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Description

A young adult nimicorn has slid into an icy creek and sprained one of its front legs. Though it manages to haul itself out with a laborious limp, it cannot keep pace with the others and falls quickly behind. It still trails its mother, though it has been independently feeding itself for six months, and calls her for reassurance. She pauses and starts to approach her offspring, but seeing again that it is no longer small and vulnerable, she changes her mind. The herd is moving off fast, sensing the drop in barometric pressure in the air that foretells a coming snowstorm and the need to bed down and take shelter. She mustn’t be separated from the group, and so she abandons her offspring. Her job, as far as her instincts tell her, is done, and she can no longer worry over its fate as another is already on the way. The injured thorngrazer’s plaintive bellows thereafter go unanswered.

But they don’t go unheard. Limping along at a snail’s pace, each step upon its sore leg difficult and heaving, it cries out for comfort as it always has. Snow begins falling, making visibility poor, and now it’s not certain which direction the herd has even gone. Mother is now beyond earshot, and the big baby experiences the trials of adulthood for the first time at the worst time: its struggles have attracted predators. Three hook-clawed sawjaws are now following it at a distance, their padded feet falling lightly on new-fallen snow. The thorngrazer turns back periodically to check them and each time they have closed the gap further, and its panic heightens. They are analyzing it, taking note of its injury, and planning their next move. It turns to face them and produces a deep rumble, thrashing its horns from side to side, and it is what they were waiting for. As the thorngrazer focuses its energy upon one, the other two dart around the sides and make their moves. One leaps onto the hapless prey’s back and digs in with its double wrist talons, causing it to rear upwards enough for the third to lunge and get a strangle-hold upon its throat. With one weighing it down from above and the others sawing at its neck, the injured nimicorn’s death is assured, but not immediate. Blood pools heavily in the snow as it fights to the very last, but it weakens quickly. It becomes hard to think soon, and even harder to move. Vision blurs, and everything becomes numb. Life ends, and a tired form collapses upon its side.

The sawjaws immediately turn their attention to the underbelly, slicing it open and reaching in to carve out mouthfuls of flesh. Yet no sooner than they take their first bites are they alerted to another animal coming in quickly from the side. The pack scatters just in time to avoid being hurdled into by an enormous, lumbering animal twice as large as their prey. Resembling a patchwork monster with a gigantic skull and a hooked beak like an oversized parrot set upon the huge form of a bear, It neither squawks nor roars, but rather produces something somehow worse than both, a sound so loud that the sawjaws instinctively close their ears shut and lower them against their heads. The intruder is more than twenty times larger than any of them, 2,000 pounds of raw muscle and rage. They can do nothing but watch as the dire bumblebear drags away their huge prize as if it was a ragdoll.

Full entry here: sites.google.com/site/worldofs…

Serina on Patreon: www.patreon.com/sheatherius

Description

A young adult nimicorn has slid into an icy creek and sprained one of its front legs. Though it manages to haul itself out with a laborious limp, it cannot keep pace with the others and falls quickly behind. It still trails its mother, though it has been independently feeding itself for six months, and calls her for reassurance. She pauses and starts to approach her offspring, but seeing again that it is no longer small and vulnerable, she changes her mind. The herd is moving off fast, sensing the drop in barometric pressure in the air that foretells a coming snowstorm and the need to bed down and take shelter. She mustn’t be separated from the group, and so she abandons her offspring. Her job, as far as her instincts tell her, is done, and she can no longer worry over its fate as another is already on the way. The injured thorngrazer’s plaintive bellows thereafter go unanswered.

But they don’t go unheard. Limping along at a snail’s pace, each step upon its sore leg difficult and heaving, it cries out for comfort as it always has. Snow begins falling, making visibility poor, and now it’s not certain which direction the herd has even gone. Mother is now beyond earshot, and the big baby experiences the trials of adulthood for the first time at the worst time: its struggles have attracted predators. Three hook-clawed sawjaws are now following it at a distance, their padded feet falling lightly on new-fallen snow. The thorngrazer turns back periodically to check them and each time they have closed the gap further, and its panic heightens. They are analyzing it, taking note of its injury, and planning their next move. It turns to face them and produces a deep rumble, thrashing its horns from side to side, and it is what they were waiting for. As the thorngrazer focuses its energy upon one, the other two dart around the sides and make their moves. One leaps onto the hapless prey’s back and digs in with its double wrist talons, causing it to rear upwards enough for the third to lunge and get a strangle-hold upon its throat. With one weighing it down from above and the others sawing at its neck, the injured nimicorn’s death is assured, but not immediate. Blood pools heavily in the snow as it fights to the very last, but it weakens quickly. It becomes hard to think soon, and even harder to move. Vision blurs, and everything becomes numb. Life ends, and a tired form collapses upon its side.

The sawjaws immediately turn their attention to the underbelly, slicing it open and reaching in to carve out mouthfuls of flesh. Yet no sooner than they take their first bites are they alerted to another animal coming in quickly from the side. The pack scatters just in time to avoid being hurdled into by an enormous, lumbering animal twice as large as their prey. Resembling a patchwork monster with a gigantic skull and a hooked beak like an oversized parrot set upon the huge form of a bear, It neither squawks nor roars, but rather produces something somehow worse than both, a sound so loud that the sawjaws instinctively close their ears shut and lower them against their heads. The intruder is more than twenty times larger than any of them, 2,000 pounds of raw muscle and rage. They can do nothing but watch as the dire bumblebear drags away their huge prize as if it was a ragdoll.

Full entry here: sites.google.com/site/worldofs…

Serina on Patreon: www.patreon.com/sheatherius