Ablys

She hatched in a cave system beneath the River Nlok. It was a secret place. Not many were here. Other little ones, a few adults. Sometimes new hatchlings were brought to the nursery room. Every day, one of them was led out. When it was her day, Ablys followed obediently as the adults led her through the tunnels. Finally, they reached a wide chamber. Some mechanical thing sat in the center, with weird tubes rising out of it connecting to roots above. They had her sit in the thing.

It was as though her skin was burning. She scrambled to get out, to get away, but the feeling followed her. Mercifully, she passed out within the minute.

As she faded, the adults marked her as another failure, and moved her body into storage. She would be examined later; she'd survived the longest, and they needed to know why.

Hours later, she awoke. Or... something like her, at any rate. She remembered everything like it was her, but... she felt wrong. She was still cold, but her heart beat anew. Blood, once still, again flowed. Slowly, the stiffness left her body, her limbs. The numbness faded. She lived again.

She hid. When the adults came, they could not find her. They argued, demanding to know which of them had moved her, and why. She barely breathed, desperate to go unnoticed.

The next day, they found her. She was sleeping when they grabbed her, and though she fought she could not break their grip. Soon they were all there. They sealed her into some kind of glass cube for study. She could barely fit a toe through the air holes, and she couldn't seem to break the glass. They took blood once, but mostly they were looking at her- especially her eyes. She tried to keep them from looking- closing her eyes shut, covering her face with her legs or wings- but if she did they would shake the cube. And they had so many questions. They promised to let her out once they were finished with their study, if she was nice and did what they said, but she wasn't sure. They had hurt her last time, hadn't they?

They left to analyze their results or something like that. She was glad at first. She was so tired, they hadn't let her sleep since they caught her. But the hours turned to days. She clawed and pounded on the cube walls, but she couldn't break out. She thrashed like a beast, but eventually exhaustion overtook her.

She didn't die. They thought she did a few times, but she came out of it each time. They didn't bring her food, yet she kept living. It was horrifying. She hissed and fought if they tried to take blood, and they never got more than a few drops before she broke the needle. Taking blood during her 'deaths' was possible, but it didn't help. There was nothing unusual. This was the whole point, sort of, but it was random. Why had it worked on this one? What had changed? How was this working?

She was growing, still. They had hoped not feeding her would prevent growth. She was getting too big for the cube, but they couldn't safely move her. They didn't have another good way to contain her, and she had grown into a violent creature. They needed to hold her somehow, though. All of the others died in the machine- they needed to know why it had worked only once.

She grew too large. She was forced to curl into herself, but even after, her body pressed against the glass on all sides. If she grew much more, she would break the glass- or her bones. She could scarcely move. They still took blood, but her eyes were free now. They couldn't see them, couldn't steal them anymore.

A breakthrough! They hadn't fed her since finding her, and yet she had regular sugar levels for many of the blood samples. They started to take blood more often. During her 'deaths' her blood sugar levels seemed to be rising, and when she was 'alive' her blood sugar was more variable, but trended downward. She had to be getting that sugar from somewhere.

She woke in a new containment, an enclosure of sorts. Big enough to walk around a little bit. The walls were mostly glass, with some kind of metal for the lower sections of wall and for the floor. She paced for a while, just excited to move around again. She tried to stretch her wings out, but she could not. They were held closed by some metal binds. She paced faster. Some of the adults were watching from beyond the glass.

One of them spoke into a thing, and his voice seemed louder than it should be. He wanted her to go over to that wall.