Apex predator

[Salandis]

Moana approached the lake shore with an air of relaxation and anticipation. It was late in Wathais, well past midnight. The moon was low in the sky, but still full and bright. The air was warm and calm, with just a hint of breeze to send soft curls of water lapping at the sand. Perhaps most importantly, the beach was deserted. She was well out of the central Wathais city, in the suburbs that framed the lake shore. The beach was unlit except for the moon, the houses around were silent and dark, and the beach was actually clean. It was as close to perfect as it got, for her.

She took off the shoulder jacket and tube top she was wearing and carefully slipped out of the tight leather pants. A normal person skinny dipping would no doubt have to find some handy rock to hide this under, but she simply concentrated a moment and the pile of clothes she held vanished with a faint glow. They would be wet when she retrieved them, but nothing a careful drying wouldn’t fix. She stretched, arcing her back in the moonlight, and then strode to the shore. Without hesitating she walked out into the dark water, giving a soft sigh of pleasure as it folded her in its embrace. She waded from the shore, and then swam out until the ground below dropped off into empty darkness. Then, without even taking a breath, she dove deep into the water. Far from any eyes, she finally was able to relax completely.

Had anyone been able to see her at that moment, they would have been incredibly confused. In an instant, Moana’s supple brown body turned entirely transparent. Her form blurred, and then seemed to unfold, becoming much longer and thicker. And then, in the space taken to gasp, it was solid again - only deserving another gasp as she wallowed in the water, revelling in her true form.

Not that taking human form was uncomfortable, really. It was something like wearing a suit, she supposed. A bit irritating, not really bad especially, but an absolute relief to be out of. She rolled her 20’ form in the water, amused at the wake she created, and then with a flick of her tail headed further out into the lakes’ depths. Her form in the water was long and lithe, eel-like in build but with heavy scales on her back and sides, with stubby webbed feet emerging from her sides and tucked up close to the paler belly.  Her long neck was graceful, nearly as long as her tail, and her blunt, not quite crocodilian head was long jawed, showing the saw-tooth spread of an apex aquatic predator.  In water this size there had to be a good amount of fresh fish, and Moana fully intended to find some.

She had been out a few hours, and found more than a few unfortunate trout. She was getting the edge back into her hunting, and revelling in being the top of the food chain in this particular evening. She was even tracking another school of some kind, teasing out an elusive group of fish in the dark of the lake depths, when something in the deeper water caught her eye. Far from the original beach now, she was around the lake’s rocky eastern shore. Dark as it was, it was difficult to pin down how deep the water was out here. Looking down at the lake-bed there seemed to be something like an octopus tentacle - which was very weird, since there have never been any freshwater octopus species, or any cephalopod species for that matter. Her curiosity was piqued, and she left the school of fish to take a closer look. Turning on her tail, she angled down towards the lake bottom. And yet, fast as she was, at first it didn’t seem to be getting any closer at all.

Faintly, an alarm bell began to ring. Whatever this was it was clearly big, and she had gotten that sense of a strange, large predator in the area when she first arrived at Wathais. She had discounted it, since not much was big enough to threaten her kind, but this suddenly seemed something large enough to be beyond threatening, into the realm of terrifying.

She stopped in the water as she began to make out more of the outline of this creature. It had many more tendrils than the one she initially spotted, but they were hard to see. There was an amorphous black outline sprawled against the deeper darkness of the lake-bed depths, and it was big. With the illusion granted by distance stripped away, she saw it was large enough that many of those tentacles could easily be as big as she was. Her instincts were screaming at her to flee, but in a strange paralysis she tried to follow the body shape. Her head followed the shape from the tendrils she first saw, angling up a long lean body, to what seemed like a large blunt head - which, she saw, was ahead of her, since the vast creature was curved against the lake-bed.

It was in the grip of an icy horror that she hung suspended in the water, slowly realising that the creature below her dwarfed her in size, likely even being larger than the largest of whales... and she was close enough it could probably catch her own scent on the water, for its own oddly alien scent had already permeated to her.

[Marshmallow]

The great dark shape rested against the craggy slope of the lakebed, nearly motionless save for the slow undulations of its longer tentacles. They seemed to wave and sway as though under the effects of a calm breeze, or an ocean current. Idle they were, almost hypnotic in the calm of their repetitive movements. There was no immediate sign that the creature had even noticed its silent watcher in the deep.

But he most certainly had.


Malthiel had no sense of smell to speak of, but his kind had evolved other ways - better ways, in his opinion - to detect prey in the depths. Every move made by the serpentine form hovering above him sent ripples, vibrations through the water. He had felt those vibrations long before his visitor had even come to realize the scale of what she was looking at. And even as she hung there, stuck fast by either fear or fascination, he could just about sense the thrum of her heartbeat in the dead silence of the lake.


The crocodilian head shifted and one eye opened, a shining silvery orb in the darkness. It swiveled lazily to and fro, as if searching, as if he didn't already know precisely where the serpent was. And then, one by one, the other fourteen blinked open. The silver irises shone like mirrors in the deep, catching and reflecting and amplifying what little light reached this far, until it almost seemed like they were glowing.

His head tilted, and all at once all eyes were on the trespassing Taniwha. For long moments he remained still and silent, watching her. Then several of his tentacles retracted, pulling flush against his back and flanks. His primary quartet shifted beneath him, and slowly the leviathan pushed up and away from the rocky bottom. He twisted in the water, movement slow and languid, relaxed - for surely he had nothing to fear from a creature he could easily swallow whole - as he turned to regard his visitor.

A low thunderous rumble shook the depths, a sound that was felt almost more than it was heard. The tail end of the note rose in pitch, questioning, before tapering off in a cascade of clicks and warbles.

[Salandis]

Moana hung in the darkness, paralysed in fright, the odd, astringent sense of otherworld in her mouth and nose. Below her a giant silver disk opened, shining brightly in the darkness as if the full moon had been cast into the dark depths. A colossal eye, vaster than her head, shone in the darkness. It was not long alone, as another opened, then another, and more, until fifteen gleaming metallic lamps shone in the gloomy dark, all looking in different directions, sweeping the water independent of each other, seeking out… something. Amid a swamp of fear, she realised it was looking for her, and yet still she couldn’t move, suspended in the water near the lake floor.  She was still stunned in paralysis when one of them found her, and then suddenly all of them swivelled to look directly at her. Icy terror swam down her spine as the dark form gathered itself below her, swelling in front of her in brobdingnagian horror, leviathan made real.

A rumble shivered through the water, a deep bass that rocked through her form instead of being heard by her. The sound was complex, patterned even. It rose at the end in pitch, shaping itself in a string of clicks and warbles that sounded remarkably like whale talk. Language, she realised through her fear. It was trying to talk to her. The addition of intelligence was not reassuring, and only added a new and surreal level to the threat before her.

Moana did not speak whale. The native language of her kind did not rely on anything as mundane as sound, instead being the language of the mind, the language of the spirits, something that had never worked with another creature – even among Aotearoa’s other natives. Casting her own mind out before her did not greet her with the warm glow of the home waters, but instead felt like casting herself into a darkness so complete and cold it felt like the interstellar depths had been brought before her in this world. Could it even hear her? Her message was less language and more concept, a definition of herself as friendly (As if she could be hostile!) laced with barely hidden fear.

[Marshmallow]

As the interloper floated in paralyzed silence before him, an alien sensation brushed past his consciousness. Like the caress of a sun-warmed stream, it was not unpleasant, but stood in stark contrast to the vast abyss of his own presence. It carried not words so much as impressions, images and intent. A language of the mind, heard but not spoken. Similar, in a sense, to his own deep speech. It seemed an age had past since he had last encountered a mind that could reach his own.


Reflexes borne of distant memory warned him to draw away from that mental contact. A lip curled, a flash of teeth in the darkness as he considered the morsel before him. The touch of that other mind was mild, tentative. Earnest without being invasive - and tinged with an undercurrent of terror - and after only that single moment's reservation, Malthiel allowed it to filter through. The abyss welcomed the sun-touched waters.


With a single, lazy stroke of his tail, the massive shoggoth rose from the lakebed proper. His head drew level with the serpent, easily within striking distance, and pinned her under the stare of one great, silvery eye. An impression of curiosity and expectation rolled from his mind to hers. Not quite the same language, not quite on the same wavelength. More like an imitation, a camouflaged language. It adapted to what she expected to hear and feel.

Another rumble rolled through the depths, accompanied by more of the alien cadence of clicks and chittering noises. But this time layered on top of the sound was a voice, as deep and dark as the lake itself, translated automatically and pressed into the other mind with a sense of polite laughter.


'Isn't it customary to knock before entering another's home?'

[Salandis]

The massive creature responded, sliding up from the lake floor with a speed that defied its bulk. Even amid the fear that swamped her, Moana realised that had she fled at once it was unlikely she would have escaped. Now, with that tremendous head brought close, such a move would be suicide. A single silvery orb rested on her from a bare body-length away. And then, impossibly, the darkness spoke. Amid the shuddering vibrations of before, her mind caught a drifting current, an impression of curiosity. It was not at all the language of home, rising on a current of thought that felt as though it had flowed from the airless depths of the dead ocean floor. It was more as though it was pretending to be – as if this creature had adapted to the language she could understand.

‘Isn’t it customary to knock before entering another’s home?’

Despite flowing from the frozen depths the tone of the message was polite, even amused. Moana’s horror, born from finding death in the lake depths, broke. Not from a lessening of danger, no - her hind-brain was still happily estimating her survival in seconds - but because here, at the unexpected end of her life, there was polite conversation. She felt a spurt of irrational irritation under the paralysing fear of facing a creature with teeth as long as her tail.  Beyond that, the very texture of the thought was... cold.  Speaking with another of her own people was like the shimmering play of light over waves, while this mind was edged with the cold abyss of the depthless dark.  

Her hind brain won after all.  In a movement swift and graceful she turned end over end and pushed with all her considerable muscular might, even reaching out with magic to command the water around her to push her faster.  She shot to the surface like a homesick meteor, turning back only briefly, after what felt like an eternity, to see if that eldritch horror was chasing her.

[Marshmallow]

As the seconds ticked by, stretching into a small eternity there in the dark, Malthiel appraised the tiny creature before him. His greeting seemed to have fallen to deaf ears, though he knew fully well that it wasn't due to a barrier of language. The silence was telling. He could sense the paralyzing tension in the little serpent, could almost feel the pounding of her terrified heart.

A lip curled back in a crododile grin. A deep, rattling rumble pulsed through the dense waters, felt as much as heard. Some monstrous, alien approximation of a chuckle.


The tension snapped. In the blink of an eye, the little intruder spun in place and bolted, fleeing up and away toward the distant surface.

Over a dozen eyes snapped wide in attention, all turning to track the sudden lance of movement through his waters. Malthiel's great body seemed sluggish in comparison; wide, heaving motions of a colossal fluke, the sway of tentacles thicker than tree trunks, the gape of monstrous jaws.
His size masked his speed.
With a surge of motion that had all the power of a terrible flood behind it, the shoggoth lurched upward. A great maw lined with row upon row of glistening dagger teeth yawned open beneath the fleeing morsel. For a terrible few seconds, the serpent's upward momentum stalled as the water around her surged backward to fill the void of his jaws...


And then, the fleeing Taniwha was clear and away, shooting out of reach and climbing the fathoms at speed. When she finally slowed and chanced that look behind her, where she may have expected to see that eldricth darkness on her tail, there was... nothing. Nothing had followed her. The waters stretched around and below her as dark and empty and silent as the moonless sea. The only hint that her experience had even been real at all was the distant, thunderous rumble-clatter that pulsed through the water; alien laughter, carried away on the currents.

[Salandis]

Nothing. Moana floated gently at the surface, moonlight silhouetting her sleek lines to the darkness below – a darkness that was entirely empty. Her heart continued to race, insisting that she was in danger, but the water beneath her was entirely clear. It was impossibly to believe that she had escaped, not when she had felt the back-pull of water, knowing it for what it was, realizing that she had to have hovered, however briefly, within that titan’s jaws.

And, with a chuckle, he had let her leave. He had let her live. There was no question of that, really, that she had been allowed to survive when just as easily she could have been eaten.

And so she stopped, resting near the surface, allowing her mind to catch up with what had happened now that her heart began to slow. ‘He is old,’ she thought to herself, remembering his colossal size against the lake bed. The eldest Taniwha were bigger, really, but they were virtually sessile – they stopped living in the physical world, giving themselves over to the dreams of the spirit world, and arguably could be considered dead. Her parents were some of the eldest Taniwha that had not begun that long rest, and were smaller – if only a little – than the creature below. Still… ‘He’s lonely.’

She didn’t need her tiles to read that, somehow knowing it for a certainty. Moana wasn’t a seer, wasn’t as practised with the tiles as others of her kind, but something very significant had happened. She sensed that her own life – her own future – hinged on what happened next. Whether she return to the shore, return to human shape and continue in the city as she was, or… something else.

It was curiosity that finally won, that vague pull of something greater, a revered elder beneath the surface that would change her life. Moana’s shape changed again, lengthening and narrowing into a shape she had created – imagined – while still pretending to be a human in school. Her body became even more serpentine, while her face became more fierce and draconic. Long whiskers grew from her nose, sweeping back along her body, and a ridged spine grew next to oversized scales. Her fins turned into slender legs, too weak to possibly hold her but dexterous, and finally glowing patterns of bio-luminescence sprouted in intricate spirals down her body and belly. ‘This really makes more sense in the water,’ she thought to herself as she swam back down into the depths. ‘I never understood how a Chinese dragon was supposed to work otherwise!’

The lake bottom began to resolve below her as she spiralled gently down into the depths. ‘I couldn’t find the door’ She called out below her. ‘May I come down?’

[Marshmallow]

The shoggoth trilled softly to himself, pleased and amused by the outcome of his play. The intruder had fled for dear life without so much as a backwards glance. He watched as her form shrank with the distance and churning shadows, until she was well beyond line of sight. Nothing more than a speck against the distant shafts of moonlight high above.


With a flex of muscular limbs and a sweep of his fluke, Malthiel turned from where his visitor had seconds ago hung suspended in disbelief and began a slow, lazy ascent. It took some moments to expel the water that had flooded his maw, and during that time he thought. He wondered at the identity of this youth that had so brazenly trespassed in his waters, the wherefrom and why. It had been some millenia since he had last conversed with one of the Taniwha - it was a curious and puzzling thing to find one here, so far from its native seas. And so small...


As he circled upwards in a slow, wide spiral, the speck made an unexpected return. He felt the ripples of movement before he even saw the serpent. His tentacles splayed to bring him to a gradual halt, silvery eyes searching the darkness. And as she came into view, wearing a different shape than before, he once again felt the sunny warmth of her spirit speech flow across his mind: A polite request to enter his domain.


'Certainly,' the abyss rumbled back, at once suprised and pleased to see the youngster return. Clearly there was more to her than he had first expected. He bared his rows of teeth in an approximation of a smile. 'Such formal attire is hardly required,' the leviathan boomed, his rattling chuckle reverberating off the rocky lakebed. 'I know what you are already. Why, little one, did you decide to return?'

[Salandis]

Moana spiralled down into the lake, the water darkening around her once again. The bioluminescance she gave off lit the water around her, softening the gloom and slightly extending her vision. Any fish that had still remained in the vicinity fled as the soft blue-green glow filled the darkness, adding a feeling of surreal emptiness to the depths. Below her she beheld the elder she had startled, hovering now above the lake floor. Certainly, the voice rumbled back at her, black pitch over the water of her own mind. Dark and unfamiliar as it was, in it she sensed surprise and a hint of pleasure, the emotions like the rainbow glitter on spilled oil in the sun.


She laughed at his observation, and if there was still a hint of fear in that laughter it was perhaps understandable.  'If you know of our people you know complex shapes and fine detail, especially of size, are difficult for us to hold,' she said, arching in a loop as she descended. 'Besides being pretty in it’s own right, I like to show off.'  That admission was delivered frankly, and entirely true - Moana liked to flaunt her skill like this, and staying among stuck-up normals for so long she hadn't had the opportunity to be suitably appreciated.


Close enough now to circle him she was awed again by his size. Moana was longer now, a slender 30 feet of dappled and patterned sea-dragon, but she would not even be a third as long as the creature she now swam around – and was dwarfed by his mass besides. He frightened her, could easily eat her, had startled her intentionally, and if she had been sane she would even now be in the city booking a flight home. But she had been putting that off for years now, and in this creature she sensed mischief equal to any of the Tipua tricksters of her home.


'And if you know of them, revered elder, I do not know of you,' she called. 'Tell me truly,' she asked, as sparkles of laughter coloured her mind, 'If I was not so far from my people that I could reach their dreams, would they tell me to flee from you, or simply be cautious?'