A chicken walked through the streets of a city. He was sickly and feathers were falling out, but he had to hide. He did not know why he had to hide. A chickens mind was not deep, so he did not question the desire. If he felt that he had to hide, then hiding must make him happy.He wanted to be happy. Looking around he saw something that he wanted desperately.
Bird seed.
A burly man was carrying bags of the stuff into a three story building. One of the corners of the bags had come undone and a slight trickle of the perfect grains fell to the floor. The chicken could not just leave those there, he would pick them up. As the door was propped open the chicken followed the man in.
The trail of grains went from the bottom floor, up two flights of stairs and into a side room. While the chicken was busy eating his food ,he could hear two deep voices arguing. One reminded the chicken of the farmer while the other reminded him of the farm hand, which the chicken had always called minion. The chicken never really liked the minion, he always took the hens eggs.
Farmer said, “When can you send my message to the Plain Caldera. You know I can’t go there without a certificate, I’ll get imprisoned for trespassing.”
Minion sighed, “Hey, don’t blame me, Elder Plain has stopped sending the pigeons back. I have six dozen messenger birds that are just eating seed right now. Until I get word that they’ll stop stealing my birds, it won’t help to send anything there.”
Farmer grumbled, “I’m sure that coward leader of theirs would kill us all if he could.”
Minion chuckled, “I’m sure, the new Elder Grass has sure made him angry with the price hikes on produce.”
Farmer seemed happy, “He should bleed every talent that he can out of those self righteous bastards.”
The chicken entered another room, this one had bags of the holy seed in it. They were stacked as high as his head, it was glorious. He decided that this would be the perfect place to take a nap. The only thing that would make it better would be if the cheeping from above quieted down. Farmer stomped down the steps and left while minion grumbled in his office.
The messenger pigeons watched the chicken fall asleep. He was the only interesting thing to come wondering in here in the last few months. After half a day of nothing the pigeons lost interest, that was until a muffled cracking noise caught their attention.
They looked over to see a creature with a redish shell crawling out of the chickens chest cavity. It used one of its eight legs to drag the chicken behind the pile of bags. The newly born ghost crab spent the next few days consuming the chicken, bones and all. Minion came in several times to feed the pigeons and while he wondered why they were so riled up, he never investigated it.
Ghost crabs were the feeder animals on the mythical beast food chain, because of this their first order of business was to secure the next generation of crabs. After the chicken was gone and its carapace had hardened, the mythical beast focused on its next victims. Its needle pointed legs had no trouble getting a grip on the rough hewn table.
The pigeons started screeching, trying to get minion’s attention. Unfortunately they had done this a lot over the last few days, minion had long gotten used to ignoring them. The crab clung to the side of the cage, the cage made it extremely easy to sting each of the birds in the chest. In less than five minutes, it had planted two dozen eggs.
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Ghost crabs were not known for their intelligence, it did not cross the crab’s mind to release the birds. That would have been the end of it, if other ghost crabs had not started popping up all around the city. Hundreds of rats and chickens were implanted and hatched into a wave of ghost crabs that quickly turned every pet and pest into incubators. Many humans suffered a similar fate, though the one month incubation time let them remove the egg with plenty of time to spare.
The Grass Caldera was at its breaking point. Then the first child died, and that was enough. The Grass Caldera needed help and the Plain Caldera was all too ready to assist.
Minion walked into the bird room and squinted at his birds. They were acting odd. Whatever, he had a message to deliver. Asking for help from the Plain Caldera felt like a surrender. He snorted, scratching his stomach, grabbing a pen and paper he wrote a note asking for help and placed it in a tube.
“It’s not even mosquito season yet,” Minion grumbled, he had received several bites over the last few days.
He opened the gate to the pigeon cage. To his surprise, the birds swarmed out. The panic and desperation they showed caused minion to flinch back and they escaped. Cursing, he held his scratched up hand, what had gotten into those birds. Pigeons as a whole were not thought well of, however messenger pigeons were different. They were well trained, they would only flee like that if there was something they were afraid of.
Grumbling, minion gave up on his birds. He had left a window open and they might never come back. The message would have to be sent by a courier, and he would have to pay the courier. Birds were cheaper than people.
The pigeons were flying over the plains, following their instincts. They had been trained to go to the Plain Caldera, but as they entered the city a feeling of extreme drowsiness over took them. Soon they started looking for places to sleep, it could not be just anywhere, a cat might get them.
Ordinarily they would have went to the pigeon holder in the Plain Caldera, and a few did. Most roosted on top of buildings, even inside if they could get in. The sun set as almost two dozen ghost crab time bombs were set in the Plain Caldera.
In a tavern head warrior Vin was celebrating with his men. They had just gotten a letter confirming the submission of the Grass Caldera. They were in a bar, drinking themselves into unconsciousness. Seven men and twelve women were loudly laughing and spilling alcohol everywhere. Vin would never understand why his team wanted a pretty girl on each lap.
While he did drink quite a bit and sing some stupid songs, once midnight hit, he decided to head home. The Inn patron was a good friend, he had let the excited warriors have the run of the place. He only had a tier one air kern and used it to put bubbles in some of his more expensive drinks. The owner had decided that spending time with a bunch of drunken men two tiers stronger than him was a bad idea. Wisely, he had taken his teenage daughter who waited tables home for the night.
Vin left the inn and staggered home. In his drunken state he had forgotten to close the door. Despite the joyous occasion, he had to work the next day. Soon the Plain Caldera would send out a subjugation force to bing back the lesser castes and less importantly, kill a few crabs. Vin was the one who would get to lead that expedition and it would let him put his name in history as a champion of the caldera. Well so long as no one found out he helped plan the crabs in the first place.
After the drunk warrior left the light leaking through the open doorway attracted a new born ghost crab. The beast was small no bigger than a fist, even if people noticed it in the twilight of sun set, they would assume it to be a rat. It scuttled in and was surprised to find twelve easy marks. There was also a few rats to eat, so it was happy. The rooms above were also filled with members of the warrior caste, sent by other Claderas to help contain the plague in the Grass Caldera.
The Elders had hoped to quietly deal with the issue, but that evening, almost fifty tier three warriors were stung while they slept. One would think that a warrior would be able to hear it approach and definitely wake up with the sting. Many did, it was just that people rarely looked up when something threatened them so most warriors chalked it up to a mosquito bite.
The ghost crab had little to no intelligence, making it unaware of the massive mental blow it had just dealt the Caldera. It was just happy that it could find some food. It happily munched away on the rodent population, doing a much better job than the cat ever did and wondered off to create more havoc elsewhere.