***Tirnanog, The Old Camp***

***Astra Frost***

I groggily opened one eye, still feeling a little spent after yesterday. Braving the forest alone wasn't something that should be taken lightly, even for people who had lived in this world for most of their lives.

Sadly, spending the night in supposed safety hadn't been exactly restful. Alarms had gone off four or five times throughout the night as some very stubborn critter tried to force its way into the bunker. But the combined forces of several strong warriors repelled the creature each time.

The safety of the bunker was a matter that all the clans were interested in, and so there was always at least one capable person on watch. Though, that didn't mean I hadn't woken up each time they activated that damned siren. Full of adrenaline, I rushed out of my room, again and again, to check whether my help was needed.

Moaning, I rolled out of bed and flopped onto the floor of my little, spartan room. It offered barely any comfort aside from the bed itself, but that was more than most exiles would ever get.

The cold concrete greeted me on the ground. It was always a good way to get me going in the early morning hours.

Grumbling, I stayed down until I couldn't stand the cold any longer.

So I got to my feet and untangled my filaments. They had the uncanny tendency to move on their own when I slept, and come morning, I had to suffer the joy of untangling them. They were attached to the back of my neck and ran all the way down my spine – which could get problematic at times.

Normally, sorting them out took me just a few seconds. But today, I had somehow gotten a nasty knot right between my shoulder blades. Groggy as I was, I spent at least five minutes getting that taken care of, one filament after the other because my brain simply couldn't handle more. And I had over a hundred of them, each between ten and thirty metres long.

Once I had taken care of the worst of it, I slowly intertwined them over my body to create the illusion of clothing.

Today, I created a skin-tight suit that covered me from the shoulders down to my toes. To add a little variety, I touched myself up with a split skirt and a double-layered cloak which took care of all the excess filaments still left over.

I placed my hands on my hips and studied myself proudly in the mirror. If I went out like this, nobody would even think about calling me a monster. This getup had the style of a queen!

My feelings promptly shone through which involuntarily had my filaments glow a little brighter, making me shine like some deep-sea jellyfish. The luminescent markings on my skin flared, adding to the ambience. I rubbed at the ones underlining my eyes like makeup gone overboard.

That brought me back to reality.

I sighed and forcefully controlled my emotions. Once my colourful outburst was under control, I allowed my clothes to sag a little in all the wrong places, making my figure look ungainly and malformed. This may seem strange to someone who hadn't lived in my shoes, but there was a method to the madness.

Once I was sure I would no longer attract certain men like shit does flies, I left my room to look for breakfast.

There were three ways people would react to someone like me – a person who had a little more radical mutation than was normal.

First, and most common, were those who went apeshit once they saw the 'tentacles'. They would think of me as yet another monster, followed by them doing something stupid. This was why I avoided using my filaments’ full capabilities while I was among people.

Then there were those who ignored my uniqueness and tried to woo me, mainly because they wanted a ticket out of the Old Camp. They nonetheless thought of me as a monster.

And finally, there were the creeps. Those who were genuinely attracted to me, for whatever reason. Or those who simply wanted me for my power and nothing else. Sadly, I had noticed the hard way during my early adulthood that ninety-nine per cent of those types had a few screws loose.

Hence my decision to give up on something like love and to choose my partner purely with rationality and survival in mind. The gods knew I would need every scrap of power once I officially ascended the clan’s ranks further and got to my parents' level.

I reached the common room and helped myself to some broth that one of my peers had left steaming in a pot. It was a common ritual for most of the people who belonged to our clan to eat together in the morning before they went out to do whatever they had planned for the day.

Since I had slept in, I had missed the others.

“I have to get going, or will be late,” I mumbled to myself and spooned the food into my mouth as fast as I could.

Once I was done, I deposited my plate with the used dishes and headed out. On the way, I greeted the lone guard who kept watch on the entrance to our section of the bunker.

Outside, I walked directly to the arena where people without affiliations could demonstrate their merits. On my way there, I noticed the camp had already been reclaimed by the common people. The guards likely had already driven out the last of the creatures which had made their way over the walls during the night.

I returned my attention to my goal and headed to the table where the arena organizer had made himself comfortable.

“Gurney, how is it going?” I said and raised a hand in greeting.

“Well enough,” he harrumphed. “The thing that bothered the bunker last night broke into one of the common shelters and took all of its inhabitants. Ten people, and four of them owed me goods. Couldn’t you guys have just killed the beast so that it wouldn’t search for easier prey?”

I smiled and decided saying nothing was the best course of action. Defending the bunker was one thing. Running out into the night after some alpha predator to fight it on its own terms, that was an entirely different pair of shoes.

Safety was relative in this world.

Pointing that out to Gurney wouldn’t tell him anything new, so I kept silent.

He was a rotund man, but that didn't make him less dangerous than the average exile. He had gained a very powerful strength evolution. That alone would probably allow him to join a clan if he ever wished to, but he happened to have another high-quality sensory ability on top. Some women would take him for his abilities alone. Hell, some of the lesser clans might take him for his abilities' sake.

But for some reason, he preferred to stay in the Old Camp, doomed to never achieve more strength while playing the arena organizer.

It wasn't as if the job didn't come without benefits, like the backing of all the clans who wished him to stay neutral. He could probably live a better life than the average person who got exiled to this nightmare of a planet.

Once he was over his misgivings, he looked up at me with a more business-oriented expression. “Astra, same old question?”

I nodded. “Anyone new?”

Gurney sighed and shook his head, but he searched through a stack of handwritten papers only he knew the order to. “You have to lower your requirements, girl. There just isn't something like a perfect match when it comes to things like these. Ever thought of taking someone just because you like them?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Haven't I explained myself often enough? I don't want to just survive in this world. I want to thrive-”

“And for that, you need a partner who complements your evolution,” Gurney quoted me.

We had this discussion so many times and it felt like a tradition by now.

“If you ask me, by limiting our nanotech, those fucked up scientists just made it all the more impossible to survive in this world. Why put a hard limiter on the number of evolutions we can get? And then they go and make the only way to unlock your full potential to get it on with someone of the other gender. It makes no sense.”

He was ranting, but that was normal for him.

Gurney pulled four sheets of paper from the stack. “There we have them. Already copied and marked with their fighting times. One new exile made it through the woods. One guy who lived through the last season in the Old Camp, but didn't apply for a spot in the clans. And two youngsters from Clan Hochberg and Thich who wish to try their luck somewhere else.”

I took the papers. “I suppose the scientists limited our evolutions because the further we deviate from each other, the less likely it is for us to be able to have children. If they allow each of us to gain some power on our own, and then blend the genes of two partners, it's much more likely that... it works... out… between... Don't look at me like that.”

He shook his head once I had realized he wasn’t interested in me holding a sermon.

I quickly excused myself and headed into the arena, practically fleeing the scene. It was uncanny, but Gurney was one of the very few residents of the Old Camp who could actually intimidate me.

Yeah, well, there was that, and he was the arena organizer, someone whose good side I wanted to stay on at all costs. I just wanted to know why he always got so angry when someone talked about the nanotech’s partnering system. Normally, I was good with people, but Gurney’s misgivings eluded me.

It wasn’t like we could escape the hard facts.

I reached the natural grove around the central battleground and used the filaments that made up my cloak to latch onto one of the trees. Then I boosted myself up towards the observation lounges that were reserved for the Aerie clan. They were twenty metres above the ground, but my filaments made the climb easy.

I also had ensured years ago that one of the best ones was always booked under my name.

The lounge was personalized to my likings with its own furniture, another sign that my willingness to pilgrimage year after year to the Old Camp had long ago turned into an obsession.

Thankfully, my lounge hadn’t been defiled by one of the beasts overnight. I took a peek up at the canopy. The trees were massive, rivalling redwoods according to one of the books I had read about Earth.

Satisfied, I drew up the lounge’s shades and sat down in the woven chair that I had bought on the market. It was just at the right height to allow me a perfect view of the pit which served as the arena’s battleground.

Some people had made their way to the lower viewing ranks. Their bad equipment marked them as inhabitants of the Old Camp. As far as I knew, their only purpose for being here was to get a kick out of watching the fights and I assumed there was some betting going on even though the clans forbade it.

Knowing about it, I probably should have put an end to the practice, but I didn’t see the point. If I investigated and punished the organizers, it wouldn’t even take a single season for someone else to pick up the job.

It was one of those things where the clans officially took the stance of being against it, but didn’t actively enforce their own law. So people did it anyway, following the motto: Where there is no prosecutor, there is no judge.

There was still a little time until the petitioners would demonstrate their skills.

I settled in and took a good look at the first sheet of paper. It held a small biography of the candidate, combined with a summary of his abilities and mutations.

Mark Whetherton was a former bank employee and had been exiled for taking part in a money scheme that cost his entrusted customers millions. I was never sure whether these little background stories could be trusted – since they relied on the exile’s testimony.

It wasn’t like Earth would give us a neat database with names and a fitting reason for someone being exiled.

Still, it said something about a person when they decided to share one story or another with Gurney when he took their information.

Mark had arrived in this world one year ago but hadn’t applied to the arena during the first season. It wasn’t too surprising. Many exiles thought they could make it on their own until they learned the Old Camp was a dead end.

By not demonstrating his skills in the arena, Mark was forced to hold out for one winter before he got another chance with the clans. It said something about his abilities, since surviving the winter in the Old Camp was harsh.

There was a good reason why I travelled each year back and forth between the clan-grounds and the Old Camp.

Sadly, his evolutions didn’t seem to match with mine at all. He had the minor healing that most new exiles got once they ate a starfish. The critters were pests and infested the lake at the men’s arrival point. But the regenerative ability they granted could fix most things in time. So it wasn’t the worst thing to have.

Another evolution allowed him to spit poison and had his blood turn to acid.

I considered the benefits of joining with him.

Best case, I got the ability to deliver poisonous attacks with my filaments.

Worst case, I would simply get his abilities added to mine, affecting just my main body without the filaments. And since my filaments couldn't bleed, it would likely be the latter. Anyway, relying on anything which forced me to lose or damage some of my filaments was bad, given their slow growth.

My fighting style relied strongly on stealth. While hiding my main body, I often relied on my filaments strangling the enemy. So having poisonous spit and acidic blood wouldn’t help me in most cases. Many predators were so powerful that when it came to the point of being discovered, I would likely die before poison or acid could take effect against my enemy. It really depended on whether I could deliver the poison with my filaments.

Whether or not that was possible was a gamble. One I wasn’t willing to take.

My filaments were strong enough to contest with a strength-based mutation like Gurney’s, but the rest of my body was fairly weak. Even someone like Roderick could easily snap my neck if he got a hold of my main body.

Ideally, I would want a partner who provided me with a strong defensive mutation that would guarantee protection for my main body while I used my filaments offensively. Then maybe something that provided utility or more offensive capabilities.

As good as acidic blood sounded, I found it to be kind of a waste of potential.

Even with improved healing, shedding your own blood meant that something had injured you. And on Tirnanog, the things that managed to injure an evolved human more often than not could also kill them in one hit.

And now that I thought about it, shedding my own blood intentionally was an absolute no-go. I couldn't even count the number of predators that were magically drawn to the scent of blood.

Lurkers would be drawn from kilometres away if they scented something that smelled like wounded prey. Getting a scratch in their territory meant you had to prepare for waves of attackers until either they expended their last hive-member or you were dead.

On top, I didn’t care whether my attacker died to poison and acid after eating me.

Dead was dead.

I put the first sheet aside for now and turned my attention to the next.

The first clanner was a similar case to Mark. He provided a pure strength evolution, but his other skills were mediocre at best. Minor healing, same Spiel as before.

Though, he had a sensory ability that increased his hearing dramatically. Kind of like echolocation. The issue was that my filaments already provided me with something similar. Not so sophisticated, but I would yet again waste some of my potential.

The second clanner also fell through. He was a pure evasion type with no offence to speak of. He had the ability to camouflage himself by changing the colour of his skin. According to the file, the effect was so sophisticated that he could turn almost invisible.

Again, I didn’t think I needed to improve on my ability to hide, something that was easy enough in this world’s flora. It would be nice if I got better at it, but it felt like doubling up on a skill I already possessed. Once I found a partner to unlock further evolutions, I could improve that aspect naturally. There was also the downside that this guy offered no offence to speak of.

Not to mention that joining up with a Thich would result in a political disaster at home.

I gave the invisibility a few more moments of thought, but the longer I did, the less interesting it appeared. This type of invisibility was purely visual. With the number of sensory abilities, mere camouflage wasn’t going to cut it. Things like thermal vision or even my own mediocre echolocation could defeat such a skill easily enough. And I couldn’t even count the number of exiles whose improved smell would probably allow them to point out an individual’s exact position.

Both papers went to the side.

The last one was the newcomer who had survived the trek through the forest. It was immediately clear that he had eaten from the omnieye I had killed to save the group.

Surprisingly enough, he was one of the few who hadn’t gone insane.

For some reason, gaining an evolution from an omnieye could have one of two outcomes.

The most common result was that you mutated into something utterly inhuman and went batshit crazy. I assumed there was something about the omnieye’s DNA which made it incompatible with humans.

The other possibility was you came out relatively sane at the end, but were turned into a monster. Often enough people ended up with some form of mental malfunction, like heightened aggressiveness, or the inability to cope with the social aspects of human life.

The clans had researched the problem out of necessity, and it was common knowledge that an evolution should always be started with a lifeform that was preferably not something completely unrelated to human biology. A second criterium was that the lifeform needed to possess some social aspect. Some herd or pack animal was preferable to something that lived most of its life in solitude.

Many evolutions brought instincts with them that made it easier for the evolved human to use his or her new abilities. This could be a boon or a bane, depending on what you got.

I sighed dejectedly when I noticed Gurney waddling into the arena, leading two blokes who I assumed to be the two clanners.

Well, if they weren’t partner material, then they may as well be entertaining.