Citrine (Deliverance #3)

2. Wroahk

2

Wroahk

This rhelld will be my most challenging kill yet. I can already taste its flesh but stop myself from letting my teeth clack together in anticipation.

I keep myself moving through the water, my tentacles tasting the surrounding water, letting me know where to go.

I catch a flash of green limbs in the distance, along a reef I have hunted many times, though it is contested territory.

Another glance and I can tell it is a female, signaling in my direction, ready to lay a clutch.

No. I ignore her.

A rhelld would be far too difficult to fight if I were missing limbs. She will have to find another male willing to risk death just to offload his seed.

I have a better sort of hunt and turn my attention back to the trail teasing me through the water.

I see a flash of red and move my limbs so they propel me toward it, elated that it has moved into more shallow water.

I will soon have it trapped, though I would prefer to remain out of the warmth and sunlight. It tries to dart away again, but it is tiring, no match for my endurance.

As I close in, it releases one of its fins, hoping I am one of the many mindless creatures that would take the small meal as a distraction while it flees back into the trench beneath us.

I ignore it, though I see other opportunistic predators are already tearing it apart.

If it drops any more fin layers, it won't live much longer. I push through the long blue weeds close to the shore, scanning for another glimpse of it, tentacles splayed out to detect any disturbances in the water.

It isn't swimming now, using the weeds to hide, but after a moment I can detect its heart, pounding away in delicious fear.

I drift toward it slowly, savoring the last few moments of this day’s long hunt, reaching out slowly toward where it is trembling behind a layer of weeds, pulling my gills tight against my body in preparation for its last defense.

I snatch the large red body toward me, ignoring the clicking screeches it makes, moving slowly away from the poison it has dumped into the water around us.

Just as I move it to a safe distance, and prepare to break it apart and feast, something punches down into the water from above.

I freeze. What new predator is this?

Something gleaming pierces the rhelld and I'm yanked up out of the water before I'm able to release it from my hold.

Once the spray of water clears, I see a giant pink… something in the sky. Floating there, just like I would under the water. It's… wrong. Nothing large moves through the sky.

Before I can puzzle it out or get away, it attacks me with its own tentacles, except there are far more of them than any creature should ever have, and when they pull against me, they feel nothing like flesh.

I try to tear into them, but they won't break and instead leave long cuts and gashes as they squeeze me into a smaller and smaller shape.

Then it pulls me into its maw, the rhelld screaming out in pain near me, its multiple rows of black eyes rolling as green blood pumps out of it and down into the water below us.

I try to fight against the hold, but only manage to swing myself through the air. The wind already biting into me and drying me out.

I'm spinning wildly as the creature pulls me into its mouth. I scream out my defiance as it prepares to eat me, but once I get inside its mouth…

I see other creatures. None of them look like they have been chewed. Do they live inside it? Cleaner fish?

I don't have a chance to figure out their role before one of them holds out a limb and coats me with something vile, every sucker sending me information about it I would rather not know.

My vision darkens as my stomach heaves.