***Ykuingi, Daughter of the Chief***

Ykuingi led the way through the canopy, leaving a trail of Binding behind her, making a safe trail for the for the rest of the troop to follow, her hearts pounding as she moved. How could she not be nervous?

The chief had told them to observe the humans in the case they balked in the face of Yninquiak. If they did, she would be required to fulfill her duty to the tribe.

The cruel tyrant keeps demanding the largest of us, and sends its spies to confirm. If this goes on, we’ll be nothing but dumb animals. To Ykuingi, it seemed personal, more than just the demands of an ignorantly gluttonous demon. It had a purpose.

The intelligence of an ooze-weaver was directly related to its size, due to the way their think-meat grew in sync with their shell. Ykuingi was nearly larger than her mother now, and her shell showed no sign of slowing its expansion.

In another month, her think-meat would be larger than her mother’s and she would take her place as chief, exempt from the selection, which was what her mother was counting on.

If Ykuingi were to spawn the next generation of leaders, they might stand a chance of lasting another generation. Maybe even find a way to escape the creature’s clutches.

Nothing lived forever, so the People had decided to use time as their weapon. They would outlast the creature.

Ykuingi arrived at the lake four days later, just a day after the humans arrived in their strange rafts constructed out of tree.

What she saw set her hearts to beating again, this time with a different sort of dread.

***Calvin***

Blood was dripping from the parasol.

Now you’re getting the hang of it. Ellliot said as Calvin sat in his oversized observation chair and let other people do the work for him, sipping on a bottle of Gadveran cider. It’s what was expected of him as the calm and collected leader of the expedition.

“Haul, haul, you limp dicked sons of bitches! If you fuck as bad as you pull, you’re gonna be the last goddamned generation out of Gadvera.” Karen stalked back and forth on the beach while the men hauled on the arm-thick ropes they’d repurposed for norlock fishing, veins bulging in her neck as she screamed.

Calvin bounced Sacha on his lap while Grant made a pass overhead. The aging sword-dancer was riding two of his blades while trailing a single sword behind him, dipping it into the water, making a long ripple like an oversized waterglider.

True to form, another logic-defying mouth the size of a barge lunged out of the water, eager to snatch the annoying insect out of the air.

Baroke whistled idly, standing next to Calvin with the pilot hook on an oversized steel arrow that looked like it must have weighed fifty pounds, nocked to his favorite glass bow. As soon as the norlock tentacle emerged from the water, Baroke pulled back the string, lined up the shot and fired in a single breath.

The hook shot out, trailing arm-thick rope behind it. It slammed through the creature’s tentacle, just below the pseudo-jaw it used to clamp down on prey.

“Haven’t been norlock fishing in a while. It’s actually pretty nostalgic. Feels like home,” Baroke said with a grin as other archers attempted to score with their own hooks attached to thinner ropes.

“N’gui ini gyi iuya kmyigua!” The norlock tentacle they were hauling in bellowed between snapping at the people dragging it ashore and trying to bite through the rope. Unfortunately for the creature it’s teeth were meant for snagging, not cutting.

“Pipe down,” Karen shouted, kicking the tentacle as it was dragged further ashore. “You tried to eat us as soon as we got here, but now you wanna talk? Sorry, you’re fucked.” She turned to the linemen. “A couple more feet!”

When the full length of the creature’s pseudo mouth was on the beach, Karen jumped on top of it, Running down as far as she could before she unleashed a gleaming slash with her massive cleaver, neutering the tentacle as close to the monster’s mantle as she could, rendering it useless to the Norlock.

There was a rumbling near the center of the lake that spread to the banks and beyond, shaking the trees around them as the remaining stump of tentacle thrashed around above the waterline, churning the lake into a frothing red cauldron even as it spawned a rain of blood that came down from above.

Calvin leaned back under the parasol, getting his younger brother fully under the protection as the blood spattered down around them.

“Tails, clean up your ropes and get them ready for the next tentacle! Everyone else, move to the next rope!” Karen shouted as they finished hauling the gushing hunk of meat up the bank.

“See that, Sacha?” Calvin asked, making idle conversation with the drooling baby. “That’s how you hunt a norlock. They’re not normally this big, or this numerous, or capable of speech, but the basics are the same.”

The trip upriver had been frought with norlocks the likes of which would have caused a huge stir back in Deinos. They were maneaters that had gotten old enough to have a gleam of intelligence in their beady eyes. Calvin’s army got plenty of practice disposing of them on the trip up to the lake, and now they were being put to the test against the largest norlock any of them had ever seen.

Possibly the biggest and smartest any human had ever seen.

Calvin turned the baby around to face him, and the little grub gave him a vacant smile.

“Sacha, do you wanna know the difference between hunting something and fighting something?”

Sacha babbled.

“The ability to fight back.”

The water rippled ominously, forming a lump as something moved through it at tremendous speeds, heading for the shore.

“Back to the safe line!” Karen shouted, and the soldiers turned as one and sprinted back to the line marked far beyond the treeline.

A second later a pair of tentacles lunged out and stretched for the humans, teeth as long as a man’s leg bared as the norlock tried to get revenge for the pain inflicted on it.

The tentacles stopped short just ten feet shy of the safe line, obviously straining to get ahold of the men and women of the West Boles Trading Company.

Rather than wasting time thrashing mindlessly, the tentacles went for other tactics. One picked up a tree and yanked it out of the ground, trying to wield it like a club while the other one began worrying at the rope holding the newest tentacle.

“Oh, you want to lose another arm? If you insist!” Karen shouted with manic glee, rushing forward and jumping atop the protruding tentacle, aiming to sever these newest ones that the creature had decided to offer them.

Ella ran forward as well, sliding under the wild swing of an entire fifty-foot long tree as the norlock tried to crush the offending humans. She jumped on top of the other tentacle and began ripping through it with her one-hander, looking like a burrowing insect digging it’s way into the flesh of its prey.

“I’ve been wondering.” Kala asked, sitting in the seat beside him. The princess glanced between the two fighters being tossed around by the thrashing of the enormous monster. “Does Ella remind you of your mom, a little?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it, but that seems pretty accurate.” Calvin said, nodding.

Ella’s skin was painted red with blood and viscera as she hacked her way out the other side of the norlock’s tentacle, while Karen was able to sever hers completely, jumping out of the way of the geyser of blood before it washed over her, landing on the ground perfectly clean and using her thick-bladed sword as a makeshift umbrella.

Ella, on the other hand, seemed to revel in the blood.

“In some ways, anyway.”

Calvin kept Sacha safe from the monsoon of blood that followed as the giant norlock thrashed in pain before yanking the last tentacle out of the grip of the haulers and back into the water.

Wonder if it’s stupid enough to trick again. Calvin thought.

Sadly that wasn’t the case. Once there was only one confirmed tentacle remaining, the creature tried to hide out under the surface of the lake, not bothering to respond to any more of Grant’s provocations.

“Get the big hooks set up.” Calvin said, Karen echoing him a moment later, instructing the soldiers to hook man-sized pulleys to a dozen of the thickest trees in the surrounding area. Then, one by one, they tossed the man-sized hooks up to Grant, who flew them high above the point in the lake where the norlock had made its home.

“I want that thing’s tongue.”

A norlock couldn’t just get up and run, it would tear the flesh of its belly off if it tried. Instead, they took several days to dissolve the glue that held them in place before they began awkwardly swimming to their new hunting ground. Calvin didn’t know about one this size, but he estimated that it couldn’t flee sooner than a day or two, especially not while it was weak and bleeding.

Grant dropped the hooks one at a time, ferrying them back and forth in a matter of minutes. Once they were all in the water, the assembled soldiers started hauling, hoping to snag the creature’s flesh.

There were some incidents of catching boulders, but no less than eight of the man-sized hooks caught their target and inch by inch, they began to peel it off the floor of the lake.

The final tentacle came out and weakly assaulted them, but it was easily lopped off by Karen before they resumed hauling the beast up onto the shore.

The going got much harder once they had half of the thing out of the water. Its main body was about the size of a three story mansion, and when it lost the buoyancy of water, it became much harder to haul.

The enormous creature was still struggling weakly when Karen climbed on top of it and delivered a killing blow to its heart through ten feet of muscle and fat, creating a final geyser of blood.

Old Salt has reached level 15! 75% Correction.

+1 Stability

“It’s just been one of those days.” Baroke said, wiping blood off his forehead, where it dribbled out of his hair. “I’m gonna need a bath.”

Calvin glanced at the water, which had been turned red and frothy by the death of the monster.

“Probably wanna go upriver for that,” Calvin said.

“Aye.”

Once the blood stopped raining from the sky, Calvin handed Sacha over to Kala before climbing down to the creature’s beak, where his men pried the house-sized chitin open for Calvin to take a chunk out of the creature’s tongue.

I wonder If I have to eat the whole thing, Calvin wondered as he backed out of the enormous mouth with the bloody chunk in his hand. The logistics of that would be difficult.

The logistics of how it got that big are impossible. It had to have some kind of energy saving or creating mutation, because it was simply too big to only eat a handful of ooze weavers a year.

Calvin thought about that for a moment.

Where would a mutation like that be?

Either in the stomach, the fat, or the skin. Elliot replied after considering it for a moment.

Hmm… Calvin looked up at the massive creature. I wonder.

“Everybody back off a good twenty feet,” He said, placing a hand on the creature.

Harvester

12/44 Bent remaining.

The monster shimmered for a moment and reappeared in neat stacks of meat and organs, which spilled over Calvin like a tidal wave, nearly submerging him before finally settling down to about knee-height.

Calvin turned around and saw the entire crew watching him.

“The only tasty part of a norlock is the meat just under the mantle! Normally there’s only a pound or two of it, but as you can see…” Calvin said, pointing to several tons of soft, nearly translucent meat neatly packaged in strips of norlock leather. “There’s plenty for everyone, so let’s party!”

A rousing cheer echoed around the placid lake as the soldier went up and grabbed chunks of delicate meat and threw them over their shoulders, setting about getting the grills up and burning with the enthusiasm of a starving man.

Calvin felt one gaze that hadn’t left him when he announced the end of the work day. It watched him with equal parts awe and dismay.

Now, who is that? Calvin thought to himself, tracing the direction of the gaze back to the upper canopy a few hundred yards down shore. He stared at the canopy intently, unable to make anything out at this distance, but whoever was looking noticed him looking back.

There was a brief flash of panic, and Calvin saw a long, insectoid leg slip out of the shadows for an instant before the tree wobbled for a moment, and the creature was gone.

Well, at least they know we mean business. If they were willing to sacrifice one of their own every month to keep this monster appeased, then the gods knew they wouldn’t cross the people who made a relaxing fishing trip out of their tormentor.

“Hey cap,” Carl the Bannerman asked, stepping by Calvin as he helped a dozen other men lift the beak and carry it up to the trees. “Think I can hang this on my wall?”

“Sorry to break it to you, Carl, but you’re never going to have a wall big enough for that. if you wanna make a roof out of it…” Calvin glanced up at the beak looming over them. “Probably gonna have to start a raffle.”

Carl heaved a frustrated grunt, but they took it aside without complain.

Calvin snagged a nearby footsoldier. “Have the stomach, fat, and leather brought over there,” Calvin said, pointing to where his Knick-knacks were already clearing some land for him to experiment.

Consume.

11/44 Bent remaining.

“ah.” Calvin said as his mind tingled with knowledge.

What?

“N’gui ini gyi iuya kmyigua means ‘Honorless minnows, I will stack your bones.’ More or less.”

Whew, thank goodness he was an asshole.

***Ykuingi, Daughter of the Chief***

They killed it, they killed it! mother hagfish, they killed it, and they’re absolutely terrifying!

Ykuingi passed by the security detail following her trail of Binding without bothering to stop, nimbly jumping around them and continuing on to her mother.

What will we do when they return? What if they’re mad at us? Why is the sickly human obviously the leader? It has to be absolutely dimwitted compared to the larger specimens, and yet they seemed to be waiting on his every word. Nothing about these humans makes sense!

We have to do damage control. We have to befriend these creatures with their tree-constructs and not-Binding Binding, and their weird strange shell-coverings, because if we don’t they’ll annihilate us!

I know! We’ll give them all the rewards promised to the warrior who slays Yninquiak! We’ll treat them like legendary heroes. If anyone believes we sent them there to be eaten, we’ll simply laugh it off.

Yes. We will appease these new creatures with full force while we get a feel for their intentions.

Ykuingi continued plotting, ignoring the questioning shouts of the smaller guards as she hurtled through the canopy towards home, the fact that a breeding contract was on the list of rewards promised to any warrior who killed Yninquiak, didn’t even surface in her mind.

***

“Where’s Ykuingi going?” the guard asked.

“I don’t know, maybe we should check it out?” The other said with the People’s version of a shrug.

They followed her trail and spotted the humans hauling bits and pieces of something up the shore, toward dozens of firepits.

They shuddered at the sight of fire, as the heat was unnatural for one of the People, causing their nice mucus layer to try and get clogged by smoke.

They didn’t quite understand what they were looking at until they spotted the enormous beak resting on the sand. A beak that large could only have one source, which mean the rest of Yninquiak was being…ritualistically burned and eaten by these demons.

“Sweet mother Hagfish.”

“We should head back.”