Rex of Savage world: the New One (Patreon)

Heavy scaled paws cracked on the slope of the mountain.  Tiny avalanches of debris showered down around those alar-clawed feet, dislodged and left to patter away in silent trickles.  These quickly turned to slurry as the rainfall mixed with them, racing down the path with ever rushing speed.  Rivers of such detritus coursed down the rocky incline behind the climbers, their heavy footprints pressed deeply into the dirt and broken shale.  Up above, the mountain reached ever higher before their eyes, peak piercing the iron-grey clouds like a dagger thrust into the heavens.  The rain poured from that rent in the sky like the very lifeblood of the planet, soaking the desolate wastelands for miles around.

It did not rain on Saur.  Not often.  It was seen as a sign of change, and change was rarely ever good.  The constants of this planet were comforting: violence, heat, war.  It was a harsh world, not meant for the weak or the feeble.  Those that died from such simple things, such as the lack of water were little more than the feed and stepping stones of the mighty, the hardy, the tough and implacable.  Blood could replace water if needed, and it often did.

Kill or be killed.  Eat or be eaten.  That was the law.  The Saurians watched over their children.  It served no purpose to whine, or bemoan the grim reality of their home; it made them what they were, strong.

Yellow eyes scanned up the ever continuing slope of the mountain of Hangaulworshabdanu.  No one called it that.  It was just 'the Mountain'.  Singular, simple, blunt, like everything here.  Saur had no others like it in the Basin, but many old names that no one used.  Much was lost in the years of constant war since the Shards had come.

One of the climbers turned and surveyed the bleak landscape that stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction from the Mountain.  Miles and miles of wasteland, desolation, and sand.  The only things that broke up the monotony of it all were the towering pillars of stone that erupted from the dunes.  These sharp-tipped columns, the Shards, had no origin.  Like the Mountain, the Basin, the Saurians, they simply had always been for as long as any alive knew about them, which was little and few who did.  All everyone else knew was that they had come and changed everything.

That was how things were on Saur.  It was hot, dry, and unwelcoming.  Old, powerful things were deposed, brought low, and the frantic masses of teaming scavengers picked over their bones before falling upon one another in a mad scramble for meaningless carnage.  Violence for violence's sake that left few still alive and able to remember what had come before.  Those that survived now did so on spite alone.  There was no real reason to even come to the Mountain on any normal day.  No food or animals could be found here.  But the rain was a sign of change.

It had started during the most recent High Eye, when the sun of Saur shone through the skull of their home-Saurian, the colossal skeleton of their fallen god that housed their gang.  A holy hour, rare, for the forbiddance of eating, killing, infighting, or any other such normal activity on their world.  Speaker would speak, the gang would listen, and all would wait for High Eye to pass.  But that was when they had heard the rumble.

Like the distant growl of a Saurian, all had looked up in alarm as the hot, unforgiving sky abruptly began to darken.  From the mountain, clouds.  Thick, iron-grey, billowing, they covered up the sun and everything up above.  A shroud had fallen over Saur, bringing relief from the burning sky.  But heat was a constant.  Cold heralded night, the time of rest.  And this was not night.

The first drops of rain had fallen, startling all present at the gathering.  Speaker had attempted to gain quiet but even they were mystified.  All eyes turned to the skull of their home-Saurian, Tytan, mirroring his eyeing of the skies.  His sand-polished bones, studded through with Shards, faced the stormclouds up above, as ever, with his unseeing, empty eyes.  His mouth was locked in a roar of defiance.  Tytan, God of Unflinching Wrath, their home-Saurian, was unshaken by the change, as he ever was.  But that did not change the storm that billowed more and more by every passing second.

Lightning flashed suddenly, causing the assembled gang to shrink back in alarm once again.  Hatchlings clung to their broods while their parents posed over them protectively.  Warriors flashed their claws and fangs, feeling useless in the face of the sky as it flashed and crackled above them.  Webs of brightness, flashes of sky-fire, wove into impossibly intricate designs above their muzzles as the rain continued to fall upon and around them.  The hot sand absorbed it all like an ever-devouring beast but even so, pools had begun to form.  None dared to drink and miss this spectacle.

From the Mountain came the brightest flash of lightning yet, followed by a thunderous boom that shook the entire Basin with its fury.  The heavens opened at the center of the ever-weaving spiderweb up above.  With a scream, it came.  A ball of fire and roaring sound erupted from the vortex, passing right over Tytan as if the sun itself had fallen from High Eye.  It struck the Mountain, the impact shaking the ground beneath their feet even so many miles away.

The lightning slowly dissipated, thunder ceased, and the rain lightened but did not let up.  It had continued ever since.  Speaker had quickly made a plan.  The falling star, for what else could it be, was a sign.  Three were tasked to go out and find it, recover it if they could.  Tytan had been unmoved by its approach and the Mountain was at the very border of their territory.  If they did not act now, they risked another gang moving in and attempting to claim it for their own.  Even an unknown advantage could change the entire shift of power of Saur.  Their gang was a small one and would not survive a hostile takeover if bolstered by some message or gift from the Saurians who watched over them.  Strength drew strength.

The climber turned back to the mountain, looking away from the far-distant, gleaming white of Tytan many miles away.  No time for day-dreaming.  They resumed their climb up after the others.  Long legs ate up the distance, quickly closing with the other two who had not stopped to get sidetracked.  The flap of their coat-wing cloaks and crunch of their taloned feet kept their positions keenly locked in the sensitive ears of their errant companion, even if they were not immediately visible, having rounded a bend up above on the path.

Rounding that same curve, they appeared out of the drizzle and gloom.  Before them stretched a towering outcropping of steep rock, seemingly blocking their path forward.  Even sharp claws and powerful limbs could not scale it with any ease, especially in all this rain.  Both scaly figures turned to look back as the third of their company rejoined them.

"You get lost?" hissed the taller of the two, long muzzle sticking out from beneath the hood of the cloak she wore.  Sharp teeth flashed just out of sight, and eyes that ever sought out openings in a potential adversary's flesh raked the body of her companion.  It was not a challenge, nor a threat.  Life on Saur made everyone ready to kill at a moment's notice.  Loyalty was the greatest shield one could find, better than any hard-scale or salvaged armor plating.

Grunting, the third just shook their head.  "Thanks for waiting for me," she grunted, voice rumbling from her thick throat.  Gusts of steam emitted from the blunt muzzle that poked out from her own hood.

Shrugging, the one who had spoken scratched at their throat with one, long-clawed paw.  Decorative bands, hoops of woven string, and plant fibers were woven around the knuckles of each three-digit hand, each finger terminating in a half-retractable talon of considerable length.  "Don't really have a choice with this wall in our way."  There came a rolling hiss from underneath the hood as she looked up at her towering friend.

"It's just a rock," she rumbled in retort.  "A tall one, but hardly a bother."  Both eyes looked down towards the smallest of their group, a slender-bodied figure who was busy tapping her claws on the stone.  "Something about it of interest to you, Hesh?"

Turning around, a pair of massive eyes flashed beneath a similar hood as to match her companions' attire.  Hesh nodded.  "This stone is interwoven with Shard metal," she commented.  She tapped her needle-like claws on its surface again, causing a dull ringing sound audible over even the rain.  "Fascinating to see it seemingly formed so naturally here.  It almost seems like someone put it here to block passage further up the Mountain."

"I'm with Thassa," grumbled the sharp-clawed cynic, the second-tallest of them but barely coming up to the belly of the giant beside her and Hesh.  "It's just a rock.  Hundreds like it around here.  And not like even Tytan-Daughter could have moved it."

"Maybe a Saurian placed it here," chuckled Thassa, rolling her eyes at her nickname.  She reached down then with her two huge paws and gripped both her friends in one apiece.  Their weight was nothing compared to her strength and she tucked each against her burly chest.  Taking a few steps back, heavy paws crunching the slate floor and thick tail waving behind her for balance, she lunged forward in a pair of long strides and leaped.

Up she sailed through the rain and whistling air, leaping right over the over twenty-feet high barrier that had attempted to block their way.  She landed with a heavy thud on the top, powerful legs absorbing the shock of landing.  Straightening up, Thassa looked past the now vaulted boulder and faced again the way they needed to go.  Ever higher up the mountain, the rough path stretched, branching off into dozens of possible directions now.

"Can you see the impact sight?" she growled out, louder now as a heavy gust of wind and rain buffeted at them.  "Are we going the right way, Kree?"

Kree tapped the scaly arm, covered in countless scars, pointing with a talon up a specific trail.  "Speaker said to follow the lightning road!" she called up at her hulking friend, finally taller than her waist.  "Don't worry your scaly head.  Your Tracker won't let you down."

"You never have," chuckled Thassa as she jumped down from the boulder and back to the ground below.  An eight foot drop was nothing to her, making it look as easy as just another step forward.  "So long as our little Hesh doesn't get sidetracked with her rock watching."

Hesh hissed at both of their good-natured chuckles.  Her long, indigo-feathered tail lashed Thassa's flank.  "Trust a Dread and a Tracker to disparage the relevance of geological importance," she growled cutely at the pair of them.  "Speaker sent me on this mission with you two fang-heads for a reason.  If I'm going to take her place someday, I need to see everything and learn everything I can."

"Yeah, but don't go trying to leave us too quickly," quipped Kree teasingly before she flicked her mottle-scaled and red-feathered tail back behind Thassa's broad back and interwove its tip with Hesh's more slender and elegant one.  "This Tracker won't let you go so easy."

Hesh wriggled in Thassa's grip and tightened her tail's hold on her Bond-mate's.  Rolling her eyes, the Dread giant placed both back down on the ground.  "I'm not carrying you two while you insist on being so sickeningly adorable," she growled.  "Lifers...it's not even the Blood Moon and I'm convinced you two are about a scale's width from rutting every chance you get."

Good-natured hissing laughter echoed around them as the three hatch-friends continued their climb, ribbing each other as they went.  Loyalty was a better shield than any hard-scale, and they had earned it on many ventures like this over the years.  There was a reason Speaker had sent this trio and not another.  Trust was a hard commodity to find on Saur.

A distant rumble shook the mountain side as they wove their way ever higher upon the lightning road, named for its many sharp twists and turns like a bolt of sky-fire.  Thassa jerked her head up in time to see the path's namesake struck up high with a similar column of blazing light, followed by a clap of thunder that shook their scales.  The cloud of dust that followed came alongside an angry tremor that steadily grew louder as it drew nearer.

Wasting no time, Thassa grabbed both her friends in her huge paws and leaped from the center of the path to a rocky outcropping that formed a cave-like hollow in the side of the mountain.  She placed them down against the sloping wall and curled her massive, twelve-foot tall frame around them as a shield as the avalanche of boulders reached them with barely a moment to spare.  Several pieces thudded and skittered over her as the other two clung to her until it was all over.

Rolling her powerful shoulders beneath her heavy cloak and making an assessment of the moderate pain she was in, the Dread stood back up warily and peeked over the rim of their makeshift shelter.  It seemed the worst of the latest danger had passed.  She nodded down at the two of her companions who remained huddled against her chest in its wrapping of horn-bug plating and stalker-hide.

Her heat-glands pressed against them comfortingly, a transference of body temperature and intimacy helping to soothe them from the near-death experience.  Saurus' her age, even Dreads, didn't usually have such large ones but she had always been bit big in every regard.  Still, it was rare to see a Young adult like her possessing a form closer to that of the matronly Speaker while also still obviously muscled as a warrior.

"Are you all right?" asked Hesh immediately, lifting her beak-like snout from the cleavage and inspecting Thassa.

"Couple scrapes," she admitted.  "The cloak took most of the immediate damage, but I think an arm might have been dislocated."  She rolled it again and confirmed it with a small growl.  "Nothing too severe."

Kree nodded, also extracting herself from Thassa's chest and the two smaller women took to surveying the path forward for any signs of blocks or obstructions that might force them to reroute.  The Dread settled down onto her haunches and gripped her more damaged arm before sharply hammering it back into place.  There was a brief sharp spike of pain before she felt the numbness that had settled into the limb begin to fade.  The regeneration factor took over a second later, healing the bruises and abrasions.

Once sure she was fully recovered, she stood back up to her imposing height.  Hesh waved a delicate but long-clawed hand and began leading the way, Kree following close behind.  Thassa lumbered at the rear, eyes still scanning the horizon warily for any other signs of danger.  The rain was finally beginning to lessen.  She licked at several streams that dripped down her muzzle tip.  Just like everything here, it was hot.

Finally they crested the lightning path and faced the summit of the Mountain.  The final stretch.  Kree pointed with a claw.  "There," she noted.  "That's where the falling star hit."  It was an obvious annotation, as not many things on Saur could have blasted into stone so violently.  Even in all this rain, the site steamed.

Thassa stomped to a halt, chewing on her scaly lip a bit as she surveyed the trail.  "Path is too slender for me," she noted.  "I'll have to circle up and around both of you.  We meet at the site but no one touches anything until we are all together."  They all exchanged a nod.  She sniffed the air, keen nose straining to catch even the slightest hint of a foreign scent.  In all this damp, it was next to impossible to.  All she could sense was the odors of her two Life-bonded friends, and even those barely.  "Stay alert," she warned them, and then stomped off again past the path they would take and across the rougher slopes.

***

Hesh watched Thassa go before she glanced up at the sky.  The rain had all but ceased, now lightening to barely a drizzle.  She reached up and lowered her flexible hood, shaking herself out to rewarm her scales back up to their proper temperature.  She had always been a colder-blooded Lurk, possessed of a long, flowing body that wove through the air during dances and fights like she were a silver stream of water against the murk of a pond.  Her heat glands were noticeable enough in their covering of stalker-hide although she did not like wearing the heavy, stinking plates of horn-bug armor like Thassa did.  The rounded curves of her body only modestly broke the otherwise stream-lined shape.  Her scales rippled, dark-blue and indigo patterns on her silver-grey hide often catching the dim light and made her sparkle.  The light feathering on her tail just added to the water-like sway of the delicate-seeming but snake-like limb.

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She caught Kree staring and gave the Tracker a glowing smile of her beakish muzzle, smooth, tongue flickering from her lips twice in a gesture of appreciation.  Mirroring her Life-mate, Kree lifted her talons to her own hood and lowered it too, exposing her rough face, whose lips were pulled back even more than usual, obviously embarrassed.

Unlike Hesh who had a rather smooth-scaled and short-muzzled appearance, Kree's muzzle was long and angular, sharp teeth always visible beneath her scarred lips.  Her crest of blood-red feathers stuck up on top of her head and her huntress eyes, equipped with two sets of eyelids, flicked open and closed a few times as she scanned their surroundings, not wanting to look at Hesh from being spotted ogling her.

She was much more fully figured than Hesh, although not nearly so much as Thassa.  Even so, the Tracker was a fighter and hunter born, possessing a powerful, and swift-muscled frame.  Her talons always seemed to gleam and her mottled patches of thicker scaling, a dark green, complimented the murky brown of her lighter-scaled hide beneath her light-armored attire.  Kree prized speed and ferocity and left the heavier armor to those like their towering companion.

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Hesh still marveled at the beauty and strength of her mate, the best of the Trackers by far.  Entire raids had been turned away by her swift-thinking and swifter claw work.  If Thassa was the shield of their gang, Kree was the fang.  Only the strong survived Saur, and small gangs like theirs were often swallowed up by hungrier, more savage ones.  Even without great numbers, the Tytanosaurs were still strong enough to last the trials they faced almost daily, thanks to the efforts of their three best and brightest.

Weaving her agile tail around the tip of Kree's, Hesh nodded up the path.  "Let us continue on," she advised.   "Before the clouds part and Blood Moon shines through.  I would hate to keep Thassaloriadontis waiting for us being caught rutting by its light."  She teased her Life-mate by wriggling her tail seductively along hers.

Kree growled down at Hesh, taller by over a head and a half, and nodded.  "I might never live down the shame," she joked back.  They set off up the winding trail towards the steaming impact site.  "Well, we would," she continued, tails still not letting go of one another's.  "But to hear her complain about it might almost ruin the fun of it all."

"That's never stopped you before," hissed Hesh in a chuckle.  They both settled in a companionable silence.  "Still, it would be nice to find her an occasional mate to warm her."

"Agreed," Kree grunted.  "Problem is, our gang doesn't have any other Dreads.  And she killed the last one we saw during the second to last raid from the Lost Tree gang.  Always had a problem holding back, she does."

Humming in response, Hesh moved in tandem with Kree to scale over a small boulder.  Still side by side, they kept moving.  "She's never been interested in finding others of her kind though, you know that.  Perhaps Loxodiumius?  He may be an Armor, older, and stubborn, but he is dependable."

"Lox is a good enough match and they do get along," admitted the Tracker.  "But I think they're closer to..."

"Brawl partners?" finished the Lurk for her.

Kree nodded.  "Or how about Crasalopderix?"

"Cras already bonded," Hesh reminded her.  "To Krisalsuchis.  Last Harvest moon.  Also, I don't think Thassa likes other females."

"Still, a Learner and a Keeper make a good match," agreed Kree then continued.  "One can teach the Hatchlings, the other brings fish and...  The Tracker abruptly stopped.  Her nostrils flared and her eyes sharpened to brightly gleaming orbs.  Her tail even loosened its hold on Hesh and she stepped in front of her mate.  Her entire body began to tense up.

Hesh scanned the area around them, tongue flickering out of her mouth to taste the air.  There.  She smelled it too.  Four new scents had finally leaked through the obscuring rain and damp.  Her scales rattled noticeably.  She and Kree took several steps back, getting some distance from the emanations of the obvious ambush in waiting.

"Come out, Blek," snarled Kree, voice now harsh and grating.  Her lips had curled back and her claws extended fully from her hands and feet in preparation for blood-letting.  "I can smell your stink from here."

Materializing out from behind several large outcroppings of rock, three figures suddenly came into view.  The leader, dressed in a black cloak similar to their tan ones, threw back his hood.  He was a Tracker like Kree, taller, but with fewer scars.  One long foot-talon had been broken off and he held that foot up just slightly off the ground.  His feathered tail lashed behind him.  "Well, well," he rattled down at the pair of them.  "Kreegassimonimus, and Heshixoodinus.  The Twin Saurs are good to me this day."

"Your gang has no business here!" snapped Hesh, detesting the mispronunciation of her name, a grave insult, by the member of the Twin-Saurs gang.  "Return to your home-Saurs and quit the Mountain.  This is Tytanosaur territory."

"A small gang like yours is wasted on such open lands," chortled Blekakardartrix.  He looked behind him at the pair of Lurks who stood on either side.  They were both dark-scaled but without luster or shading to all that oily-black of their hides.  Their claws flexed regardless and both exhibited a single drop from the venom-sacks at the base of their palms.  Hesh mirrored them, milky-droplets of her toxin coating her longest talon.

The wordless exchange of intent was long passed.  Hesh and the twin Lurks flexed their long bodies, shrugging off their cloaks and letting the hardened material fall to the ground of the trail.  In-between breaths, the trio of slender, snake-like Saurixs vanished from view, their natural camouflaging scales turning them into swift ripples of light.  Only Kree and Brek were left standing openly on the path.

They moved in an instant and at the same time.  Feathers bristled and talons extended, the twin Trackers lunged at one another.  Brek was slowed by his old injury, tendons twisted by the savage scar above his alar claw beyond what Sauric regeneration factor could heal.  Kree intended to finish the job this day.  She leaped into the air, becoming airborne.  The feathers along her head, spine, tail, and arms flared out wide as she descended toward him like a blood-red lightning flash.

Kree Bloodflash's lunge, perfectly timed, did not account for the element of surprise.  A clattering of heavy scales and thudding footfalls alerted her, still in midair, to the missing fourth scent.  Bellowing, the Armor who had been hiding just out of sight on a higher rise of the trail thundered forth.  His shielded skull had no horns but his armor-plated tail was a hammer blow as it flashed out in a deadly arc.

Twisting at the last possible second, Kree took the full force strike on the flank rather than her skull where he had been aiming.  Her momentum was halted, arrested, and sent flying back.  She crashed down onto the rocks and shale, snarling in agony.  Her left arm dangled, a bloody mess, at her side and she fixed the newly arrived Armor with a glare.  "You're no Twin-Saur," she hissed in fury.

The Armor rolled his heavy shoulders and grinned malevolently down at her.  Brek had since halted his charge, having used it as a decoy to draw her attention solely forward.  There were scuffling sounds from the trail up above as the trio of Lurks danced a silent, deadly game out of sight.  "The Gods of Eclipsing Shadows, and the God of Broken Earth are unusual allies, true," taunted the lame Tracker.  "But allies none the less."

"Allies," spat Kree.  Her arm crackled and twinged, tendons torn and at least three bones broken.  Still, she snapped it back into place with a single gesture and raised both paws again, ready to flash once more.  She had more than enough claws on fully working limbs left to turn these two into gory offerings to Tytan.  "A weakling's excuse for justifying numbers not their own."  She glanced at the unknown Armor.  "How long till you're supposed to betray him?"

He grunted.  "Splitting Unyielding Wrath will keep the peace," was his retort.

"Until you turn your flank and get a claw in the spine," she responded glibly.  She looked back at Brek.  "But it at least speaks to your duplicity, depending on others for your dirty work, rock lizard."

The dark-scaled Tracker visibly bristled at that.  "I'll enjoy spilling you onto this trail," he hissed.  He lunged forward at all speed, aiming low and fast.  His teeth flashed and his arms swept out wide in preparation for a grappling slash that would allow for him to use every Tracker's preferred killing tool: their saber-talon on their feet.  Even lame, one swipe could kill at the right angle.

Kree was not lame.  She dodged the tackle-charge as she had done from countless other, faster Trackers.  The way she had dodged her instructor, the Lead Tracker, her mother, when she had taken her rank.  She kicked up dust right in Brek's face.  Stumbling, blinded, and hissing in an echoing cry of shock, Brek flashed past her, claws coming nowhere close.  A downwards swipe of the same footclaw flayed the male's spine open down to his hip.

Brek's scream tore across the Mountain as he sagged to the side, body trembling as a spray of blood nearly misted the air.  Kree watched him writhe like a landed fish dispassionately before she planted the bloodied footclaw down on his exposed belly, pinning him in place.  Its saber-tip teased at the crux of his groin beneath his cloth wrappings.  That made him freeze.

"Brek, Brek, Brek..." chortled Kree, rolling her damaged shoulder as she felt the bones beginning to mend.  "I'd say you were all balls, no brains, but I've got the capacity to take those away from you.  What would be left then, hmm?"

The paralyzed male snarled up at her.  He glanced behind himself, back at the Armor who still stood a good distance away.  "You going to just stand there?" he snapped.  "Or are you as slow as you walk?"

The Armor rumbled in irritation and anger.  "This was your fight," he snapped back.  "Finish it, Tracker.  You always talked a big game hunt you had planned for Bloodflash, boasted about it at High Eye plenty of times I heard."

"Useless, plate-brained..." hissed Brek, outrage threatening to go out of control as it coupled with the agony of his injury.  His claws flexed and he began to writhe underneath Kree's talon.  She flexed but once and he sagged back down.

Her eyes met the Armor's and he lifted his head.  "No hard feelings, I trust, after you spill his guts?" he rumbled.  "Still have to kill you but I won't stop your fun.  You two, you and the Lurk, we heard you'd be sent.  Killing you was the job the whole while.  Tytan gang won't last long without their best and brightest fighters.  The Fang and Brain."

"See, you're wrong in three very amazing ways," Kree hissed back at him.  Her feathers rattled and she tapped her footclaw against Brek as she spoke, making him jerk and whine at each throbbing twinge she caused by poking him.  "Firstly, you assume I enjoy any of this, or that any of your gangs could possibly give me even close to what amounts to a challenging enough fight to make me really cut loose."  She waved her long tail behind her, relaxing her stance.  "Second, only cravens and rock lizards enjoy helpless prey," she rolled her eye down at Brek meaningfully.  A small rustle of debris just above them made Kree's smile widen into a deathly grimace.  "And third...you forgot about our Shield."

The Armor's eyes went wide as a shadow fell across him, noticeable even in this gloom.  He looked up at its source.  His tail slashed out in a blind panic even as a massive pair of jaws closed on the back of his armor-plated neck, right behind the skull-shield.  With a bellow, he was lifted up off his flat, solid-toed feet.

Thassa the Dread, no longer clad in her hide-wing cloak, lifted the Saurix in her grasp up and then smashed him back down onto the trail.  In the dim lighting, her dull-red scales looked more blood-hued, the dark feathering atop her head flaring but not as dramatically as Kree's did.  Dozens of savage scars, more than any other of the Tytanosaur gang possessed, decorated her thick hide from battles beyond counting.  She was a giant, a living Saurian, an effigy of wrath and bloodlust and absolute power.  A daughter of Saur in all its most terrible beauty.

Her fangs, each as long as the claws on Kree's hands, had sunk deeply into his thick skin, not breaking it but locking her jaws in place.  He tried desperately to swing at her with his tail as she again lifted him up, hammer strikes connecting less than solidly on her ribs.  Much of the force was diverted by the heavy plates of shell-bug armor strapped to her chest and abdomen to protect her midsection.  The pain even those glancing blows caused were nothing as she smashed him again, and again, gaining speed and brutality with each strike.

He gave one final bellow of rage, pain, and terror before she slammed him one final time, twisting her corded neck at the same instance with the grisliest of grinding sounds and breaking of bones as thick as tree brances.  The Armor's spine snapped like kindling.  She waited until absolutely sure of her kill before she dropped the lifeless, twitching body.  Planting a blunt-clawed paw on the corpse, Thassa stretched her muscular arms out wide, trunk-like tail lashing behind her, and loosed a savage roar that echoed out from the Mountain and across the basin.

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Few sounds were louder, even thunder, than a Dread Roar.  Even Kree felt that age-old surge of terror well up inside as memories of days, older than the oldest living Speaker, when all Saurix had run before the most savage of all the savage world's inhabitants.

Turning her attention back onto the cowed Brek, Kree snarled and withdrew her talon.  She slashed out his wounded leg's tendon, flaying it open anew before she whipped him with her tail across his back.  "Go back to your gang," she snarled at him.  "Tell them that the Twins cannot hold their promises, and Unyielding Wrath still holds the Mountain in his domain."

Wincing, whining, and cringing in subjugation, which was the only thing keeping him alive he knew, Brek clambered up to his unwounded leg and began to limp down the mountain side away from the pair of red-eyed females.  His own eyes panned across the limp, unmoving bodies of his two Lurks who were sprawled lifeless, white-eyed and swollen veined, nearby.  Hesh sat between them, flexing her poisoned dew-claw at him.  She lifted the bead of venom gathered at the tip of that needle-like talon and licked it off with her tongue.

There was no Saurix who could not evoke terror, no child born of Saur who was not able and willing to kill.  It was a rare day that one met such icons of their respective species and lived to tell the tale.  Mercy was not common on Saur.  But the three females had more than enough meat this night to go along with their hard-fought trophy just up the path.

With Brek slowly vanishing into the mist at the base of the Mountain, the three of them turned to survey the damages and winnings accrued among each of them.  Kree let Hesh fuss over her already regenerating arm as she looked up at Thassa.  Blood-light was just finally beginning to leave the Dread's eyes.  "What took you so long?" she teased.

Thassa rumbled deep in her chest.  She had lost her cloak somewhere.  "I reached the impact site but scented trouble.  Doubled back."

"I noticed you up above, getting into position," Kree commented.  "Timing was flawless as ever."

"I prefer being the one that takes the distraction hits," the Dread growled.  "That's my job.  You're lucky that Tytan's blessed you with such regeneration factor."

"Luck is no commodity I put stock in," she quipped.  She glanced down at Hesh who was licking up the oozing droplets of her blood from the torn flesh.  "Am I going to live?" she joked.

Hesh fixed her with a look.  "No more games," she warned her life-mate.  Suitably chastised, Kree let the Lurk continue her examination then doctoring of the injury.  It would hurt for several moons at least but she could already feel capable of wielding the limb effectively once more.  Hesh still insisted on wrapping a spare scrap of stalker-hide around the abrasion.  They traded nose bumps before they stood and, as a group, ascended the slope towards the impact sight.  Food could wait for now.

In no time, they stood over the sloping edges of the crater smashed into the peak of the Mountain.  Smoke and mist had dissipated mostly around it by now, allowing them all to see what rested at its center.  Something none of them had ever seen before.  Thassa was first to slide down to examine the strange thing, plucking it up with care in one paw and then carrying it back up to her sisters.

They crowded around it as Thassa plopped it back down with moderate gentleness.  They stared, and sniffed, and stared some more.

Eventually, Kree spoke up.  "Not that I expect an answer...but what is it?"

Hesh tapped her way up and down it, careful with the tips of her claws not to cause the object any damage.  "Fascinating" she kept whispering in a hushed voice over and over.  She lifted a part of it up and brushed her nose tip up and down.  She let it back down to resume its previous positon alongside the rest of it.

Thassa snorted.  "I don't really care what it is..." she rumbled.  "I just want to know how something this...fleshy...was in the impact crater."

"Wouldn't we all?" voiced Hesh as the three of them crowded even more around it.

"...Can we eat it?" Kree asked hopefully.

Hesh flicked her tail back at her mate.  "Don't be absurd..." she chastised the Tracker.  It twitched at her raised voice and they all jerked back.  "Oh, it's stirring!" she chirped.

Wordlessly, Thassa gestured with her head and the other two wisely took a step back.  Using the utmost care of her big paw, she rolled it over onto its other side, exposing what was the front of it to the humid mountain air.  Sunlight was just now finally beginning to breach the clouds, casting illumination upon the strange thing that lay before them.

It was small, about Hesh's height perhaps if it were standing.  It resembled nothing they had ever seen before, pale hairless skin covering it from head to tiny paws, save for a tuft of dark, singed fur-stuff on the very top of its skull.  It was mostly bare as well, but with scraps of some kind of heavily-shredded and singed material, unlike any hide or leather they'd come across, hanging off of it, barely preserving its modesty.  Burn-marks covered its flesh too, turning large, angry patches of it red.  It had odd forepaws, with five digits on each but no claws.  From the size of the jaw, it was obvious it also had no sharp teeth.  If anything, this thing, fleshy and soft, looked like the most harmless and weak thing any of them, or any on Saur, had ever seen.

The eyes slowly flickered as Thassa's shadow loomed across its frame.  Brilliant, emerald-green orbs opened, glazed over, unseeing.  Its eyelids had curious, soft-looking flecks of hair upon them, long and curved.  They matched the dark fur on his head, long and disshelved, like the stuff on top of Thassa's except hers were feathers, and the two thin lines more upon its brow.

It blinked several times before those eyes finally focused enough on what hung directly over it.  They went wide and a shuddering intake of breath wracked its tiny frame.  The fangless mouth opened in preparation to yell, and on instinct, all three Saur women stepped back in alarm.  No living being could be more confused than them.

Well, perhaps one. The New One.  He had arrived.

Ch. 1, End

Part 2 Coming soon.