Meet the cast for Part 1
Mum: An adult sailback. Her eyes are a gold yellow, she has a chunk taken out of her sail on the very back. Her scales are a tan and blue color while her sail is a muddy red.
Patchface(Patch): A young hellbeast with long featherlike quills going along his back. As his name suggests he has blocky almost checkerboard black spots along the right side of his face. His eyes are a bright amber, and the majority of his scales are white.
Bane: A gigantic hellbeast with red markings going around her body. Her scales are a silver gray. Unlike the younger Patchface she lacks back quills of any kind. Her eyes are an angry crimson.
And now to get into the story.
A full moon shone through the thick canopy of the jungle. Illuminating the back of Bane as she lay on her stomach. The moon crisscrossed her mighty figure with stripes of shadow as her eyes were glued to a mound of dirt and leaves. It was Bane's nest; she had created it a moon cycle ago and had not left the nest since she'd laid her eggs.
The time was coming, tonight would be the night they hatched. The eggs looked pathetic compared to the hellbeast. The pearly white ovals were not even as large as Bane's toe talons.
Bane leaned closer. Had she spied movement? It appeared to be a simple trick of the moonlight as the dinosaur went back into a neutral position obviously disappointed. Her right middle claw tapped the dirt in irritation.
Finally, it happened, a single egg shook. There was a sound of moving dirt as it wriggled back and forth. A tiny claw pierced the shell from the inside revealing the hand of a hatchling hellbeast. The claws reached forward and excavated another piece of shell revealing an azure blue eye which was followed by the wet body of a stone-gray hatchling.
Bane cooed before leaning down to sniff the creature which still struggled in the remnants of its egg sack. The new mother opened her cavernous jaws and engulfed the tiny creature. A single squeak was the only sound the hatchling ever made. With a sickening crunch Bane lifted her head back and swallowed.
Other eggs were hatching now. Two more hatchlings spilled out of their eggs and quickly followed their sibling. The female lifted herself onto her feet and shook herself. Her eye peered down into the mound and noticed a single egg had yet to hatch. Bane blew out a puff of air as she lifted one of her feet and stomped on the nest. The hellbeast was hungry and her brood had not sated her appetite she refused to wait for another to hatch. The monster turned tail and stomped away intent on filling her belly now that the future competition her hatchlings may have provided were dealt with.
As the monster pushed her way into the jungle the final egg rolled onto the ground completely intact. It's rough dark tan surface was suddenly pierced by a claw. The white claw-hand felt around the shell before wiping away a portion of the shell.
A small angular head was revealed. It pushed its way outside of the shell and stumbled onto the ground. Unlike its siblings this one wriggled out of his egg sack and got to its feet unsteadily. The lucky newborn gazed at his surroundings with amber eyes which blinked, unaccustomed with the moonlight. The right side of the hatchling's face stood out against the rest of his body with the black splotches which gave him an almost checkerboard pattern.
His little voice touched the air in a pitiful chirp crying out for a mother that had she been nearby would've swallowed him whole. The little creature was not alone for long but the beast to appear was not Bane. A weasel like mammal pushed its way through the brush and gazed upon the still wet from its egg hatchling.
The mammal's nose twitched before it gave a slight squeal of delight and charged at the baby. Instinct took over the newborn as the predator fell upon him. He turned tail and ran away as fast as his little legs could carry him.
The mammal was quick and not only kept pace with the hatchling but was gaining. An alien sound like an explosion assaulted the hatchling's ears as he ran for his life. He could feel the predator's breath on his tail. Suddenly the ground beneath the hatchling was gone. The little hellbeast's foot claws vainly kicked around looking for ground to stand on but there was only air. Until with a hard-painful splash there was water.
The hatchling's head broke the surface once, smacking at the raging river with his claws as he tried to keep himself afloat until inevitably, he sunk back down and did not surface again.
Bane was not the only mother with eggs expected to hatch that night. Under a sandy overhang on the side of the river a massive crocodile headed sailback watched her eggs intently. She had chosen this place to be near the river and sheltered at the same time.
The overhang was high enough so that her sail did not brush against the top. Small birds fluttered around the back wall in and out of their nest holes. Wary of the massive predator but used to her presence. Mum leaned down to inspect her eggs. Her head was cocked to the side.
She had mothered a few broods before and was certain they should've hatched by now. She pushed her nose into the pile of sand that made her nest and pushed around the eggs in an attempt to rouse them.
A low whine escaped Mum's throat when she felt how cold they were. Eggs were supposed to be warm, especially right before they hatched. Something was wrong.
She rested her head on the nest and closed her eyes. Willing with everything in her for just one of them to hatch. The lap of the river and the chirps of the birds were all she could hear as she lay. Suddenly the river's lap was interrupted.
A golden yellow eye flicked open and rested on a sodden white shape now lying on the ground. It was small, Mum quickly identified it as some sort of hatchling.
The tiny creature suddenly spat out a mouthful of water and lifted its head weakly, letting out a chirp. The sort of chirp hatchlings gave when calling for their mother.
It didn't take Mum long after that to identify its species. It was a hellbeast, those devious creatures were one of the few predators Mum feared. Her first instinct was to kill it, she didn't want to allow it to bring it's beastly mother upon her nest, but hatchlings didn't chirp like that after they knew what their mother was. Was this hellbeast motherless? It would never survive in the jungle, not alone at its size. Mum lowered her head to her own nest, to the cold empty eggs she was growing ever more certain would never hatch.
Sympathy filled the beast's gaze as she looked back at the hellbeast, which had stopped moving save the rapid rise and fall of its chest. Mum made a decision, she let out a gentle coo in response to the hatchling's chirp. She lifted herself to all fours and lumbered over to the creature who jerked up at her coo.
Mum lowered her head to the shivering chick and nuzzled it. The baby hellbeast nuzzled her in kind. He was cold to the touch so Mum opened her maw and gently picked him up.
In contrast to the baby's real mother Mum simply lumbered back to her nest where she pushed her cold empty eggs away from the nest and plopped the baby into the sand. The hellbeast immediately snuggled into the sand, unaware of the strange circumstances he was in. For all the hatchling knew this crocodile headed sailback had been the one to lay his egg, and he seemed completely fine with that.
Mum kicked a bit of sand over the baby's back and laid down running her tongue over the hellbeast's back in an attempt to warm it.
Her eyes flicked over to her eggs for only a moment. She'd consume them later, she needed to be rid of the husks to keep egg thieves away and could do with taking back some of the nutrients she'd lost in laying them, but for now she would care for her new hatchling.
The hellbeast gave a content purr as sleep took him, Mum gave a coo before curling up around the nest in an attempt to protect and warm him.
This story concept is sort of in competition with another story I'm writing called 'The Scavenger Dragon'. Whichever gains more attention is the one I'll pursue so if you liked this please let me know.