Gritlack

Lightning strobes out of the darkness, the multiple murmurings that follow shake the ground. The ash-black landscape, choked with thorns, spears out from the methane riverbeds like twisted dead coral, rising hundreds of feet up, grasping toward the brown and gray sky. Ammonia belches from several vents near the Pylm, but the nest is constructed purposefully to protect its occupants from the lethal gases and hot spuma ejected from the planet's interior.

Further crackle-flashes reveal the presence of a herd of welms, whispy arachnoids foraging the hostile hills in groups of ten or twelve or twenty for nocturnal feeding. Gritlack spies them out of the corner of one of his many eyes, and, with surprising stealth positions himself upside down in the Pylm, slowly floating down to the surface -

- And seizes a lagging welm in his strong forward talons. A runt, to be sure, but it sure did struggle. With a twist its body breaks, lifeblood oozing out through violent fractures of its exoskeleton through Gritlack's claws. He smells the freshly-slain corpus, juices immediately excreting from the glands surrounding his mouth, which breaks into a geometric shape best expressing joy in the Mestylnma. Now his overriding concern is to overcome the burning, consuming desire to feast on the meat, to satiate the tidal desire, the heated pain inside his bellies. No, regretfully and not without a certain amount of struggle to master his baser instincts, no, he stores the creature deep within his outer stomach. He has Uletna to think of.

A booming, piercing roar fills the nest, originating somewhere north, near the Great Vent, perhaps, source of heat as well as death in molten ash and coal. Heavy thudding, which Gritlack immediately senses as apart from the thunderclaps in the upper atmospheres, follows, and deep basso growls flood the Pylm. Gritlack scans the base of the nest-hill hurriedly, anxious to ascend, desirous of staying near to the ground and the hiveholes. The welm tribes scatter instantly as the monstrous growls reverberate throughout the grotto. Gritlack, of two minds to flee or finish foraging, lunges half-heartedly at a meatier welm, but the critter luckily eludes his grasp in its panic.

Best to get below, to the catacombs, to feed Uletna. She's near term, and dying of a ravenous hunger that birth visits upon her. Yet still he lingers, the hole in sight, thinking that the one single welm would not supply enough energy to sustain his mate throughout her in her upcoming trials -

The dense, three-toed foot-claw of the Drou thumps into the mud between the hole and Gritlack's position. The Mestylnma immediately reverses gears and climbs the Pylm, rocketing up the coralcombs like a spider rappeling above a flame. The Drou's bulky, armor-plated head swivels as it's puny eyes catch a glimpse of movement, the wet maw follows Gritlack. A Drou is basically a weighty well-fanged mouth with legs, and the sight of those rancid, dripping incisors spurs a thrush of adrenaline through Gritlack. The Mestylnma's muscular hind legs launch outwards and the beast springs from one coral branch to the next, just out of range of the hungering Drou mouth, onto the far side of the Pylm, a thicker area more adapted to hiding, too bulky for the Drou to crash its bulk through.

More to throw the monstrous beast off than part of a coherent plan, Gritlack literally releases his grip on the Pylm stalk he hangs from and descend-falls the hundred feet straight down to the methane mud below. The stalks would be thick this close to the nest, much too thick and strong for the Drou to follow. He'd be safe, and he'd have time to strategize how to circle to an alternate entrance to get to his beloved.

Rear talons slice into the Pylm stalk inches off the hot ground and to his surprise a herd of two dozen welm suddenly erupt from the mud squealing and screeching, running hither-thither. On impulse rather than plan, legs from Gritlack's flank, sides, bottom and front lunge out, each a mind of its own, under its own command, seizing welm left and right, breaking backs, severing heads from bodies, smashing flailing welm-bodies against the nearby stalks.

All told, after the welm holocaust Gritlack observes nearly a dozen or so wet, sticky-warm bodies. In reality Gritlack can only conceptualize up to the number three, anything more to him, especially in the form of dead welm, is a feast of incomprehensible proportions. He can almost disbelieve this fortuitious bounty, and thanks the Grey Orb for sending the Drou to prod him to this course of action. Uletna would now have the requirements for the birthing; she may even survive the process.

Gritlack's mouth molds into the inverted triangle indicating extreme pleasure for his species. He regurgitates the first welm from his outer stomach and allows himself the luxury of feasting upon it. And one overpowering thought dominates his berry-brain mind: the incapacitating excitement he feels for the upcoming birth of his son.