him without getting the chance to bask in its glory and instead quickly walks back towards the piles of meat he prepared earlier, and stuffs as much into his mouth as possible.

After a minute of gorging himself, his body begins repairing itself at a visible speed. He thinks to himself that he needs to hurry out of that area as fast as he can before the adorable ball of destruction wakes up and decides to use that strange power again.

As he is beginning to run for his life, he hears a tender and tortured voice worm its way into his ear.

"Please help me brother... I don't want to be be alone. I don't want to be a disappointment."

He looks over at the pile of corpses and sees the small scralebit peeking over a body and looking at him. Shocked by the sudden dialogue coming from a species he thought to be unintelligent, he asks "Are you talking... to me?"

It jumps out from the pile and walks up to the front of Alistairs feet and cranes its neck to look at him in the face.

"Yes, I seem to have gone through our maturation. We can finally talk to each other now."

It is only now that Alistair realizes that a.d.u.l.t scralebits are known to have a communications networks within themselves. What he doesn't understand though, is how he is able to hear and more importantly, understand this scralebit.

"Okay, but what do you mean by brother? I'm not-"

He is cut off before can finish by the small scralebits panicking voice.

"B-Brother! What is going on?! Help! I'm scared!"

With a stomach full of apprehension, he sees that the scralebit has a crystal like shell forming over top of its scales. It looks at Alistair with hopeful eyes that he can save it.

Unfortunately though, it is destined to be disappointed. Alistair still apprehensively looks at the small scralebit and can not believe the situation he is in. After a couple of seconds though, he notices the scralebits hopeful eyes for salvation and remembers himself when he met Beth.

Back when he needed a security blanket to help make sense of his situation. He figures the best thing he can do in this situation is to try and do the same for the scralebit. He knows that logically, he should just turn around and run away while the scralebit is confused.

But instead, he is met with another unexpected emotion that he never knew he had, empathy. This internal struggle only takes place within him for a couple of seconds. After battling himself, he puts on the best smile he can and says,

"Rest easy, everything will be okay. This is probably part of your maturation process." Alistair states while vaguely remembering the notes about scralebits saying that they go into a type of hibernation during their puberty period. Although, they never mentioned anything about a creeping crystal forming.

"Oh, okay... Thank you for helping me brother. Thank you for saving me too. If only you were here sooner to stop them, maybe my other family would have been saved..."

Realizing that the scralebit thinks that he is the one that saved them, Alistair does not know if now is the right time to tell it the truth. The crystal shell is reaching up from its feet and is almost up to its shoulders now.

The crystal shell was spreading faster though and only allowed the scralebit one more chance to speak. When it starts speaking this time though, the emotions it has been holding back burst forth at the mention of its family as it begins to choke on it's sobs.

"It's so nice to be able to talk now... Hey brother, I have always been curious. What did my mothers voice sound like? What did she say"

Before Alistair is able to respond, the crystal seals around its head and completely encases it. He Watches it for a moment to see if there are any further developments before realizing the entire process is over.

He reaches down quickly and taps the scralebit very gently to make sure its safe and after verifying, he picks up the small scralebit and looks at its lifeless eyes in pity for its situation.

Upon holding it though, he does feel a faint heartbeat underneath the crystal. Relieved that his prediction was correct, he carefully rests the scralebit inside of his backpack after safety proofing it.

He looks back at the area of desolation and nothingness before turning back and walking towards his school. While he does, he engraves the lesson that sometimes humans can be more monstrous than actual monsters.

In the end though, it didn't matter what they felt or their duty. All that mattered was the absolute power that the small scralebit displayed, cementing the need for power in Alistairs' mind. Although he feels unsure about taking this monster with him, he can't deny how useful its power can be.

With its dependency on him and his need for its power, he thinks of ways that he can make it submit to himself when it awakens from its hibernation. He walks out of the sunlit area caused by the hole in the clouds and makes his way back towards his school.

As he is walking, the clouds begin to reform in the sky. While reforming though, a long snake like underbelly completely blocks out the sun above the clouds. Before its end can be seen, the clouds completely reform as if nothing ever happened.