The whelp could tell something was amiss. A slight chill seeped into the wet, dark cavern he called home. Already possessing a veteran’s paranoia, the infant fell drake knew it was time to abandon his former haven. Seventy needle-like teeth gnawed at the fleshy walls that safeguarded him from the outside world. His siblings, drawn by the flow of purple blood, swam to his side. Until now, the whelp had been the terror of these amniotic waters. He had grown strong off the flesh of his kin and might have devoured the entire brood under more ideal circumstances, but there was no time for grudges. United by a common threat, the fratricidal family frantically gnawed their way to freedom.

Teeth twice the length of the whelp’s body ripped the barrier open. Immense cesarean jaws abducted two of the whelp’s siblings. Their doom paved the way to his own salvation. Without hesitation, he leaped out of the ragged hole and broke his fall on a cluster of locusts.

His mother did not protest her son’s premature birth. Her killer, a huge male that was more concerned with food than procreation, had dispatched her with a bite to the skull. It was a mercy rarely seen on Pugna. The cannibal growled at the whelp but made no move to pursue him.

The whelp scurried off. When he was confident that he put enough distance between him and the larger male, the newborn’s priorities shifted from flight to pursuit. Now that he was separated from his mother’s supply of unfertilized eggs, he was already in danger of starving. A swarm of flies swarmed over a mound of dried titan dung less than ten yards away. The runt pounced on the black congregation. They tasted awful, but the runt didn’t care, he wanted more.

Tragically, that mouthful of stinking flies would be the young fell drake’s last meal. The infant screeched when a lesser ichneumon sank its fangs into the back of his head and carried him up a nearby tree. Knowing that a single second could mean the difference between life and death, the mongoose-like animal immediately began feeding on its half-conscious prey. The ichneumon had just swallowed the young drake’s liver when a long, sticky tongue slammed into its spine. It didn’t even have time to scream before they were both dragged down a lightning wyvern’s throat.

The mighty aerial hunter winged her way towards a vast flock of winged snakes. A current of electricity surged through the wyvern’s body as she cut through the dense throng. Every jaculi that got within a yard of the galvanic predator spasmed and died. Her long narrow jaws snapped up the fried reptiles before they tumbled to the ground. To the wyvern’s consternation, other members of her kind joined in. Sexually mature, but not quite fully grown, the youngster was in the precarious stage in her life where she was expected to fend for herself while lacking an adult’s strength. Aware that she would not receive any leniency from her elders, the adolescent conceded her air space without a fight.

She scanned the ground for any worthwhile meals. There was never a shortage of food on Pugna, but the volatile continent rarely provided free dinners. She watched a pair of brute wyverns harry an injured lesser beithir. The serpentine beast put up a spirited defense, but there was little chance it would land a solid hit, not when its adversaries were coordinating their strikes so well.

Purple blood dripped down the beithir’s scales when the male brute sank his talons into the other dragon’s shoulders. Anchored in place, the wyvern put his short broad jaws to work, thrashing them in bulldog fashion. The beithir dislodged its assailant with a desperate roll, but its fate was sealed. It hissed defiantly, trying to ignore the wind blowing through the ragged hole in its skull.

The beithir was uttering one last defiant hiss when it suddenly toppled backward minus its head. All three wyverns shrieked in alarm when a metal biped walked out of the portal that had just decapitated the serpentine dragon.

When the lightning wyvern’s eye locked onto the foreigner, she was overcome with something akin to dread. Much as she disliked fear, it was something she was accustomed to, and on some level, recognized it was what had kept her alive for so long. This feeling was different. She felt utterly helpless. Yet, despite the oppressive sense of doom hanging over her, she felt an uncontrollable desire to annihilate the thing.

Screaming at the top of her lungs, she dove at the abomination. The male brute wyvern beat her to the punch, sending the thing flying with a swing of his tail. The abomination had scarcely reunited with the ground when his mate pounced on top of it.

The thing’s ribcage shattered beneath the multi-ton wyvern’s weight, but somehow its tiny body remained intact. Its bones creaked as its blastema cells rushed to reset the fractures, but repairing them was futile until the immense pressure on its chest was lifted.

“Guys, a little help!” the thing shouted.

The female let out a startled scream when a poleaxe sliced her knee pit open. Her reptilian assailant flipped its weapon around and buried the butt spike in the hamstrung animal’s skull. The male rushed to avenge his mate, only to be prescribed a lethal dose of lead.

Thirty more abominations stepped out of the rift before it finally closed. They holstered their smoking wheellock guns and hurried over to their stricken companion. The second abomination eyed the lightning wyvern warily. Out of all the invaders, the serpentine monster was the only one that could have passed off as a native creature from a distance. It should have been the least alien, but the lighting wyvern could smell the wrongness on it. Its unnatural scent combined with its vaguely familiar appearance, placed it in the furthest depths of the uncanny valley.

She rammed the disturbing entity, her urge to kill the thing outstripping her desire to live. Unlike the brute wyverns, she was not suited for this kind of attack. Her wrist took the brunt of the impact, and she had no way of protecting her cumbersome wings from the pseudowyrm’s rending claws. Ignoring the pain, the lightning wyvern discharged a current of electricity that sent her opponent into a helpless spasm.

Black blood oozed into her mouth when she sank her conical teeth into the creature’s snout. The wyvern let out a choked scream when her voltaic assault ignited the fluids staining her tongue.

A dagger to the eye socket ended her suffering.

Zhu shoved the twitching corpse off of him. “Damn discovered in a millisecond. That must be a new record.”

“Maybe we should have brought power armor,” Blahyi remarked as he struggled to pry off his ruined cuirass.

“Nah. They’re basically useless here. This moon is full of these obnoxious little kamikaze mother fuckers that can drain an overshield in seconds,” Zhu replied.

Caustic shushed them. “You know the rules, no idle chit-chat when we’re on dragon land.”

“Don’t be such a stick in the mud. Pretty sure this runs already a bust anyway.”

“Wouldn’t count on that Zhu,” Khiva said, pointing to something behind them. Zhu scratched his head, somewhat embarrassed that he didn’t notice the mountain of flesh sooner.

If it weren’t for the god beast’s obviously carnivorous features, the gargantuan dragon could have passed off as a grootslang's even larger relative. Its elongated neck and clubbed tail were twice the length of its torso. Besides its ferocious jaws, the most prominent divergence between it and the grootslang was the pair of lethal scything limbs that protruded from the dragon's back. Even from a distance, the god beast obviously dwarfed Tannin’s ultimate heavyweight, and the dragon seemed to double in size every few seconds.

Common sense dictated that such an immense animal should have been limited to a plodding pace, yet the living landmark somehow maintained a breakneck gallop. Zhu cursed when the dust storm its footfalls whipped up blew over him. When he cleared the grit from his eyes, the godbeast was just two body lengths away.

The players scattered. Caustic was just about to be squashed beneath a brachiosaurus- sized foot when a huge saurian slammed into the first godbeast’s side. A minor earthquake ensued when the two impossibly large animals rolled across the ground. Puddles of golden ichor formed beneath the clashing beasts.

The newcomer was considerably smaller than its quarry, but it was confident and for good reason. Its jaws could have swallowed the longneck’s head four times over and its bipedal posture enabled it to dedicate its forearm to combat purposes. A pair of bladed mantis-like limbs jutted behind its shoulder.

Realizing the futility of trying to outrun its nimbler assailant, the first godbeast swung its bludgeoning tail at the other dragon’s head.

The bipedal dragon ducked beneath the blow and leaped onto its adversary’s chest. It used its arms and its raptorial appendages jutting behind its shoulders to keep itself tethered while its jaws scooped out mouthfuls of flesh. The quadrupedal dragon sank its own teeth into the back of its attacker’s neck. Its bladed senary limbs furiously gouged the biped's eyes.

“Whelp, looks like we’ll be the ones bringing back the gold blood,” Blahyi muttered in awe.

“Assuming that we don’t get flattened,” LDS grunted.

“Five bucks on the god rex.”

“Nobody is going to take you on that bet, Hustle,” a tentacled horror called UselessCynic scoffed. “The longnecks almost always lose.”

“Well, Blahyi might have, if you kept your damn mouth shut!”

“Could you at least stop trying to scam people from our own clan?” Khiva growled.

“Not sure I can afford to, Diva. Profits have been down ever since my workforce moved onto Vlad’s backwaters. Sheeeeit, it'll probably take me at least a week to get that side hustle running again after this character is deleted.”

“How much money do you make off those kids, you exploitative piece of shit?” LDS growled.

“None of your business, you whiny bitch.”

“H-hey, check it out!” UselessCynic exclaimed. “The god rex just chewed off the longneck’s head.”

“What the fuck? How is it still standing?” Blahyi’s double-take became a quadrupedal-take when the god dragon continued to stab its decapitator. “How the fuck is it still fighting?”

“Auxiliary brains,” Zhu answered. “Titans usually have them too. We should get ready. The fight will probably wrap up in five or so minutes.”

It ended quicker than Zhu anticipated. The bipedal dragon had been blessed with an especially virulent venom that could slow even a god beast’s regenerative abilities to a crawl. Once the biped detached itself from the quadruped’s chest, the larger dragon had no way of locating its opponent and became easy pickings.

The biped greedily swallowed its slain foe’s heart and the cow-sized stone within it. It had a startlingly small appetite for such an enormous beast, plodding off when it swallowed its victim's liver and a few mouthfuls of flesh.

“Alright team, start bottling that blood quickly!” Caustic urged.

The team had collected several gallons of the golden fluid when the sky unveiled a vibrant tapestry of colors. No sound went unnoticed on Pugna, and the destructive clashes between godbeasts or titans always promised a veritable feast. Wyverns, being the most common large flyers in the ecosystem, almost always sampled these rich leftovers first. The entitled scavengers loudly voiced their discontent when they realized that another party had reached the spoils before them. Their ire grew when they caught the players’ foreign scent.

“Well, I’ll take that as our cue to leave.” Blahyi squeaked as he dodged several toxic globes.

“Khiva, Cynic, Kabu, take the canteens and stay in the center of the formation!” Caustic ordered.

“Ah, how come I am always a baggage carrier?” UselessCynic complained.

“Because you got more than two arms!”

Had the flock descended on them en masse, the players would have been swiftly overwhelmed. Fortunately for them, the wyverns operated more like a mob rather than a well-coordinated pack. Savvier pairs hung back, confident that the others would dispatch the blackbloods for them. Some of the more aggressive individuals were so worked up by the devourers' appearance that they attacked each other. Still, even with all the social loafing and in-fighting, Zhu’s party stood little chance against them in a head-to-head fight.

Not that they planned on fighting fair.

“Blahyi, summon the giant flying pac-man!” Caustic shouted.

A massive mouth monster materialized out of thin air. A snap of its cartoonish jaws scattered the lesser dragons.

“Don’t be too aggressive! These things are smart!”

“I know! I know!”

Blahyi’s trick didn’t buy them much time. Once the fire and poison wyverns realized their projectiles were phasing through the illusion, they simply sailed past it.

“Shit! That was quick! Tim, distract them!”

The alien figure snapped Caustic a sharp salute. “Got you covered!” He performed several unnecessary backflips and fired his pistols into the encroaching horde. “Fear me I am Tim!”

Tim diverted several wyverns away from his fleeing teammates, but ultimately his flamboyant antics didn’t alter their quandary in any meaningful way.

“Don’t think splitting up is going to work,” Khiva said. He chanced a look back and clucked his tongue. If Conquest had implemented immersive smells, the reek of rotten meat would have filled his nostrils.

“Contact in thirty seconds!”

“I got an idea,” Zhu said calmly but loudly. “Blahyi, poof up a wall behind us on my say. Stitches, Poison cover me.” He waited three heartbeats before shouting, “Now!”

The wyverns leading the chase halted their charge when a small mountain erupted out of the ground. Zhu and his two ogre-like allies burst out of the intangible landmark. They maimed several of the landing wyverns before regrouping with the others. To Zhu’s delight, a ninety-foot-long iron drake burrowed out of the ground and finished off the crippled flyers.

“Rift ahead!” Hustleman whooped.

“Blahyi, make a smokescreen. Give it everything you got!” Caustic shouted.

Blahyi produced a black cloud that would have made a bunker buster proud. The flock, now inured to his tricks, recklessly entered the dense smog. As they suspected, the smokescreen did not contain any harmful fumes. It did, however, obscure their vision. Several wyverns crashed into one another as they tried to navigate their way through the cloying darkness.

“Khiva and the other carriers made it to the rift,” Iris reported. “Should we leave too?”

Caustic set up a telepathic link between him and the others. “Negative. King’s team is on their way to the enigma lake, but Nikita’s got wiped and Sovereign’s is in a tight spot. So, we're on tongue collection duty now.”

“I’d rather collect their eggs,” Zhu whispered to Iris.

“Don’t you have enough?”

“No such thing as too many wyverns.”

“No way can we take on that many. I say we dip and try our luck elsewhere,” LDS argued.

“There’s a cave nearby,” Poison pointed out. “Those shrieking fucks will have a doozy trying to fight us in those tight confines.”

“Still,” LDS said skeptically.

“Things have been going ridiculously well so far, let’s see if our luck holds out.”

LDS side-eyed Zhu. “Just a few minutes ago, you were convinced we were screwed.”

“That was then. This is now. Besides, it's not like we got anything to lose from trying.”

“Zhu’s right. Teleporting here costs way more than the gear we brought. I doubt we’d be able to outrun these guys away. Blahyi, how long can you keep the smokescreen up?” Caustic asked.

“Two or three minutes.”

“Good enough. Let’s assemble a defensive position in that little cave on our left. Conjurors, make sure you don’t pull out too many structures at once.”

Zhu and the largest members of the team were tasked with driving iron stakes into the ground. Everyone else worked on placing spiked obstacles wrapped in barbed wire around the cavern’s entrance.

“Almost out of energy,” Blahyi warned.

“Try to hold on just a little longer. Make some noise guys!”

“I like turtles!” Zhu screamed.

Apparently incensed by his professed love for all things terrapin, a poison wyvern bull-rushed Zhu’s position. It let out a gasp when it impaled itself on a metal spike. It tried to wriggle off the skewer, but Zhu grabbed it by its snout and dragged it down the base. Maintaining his grip, Zhu pried his captive’s jaw apart with such force that the top half of its snout nearly flopped off its face. Snickering, Zhu shoved his jaws inside his dying victim’s mouth and spat out its forked tongue.

“Whoo! That is some savage shit!” Hustleman exclaimed.

“Stop showboating!” Caustic shouted. He clicked his tongue when the smokescreen dissipated. “We need to kill these things quickly and efficiently if we want any chance of winning this fight.”

“Roger-dodger boss man.” Zhu laughed madly as the smoke cloud gave way, revealing a winged legion that blotted out the sun.