Kira Thornwhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Kira Thornwhisper crouched in the mud and watched the young monster feed. It was the size of a hound, green and purple, with insect legs and a frog's wide mouth. Its parent, the beast that had eaten half the island's creatures, had left this brood to grow. Kira meant to kill them all before they matched the giant that spawned them. Her hands were small. Her spear was smaller. That was the whole problem. She rose and threw. The tip struck the creature's back and snapped off. Its shell was armor, not skin. The young monster turned its yellow eyes toward her. Kira ran. Her light gear killed rats and biting flies, not this. The creature charged, faster than a thing that size should move. She darted between roots and dove behind a straw hut. The hut's roof carried the mounted head of a full-grown monster, a hunter's trophy from before the brood came. Kira pressed her back to the wall and breathed hard. The young beast circled, sniffing. She needed a weapon that could pierce the shell. She had none. If she stayed, it would find her. If she ran, it would run faster. Then she saw the plant. It grew in a cracked pot beside the hut's door, cyan and purple petals wet with dew. She knew the stories. Old hunters swore this bloom could mend any wound, restore any failing body. Kira had never tested a legend. She had no time to test one now. But she had a knife, and the creature had one soft place. Its eyes. Kira grabbed the flowerpot. She stepped out and hurled it. The pot burst against the monster's face. Petals and dirt smeared its eyes. The beast reared, blind and shrieking. Kira sprinted in low, jumped, and drove her knife through the yellow eye to the hilt. The monster thrashed. It threw her against the hut. Her shoulder cracked hard. The creature spun twice, legs buckling, then dropped and went still. Kira lay in the mud, gasping. Her knife jutted from the dead eye. One brood-beast down. She had killed it, but not with any weapon she could trust to work again. The next one would keep its eyes on her from a distance. She looked at the crushed pot. The last petals were smeared and ruined. She had thrown away the only bloom the legends said could heal her, and now her shoulder screamed with every breath. She flexed her arm. It moved, but wrongly. Kira pulled her knife free and wiped it clean. She could not fight the brood with a knife and a broken shoulder. She needed a real weapon, one that could punch through shell without luck. The old hunters who mounted trophies had made such tools once. Somewhere on this island, one still had to exist. She rose and started walking to find it.