Hall of Infinite Doors
Some reptiles, you know, are capable of bursts of surprising speed, and can overtake a man in full flight. Knowing your luck, you've probably run into one. But as you grasp your spiked cudgel in a desperate try at self-defense, you feel a ragged emotion rising in you. It's pride, your pride as a hunter and a wild creature of the mountain, pride and hunger and hope. Everything inside you that made you a hunter is smiling as you face the crocodile-beast down and stare at its snapping, hungry jaws.
The beast lunges at you, flailing its arms and landing with a smack into the pool, scattering fishes. You back up slowly and feel the fear in you gather until you almost can't stand it. But then something odd happens. The fear snaps, like a bubble popping, with a burst of understanding: fear is this thing's weapon. It wants you to run, so it can chase you and kill you with ease. This is bravado. The thing is trying to scare you into making its job easier. As it pulls itself out of the water and slime, the fear disappears, leaving you braver and stronger than you've ever been.
Then it snaps at you for real. It lunges in with a grab at your ankle, intending to tear you down and grapple your head. But your ankle isn't there anymore. You've jumped up and to the side and struck out with your club as it snapped at you, bashing it between the eyes. Though you know you can't have done any actual damage, you've left a shard or two of sharp obsidian in its thick hide, and rattled the thing's tiny reptile brain. It moves to try and retaliate, but by then you're behind it, and raining a double burst of blows on the back of its neck. Snarling, growling, it moves to snap at you with its tail, its body, but by then the memories and the instincts have you.
The creature you've become knows how to fight. As the monster lashes at you, it knows to draw away and attack when the opportunity presents itself. You score the thing's belly with scrapes of obsidian, and lodge a sliver of flint into its eye with an expert throw. You harry and frustrate the monster until its almost foaming with anger, flailing its limbs desperately to get at you, but you always leap away just in time to leave a mark, and another chip of anger. You cannot often pierce its hide, but you determine its weak points and strike. You hit the joints, the spine, the eyes. You blind it completely, and it tries to sniff or feel you, but frustrates itself. You get a lucky shot with a flint shart into the thing's mouth, hitting the roof of it's jaw and sending it screaming.
And then you get a lucky strike, a once-in-a-lifetime smack with your cudgel to its neck. As you move time almost slows down. You can feel your club crashing against the thing's windpipe. You can feel the remaining shards biting into its soft under-jaw flesh. You can feel the instincts, the hunter in you rejoicing. And you can feel the dinosaur die.
It is almost full night by the time you drag the thing's carcass back to the tribe. Not only does your mate greet you with joy, but the others of your people, the rough and hairy individuals who even in their undevelopped brains realize the feat you have accomplished. The crocodile-monster is almost twice as big as you, and muscular and meaty. Its bones are large and hollow, and form good white weapons and plates of armor, and its skin is tough and scaly. Though the meat and body is yours, you share with your people, feeding them often through the long and frigid winter that follows. When the path to the forest becomes choked with snow, it is you, your skin protected by the hide of the beast you have killed, who burrows through it and clears the way.
Spring comes late. But it comes. Some have died, as people do during winter, but less than might have. Your son grows, and grows strong as he eats the meat of the reptile you have killed, as if inheriting the thing's brutal power. Though you have not found the real reason for the drought of food, you have survived this winter, and made your people hardier, so that the continuing famine does not affect them as much. Prosperity does not return for years, but you persevere, as does your growing family and growing tribe.
While not exactly smiling, the mountain makes known that you are welcome at its feet, and your reptilian armor marks you as a hero among your primitive kin for the rest of your short, simple life.
The beast lunges at you, flailing its arms and landing with a smack into the pool, scattering fishes. You back up slowly and feel the fear in you gather until you almost can't stand it. But then something odd happens. The fear snaps, like a bubble popping, with a burst of understanding: fear is this thing's weapon. It wants you to run, so it can chase you and kill you with ease. This is bravado. The thing is trying to scare you into making its job easier. As it pulls itself out of the water and slime, the fear disappears, leaving you braver and stronger than you've ever been.
Then it snaps at you for real. It lunges in with a grab at your ankle, intending to tear you down and grapple your head. But your ankle isn't there anymore. You've jumped up and to the side and struck out with your club as it snapped at you, bashing it between the eyes. Though you know you can't have done any actual damage, you've left a shard or two of sharp obsidian in its thick hide, and rattled the thing's tiny reptile brain. It moves to try and retaliate, but by then you're behind it, and raining a double burst of blows on the back of its neck. Snarling, growling, it moves to snap at you with its tail, its body, but by then the memories and the instincts have you.
The creature you've become knows how to fight. As the monster lashes at you, it knows to draw away and attack when the opportunity presents itself. You score the thing's belly with scrapes of obsidian, and lodge a sliver of flint into its eye with an expert throw. You harry and frustrate the monster until its almost foaming with anger, flailing its limbs desperately to get at you, but you always leap away just in time to leave a mark, and another chip of anger. You cannot often pierce its hide, but you determine its weak points and strike. You hit the joints, the spine, the eyes. You blind it completely, and it tries to sniff or feel you, but frustrates itself. You get a lucky shot with a flint shart into the thing's mouth, hitting the roof of it's jaw and sending it screaming.
And then you get a lucky strike, a once-in-a-lifetime smack with your cudgel to its neck. As you move time almost slows down. You can feel your club crashing against the thing's windpipe. You can feel the remaining shards biting into its soft under-jaw flesh. You can feel the instincts, the hunter in you rejoicing. And you can feel the dinosaur die.
It is almost full night by the time you drag the thing's carcass back to the tribe. Not only does your mate greet you with joy, but the others of your people, the rough and hairy individuals who even in their undevelopped brains realize the feat you have accomplished. The crocodile-monster is almost twice as big as you, and muscular and meaty. Its bones are large and hollow, and form good white weapons and plates of armor, and its skin is tough and scaly. Though the meat and body is yours, you share with your people, feeding them often through the long and frigid winter that follows. When the path to the forest becomes choked with snow, it is you, your skin protected by the hide of the beast you have killed, who burrows through it and clears the way.
Spring comes late. But it comes. Some have died, as people do during winter, but less than might have. Your son grows, and grows strong as he eats the meat of the reptile you have killed, as if inheriting the thing's brutal power. Though you have not found the real reason for the drought of food, you have survived this winter, and made your people hardier, so that the continuing famine does not affect them as much. Prosperity does not return for years, but you persevere, as does your growing family and growing tribe.
While not exactly smiling, the mountain makes known that you are welcome at its feet, and your reptilian armor marks you as a hero among your primitive kin for the rest of your short, simple life.
