Not all demons start their lives as one. Many begin their lives as an ordinary creatures, struggling to eke out a living. The most perilous time of their lives is birth. Not all demons are born equal and the same can be said for all life, including man.

The demon in question, the protagonist of this story, was but a tortoise. The naming conventions for these unique shelled reptiles is varied depending on location and dialect. To simplify things, the tortoise will be defined as the slow moving landlocked variety while the seafaring cousins will be called turtles.

This was day one of its life. As the entire story revolves around this being, it marks the starts of a new calendar. Year zero, month zero, and day one of the demon tortoise's calendar. The start of the tortoise's life is marked by its hatching out of its egg. All the time before then, including the tortoise's development in its shell and its mother giving birth to this clutch, does not matter. A new era was upon us.

A full moon hung in the sky, illuminating this auspicious event. Under the earth, life emerged from small time capsules, left to their own by the mother of the clutch. No guidance came from the mother, instead, genetic instinct fueled this horde of baby tortoises. Their clumsy legs and claws burst through the shell then dug through the earthen walls that entrapped them.

They burst out of the bowels of the earth like grievous undead. Not all of them made it. The unworthy ones, lacking something intrinsically linked to survival, or never even having life in the first place. Out of the original thirty in the clutch, only twenty-four made it to the surface and took their first breath of air. Their welcome to the world was by no means a warm reception.

The ground was as frigid and hard as the tundra and a fell wind whipped across their bodies. They were slightly damp from the albumen that once sustained them within their egg. Now, it was their worst enemy as it sapped precious warmth from their underdeveloped bodies.

Oh, but they did have a reception. They hatched at night for the sole purpose of avoiding such a reception. However, uninvited guests tend to show up even when they're told the wrong time and place. Predators, looking for an easy meal in baby tortoises.

The best defense a tortoise had against predators was their shell. It made them very hard to eat and protected them from attacks. Baby tortoises had a shell too, with a minor flaw. That minor flaw was that their shells were still soft and would take a few hours to harden and function properly. Combined with their slow speed, they could do nothing while the predators picked and chose which ones to eat.

The tortoises scattered, heading off in different directions, guided by instinct or whim. Although they were slow, they only had to outrun their siblings, not the predators. With them being twenty-four in number, there was plenty for all the predators to fill up and then some.

Birds of prey circled in the sky, eagles and vultures, enjoying the rare leisure of choosing which prey to take. These just born tortoises were ripe for the picking as these birds swooped down to feast. A group of vultures surrounded a straggler and began to pick it clean of flesh. While a lone eagle stepped on a tortoise that managed to distance itself from the rest. Its talons acted as a cage as it began tearing the tortoise apart limb by limb.

A fox with luxurious brown fur came along and dug at the ground, revealing the egg clutch and feasting upon those that didn't make it to the surface. Rather than an early grave, it was a platter for keen scavengers.

The remaining tortoises, with only half their former number, escaped not due to speed or skill or anything like that. Simply luck and the fact the predators filled up on their family. All of them scattered, perhaps never to meet again. They held no familial love, nor did they consider each other rivals. They didn't even acknowledge the other's existence. What mattered more was survival, and each held a different notion of what to do.

Three of them headed North, guided by the stars. To the North lied lands that were much cooler. It sounded like a death sentence to those already half freezing just from the night air. The stars stated otherwise, whispering sweet nothings of fertile lands with few predators, cool days, and warm nights. Misguided fools or enlightened sages, only time will tell.

Six of them drifted to the West, under the moonlight's glow. The gigantic moon stood out in the starry sky, menacing those that oppose it and acting as a beacon. An unreliable landmark it was as it moved across the sky. Nonetheless, it was the guide most of the tortoises chose because it stood out the most. Out to the unknown expanses did these tortoises go to try their luck before it all ran out.

The final three were far more practical. Rather than relying on the celestial bodies, they focused their sights on the earth before them. Traveling towards a great expanse of greenery to the Southeast. Their stomachs rumbled and they let their inner desire of gluttony guide them. Among them was the protagonist of this story. And that is how the first day ended.

The moon reached its zenith, midnight struck, and the day had passed. No one stopped to observe this event, nor did the tortoises rest. They all followed their destiny, undeterred by man-made conceptions of time and the passing of it. Alas, this is where the chapter is to end.