Midday does not arrive gently.It builds.
Heat presses down through the layered ceiling above the ruins, thickening the air beneath the fused roof of canopy and broken composite. Light finds every gap and turns it into a blade. Fungal skins clinging to old metal sweat moisture back into the clearing until even the shade feels wet.
The ruins keep warmth. The jungle keeps it too. The air is a closed mouth.
I rouse and stretch. The finned members along my wing edges separate in small, involuntary shifts, reading current the way my tongue reads air.
When the motion settles, I sit back on my haunches and let sensation sort itself. Inside. Outside. What changed while I was gone.
There is only one way out of the facility that does not choke shut within meters.
The southeast exit.
I take it.
The old service tunnel rises away from the clearing. The ceiling lowers. Ruin ribs close in where corridors once guided maintenance traffic. The ground slopes upward, metal showing through rot where roots learned not to pry too deep, as if the jungle still respects certain bones.
Water runs here. A thin stream slides down the center line, pulled by gravity back toward the clearing behind me. It sheets over dark plating and carries sound with it, sending it downhill into the place I hatched.
Near the upper lip, where the tunnel breaks and the jungle presses close, I stop. The tunnel holds stale warmth. Trapped. Beyond it, the forest breathes.
I lower my head and drink.
When I lift it, the clearing sits behind me, enclosed and hot. The stream continues past my feet and slips away into shadow. Ahead, the forest waits.
I step beyond the facility's edge and begin my patrol.
Not in widening rings. Those early loops taught me which ground held and which lied. Today I choose a line and keep it.
The facility stays to my right, a jagged boundary of exposed ribs and half-buried wall. Soil packs harder where vegetation learned to brace instead of consume. Step away from the structure and the jungle thickens. Sound breaks apart.
Heat carries scent differently. It does not sink. It rises. It lifts off rotten leaves and damp earth, slides along the ruin's outer slopes, then spills wherever it finds an opening.
I taste it before I see it.
Meat.Old meat.
Warmth makes it loud.
I stop, head angled, letting the air write direction across my tongue and throat. Not west, where grazing signals drift low and steady. Not the north's sharp edge either, where the air feels stripped.
Farther north, beyond the main ruins' broken end, where geometry gives up into collapse and shadow.
I go.
It is not far. No more than a dozen body lengths. The ground changes anyway. Composite gives way to root lattice. Soil thickens, pressed into the shape of metal and then forgotten. Fungal shelves broaden along anything that holds still long enough, layered like pale ribs of their own.
My paired kurus flex close to my neck. I extend them in short tests, brushing a root bridge before I commit my weight. The vibration that returns is immediate and fine.
Live. It will hold.
I step onto it. The smell deepens. Carrion and movement. The air here is busy in a way the ruins are not.
A shallow pocket opens where the ruin has sunk and the jungle has filled the depression with rotting leaves and pale fungus. Vines hang in loose nets from a crossbeam that once braced a corridor. A broken panel lies half-buried like a dark stone. Water beads on it and runs off in thin lines.
Under it, the carcass sits.
Half-eaten. Not fresh. Hide torn open. Ribs exposed. Flesh darkened where air and moisture have worked it, edges swollen and glossy with congealed fluid. A forelimb is gone, joint ripped free rather than cut. Whatever fed here did not take time to be careful.
The carcass swarms.
Teylu gather where the meat is wettest, pale bodies pulsing with constant motion. Small. Many. They make the carcass look alive in a way that is wrong.
My first response is refusal.
The smell is ruinously sweet and sour. A thing left long enough for the world to start taking it back.
I hold still and watch anyway. Refusal does not feed me.
The Teylu do not notice me at first. Their movement is not random. Not panicked. It has pattern. They spread, feed, retreat, then feed again, making space without conflict. When two collide, one yields without a fight. Not weakness. Cost control.
They behave like water. They gather where the resource is richest. They thin where it dries. They pulse in and out of torn tissue, and the carcass's surface rises and falls with them as if it still breathes.
The jungle tolerates them. Insects drift close, then veer away. A thin-winged flier hovers above the open cavity and refuses to land. Even the fungus looks shaped by their passage, thicker where they move, as if it eats what they leave behind.
No waste.
I draw in air again. The carcass stinks of rot and time. The Teylu smell different. Sharp, like cut plants. Like clean oil. Concentrated.
Hunger is not sharp, but it is there. Pressure that returns. A rule.
I lower my head.
Not into the oldest meat. Not yet.
I take a careful test from the edge where flesh meets fungus, where the Teylu are thickest. The meat yields slowly, worked by time, but my teeth still tear a strip free.
With it comes the Teylu.
They crunch under my teeth. Thin shells collapse instantly, bursting into dense paste. The sound is sharp and brief. Then a clean vegetal brightness cuts through the rot.
The taste is not like the carcass. It slices sourness.
My throat tightens once in reflex, then releases. I swallow.
Heat answers inside me, but not like before. Not just digestion warming outward.
Something adjusts.
The refusal does not vanish like a switch. It backs off. The smell stays wrong, but it no longer stops me. Saliva thins in my mouth. Heat settles lower in my core. What repelled me becomes usable information.
Rot is no longer a wall.It is an option.
I take another bite. More Teylu. More of that sharp, clean taste. I chew slower and pay attention. Their bodies collapse into paste with almost no resistance. Thin shells. Dense interiors. Built to be consumed, by anything that finds them.
They are not carrion. They are carrion's conversion.
I watch them again. Different angle now.
They are not merely feeding. They are processing. Scraping. Burrowing. Leaving behind change. The torn cavity is wet where they are thickest and drier where they have already worked. The surface shifts under them. Rot turns into cleaner edges. Exposed tissue becomes stripped strands. Bone emerges, pale and slick, then dries as air reaches it.
They accelerate decay, then harvest it.
A cycle with no sentiment.
My wing-talon lifts and knocks the carcass's flank.
Thok.
Teylu scatter in a pale wave. Some spill into rot. Some cling. Many break toward the edge, where I can take them without burying my teeth in the oldest flesh.
I feed.
Bite. Chew. Swallow.
Each swallow sends a thin, rapid heat through my core. It does not sit heavy the way shell did. It does not roll slow the way fresh meat does. It moves quickly, as if meant to be spent now.
My stomach tightens and releases in patterns that were not there before. My mouth tastes different. Saliva feels slicker, thinner, like it carries a solvent meant for this.
I take a deeper bite and include meat. The interior gives more easily than the surface, collapsing and working hollow. Air escapes in a wet sigh as tissue ruptures. The taste deepens. Heavier, but it no longer triggers recoil. The smell is worse at the center. I do not pull away. The meat breaks down easier than it should. The swallow does not fight me.
Heat spreads cleanly.
When the immediate pressure dulls, the Teylu thin to scattered clusters and retreat deeper into the cavity. The carcass looks less alive now. The wrong movement quiets.
The world comes back in pieces.
Insects drift through shafts of light. Something small skitters along a vine and freezes when my head turns. Above, movement swings between branches.
A Prolemuris pauses, blue-green and quick, and stares down as if weighing whether I am predator or strange terrain. Then it tosses a rind away.
Plop.
The sound lands wrong in my chest. Not anger. Recognition.
Noise draws attention. Waste draws attention too.
I lift my head and listen. Nothing comes.
That silence never stays.It is only a gap.
The Prolemuris vanishes.
Back to the carcass. Beneath everything, marrow sits quiet and dense in the bone. Mineral. Structure. Not fuel. Building.
I move to where bone is exposed cleanly and bite a rib.
It resists, flexing once under pressure.
Then it fractures with a dry crack, splintering unevenly. Shards scrape my gums and tongue before marrow releases, warm and dense beneath the mineral.
Crack.
Satisfying. Firm. Final. I crush splinters between my teeth and swallow shards and dust and the faint richness trapped inside.
Heat answers again.
Slower. Deeper. It spreads into limbs, neck, and the base of my wings where muscle bundles sit thick and underused. Not pain.
Demand.
Calories are not enough. Structure matters.If I linger, I build. If I linger, I advertise.
I remain in the northern reach for minutes, not hours. I move through pockets where scent gathers. Bones left behind, small ones, then larger. Half-buried in rot. Wedged against root bridges where damp collects. Hanging in vine nets where something dragged them and abandoned them.
I eat what breaks. I leave what does not.
Not because I cannot crush it.
Because heat carries scent far, and this place already feels watched.
The air here carries absence. Too many cleaned bones. Too many half-eaten bodies. Grazing signals thin where they should be strong. Tracks in mud that do not cross back. Quiet corridors in the undergrowth where something heavy passes often enough to keep vegetation from rising.
Something feeds in the dark.
Nocturnal. Cautious. Efficient.
I do not see it. I do not need to.
The north is already marked.I am the one arriving late.
Fullness settles heavy. I move away from the carrion pocket and find a stretch where the ruin ceiling opens wider. Air moves more freely here. Light spills in broader panes. The world feels less close to my skin.
My wings respond without intent. Membranes sense pressure. Finned members part slightly, measuring current and angle.
I face into the wind.
Not open sky.
Enough gap.
I run. Rear legs push. Wing-talons strike and lift in rhythm. The mid-wing talons touch down like brief legs when balance shifts. The smaller stabs correct roll when the wind stutters.
Then I jump.
Not flight.
A hop that becomes a glide for a heartbeat.
Air catches membrane. Weight becomes less. Control answers.
I land hard but intact. Wing-talons take first load. Rear feet catch second. Impact jars joints. Nothing breaks.
Again. Longer run. Stronger push. A longer heartbeat of glide before gravity takes its due.
Each attempt teaches: angle that holds lift, angle that dumps it; sequence the finned members must follow; the way the stabs can catch unstable air and keep a fall from turning into a tumble.
I do not leave the ground for long.
But I leave it.
That is enough.
The wings can pay rent.
When light dulls and shadows lengthen, the northern absence sharpens. What hides in heat does not hide as well when day cools.
I return to the ruins by the same line. Facility on my left now, ribs guiding me back, until the tunnel mouth and its stale warmth reappear.
The clearing holds its familiar geometry. My broken shell remains where it fell, a landmark that does not move. The stream's thin sheet provides constant sound below, guiding me without sight.
I settle beneath the collapsed wall and fold my wings tight.
Sleep does not arrive as surrender.
It comes as a partial closing.
The world is wider than the clearing.
In that half-rest, the day's changes keep turning inside me. Rot no longer repels. Old meat no longer stops me. The taste of Teylu sits like a sharp mark, and beneath it my core feels prepared, as if something inside widened its tolerance for what the world offers.
Somewhere north, something moves with a weight that is not small. I do not hear it clearly, but absence tightens, then releases. A predator moving without panic.
I remain still.
Tomorrow, west.
Night folds deeper than the ruin's shade.
The clearing's familiar geometry dissolves. Not into nothing. Into an arrangement that is not a place. Sound becomes distance without direction. Scent becomes color. The stream's constant thread becomes a pulse beneath everything.
<> <> <>
I am not asleep the way I was before.
I am held.
Roots do not touch me, but I feel them anyway. Not in the ground. In the air. In the space between leaves. In the thin places where heat rises and coolness sinks. A pressure surrounds me. Gentle in force. Absolute in presence.
A field.
A network.
The jungle is not separate from it. The ruin is not separate from it. Even the bones I swallowed feel threaded, as if they were never truly mine.
A shape forms. Recognized, not seen.
Not a voice.
An intention.
Images surface without warning. A rush of water, not in a stream, but in a river so wide its current moves like thought. A canopy seen from above, endless and layered. A storm of wings, not hunting, turning together as if one body.
Then the carrion pocket returns.
The carcass. The Teylu. The fungus. The rot. The wrong smell. The sharp taste.
The scene tilts, as if something changes the angle.
The Teylu are no longer insects. They are a mechanism. Small by necessity. Through them the carcass becomes clean. Through them, waste becomes resource. Through them, the forest closes the loop.
Understanding lands without words.
Not all food is fresh. Not all death is loss.
A pulse moves through the network. It does not command. It does not explain. It aligns.
Permitted.Allowed.
Then a second image, distant and heavy.
A shape moving through undergrowth with practiced weight. The north predator. It is not shown in detail. Only as effect. A corridor of quiet. A line of emptied ground.
Warning. Informational.
Cost.
Then the west.
Hoofbeats like a soft drum. A basin of slick earth. A body that slips when panic comes too late.
The pulse tightens once, like a muscle bracing, then releases.
Hold.
<> <> <>
When I surface, the ruins return in slow layers. Drips. Wet air. The stream's sound filling space. I can hear my own breath.
I am awake.
The feeling remains, thin as a thread.
Not a message.
A presence that touched, then withdrew.
I wake without light.
Darkness above the ruins is thicker, layered. Moisture beads along the underside of broken composite and drips at uneven intervals.
Tap.Tap.
The air is cooler. Washed. The ground beneath me is darker where it was dry before. The stream carries more sound than yesterday, a fuller sheet of water sliding over metal.
I uncurl slowly. Wings unfold partway, membranes stretching with a faint pull that is not pain. Mid-wing talons release their brace against the ground and reset as I shift my weight. Rear legs extend, talons scraping lightly as I find balance.
Skrrt.
Droplets strike my crest and run along the kurus resting close to my neck. Brief. Cool.
I do not know rain as a named thing. I know cause and effect. The drops did not fall from one leaf or one seam. They fell from everywhere at once, as if the roof of green had been struck and answered in a thousand small impacts. The air smells rinsed.
I stretch fully.
My wings feel heavier.
Not burdened.
Dense.
I shift my weight, and the floor answers differently. Composite compresses more under me. Limbs extend farther before meeting the same angles. Wing-talons bite deeper into rot and metal alike.
I am larger.
Not large enough to see without memory, but large enough to feel. Yesterday I consumed shell, flesh, bone, and Teylu. Yesterday something inside me adjusted.
This is not sudden length. It is consolidation.
What was taken has been kept.What was kept will be used.
Before leaving, I patrol the ruins.
Slow. Deliberate.
The clearing is a bowl of broken geometry. The central rise holds the cracked mass of my shell. Three corridor mouths remain visible where the facility once continued, but the jungle has claimed them. From the clearing they pretend to be paths. Up close they are always the same lie. Five meters in, the green closes into a living wall.
I stop at each mouth anyway.
Listen. Scent. Vibration through the floor where old metal still lies under rot.
Nothing intrudes.
Quiet means uncontested. Quiet means someone will test it.
I drink from the stream again, less for thirst than to taste the day.
Clean. Metallic thread. Diluted.
When I lift my head, I hold still long enough to hear what drinking usually hides.
No footfalls. No scraping. No heavy shift in canopy.
Only the slow life of the ruins. Dripping. A faint creak of vines under their own wet weight.
Tk. Tk. Tk.
The facility holds.
That is a win I can feel.It will be spent.
When I turn west, I do so with intention.
West is closest. Even after the wash, the west signal reaches the ruins without effort. Hoofbeats arrive in light packets, then fade, then return. Many bodies moving together in repetition.
Hexapedes.
I do not move directly toward them.
Instead I circle downwind, keeping the ruin's outer wall close to my side, using its broken angles as cover. Hill and metal fused. Root-laced. Skinned by fungus. It still holds a line.
The forest opens in stages. First a thinning where light reaches ground in wider panes. Then a shallow basin where grasslike growth spreads between roots and broken stone. Not a plain. A pocket. Used because the ground is soft and the growth is easy.
I stop at the edge.
A portion of the herd grazes within view. Six bodies. Hides banded with darker patterning. Movements quick but not panicked. Fans lifting and settling with each breath. Hooves churn wet ground into a map of recent passage.
The wash has slicked the basin. Turns are wider than they would be on dry ground. Starts are slower.
Slick ground steals speed.Slick ground makes mistakes expensive.
One lags.
An adolescent male, heavier through the shoulders than the others but not yet dense with adult mass. Steps lack precision. He pauses longer between mouthfuls. His head lifts often.
Alert.
Young.
I study the basin as much as the bodies.
A low rise angles toward a fallen trunk, slick with moss but firm beneath. Beyond it, ground slopes down into the basin. A collapsed wall section breaks line of sight in two places. Not enough to hide me standing. Enough if I stay low.
A path.
Usable.
The wind finishes it. It carries my scent away from them, drawn by cooler air sliding along the ruin's edge. The world is loud with wet leaves, fungus, and soil. My presence sits under it.
Muted.
I wait.
Waiting is not indecision.
It is cost control.
A rushed strike spends energy. A clean strike spends less. If I am to hold territory, I cannot bleed for every meal.
The herd drifts. The lagging male moves farther from the rest, drawn to a patch of growth nearer the basin's center. The distance between him and the nearest adult widens by a few body lengths.
Enough.
Will the drop end him before he finds traction?
I move.
Not fast. Not yet.
Up onto the rise. I keep my body behind the broken line of the collapsed wall until the last moment. Wing-talons set and release in controlled rhythm. Rear feet push without slipping. The slickness is real, but my points bite.
When I break cover, I do not charge.
I drop.
Gravity takes me down the slope faster than muscle alone could. Wings open just enough for membrane to catch and guide. Finned members separate in sequence. The stabs correct a slight roll as my weight shifts.
Not flying.
Falling with intent.
His head snaps up.
Too late.
I land on him. Wet ground bursts outward. Hide tears under my wing-talons as weight drives down through muscle and spine, forcing breath from his chest in a harsh, broken exhale.
Thud.
He scrapes for purchase and finds only slide. His body tilts wrong under my mass.
Panic comes. Panic needs traction.
He tries to lurch sideways. I ride the movement and press harder, using weight as restraint instead of chasing balance.
Only then do I bring my head down, crest angled in. Not to break bone. To pin. To deny the last clean turn.
He collapses sideways, legs scrabbling, mud spraying. He tries to rise. Rear legs find nothing but slick ground. Front legs push and slip. His fan flares wide, a reflex meant to intimidate, but display does not create leverage.
The herd reacts instantly.
They scatter. Away, not toward me. Hoofbeats thunder and fade as bodies vanish between trunks, fans flaring and retracting. The ground shudders, then stills.
I take the neck.
Jaws close around the base where muscle bunches and blood runs close. He kicks once, hard, a blind strike. It glances off my side and leaves no damage. He twists, trying to bring weight to bear, but he is half in mud, half on slick grass.
No leverage.
I bite down.
Resistance holds for a heartbeat as cartilage compresses.
Then it gives. Heat floods my mouth as blood vents and structure collapses.
Crk.
His body jerks once more, then slackens. Breath leaves in a wet rush. Legs spasm, then fall still.
Clean.
The basin did its part.
I hold until motion stops, then lift my head and scan the tree line.
No approach.
Only the forest swallowing panic and giving nothing back.
I drag the body toward cover at the basin's edge, teeth locked in hide. Weight pulls at my neck. The ground gives under hooves and ribs and my own talons, but I keep purchase. I wedge the carcass against a root buttress where vine curtains hang low and sight lines break.
I do not eat immediately.
I wait.
Breathing steady. Scent sorting. Listening.
Minutes pass.
No return.
The world lets me keep it.For now.
Then I feed.
Methodical. Neck first. Shoulder next. Tendons part under steady pulls. Blood pools rather than sprays, dark and warm, soaking into earth as the body cools beneath my weight. I tear clean sections free and swallow. Between bites, I lift my head to check air and ground. Feeding makes noise. Blood carries scent.
The meat is clean. Dense. Heat spreads through my core, heavier and slower than the Teylu's sharp burn. It sits and builds.
I hollow the body, then crack long bones. The first fracture takes force, jaws tightening until structure fails unevenly. The second breaks faster. Marrow releases with faint sweetness beneath grit and dust.
Time passes. I do not rush.
When I finish, pressure settles into dense weight. Blood dries along my jaw. Breath slows.
No pursuit comes.
The first hunt is complete.It will not be my last.
I turn back toward the facility.
The return is short. West is close. The basin is not far.
As the ruin's broken angles reappear through vines, I slow.
Not fear.
Assessment.
Before the clearing opens, I stop.
Listen. Scent. Vibration through root lattice fused into old floor.
Nothing.
Still quiet.
The facility remains uncontested.Another win.
I enter the clearing and move to the central rise. The shell sits like a split monument. The stream continues.
Under the collapsed wall, shade holds. Metal beneath is cool.
My body works on what I consumed.
Heat spreads through core. Nutrients break down and distribute. Marrow becomes structure. Meat becomes fuel. The sharpness of yesterday's Teylu lingers like an edge, as if the earlier adjustment makes today's feeding more efficient.
The heat does not stay in the gut.
It moves into limb. Into neck. Into the bases of my wings.
Pressure gathers there.
Not pain.
Demand.
Unused mass is liability. A creature that cannot use its own structure will be outlasted by something that can.
The pressure does not ask.
Height solves this.
The forest is thick. It steals sight lines. It hides threats. It hides prey.
I step onto the central rise where the ground is firmer, packed hard by old weight and buried structure, and face into moving air.
Wind slides along the broken roof and spills into the clearing in irregular pulses. Each pulse touches membrane differently.
Information.
I flex my main wings. Not fully open. Controlled unfurl, enough for finned members to separate and feel pressure between them. The stabs mirror the motion beneath, smaller membranes catching secondary currents and correcting imbalance before it becomes a stumble.
The fins do not flap.
They adjust.
Pressure gathers under the wing when angle is right. Drag bites at the edge when it is wrong. A subtle lift appears. Not enough to carry me. Enough to matter.
Wing-talons take load as I lean forward. Mid-wing points dig into rot and composite. Rear legs push.
I run.
Measured acceleration across the clearing's span. The clearing is not large, but it is enough for strides to stack and for air pressure to build against membrane even without full extension.
At the far edge, vine curtains and corridor mouths wait.
Five meters in, the green closes.
A limit.
I turn and run back.
This time I open the wings more. Finned members separate wider. Stabs angle outward, catching unstable air that would otherwise roll me.
My feet leave the ground for a moment.
Not flight.
Less weight. Longer stride.
I land. Wing-talons first. Rear feet second. Impact controlled.
Not graceful.
Safe.
Again.
Each pass refines angle. Each pass teaches where the broken roof channels wind and where currents collapse into dead pockets. Each pass shortens the distance between intention and result.
The clearing can train me.That matters.
After several runs, heat builds thick in my chest. Exertion layers over digestion. I slow and breathe.
Wind carries scents from outside.
West remains close. The herd's trail is fading, but the basin's grazed earth still sends a low signal.
North is absence. Bone-clean and recent.
East is distant, a faint cool mineral note when wind shifts.
South is the far vibration, heavy and slow.
The map holds.
Now I choose.
Not north.
Not today.
Fullness makes me slow. Slow makes me vulnerable. That is cost.
Not east.
Not today.
East costs time, and time away from the ruins costs certainty.
So I stay close.
I leave the clearing and climb a low rise west of the facility's outer ribs, where the forest thins enough to let sound carry. I hold still and watch.
Motion appears between trunks.
Then another.
The herd has not fled far.
They have relocated.
Spacing tighter. Heads lifting more often. They move as if the ground itself learned to bite.
I watch them for a long time. Not with hunger. With study.
If I hunt again soon, they will run sooner. They will change the corridor.
If I want territory, I cannot empty it.
Prey must persist.
Function.A territory without prey starves its owner.
When I turn back toward the ruins, I do it slowly.
Not tired.
Listening.
The ruin's presence returns before I see it. Air changes where metal holds different temperatures. The stream's echo returns. Ground hardens as roots brace against buried structure.
At the clearing's edge, I pause.
Nothing moved.
The broken shell remains. The stream remains. The roof drips.
Shade takes me again.
Rest does not arrive cleanly.
My body holds heat. Digestion and exertion layered together. Membrane itches where it stretched and cooled. The finned members settle, but they remember pressure.
Somewhere to the south, very far, deep trumpeting returns once, muffled by canopy and distance, arriving as a slow vibration through air and root.
Somewhere to the north, closer than the south but still not close, absence tightens for a moment, as if something moved through undergrowth with practiced weight.
Then it releases.
I remain still.
I do not challenge what hunts the dark yet.
I close my eyes.
Not deep sleep.
Partial closing.
Sound remains a thin thread.
Scent remains map.
Vibration remains warning.
Inside, territory holds.
And I hold with it.
The question changes.
It is not whether I can feed.
It is what feeding will attract.