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“The first one of you to touch me is going to cry,” I tell them. “Just so you know.”
They look at one another, snarling as they get a little more excited. There’s only one of me, and there’s a whole lot of them. They can’t share me. There’s not even enough to take a little nibble of me each, and they all want a great big bite.
“Do you want to be fucked first or eaten first?”
I’m surprised any of them are trying to intimidate me verbally when they have so much physical threat to bring to bear, but I suppose terrible males of all species like to run the gamut of abusive techniques. Maybe they like the taste of fear. They’re going to be disappointed if that’s the case.
“If you can work out a way to fuck me after you’ve eaten me, be my guest. Idiot.”
Some of the saurians enjoy that quip. The laughter becomes a little mocking in nature, which makes the purple and green behemoth with the swept back fringe of bone on the back of his head angrier and angrier.
He lunges for me, arms outstretched, fingers replete with claws that extend as he throws himself at me. There’s a brief moment in which everything slows down. Time becomes a thick trickle of actions coming one after the other, freeze frame to freeze frame. I don’t have to react yet. I have plenty of time. As he hurls himself across the bar, and the other saurians start to move as well in a big tableau of vicious, hungry muscle, I slide my hand down my hip to my thigh. It’s a very small movement, and that’s why I don’t need much time to make it.
The universe is full of amazing things. But it is also full of terrible things. One of them occupies a particular slot in my suit near my hip. It’s technically a fish, but it’s a very dry, very flat little fish, so dry and flat and small that one can carry it around like a credit card. Some people say it’s an incredible source of protein. But it’s much more than that. So much more.
I chose this seat because the table next to it has a lot of half-finished drinks on it. I slip the card out of my pocket and drop it into the nearest tankard. The Chaos Fish prefers water, but it’ll work in any kind of liquid.
There is a sound that I can only describe as pure hydration and chemical reaction. The tankard shatters, the table it was on breaks. I scramble away as the Chaos Fish emerges from its dormant state in an instant. I don’t want to be between pure anarchy and its prey.
The Chaos Fish expands to over one thousand times its initial size in an instant and starts chomping with piranha-sharp teeth. Chaos Fish don’t really care what they’re biting. They’re just basically angry. Furious, really. See, the Chaos Fish is born with a deep and abiding sense that something is very wrong and very unfair about life in general, and it seeks to undo that wrong by biting the hell out of it.
I don’t think anybody in this bar has ever met a Chaos Fish before. They’re making its acquaintance real fucking well now, though. They’re learning all about the feeding habits of the creature firsthand.
The Chaos Fish isn’t a fish at all. It’s more like a leviathan water bear. Some people don’t know what a water bear looks like. Let’s just say it’s a beastly, sickly, slate-gray looking thing, with gills and tentacles, and a big round mouth right in the middle of its seemingly eyeless face. It’s somewhat cute at certain angles, though it’s currently screaming loudly with a round mouth full of teeth, teeth that don’t go up and down and aren’t attached to gums and jaws. Instead, they emerge from practically every single surface of the interior of its mouth.
They have very stubby little legs with quite cute heinous claws attached, which means they don’t move super fast in terms of running. But this is an enclosed space full of targets, one in particular who has made the terminal mistake of rushing me, and now, the Chaos Fish.
The beast scream-roars, tentacles extending toward the aggressive saurian who now seems to be charging toward the Chaos Fish itself. He doesn’t have enough time to change direction. He was inches away from grabbing me, and now he’s less than an inch away from the fish’s mouth.
What happens next is surprisingly squishy and disturbing, and involves the predator becoming prey in the messiest of ways. The fish’s mouth isn’t quite big enough to fit him in whole, so it sort of bites him up and pushes bits in with bloodied tentacles. I get a very impromptu lesson in saurian internal anatomy as I cower under a nearby fallen table.
To say that the rest of the bar’s patrons are startled by the appearance of the Chaos Fish and the piece by piece disappearance of their erstwhile companion is an understatement. I don’t think anybody here is used to being afraid, which I can understand. They’re getting a solid dose of it now though, all together, all at once. Very bonding, I imagine.
The Chaos Fish smells fresh food in the aftermath of its snack, and boy, it is hungry. Being dehydrated and shrunk down to the size of a cracker for god knows how long has really worked up its appetite.
The saurians start leaping out windows and pouring out doors. The Chaos Fish, sensing its prey fleeing, takes immediate action. It tries to get out of the windows but finds itself to be several times too large to fit through. This doesn’t bother it, because it neither understands nor begins to care. It simply goes all the way through, crashing through the wood wall as if it isn’t there in slow, lumbering, terrifying pursuit of its prey.
“I have more of those,” I inform those who have not fled the bar in horror. “So I think you should all leave me alone.”
This gets rid of the stragglers and leaves me in command of what’s left of the place. This means I’ve taken care of the immediate needs of food, water, and shelter. I’m doing pretty damn good right about now.
I get up, go behind the bar, and start looking for snacks. They’ve got to have something besides bloody meat here. There’s got to be some kind of local bread or… here we go. I find a whole box of packet foods that when opened reveal what look to me a lot like potato chips. It’s possible they’ll be toxic for someone with my physiology, so I am careful, putting one to the tip of my tongue first to check.
“Mmm. Salt and vinegar. Perfect.”
2ALPHA’S CLAIM
Thorn
“Alpha Thorn?”
“Yes, Sona?”
My faithful servant appears on the rooftop behind me with an ever-so-gentle reproachful expression on his face. You might think he doesn’t approve of me, and you could be right. I have been Alpha of the Primal Wilds for approximately one year, and the very roof where we now stand still bears stains from the blood of the previous alpha.
Saurian society does not tolerate weakness. I have earned my place here, and well he knows it. Though he may respect me, I can be almost entirely certain he does not yet like me. Yet he requires my favor to ensure his survival. It is a dynamic of almost constant, inescapably polite tension.
Grave City is at my feet, a thriving saurian metropolis of a million souls. I like to stand up here to get a sense of the place, and all those who live in it. I’ll never know them all individually, but I’m responsible for the wellbeing of all of them.
