Grub did not sleep that night.
He lay on his bed inside the small shelter he had built beneath the tangled roots of the trees, staring up at the woven branches above him while the forest slowly shifted from evening into darkness. Normally exhaustion would have taken him quickly. His days had become a cycle of observation, training, and constant tension, and his body had more than enough reason to collapse into rest. But this night was different.
His mind refused to settle down.
Every small noise in the forest made his muscles tighten. The rustling of leaves in the wind. The distant movement of animals somewhere deeper among the trees. Even the soft creaking of his own shelter shifting slightly in the night air made him glance toward the entrance again and again.
He kept expecting them to come. At any moment he imagined a group of lizard soldiers stepping silently out of the darkness surrounding his camp. They would surround the shelter without him noticing. They would drag him out before he could react.
Or worse, the lizard he had killed might have already told someone where he was before leaving the settlement. Perhaps they were gathering forces right now. Perhaps the forest was already filled with scouts quietly searching for him.
Grub sat up several times during the night, gripping his club while he listened carefully to the silence outside. But no one came. The forest remained empty.
By the time the gray light of morning began filtering through the leaves above him, Grub's eyes burned with exhaustion and his head throbbed from the lack of sleep. Still, he forced himself to move.
Carefully he slipped into his bush disguise once again and made his way toward the edge of the settlement. The walking bush took its usual place among the foliage near the outer edge of the clearing, and from there Grub waited. It did not take long.
Soon several lizard soldiers emerged from the forest carrying a familiar body between them. The scared lizard's body. Grub recognized it instantly despite the damage he had inflicted when staging the fake animal attack. The gashes he had carved into the corpse were still visible, though the lizards had wrapped parts of the body in cloth.
The group moved quietly through the camp, their voices low and subdued. The usual energy of the soldiers seemed slightly muted as they carried the body away toward a section of the settlement Grub had not paid much attention to before. He watched until they disappeared. Then he continued watching.
Days passed. Then more days.
Over the course of the next week Grub maintained his routine with obsessive focus. Each morning he observed the soldiers from the edge of the clearing while scribbling new words and sounds into his notebook. Each afternoon he returned to the cave to train his body and experiment with the strange death-weight power resting inside his chest.
At night he studied everything he had written, slowly piecing together fragments of their language. And during that week he saw what they eventually did with the body. They buried it.
The ceremony was simple but solemn. Several soldiers gathered in a small clearing near the edge of the camp while one of them spoke quietly over the grave. The others stood in silence as the body was lowered into the earth. Grub watched the entire thing from the trees. He did not write anything during that moment. He simply watched.
By the end of that week he had begun to understand small pieces of their speech. Not enough to hold a conversation, but enough to recognize individual words and phrases when they were repeated often enough.
One afternoon he sat inside his bush disguise listening to two soldiers talking near one of the supply tables. Their conversation drifted through the hollow twig he used as a listening tube.
This time some of the words actually made sense.
"Tre'lok… sent from ...… settlement."
"…debts … army service…"
"…new recruit…"
The rest of the conversation blurred together into sounds he could not yet understand. Grub slowly wrote the name in his notebook.
Tre'lok.
That had been the lizard's name. From what he could piece together, Tre'lok had not been a long-time member of the soldiers stationed here. He had been sent from somewhere else—a larger settlement, possibly—to serve in the army as payment for some kind of debt. Grub stared at the name in his notebook for a long moment.
Part of him felt proud. He had actually understood something. A real piece of information pulled directly from their language.
But the pride twisted uncomfortably in his chest. Because he was the reason Tre'lok was dead. Grub closed the notebook slowly. Still, the conversation had revealed something important.
This confirmed without a doubt that this place was not their main home. It was a military base. That meant there were larger settlements somewhere beyond the forest. Cities perhaps. Entire communities of these lizard people living lives he could barely imagine yet.
The realization made the world feel larger. And his situation far more complicated. Eventually Grub slipped away from the clearing and returned to his shelter. Once inside he sat at the small workspace he had built from flat pieces of bark and began planning his next move.
Watching them from afar could only take him so far. Eventually he would have to get closer. Much closer. Grub stared at the scattered pages of notes spread across his desk while an idea slowly formed in his mind.
He would infiltrate the base.
If he could disguise himself as one of them—even poorly—it might allow him to move through parts of the camp without immediately drawing suspicion. It would give him time to observe their hierarchy, their routines, their customs.
And eventually…It would allow him to introduce himself properly. Not as a threat. But as someone who could speak their language. Someone who meant no harm.
The idea sounded insane. But it might work. There was only one problem.
He had no idea how to imitate them convincingly.
Grub leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. The lizards clearly resembled reptiles in many ways. Their scales, their claws, the shape of their tails—it all suggested some connection to reptilian biology. If that was the case… Then perhaps they shed their skin.
If he could find a discarded molt, he might be able to use it as a reference. With enough patience—and his own ability to craft things—he could build a convincing disguise. But there was a flaw in that plan. He had no proof they actually shed skin at all.
Looking like reptiles did not necessarily mean they behaved like them. Grub sighed. This was going to be another long project. Eventually he arrived at the only reasonable approach. He needed to observe a younger lizard.
Preferably a child.
But this was a military base. There were no families here. No children running around the camp. The best he could hope for was a younger soldier. Someone who had not yet fully matured. If they molted, a younger one would likely do it more frequently. Grub would follow that individual for the next several weeks and observe everything it did. If they shed skin, he would find out where the discarded pieces ended up.
Grub leaned forward on his desk and buried his face in his hands. He had not spoken to another person in weeks. Never held a real conversation. Or heard one he fully understood.
The silence had begun to settle deep inside him. He missed the ridge. He missed the survivors. He even missed the chaos and arguments that used to break out around their fires. Most of all, he missed Wrighty.
Grub remembered the look on Wrighty's face the last time he had seen him. The stubborn optimism that somehow survived even in the worst situations. Grub sighed quietly.
Sometimes he felt strangely hollow. Like something inside him had been scooped out and left empty. At times he could almost remember the whispers he had heard back when he had been trapped inside the giant grub. The distant murmurs of other thoughts brushing against his own.
He pushed the memory away. Eventually he stood from his desk and picked up the bush disguise once again. There was work to do. Somewhere inside that settlement was a young lizard he could study. Grub stepped out into the forest.
And as he moved quietly toward the edge of the clearing, he silently hoped that one day—once everything was ready—he would finally be able to walk into that camp and speak to them peacefully. Because the loneliness was beginning to feel heavier than anything else he carried.