A Scholar's Tale

What was that..? It felt... I could feel it... I... It was me... My body... It isn't right...

A sharp pain shot through the hollow's mind, a sliver of light enveloping half of it's vision. The sensation of his hands grasing the newly formed flesh stirred something in his mind, a memory of a sensation - the feeling of living a different life. As quickly as his mind could process this feeling of fleeting deja-vu, it began to fade away. The light of consciousness that flickered in the dark expanse of this beast's mind eventually returned to the void, as all things do in time.

Moments like that were happening more often lately. Whenever he feels the threat of death close by, a chill runs through his body and something like a memory of an emotion washes over him. Though life in a desert can be dangerous, he's never felt the desire to explore further past the dunes than he already has. Perhaps part of his subconscious mind was keeping him here for the sake of those seconds of clarity, forcing him to experience those jarring moments when sentience beat out instinct.

Dormin, was the name of this hollow. He moved through the desert aimlessly, as most hollows do, reacting only to the presence of predator or prey. In this moment, though he didn't realize it yet, a predator was already stalking him. Dormin moved on two legs, his knee joints bending opposite a human's, though his foot prints looked similar, albeit larger. His body was lanky - long spindly arms that ended in four clawed fingers curled tightly into determined fists as he fought through the thick sand. His skin was hairless and black, a large hole in his chest and the stark white mask shaped like the neck and head of a crane. Aptly enough, his hunter was also reminiscent of a beast of the natural world - something close to a malformed spider lay in wait just up ahead. The sands beneath Dormin's feet betrayed his position and direction, giving the creature ample time to adjust its ambush position as he approached. As the crane hollow's foot made contact with the sand, there was a sudden burst of energy beneath him, and a cloud of loose sand obscured his vision, making it impossible to see, much less react to, the attacking limbs that quickly enveloped him from all sides. They yanked him hard, but his footing was sure enough for Dormin to lock anchor himself down and resist the force that attempted to drag him underground.

Ohhhhohoho! A lively one!

As the sand in the air settled, his attacker was revealed to be a hollow much larger than himself. Its mask was accented by 8 eye holes placed in groups of two around the mask almost randomly, and its body was that of a traditional tunnel spider, the large, bulbous thorax was hidden below the sand in a tunnel lined with thick, velvety spider's silk. With its legs commited to dragging its prey down to be feasted on, the spider hollow maintained the force in hopes of overpowering Dormin eventually, but to no avail. Dormin felt a surge in his mind, a survival instinct that forced an action before the risk was calculated. With both arms and legs struggling to maintain his position, he turned his head and mustered up as much force as he could to try and impale one of the legs of the hollow using the tip of his beaked mask. The impact of the strike wasn't as much as he hoped for, and failed to penetrate the hard exoskeleton of the spider hollow's many legs, however, it was enough to crack it, and as a chip of the damaged exoskeleton crumbled away, he spotted a raw skin beneath the armor. Red and pulsing, it was easy to see the next move. Dormin reared back again, and drove his beak down towards the chink in the spider's armor, but just before his mask found its mark, the spider recoiled from the attack, withdrawning its legs to avoid damage and dropping its grip on Dormin to flee down into the tunnel. The entire exchange only took a few moments to occur, but afterward, he was left with that same feeling. Being so close to dying, he could feel the overwhelming desire to live. It brought back familiar sensations like the sand beneath his feet and sun above his head. Dormin examined the cold, white sand and pale moon above him, and concluded that this was not his first life. He wanted to know more about who he was, and could only think of one way to draw those memories up from the depths. Gathering his resolve to face death head on in hopes of uncovering some secrets to his past, he faced the tunnel leading to the unknown, and started his descent, allowing the silk lid to close behind him.