The first thing Split noticed was that there was light all around.

The second was that the ground she was lying on was not cold stone.

The third was that her axe was still firmly gripped in two of her hands. Thanks for that.

The kostral propped herself up on her forelimbs and looked around. The sky shone over a flat yellow expanse speckled with green, stretching as far as she could see. Sand, she thought. She moved a hand to lift herself better, and felt something scrape against her skin in a way sand did not. A handful of it came off the ground with less ease than she expected, clinging to it like an uprooted bush. It was much like a bush, she realised, or moss, with much longer, thinner straight strands. Smelled much like moss or a bush, too. Tasted- she bit off half a strand, gave it a brief chewing, swallowed. It was the faintest bit similar to the lichens she had once grown so sick of, though not different in a way that made it an appetising alternative. She tossed away the clump of plants and looked around again.

Yellow and green, up to where the ground touched the sky. Nothing broke the flatness of the land, except the mild sloping of some low hills not too far away. Split rose to her hind limbs, towering above the rustling grass, and looked further. Just a small dark spot off in the distance. No sign of Arya - she remembered to look directly above herself, but that did not help - or the ‘lope, nor of the way she could have come here from the tunnels. In her sleep, it struck her. How could that have gone again? She had kept going towards that light for what must have been days without getting any closer, sometimes being led down bends that should have made spotting it in the first place impossible. Nothing to eat except for the occasional patch of mould on the walls and the worms around it, though even the worms were a lucky find, and short naps where she found a side passage or opening in the rock. That was as it had gone last time; she had laid down after another day or two of walking, and then here she was.

The open sky and cool breeze made it hard to smell as she was used to, but by now she was sure Arya was not anywhere nearby. From how those tunnels worked, it was likely she was not anywhere not too far either. Maybe the other end of the world, for all she knew. Troubling as that thought was, Split did not think that staying underground would have made finding her any easier. All there was to do was hope that the girl had picked up enough to handle herself wherever she might have ended up, unless it was in- No, no use thinking that. Lurker or no lurker, it wasn’t likely anyway.

A pang in the stomach threw her sniffing off-course. How long had it been since she had even found mould? No one had kept track, but she was sure enough the answer was “way too long” anyway. She picked at the grass and snorted. That wouldn’t work. Having the jackalope around would have helped, but she was nowhere to be seen either. Hopefully she would not run into something else large and hungry.

Her head twitched as a vaguely familiar smell drifted by her. Earthy, warm scales. Her jaws tightened at the thought. It had to be just there, some way towards the dark blot in the distance. If she was quiet enough in getting closer… Yes, there. A short, slender body, like a large worm, edged its way through the stalks. Its brown-ringed yellow scales made it almost invisible among the grass and its smell was faint at best even close up, but she saw it perfectly, and her axe had no trouble finding it either.

Only after the creature’s bones had been picked clean did Split realise that a small meal would only dig the hole in her stomach deeper rather than filling it. An only slightly dulled pang was quick to confirm it. With a grunt, she lifted herself up and smelled the air again. No more moving things nearby, except some insects. There was, however, a new smell coming from where the spot of blackness winked over a gentle slope. The smell of a bush, though somehow warmer and richer. She was not sure what to make of that, but bushes usually meant things like rats and other small animals, and that would have been welcome. Dropping to four again, she was about to toss away the scaly thing’s emptied skin, but stopped mid-motion, running her eyes over it up close. Flexible, robust. Who knew, it could come in handy sometime. She wrapped and tied it around a wrist.

The black spot was a bit further than it seemed, but five legs went quickly. At a closer look, it was indeed made up of shrubs, or something very much like them. The resemblance would have been even closer if shrubs had been almost nothing but trunk, with branches unfolding high up like mushrooms, but that was close enough. There were actual shrubs, too, short and dry, though their yellow was more widely stained with the upper canopies’ almost bluish green. All of this was, however, forgotten as soon as a furry shape darted between one branch and another, and a black cloud rose from deep in Split’s belly to cover her eyes from the flurry of chopping, snatching and gnawing that followed.

It was not until her axe met something large, dense and snarling that she blinked her predatory instincts away and took a glance at what she was running into. Staring at her from the other end of the haft was an imposing bulk of dark fur, claws and teeth. Judging by its lean though towering body, the beast must have had gone hungry for some time as well, and her crashing through the undergrowth had been as clear a track for it as its smell had been for her. The kostral’s front eyes locked gazes with its animalistic leer. Whatever it might have been, it was clear that only one of them would eat their fill that day.

With surprising speed, the beast was first to act. Split narrowly dodged its swimping arms, diving under their crushing embrace, and jolted out of the way as it dropped its weight onto her. Balancing on three limbs, she grasped at its thick, matted fur for leverage and drove her axe into its flank as it turned about to face her, drawing out a pained roar. The claws came for her again, as the blade was still lodged into the shaggy hide, and she let go her grip of it to strike back against the paw with two hands. She did not expect the resistance to be so easily yielding, and almost fell forward into the slavering jaws, righting herself with a kick to its exposed nose. The creature’s maw still reeling backwards from the blow, Split fell back onto her rear limbs, only to gather up and vault over her opponent’s broad back, tearing her axe out with a tug and landing into a ready pose on its far side. When the beast’s jaws came for her in a frenzy of pain and fury, they were met with a blow that cleaved the skull behind them from side to side. The animal let out a final groan, briefly spasmed in the legs and collapsed.

Split sat for a moment catching her breath before leaning over the massive carcass. The beast might not have eaten well in a while, but it was still a good deal larger than her. Hungry though she was, it would take her a long time to eat it all, longer than it would stay fresh. Besides, she was not going to sit around here until she finished it, not while people back home kept eating lichen and falling down wells in search of metal, and she did not even know where she was. Maybe she could take out the best bits on the spot, then carry some more along somehow- Take out, that sounded right.

A push with three arms was enough to turn the hefty body over. Cutting it from the back would not work, she knew well enough. The belly was the way in. Her axe was not ideal for the job, long and unwieldy as it was, but it would do. She pulled the cut wider open, baring her teeth in what might have been a smirk at the familiar experience of clawing through something’s entrails. What were her last hatchlings up to now? It had been some years already, so they must have been… Her jaws snapped closed and her gaze darkened. At work, digging up stones with little better than other stones or hunting obsidian stalkers in the wastes. [i]Maybe[/i] she gnashed her teeth and tightened her hands [i]already dead.[/i] With a grim look, she hunched back over the gutted corpse.

Not long afterwards, her stomach was much better, glutted as it was on the most appetizing bits she had dug up in her summary dismemberment of her prey, and, though the mood was not as easily mended, slicing up the beast had been an oddly calming exercise, far from the euphoria of mating that she remembered. Split finished wrapping a bundle of strips of meat in a piece of hide and fastened it with a sharpened snapped bone. She sniffed and craned her head satisfiedly. To say that her trove was perfectly clean was too much, but she had done a good job in separating those morsels from the innards. Before, she had never stopped to consider if one piece would taste better than another, and she had taken Chops’ cutting up the rabbits as an oddity. But, as it turned out, sorting things helped a lot.

She would have to try this more often.

The kostral glanced up with an eye. The sky still shone brightly through the foliage overhead. No point in sitting around. Lost as she and almost everyone else she knew might have been, the only way to fix that was to go look around harder. She would figure out where she was, maybe find Arya somewhere sooner or later. And, someday, come back home with a way out.

Split slung the axe over her shoulder, gripped the meat bundle with her free forearm, and crept off into the shrubs. The world would not wait for her.

[hider=One long metro ride]

This post takes place before the Alma broadcast, though by how much is up to interpretation.

After a long time spent walking through underground tunnels, Split wakes up in a yellow grassland with no sign of how she got there. Unbeknownst to her, she’s somewhere in central Atokhekwoi. She looks around, discovering grass, trees and snakes, eats one of the latter and makes an armband with its skin.

After some more wandering, she reaches a wood, where, between the influence of her axe and not having eaten properly in the aforementioned long time, she goes on a feeding frenzy at the expense of the local small animals. She’s only stopped by meeting a bear, whom she wrestles, kills and slices up. Since it’s too big to eat in one go, Split cuts out the best pieces. She finds that she enjoys the activity and it makes the result taste a little better, and decides she should do it more often. Having stocked up on bear bits, she sets out to discover where she ended up.

[/hider]

[hider=Prestige]

22 starting.

+2 as participant and protagonist of the post.

-2 spent on the title [b]the Butcher[/b]. She likes cutting up things, in and out of combat, and is getting good at it too.

22 ending.

[/hider]