The hybrids tried to pile on the Lions, but they were capable warriors, seasoned by fighting together through the cycles. They pivoted capably, dodging the bites and swipes of the hybrids, as they drew long hooked heat knives and cut their attackers apart.

Haru’s right hand snaked out and his metal capped claws slashed the throat of one mangy looking hyena hybrid, while his own heat knife flashed up to gut another, as he turned and kicked it with the force of a cannonball, lifting it off of his feet and sending it flying through the air with a horrible wail, away into the darkness that surrounded the periphery of the Central Den. Immediately the whelps and beasties pounced on the wounded hybrid, silencing its cries of anguish as they greedily devoured it.

Haru listened to the crunching sounds of the pack feasting on one of its own, and a sickened look crossed his noble features. He pointed up a Tzreek.

“With your crude doses you couldn’t even remove the blood hunger from them. This is no pack of mine! What you have done to their trust, is beyond reconciliation, and I will put them out of their misery myself!” He roared.

The other two lions continued bounding off one another, ducking and lashing out with deadly precision until none of Tzreek’s minions were still standing. They stood breathing hard, just behind Haru at each of his shoulders, their eyes glinting yellow green in the light. One flicked the blood from its heat knife, holding it at the ready, prepared for another assault.

“So snooty! Casting aspersions upon us, for our methods of hybridization, we did what we had to to stay powerful and to make the Drydellians fear us!”

Haru looked up at Tzreek, twin fires of rage burning in both his golden eyes. “You used the blood of innocents for more immediate results and to make quicker gains. When I left, I taught the elders the old ways, you all could have hybridized safely and without any civilian casualties, then your den mates would not have any blood hunger. This pack is little more than a den of drainers!”

Tzreek fluffed his feathers. Unfazed by Haru’s words.

“It seems a heavier hand is required, to deal with the likes of you.” He said with a tone of general annoyance.

“I doubt whatever power you possess will be sufficient to deal with me, you feathery deceiver.” Haru said, drawing his heat knife and looking around him for the next wave of hybrids that would attack them.

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Behind the golden Lion, the gestation globs stopped pulsating and began to recede into five gelatinous puddles, revealing five more hybrids identical to Kotuk. They rose silently, as viscous fluid dripped from their new unblemished scales. They opened their reptilian eyes and blinked away the slime with a second pair of eyelids. Their stares narrowed with a hungry intensity, as their tongues snaked out from between their scaly lips, scenting fresh flesh and spilled blood.

Silhouette moved slightly and through the mirage of the obscura bracer it seemed as if she made an input on an intelor.

The newly gestated lizards sprang at the Golden Lion and his two followers.

Haru’s ears twitched, as one of the lizard’s claws made a scrabbling sound on the flagstone floor behind them. “Lookout!” The Golden Lion shouted to his fellows, and he leapt straight up, his capable vertical leap taking him above a lizard who lunged at him, as it snapped its jaws shut on empty air, sailing forward through the space where he was a moment before.

The golden lion executed a perfect arcing flip, landing with crushing force on the lizard’s back. Long curved claws extended and ripped apart the scales as his fangs bit deep into the lizard's neck, separating the reptile's head from its shoulders. He lifted his head and roared with the exaltation of the kill, his maw stained red and dripping with blood.

His fellow lions did not fare as well as he did. They had both been beset upon by two lizards, and as he turned to help them, it was already too late, as they had already been ripped apart, and the freshly birthed lizards were hungrily gobbling down strips of their flesh.

As the golden lion tried to spring at them to avenge his fallen brethren, Silhouette threw down a cup forcefield disc and activated it directly over him. A diagnostic puck detached itself from the disc and moved in the suspended on the exterior of the forcefield to float at waist level.

Haru threw himself against the barrier with a wild rage. It sparked and crackled dangerously.

“Release me!” He roared.

Then he took out his heat knife and tried to ram the blade through the forcefield and into the diagnostic puck.

The barrier flashed and sparked violently, fracturing the weapon, and leaving him holding a charred hilt in his hand.

He examined the remains of the heat knife for a moment and then cast the handle away to the floor at his feet.

“For what it's worth I am sorry. For I truly admire your legacy and your work.” Silhouette said, the voice modulator eliminating any emotion from its voice, giving it a stilted mechanical cadence.

“You have slaughtered my kin, helped to defile this pack and now present apologies? I will teach you the meaning of remorse!”

The golden lion howled as he turned his head away from the grisly display of the ravenous lizards as they fed on his lion-kin.

“Well, what shall we do?” Moloch asked Krasus.

“I confess I find myself somewhat bewitched by the spectacle that is playing out before us. I feel like when they are done killing each other, we can begin killing them.” Krasus said.

“Fair point.” Moloch said.