Blue runs through the dark forest, her footsteps a staccato “twip-twip-twip” on the leafy ground, her talons digging in slightly for added traction in a way that just feels right to her. The night is alive to her senses, her massive eyes revealing everything the shadows could hope to hide, her nose picking up every individual scent and every individual creature. A few creatures scurry around her, some of them giving off enticing smells that under any other circumstance, would entice her to stop running and investigate. Perhaps hunt a few. But right now, she’s only interested in one thing:

  That delicious, enticing, and dangerous smell that she’s been desperate to sink her claws into. Blue is a careful observer. And by what she’s seen of the things that Caretaker is killing in droves, she has decided:

  They’re not worth her time.

  All Caretaker has to do is wave their fleshy bits, and they fall to pieces. And while Blue doesn’t have fleshy bits that she can wave around quite like Caretaker can (and she was trying to, while Caretaker was restraining her!), Blue feels like she would waste less time just finding her own prey.

  As she follows it, the smell of the weaker things that Caretaker and the… Other things - were fighting starts to grow stronger. She spots groups of them crouching in the darkness, holding different not-flesh things in their hands, staring in the direction that Caretaker and the others are in. She slows down and watches for a moment as a group of them hurries off into the night, marching slowly in the darkness towards Caretaker, before deciding that it doesn’t concern her, continuing to follow that dangerous smell.

  She keeps running, the forest blurring around her, the groups of green things growing more and more frequent as she gets closer to the delicious smell. They turn to look at her, pointing their green fleshy-bits towards her as she passes, some of them raising up their non-fleshy things and pointing towards her before their fellow green things stop them. None end up accosting her passage, most likely being able to recognize a superior apex predator in their midsts.

  The smell grows thicker and thicker, exciting her further and further, her blood singing in her veins. Her vision seems to grow sharper, her nose more sensitive. Every feather on her fluffy body feels electrified, fluffed up in excitement and anticipation. She can feel her mouth chitter, her razor-sharp beak clacking against itself with the anticipation of tearing into something fresh and alive.

  The smell becomes overpowering and she skids to a halt, inhaling deeply as she tries to locate her prey. Her mouth fills with saliva as she lets out some happy chitters. She’s so, so close, she can almost taste it.

  With a few more furious, impatient sniffs, she finds it. Just a bit to her left, a short turn from the direction she was running and far into the forest - so far that if it wasn’t for her fantastic eyesight, she wouldn’t have had a hope of seeing them - she spots the outline of her prey as it moves along the foliage, her brain easily able to pick out the unnatural movement of it from the gentle movement of the forest.

  With a scree of glee, she takes off right for her target, her focus narrowing down to a razor’s edge, watching for any further movement from it. She quickly reaches her top speed, her feet a blur underneath her as her target sits there, stationary, somehow not realizing that it’s being hunted.

  The shape of her prey becomes clearer and clearer the closer she gets to it, and with some disappointment, she realizes that it’s another one of the green creatures that Caretaker and the others are slaughtering, just a bit different. Whereas most of the green things that she’s seen have a small leather covering over their groin area and are holding wood-things and shiny things that they seem to use in lieu of the superior beak and claws; this one has a black covering over its entire body, leaving only its face uncovered. It’s holding up a shiny, round thing, staring deeply into it. Occasionally, it lifts a wriggly, fleshy thing, gesturing towards where the Caretaker is, and another group of green things starts moving in that direction. All of which would be important and of interest to Caretaker, if there was any way at all to convey that information to Caretaker. Or if Blue cared about it at all.

  No. All Blue cares about at this moment is how satisfying it’ll feel to sink her claws into something. Even if that something is a weak little green thing.

  She lets out a mighty cry as she gets ever closer to her prey, her prey finally spotting her, looking up at her with a confused look on its face. Running on instinct, Blue jumps into the air, flapping her little day-old wings as the green thing dodges out of the way of her mighty attack.

  She catches herself on the ground and turns to face the green thing once again, finding it reeling away from her. The green thing barks something to the shiny, round thing that it’s holding as it brings its wiggly flesh bits to point at Blue.

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  Blue rushes the green thing once again, diving at it with her talons outstretched. Frustratingly, the green thing manages to dodge her once again, and she lets out a chirrup of frustration.

  Abandoning her pounce, she rushes the green thing, rearing her head back in order to deliver a devastating blow with her beak. The thing’s wiggly flesh bits start to glow green as she approaches, growing brighter and brighter.

  She swings down with her beak, missing the green thing’s skull and hitting it in the chest instead. Blue’s beak penetrates deeply, causing the green thing to let out a cry, but it’s just not deep enough to kill it. She continues her charge, using her mass to knock over the little green thing in an attempt to get on top of it.

  The little green thing stumbles but fails to fall, clutching its bleeding chest wound with one of its wiggly flesh things. It brings the other up, the green glow now almost blinding in the darkness.

  The green glow becomes an energy that sparks out from its wiggly flesh bits, dancing from one to the next before shooting out and hitting Blue on the flank. Blue’s muscles seize as the energy courses through her body, burning as it travels through her body before quickly leaving through the ground.

  Blue lets out a squawk, shaking her head and stumbling from the sensation as pain wracks her body. She’s never experienced anything like it in her less-than-a-day long life. It’s horrible, painful, awful, please someone make it stop. For the first time, she feels a glimmer of a feeling that isn’t hunger, or the excitement of the hunt, or curiosity of the world around her.

  She feels anger. This pain is infuriating. How dare something make her feel this way?!

  The green thing brings up its wriggling flesh-things up once again, pointing it towards Blue. Before the glow could turn into that horrible, burning energy once again, Blue opened her beak as wide as it could go, snapping it shut on the wiggly flesh-things and severing them like a guillotine.

  The green thing screams in pain, stumbling back and holding onto its maimed fleshy bits. The green glow that suffuses the flesh bits that are now wonderfully sliding down her gullet suddenly flashes bright before vanishing, taking the green thing’s hope of surviving this encounter with it.

  With a furious chirrup, Blue jumps at the goblin once again, knocking it over successfully this time and landing on its stomach. The goblin swings a fist at Blue that hits ineffectually against her hide, and in retaliation, Blue guts the green thing with her razor-sharp claws. The green thing screams out into the night, staring at its exposed guts, before Blue brings her head down, piercing its heart and killing it off for good.

  Gruk rushes through the dark forest, his mighty club held at the ready to beat and bash at whatever thing caused Great Warlock to scream into the night like a mewling babe. He holds his communing-crystal in his hand, the magical glow that connects his hunting party to Great Warlock’s communing-crystal now dim and gone. A bad sign when it comes to hoping for the Great Warlock’s survival.

  They’ve been hunting the man-things all day, taking great care not to attack too early after hearing reports of what they did to the first and second hunting party that went against them. The man-things proved to be stronger than they first thought, although Gruk still thinks they should just swarm them and finish them off. But Great Warlock gets to command the hunting parties, and he’s decided to wear down the man-things with the weaker hunting parties. Gruk was supposed to go next, once the command was given, but after hearing the screams, he decided to go and see what had the Great Warlock so scared.

  Pushing through the dense foliage, Gruk finally reaches where he last saw the Great Warlock. Scanning around, he manages to see the silhouette of a creature with a long neck further out.

  He watches as the thing bends over, tearing into something before tugging off a piece of what looks like meat and gobbling it down. Gruk licks his lips, his stomach rumbling at the thought of fresh meat. It’s been hours since he last ate anything, and some fresh meat would go down really well.

  He crouches down and sneaks closer, his club ready to bash the skull in of whatever this creature is. His mouth starts to salivate as he inches closer and closer, the thought of a full belly distracting him from noticing that the creature has paused its eating and is sniffing the air, deeply.

  He inches ever closer, slowly creeping through the foliage, being careful not to make a sound. The details of the creature becomes easier and easier to see as he gets closer, his night vision better than the man-things are but not perfect. He sees the fluffy feathers, the sharp beak, and the blood dripping from said beak.

  As he gets closer, he finally notices that lying underneath the thing’s claws is the body of the Great Warlock, his eyes glassy and his face frozen in pain and fear. And that the thing’s head is angled to look at him from the corner of its vision, tracking him the entire time as he inched closer and closer to it.

  Gruk’s heart clenches in fear as he stops moving, his feet growing heavy and his blood going cold. As a creature of the wilds, his instincts are sharp and fairly accurate, especially when it comes to danger. And right now, his instincts are screaming at him to run. He starts to slowly move backwards, never once taking his eyes off of the dangerous creature, which allows him to see the exact moment that it starts sprinting for him, quickly reaching a speed that he has no hope of outpacing.