Gods can bleed.
The Indominus had discovered this in her youth, the day she had almost tore off the arm of one of the keepers.
The mythical aura that she had given to the members of the race who had created her had definitively disappeared that day, even if the memories of her birth in a special room of the Norman Atherton laboratories were still there and gave her nightmares in her sleep.
Throughout her life in captivity, she had wondered about why the men were free and not her. She had found the answer that day. She was stronger than them and they knew it. They were afraid of her and how much.
All those she had encountered during her escape had ended up helpless before her. By grabbing them between her jaws or her fingers, she had noticed their fragility and rapidly, she had developed a taste for massacres since they allowed her to unwind and evacuate all the frustration she had accumulated during her life.
Feeling the flesh tear between her teeth, the blood moisten her maw, her claws shredding skin and organs, her jaws crushing bones… All of this had the effect of a drug, just like the heady scent that had led her right on the guards. Frightening the latter with her ability to blend within her environment, an ability she had discovered when she was young during a rodent hunt, had been almost like a game for her.
As for the dinosaurs, she only had a secondary interest in them. They were either too fast and agile, too big and dangerous, or the individuals tended to stick together when confronted to a threat.
Thus, the Indominus had avoided them most of the time and the only confrontation which she couldn't have avoided was the one with that overconfident young male apatosaur when she left the wood as the sun was at its highest in the sky. The herbivore had charged her on sight and she barely had avoided the spikes that lined his neck, spikes that had left a series of small wounds on the upper part of her right side and back. At the end of a brief battle, she had managed to defeat him and had done little more than abandoning his corpse to scavengers.
The only time she had felt in danger was when the metal bird chased her and cornered her against the aviary while the great mountain roared.
Fleeing its wrath, the Indominus had returned in the Reserve and when arrived near the now buried ruins of the old Visitor Center, she turned east, passing next to the remains of an old basalt arch covered with creepers.
From the top of the ridge that barred the western end of the Embrace, she saw a mountain with jagged edges and a pointed summit in the east, beyond the valley and the cluster of hills covered by the jungle.
She then thought that she could find a refuge in its shadow and she went down to the Embrace.
During her journey, she saw the verdurous valley being little by little covered with ash and gradually turn into a grey desert.
The valley having been abandoned by its inhabitants, the Indominus was alone between the two mountain arches that stood on either side. For a human being, the feeling of isolation that prevailed there was such that it would have been oppressive.
The only thing of interest which broke the monotony of the Indominus' walk was to pass by the Pegasus' steaming carcass.
That was another threat gone, but during the stand at the base of the aviary, the metal bird had thrust its sting in her shoulder. The sting was still there and if she moved her arm a bit too briskly, she felt pain.
The more the ash fell, the drier the air became, making her thirsty. She had to find water.
There was a stream flowing in the middle of the valley but when she leaned over it, the Indominus realized that the ash fall had already soiled it.
To find a cleaner water, she had to move and look where ashes couldn't fall or haven't yet fall.
Reaching the gates of the valley, she was in sight of the landslide that had taken away a part of the Limes.
The fence was now nothing but scraps at this level, in addition of being half buried.
The Indominus followed the slide and once at its top, she turned to her left to head to the breach.
At this level, she saw footprints of several different herbivores in the ash, mainly those of Parasaurolophus and Gallimimus, leading out of the Reserve, in the sector beyond.
She crossed the breach and continued south-east.
Her ascent of the slopes of the northern summit of the Misty Mounts began rapidly enough among large trees, whose shadows she left after a while to take a narrow rocky ridge that led higher in the mountain. She stopped to turn and watch for a moment the sun setting beyond the screen formed by the ash cloud.
A little further on the ridge, she had a viewpoint that overlooked a complex of several austere concrete buildings and enclosures delimited by high fences that occupied the bottom of a small valley in the shadow of the mountain and surrounded on all sides by dense jungle. The quarantine paddocks.
The place was familiar to her. It was there that she had lived the first months of her life before being transported to the cirque.
A look north made her see that her second home, the Coliseum, was nothing more than a small prominent mass on a hilltop. The surrounding forest fires made it look like a besieged castle. Between the enclosures, the Indominus saw the headlights of a moving vehicle: men were still there, patrolling as darkness fell.
She resumed her ascent but in the middle of it, the Indominus almost lost her balance.
Her mind was muddled and a feel of nausea struck her.
She eventually vomited, leaving among the rocks the half-digested body of one of the truck's passengers.
The Indominus waited for her condition to stabilize and proceeded.
At nightfall, she reached the edge of an oval pool dominated by a high waterfall and lit by the moonlight.
She walked to the water and seeing that it was unsullied, she quenched her thirst, half-opening her mouth to let a certain amount of water in before arching her neck back and let it fall down into her oesophagus.
The contact of water with her amputated tongue created a very unpleasant sensation, painful even. Another injury, inflicted by the female human with fiery hairs.
She knew the latter and recognized her smell, similar to those of the flowers that blossomed in the jungle, and her face among all those of her race.
At the exit of the mother-tank, she was the first living being that the Indominus saw as she came into the world. She remembered that the sight of her face covered by an antibacterial protective mask and her green eyes looking covetously at the frail creature she was had scared her. But as the Indominus grew, this relationship had been reversed and the predator had realized it during the test showings where the human didn't dared to look at her in the face. How ironic.
But as she was drinking, it was then that she saw her reflection for the first time.
At first, she was frightened and clawed the water to chase the being that was looking at her from the bottom of the pool but when she noticed that the latter was imitating her moves, curiosity supplanted fear and she looked at it carefully.
She tilted her head sideways, first to the left, then to the right and saw that it copied her gesture to perfection.
She also saw that it too had a sting thrust in its shoulder and realized that she couldn't leave hers in her flesh. It had to be removed.
She closed the fingers of her right hand around the harpoon and pulled, but the pain was such that she staggered and fell on her side in the middle of the rocky bank.
As she was panting, exhaustion threatened to make her pass out but she couldn't allow that to happen in an exposed place like this one. What would men do to her if they found her like this, at their mercy? She now had to find shelter.
A few minutes later, she slowly got up and stepped into the pool until water reached her underbelly. She had felt a slight draught, coming from beyond the waterfall. A cave was behind perhaps. Shelter.
The Indominus immersed her arms, washing the blood on them.
