The adventure of the fishron and search for the Everstream continued. It had been four months since Arvinakon's fight with the Abyssal Lagiacrus, four months where he couldn't fly and didn't have any worthwhile fight to his immense shagreen.

He did rounds around the human island for a month and a half but stopped when he realized the humans were starving because they never dared to go into the sea. Their main source of food is from the reef

Humans weren't new, yes some were arguably superhuman but they still are humans and as such their behavior was nothing unusual, the strange cat people were more and reminded him of the boaboas. Thought those were rare and in minority compared to humans.

Anyway, the food here was good, the shark in particular. They looked great white and were roughly the same size.

Another one he particularly liked was those male crocodile-varan hybrids with a strange sponge collar, they are ludroth, royal ludroth to be exact and he loved the softness of their spongy yellow collar, it reminded him of a type of cake. What exact type he couldn't exactly remember.

'Now that my flipper is fully healed, let's take a small flight test and see a bit more of this luxurious forest...', he thought, his cavernous heart rhythmically beating in growing excitement.

The fishron swam deeper to help him get more potential momentum, then with a mighty flap of his flippers, a flick of his tail, and a flare of bioenergy through them he propelled himself with such force that it shook everything close to him, he kept this pace until he broke the water surface and took off.

*RAWR!*

Giving a happy roar he flapped his flippers and flew higher. Spinning on himself he roared again and enjoyed the whistling of the tropical wind in his triangular ears. It was life. Freedom.

Scanning the Ancient Forest with his yellow draconic slitted eyes, a herd of parasaurolophus-like herbivores grazing around the plains, next to them was the forest, birds, and enormous insects flying around.

In the far distance, he caught a glimpse of a green spiky T-Rex-like monster, a deviljho, happily eating something meaty of the same green and texture of its scale.

'It's eating its own tail… while dancing? Strange… Well I mean, it's understandable, I taste pretty good myself. Go on and eat your tail, big pickle t-rex. And your species seems to be worth fighting… latter not hungry enough but I know where I might find more of you.'

Suddenly he lost control for half a second on his newly regrew pelvic flipper and uncontrollably started to spin and fall to the ground.

Surprised but still calm if a bit pissed, he folded his dorsal and pectoral flipper, partially stopping the unstoppable aerial ragdoll but marginally increasing his speed, diving snout first to the rich grassy ground.

He waited and kept going like this until he stabilized and stopped spinning, then he spread his dorsal and pectoral flippers wide, muscles tensed up, and put more weight on his tail. Violently breaking his fall and pushing powerful gusts of air outward, however, it didn't fully stop his momentum.

*BOOOK BAAAGOOKK!!!*, a strange mix between a dodo, a velociraptor and a therizinosaur clucked in terror and froze the egg in its clawed forelimbs falling and miraculously not cracking and spilling its nutritious inside on the grass.

The Kulu-Ya-Ku's beady eyes were wide open, and its head was fixated on the incoming fishron.

'Oh, sorry not sorry birdy thing.', he thought and the moment of impact between a multiple tons projectile and a big flightless bird happened right the next instant.

*boom**splat*

Clouds of dust were flying around the area of impact and Arvinakon dispersed them with one strong flap of his dorsal flipper, hoisting himself on his pectoral one.

Yellow feathers, blood, bones, and a bit of brain matter sticking and dripping from the smooth scale of his belly.

Then his gaze fell on a blue egg, he curiously sniffed it, ears twitching and he gobbled it up under the horrified gaze of a female Aptonototh. It was crunchy, crunchy not as in the eggshell, crunchy as in a fetus' fragile bones getting crushed.

That didn't stop him, nor did it bother him in any way. It wasn't the first time either this happened, such as eating a shark to realize it was full of pups. It's a bonus. He already knew there was a fetus inside with his electromagnetic sense.

'Pretty good it's been a long time since I last ate an egg...', Arvinakon thought, then he moved his regenerated flipper, feeling it. He might have lost a bit of muscle memory, which is why he lost control, but it was stronger and better than before.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Crawling, he surveyed his surroundings, seeing colorful flowers, wild and untamed vegetation, and animals running or flying away from him with everything they got, except a bunch of yellow toads in a nearby puddle. He could immediately tell that those things were nasty little fuckers.

Muscles flexing, a few tentative flaps, and a jump later he was airborne and on his way back to the sea.

Two days later he was back flying above the forest, more on the Northmost part, he could see in the far distance smoke coming out of a volcano, even smell the somewhat pleasant odor of sulfur from here, and to the west giant jagged cliffs that encircled the Coral Highlands, a giant reef growing out of the ocean rich in strange and unique lifeforms.

'It smells of honey…? It smells so good!', nose twisting. He maneuvered to the side and followed the trail like a dog. He wanted honey and so he will get honey and any who dare to put themselves between him and this liquid will suffer. No one gets in the way of satisfying his stomach.

Sometime later he circled above a particularly dense part of the forest, a river descending in a precipice that goes at least three kilometers deep.

All of it was full of life and bees… lots and lots of bees. Giant bees bigger than a man's head and each possessing a deadly stinger going on about pollinating the thousand of various colorful flowers.

Flying inside the precipice he rapidly dove Downard, the constant buzzing of bees annoying his very sensitive ears, flattening them against his head he somewhat muffled the sound. He passed right next to a giant cave that led to the Coral Highland and also connected farther down to the Rotted Vale but ignored it.

The sweet smell of honey was getting intoxicating and he started to salivate, his slitted eyes sparkled as a giant orange-yellow beehive fused to a mossy wall appeared in his sight. The buzzing got louder, and angrier while growls and howls could be heard.

'Oh those look like bears but greener… wonder what they taste with a bit of honey… hmm yes, that's a nice plan.', he randomly thought as his eyes fell on a group of twenty arzuros, beer-like creatures but bigger and fiercer fighting a black gargantuan swarm of bees.

'And that's a big ass bee we got here… Is that the queen? Strange and fascinating… right food.', Arvinakon's stomach grumbled and his thought shifted to something more important. Food was what made the world go round.

The bee he supposed was a queen, was indeed the Queen of this hive, the matriarch. A bee of enormous proportion, slightly bigger than him. She looked like a bee fused with a hornet and a wasp.

She didn't have a stinger at the end of her abdomen but honeycombs that constantly produced a stream of bees, and periodically shot stingers.

Her species, particularly her 'rank', make her one of the biggest and smartest arthropods on this planet. Only second to the atlal-ka, a species of giant puppeteer mantis. The gap between the two species in intelligence is immense but that isn't the fact that the Queen is sapient, though sapient didn't mean human-like. Sapience is not unique to humans.

The Queen shrieked, high pitched and piercing was her cry, then she dove to one of the beers, six clawed legs widened. The giant bee gripped one of the smallest beers and threw it down the chasm next to the hive, the young arzuros squealed as it fell to its death never to be seen ever again.

*RAAWWWR!*

~Greeting! Alloweth me introduce myself, mine own name is Arvinakon, unfriendly neighborhood murder fish not a thy service.~

Since he learned how to talk in the Elder Tongue he never missed any opportunity to use it. Yeah, he missed that, even if only a handful could hear him, and even less understood him but it was that. A way to express himself beyond violence, which is good but variety never hurts.

The fishron roared and said lightly, announcing his presence, and the battle immediately came to a standstill. The Queen's head snapping in his direction, antenna erratically flicking through the air, that suddenly, became tense.

She realized that whatever just arrived was bad news if they were to fight it, it would end the hive and that was unacceptable.

She also, from experience, wisdom and knowledge passed down from Queen to royal nymph that beast of such might could depend on how the hive treats them be a blessing or a death sentence.

And so she ordered every one of her children to back off and let the fishron do as he pleased.

'Interesting behavior….', Arvinakon noted, then he flew down in front of the biggest bear, and their eyes met. It was frozen in fear, every instinct in its body screamed at it to run, run for its life… alas it couldn't.

He delicately opened his mouth wide and bit its head off, then crushed it before audibly swallowing, brains, mammalian one in particular always were great. The Earth element inside added to the taste.

The headless body fell limp to the side, blood spewing from what little remained of the neck. This caused a domino effect as all arzuros scampered away from him in utter terror.

The smell of fear oozed from their bodies spurred his more prime hunting instincts and so with a terrifying grin he pursued them. Never show your back to predators or even worst run from them.

Flying through the vines and dense underground jungle he focused on one particularly chubby one.

The fishron dashed, smashing into its right side, breaking its ribs, and spine like they were twigs, and then flung it on a rock with wrought force to make spider web-like cracks on it.

As it should be, he is exponentially stronger and nearly two times its size and so cubic laws at work he also is exponentially heavier. The results were clear for all to see.

The bear's eyes comically exploded out of their socket and it puked blood, mixed with pieces of organs from both sides. It died on the spot. Arvinakon didn't waste time, he landed, and gulped the head whole, appreciating how his teeth sunk into the neck and severed everything in between.

This was promptly followed by him eating the sweet liver, then he left the carcass as it was and flew back to the beehive.

Mouth dripping warm blood he licked his chops and purred in understanding as a sizable piece of honeycomb laid on the moss, half filled with royal jelly and the other half normal honey all of it was put right next to the dead bear.

~Cunning one aren't thee?~, he said to no one in particular as every bee was back in the hive, sniffing the honey he deemed harmless and proceeded to feast upon the still warm raw meat accompanied with the rarest, most delicious and dangerous honey in the world.

One drop of this royal jelly is enough to send a hundred men to an eternal sleep full of dreams and wonderland and he just gobbled the equivalent of an entire barrel of it. And so, he is a bit tipsy because of it.

And that is how a strange mutually beneficial relationship between a giant flying fish and a giant bee started.