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Prologue

The hiss of the shuttle depressurizing fills Godfrey’s ears, and a mechanical door shoots open to reveal green skies and blue grass.

He has no recollection of where he is, only a dull feeling that something is very, very wrong. Weary, his hand drifts to the blaster on his hip as he scouts his surroundings.

The actions are routine, old combat instincts not so easily erased. His coffin-esque escape pod is claustrophobic, a snug fit for his rather round form, and entirely bare spare some padding and a small control panel.

He warily escapes the pod- and into the small crater caused by his landing- but finds himself dumbfounded by the marvel around him.

Unfamiliar stars dazzle in the green sky with 4 moons studded like grand jewels in an opulent tapestry, and on the planet itself great columns and ruins of gray stone emerge from the blue hilly landscape.

He stands amazed, but distracted in his awe; failing to notice the rustling and crunching behind him. Finally the chills running down his spine warn him, but by then it's far too late. He whirls around to a blur of blue fur and crimson eyes pouncing on him; with a scream his flesh is rendered from his bones and Godfrey promptly bleeds out and dies.

...

The hiss of the shuttle depressurizing fills Godfrey’s ears, and when the mechanical door shoots open green skies and blue grass fill his line of sight.

Gasping and sweating Godfrey collapses and clutches his gouged neck only to find healthy and distinctly not bleeding skin.

His pupils tremble and his eyes are blown wide as he whispers, ” holy shit”, under his breath over and over again.

And so Godfrey broke down in the claustrophobic pod, sweating buckets in his too tight suit, heaving great breaths that did nothing to satisfy his lungs, and clutching at non existent wounds.

That is until a sound breaks through his mental collapse. A crunch of dirt and grass that fires off his old dead instincts and kickstarts his panicking brain into action.

Clutching his trusty blaster he sinks as far back into the small pod as he can and struggles to quiet his breaths; straining his eyes he trains his gun on the edge of the pod with surprisingly steady hands.

Several boring minutes of crunching and distinct sniffing sounds pass, minutes that felt like hours to Godfreys mind as he focused to the extreme and his gun grew heavy, but then he sees it.

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A glimpse of blue fur.

His breath hitches and he taps the trigger, the familiar motion trained into him and executed successfully as a burst of red and a dull whirring resounds from the gun.

A smoking hole was put in what he now sees to be the creatures head, yet it still wasn’t dead.

Unholy screeching gouges at his eardrums as the lithe blue monster writhes on the floor and blue blood pours from the hole in its head.

Cringing at the grating sound Godfrey speedily executes the beast with another blast to the head, and sighed in relief as the terrible screeching dies out. His body trembles with adrenaline and nerves, but he leaves the inspection of the creature for later. Instead Godfrey opts for the fresh air of the very hostile world as he hops out of the pod with weak legs, and collapses into a sweating pile in the cold blue grass.

He lay on his back inhaling shaky breaths with closed eyes, simply enjoying the crisp air, lush grass, and drool on his face. Godfrey' s eyes rapidly shot open and he releases a foul string of curses. A great ridge of stone curls overhead, and decorating the top of it were pairs of red beady eyes trained on him, their shapes concealed by shadow.

Godfrey continues to display his impressive knowledge of profanities as he stumbles to his feet, his weak legs and soft, rotund body slow him down as he sprints to what looks to be a defensible position. He can hear the beasts in motion as a flurry of sound resound from behind him, and he was pushes himself to go faster.

He finally reaches it. A great curved spiral of stone, and he frantically takes to climbing it, using decorative grooves as handholds he clumsily scales. All the while he cast a weary eye back watching the agile beasts make ground.

High enough on the curved bend that he can crouch and not slide off he decides to make his stand. Really, the decision was made for him by the absolutely rapid beasts and his pathetic aching body.

Godfrey tries to calm his breathing as he trains his blaster on the purple mob and opens fire.

A cacophony on screams blare out as he shoots and takes out beast after beast, but they're hardy and determine, and their numbers only seem to grow. The few he'd seen on the ridge have now been joined by many more, and the tide only grows and grows as they begin scaling the great arch.

His calm and collected shooting begins to turn frantic as seconds and minutes pass. The beasts climb with supernatural grace, while he scrambles up desperately trying to get higher on the stone structure while shooting with a free hand.

Now flat enough to stand he focuses his shooting, and dead or dying beasts rain down impacting the blue ground with heavy wet thumps.

Momentarily distracted he glances down and his body trembles as he takes in the now significant height he was from the ground, and the ocean of blue fur writhing like the blue grass of the planet has come alive.

A distraction that would cost him as he raises his head only to be bodily flung from atop the arch by a flying tackle.

For Godfrey the next moments would seem to drag in slow motion, his impending doom dragged out to a horrendous crawl as blue, green, and gray streaked through his vision.

For me, the moment lasts a few seconds at most, and he dies an instant and gory death as his body meets the unrelenting ground. Then, the corpse is quickly carpeted in a mat of hungry blue beasts as if the planet itself is swallowing him up until it vanishes.

I sigh in contentment as I lazily take in the multiple perspectives of my all seeing eyes, a buxom woman in blue scrubs crawling in the grass, a diminutive man gorging on blue flesh, ah, I can't  help but smile; the victims this time were truly so... amusing.

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