Echoes of Creation by Lance Conrad

Author:Lance Conrad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lance Conrad
Published: 2020-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The group continued to press him for stories as they walked back toward the open plain they had come from. It took a while before he could convince them that the sprawling scramble for survival, while exciting, didn’t make for much of a narrative.

Everyone grew silent as they cleared the hills and stepped out onto the plains. The hulking carcass of the monster that had first hunted Sadavir lay sprawled out in the tall grasses.

The work of decomposition was well on its way and most of the party turned aside, holding their noses and trying not to breathe when the wind wafted the stench their way.

Sadavir, with Vova by his side, approached the dead body. It didn’t look nearly as large with the muscles largely melted away or consumed by smaller scavengers. Still, the absurdly long claws looked bleached in the sun and stood out like long white swords leaning on a rack.

“Look at this,” Vova beckoned Sadavir over to the head. Once Sadavir had joined him, Vova used a stick to push the decayed lips farther back from the teeth. Four long fangs, two on top and two on bottom, fit together perfectly, the motion of the jaw serving to sharpen them.

Sadavir shuddered involuntarily.

“Those things will haunt my dreams the rest of my life,” he confessed to Vova. His friend looked sympathetic, but was already shaking his head.

“You’re missing the point. There’s something much scarier here than fangs. Look at the back.”

Sadavir leaned over to get a closer look at the back of the thing’s mouth. He looked for what had so concerned his friend, but the rest seemed fairly mundane. The back teeth were flat and worn. He looked back at Vova and shrugged his shoulders.

“Molars, Sadavir,” Vova clarified. “Not sharp, tearing teeth for eating meat, these are flat, grinding teeth for eating plants.”

He paused, waiting again for Sadavir to comprehend this new discovery. When all he got back was a blank stare, he sighed dramatically.

“May the powers save me from the Creators’ education system,” he remarked, rolling his eyes. “These creatures are omnivorous, meaning they can eat plants or animals. This matters because most predators are very limited in number due to how many prey animals are available.”

“But if they don’t need meat to survive...” Sadavir began.

“Then there is no effective limit to how many of these things there might be. We’ve seen small packs, but if they can live off greens, there’s no reason why there couldn’t be entire herds up here.”

“Herds...” Sadavir whispered the word. There were villages to the east of Surac that kept cattle. Sadavir had visited them once and had stood in awe of the vast number of animals that swept over the wide prairie. Now his mind boggled as he tried and failed to imagine replacing every plodding animal in that herd with one of these violent monsters.

“We’d better get back,” both men spoke in unison, deeply unnerved by this new discovery and the possible implications. As horrific as their

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