Raelynn observed carefully behaviour of the group, quickly learning their body language. They were walking spread out sweeping the area, there was 1 leader making decisions while others were communicating if they sensed some source of food or danger.
Long, high pitched whimper with slightly raised tail meant there’s potentially food in direction, pointing the direction with their head. Then leader made the decision, if he sneezed group would change directions.
Finding prey wasn’t easy, most smaller animals ran away before Raelynn could even spot them. Her ears perked, there was something bigger moving in front of her among bushes. She wasn’t sure if she should yelp out warning signal to others or wait and see what creature hides behind.
Before she decided others came closer for safety barring their teeth awaiting for what comes next. From the bushes came out creature standing on 2 legs, it was taller than any of the false foxes with height of about 1m not counting big oval ears. Weirdly, the creature had short white fur that didn’t blend in with environment. with thick tail and short muzzle shape of a body resembled a slug.
The creature stopped, with big black eyes it starred at Raelynn’s group observing what they will do. It got down on all fours and very slowly moved forward.
- Damn it, this one is just too cute. I am hungry but-
Before Raelynn could finish her thought someone rushed towards the creature, however it quickly stood up and threw a rock hitting false fox in the head. He stopped startled and the rest rushed to attack. White animal using few moments of head start ran towards nearest tree and climbed it with cat-like agility.
There sitting on the branch it looked down upon a group, tail hanging taunted them. After a while white creature still refused to come down, the group decided to not waste time anymore and move on. Raelynn’s nose caught faint sweet smell, she followed scent until she stopped and looked at a mushroom. Raelynn was considering eating it however she was on a hunt with others who knew what to eat.
Despite that she gave the mushroom a lick, it didn’t taste bitter, she stood there feeling like an idiot because she didn’t want to take even the smallest risk. She was anxious, Raelynn probably stood there for too long because female member of a group came up, she sniffed mushroom and in one swoop ate it.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
- Hey that was mine! - Raelynn was more mad at herself for not eating something with such inviting smell right away rather than her meal being stolen.
Search for prey continued, but then one of the false foxes tensed up, he put his ears backwards and got closer to the ground. He moved slowly and often stopping, movement resembling that of a mantis. She looked through the bush and saw giant millipede at least 2 meters long, black calcified exoskeleton shined in the sun rays. The millipede slowly moved cylindrical body.
- Wow, it’s beautiful. I actually can’t believe I see… the live example of giant millipede!
She could not contain her excitement and fascination, only when member of her group moved slowly near her catching her attention, she remembered why they came here. It made her sad that they will have to kill such great animal.
- Slow movement is to our advantage, it might be hard to get delicate legs when it curls up defensively we we should easily manage – Raelynn thought to herself
The group moved slowly towards prey, giant millipede raised small part of the segmented body and leaned it against brown porous pillar. Group rushed towards their prey while Raelynn tried to follow behind however her necklace was caught up in branches pulling her back.
- Damn it!
Raelynn spent few seconds to untangle her necklace without damaging it and rushed towards the group. It shocked her that millipede didn’t curl up, instead it moved around with incredible speed and fighting back. She felt her heart beating faster as she was running, she jumped and bit on hard exoskeleton.
But it was too hard to pierce, simultaneously Raelynn felt energy flowing in her body.
- No, no, no, not this time!
She focused solely on blocking that energy from coming, because of that she didn’t notice millipede circling her around. Then she was grabbed with millipede’s legs, she looked up to see tooth, like a jagged dagger, pointed towards her. Raelynn’s heart jumped.
She froze in place watching as her demise is coming, millipede was preparing to strike when it reeled back. One of the false foxes pulled off leg changing invertebrate’s focus. Raelynn quickly jumped away to not be in the center, she was breathing heavily and her heart was pounding.
From the distance she saw that millipede wasn’t in pristine shape, surrounded by false foxes which attacked soft spots whenever their prey wasn’t looking, with time their targe sustained more injuries. Limb by limb, more legs laid twitching on the ground, detached from the body. Millipede was becoming weaker and slower unable to keep up with attacker from multiple sides.
In the final moments, when prey’s weakened reflexes didn’t allow to dodge, one of the males bit on millipedes head piercing large compound eye. Bodily fluids splattered around making top part of body limp. However rest of the body still is dangerous due to ventral nerve cord. It is still moving around. Scared to come close Raelynn watched as body eventually bleeds out and stops moving.
The group didn’t wait for her and begun to tear through soft spots eating the corpse. She came up and took a bite of soft warm insides almost vomiting out.