Author's notes: sighs All the pressure you're under in college sure can make it difficult to find time for your fanfiction, can't it? Nevertheless, I managed to get up this second chapter, where we'll be seeing a day in the life of Skull Island's most feared coastal dweller-and it's not the natives. Without any further ado, now here's chapter two kiddies!
Tartarusaurus.
When you're the biggest and fiercest predator living on Skull Island's beaches, it goes without saying that you can sleep anywhere you like, even right out in the open. As a matter of fact, being 22 feet long and having a head and neck that combined were as long as a horse's body, the female Tartarusaurus almost really had to sleep out in the open.
That was where the first rays of dawn found her, sleeping up against a large log of driftwood in a depression she'd dug out of the mixture of gravel and sand that covered the eastern beach. Although she looked very much like a four-legged dinosaur, she was actually descended from a family of reptiles closely related to crocodiles called poposaurs, which contained such Triassic killers like Postosuchus. And like her ancestors had been, she was every bit as savage.
Also unlike a dinosaur, she was cold-blooded. True, her mass helped retain some heat, but she still had to warm up first if she was to have the energy needed to hunt and feed. So, picking a nice semi truck-sized boulder of granite, the chilled Tartarusaur weakly walked over, flopped down onto it, and waited as the sun shot over the horizon like a ball of fire.
Soon, it burned off all the thick mist, and began to get steadily stronger. The sunlight felt great against her thick, plated skin, and she soaked in the heat with the relish of any human sun-worshiper over the next two hours while the yellow orb arced higher. Finally hot enough, now she felt full of vigor and energy, her metabolism running nicely as she jumped off the great boulder and onto the beach, heading northwest to hunt. Until this moment, the Tartarusaur would only be a dangerous creature if she had been disturbed. Now she was simply dangerous.
Walking along a beach of gravel and broken rock, she came across a Limusaur, a strange, 3-foot amphibian adapted to feeding on shellfish in the surf. Crawling over the rock, his eyes widened and he plunged into a shallow crevice for safety. For the Tartarusaur though, it was no deterrent in the least. Reaching in with her left sickle claw, she groped, twisted, and then hooked the Limusaur right through a shoulder, dragging him out. A quick, brutal bite and shake, then she bolted him down in two bone-cracking bites.
Besides being a hunter, the Tartarusaur was also an unapologetic scavenger, and the fertile seas always gave up their share of food, fresh or deliciously rotten. Smelling fish, she trotted over to the edge of the surf to find a 10-pound snapper with its head bitten off, probably by a reef shark. Picking it up with surprising delicacy, she swallowed it whole in one easy motion.
She continued to walk along the beach, walking among and over old stairways or jagged, broken rock with a remarkably easy grace. Fishing Peracerdon on seeing her immediately kept their distance or expertly climbed up the cliffs beyond her reach, as well as swimming out to little islets where the predator couldn't reach them. The Tartarusaur ignored them, knowing full well the only way she could ever catch one of the dinosaurs was to surprise them at close range.
Then she came across another live creature, one that tasted great and was helpless on land, but had to be dealt with very carefully. It was a 4-foot olive sea snake, washed up on the beach during high tide in the night. Unable to crawl an inch on land with his flattened body, he could only slowly writhe helplessly as he started to bake in the sun. His lethal venom however, able to kill a man within half an hour, was very much a danger to be reckoned with, and his distant cousin knew it. She had ways of getting the job done though, and jabbed at the sea snake's head.
As best he could, the sea snake struck back, but the Tartarusaur swiftly drew back her hand before he could connect. Then she jabbed at the olive sea snake again, and just like before, he tried to bite her. But this time, the bigger reptile met him with the other forefoot, turning to the side and bringing the flat of her sickle claw right down on top of his skull in a well-timed maneuver, crushing it. She waited for a minute or two, continuing the pressure until she was sure this lethal prey was dead.
Unlike humans, most predators don't bother with gloating, even if they took out something dangerous. Nor did the Tartarusaurus. She ripped at the snake, eating the body in three bites before continuing her quest for food. Her belly was now a third of the way full, but naturally she sought more meat, and the day was still young at just midmorning. All of a sudden, she caught the scent of another Tartarusaur a couple hundred yards down the beach. There was also the scent of another carcass, a large one bearing the fragrant smell that marked it as a mammal. It got all her digestive juices flowing.
Approaching, she saw that the other Tartarusaur was a younger male, his jaws and muzzle stained red from the dead creature he'd been ripping at. It was a horse who had died of seasickness while being shipped by boat over to Batavia, and had then been tossed overboard to wash up on this forbidden island's shores.
Cautiously, she approached him and the dead horse as he regarded her suspiciously, growling in a mild warning. If this had been two months later during the breeding season, he would've had no problem allowing her to feed alongside him. But right now, he couldn't help but understandably be possessive of his newfound meal.
Still, being a female and at about the same size as the male, the Tartarusaur was warily optimistic that she stood a good chance of being tolerated at this meal, the two eating together in an uneasy truce. Eating at the horse's abdomen, the male locked his black eyes with the female's, growling in irritation again and again as she warily sidled up to the head end and began tearing meat from the head and neck. If his visitor had been another male, there would've been a good, serious fight, one that could end in only one animal having the equine. But since she was female, he managed to just barely tolerate her. As for the other Tartarusaur, she growled and stared back while she ate, showing her determined confidence. The rich red meat tasted delectable to her, flavored just perfectly by saltwater and early decomposition. She even ate the bones, cracking them to enjoy the fat-rich marrow.
For the next hour, the pair ate together warily and grudgingly, growling, hissing, staring each other down, sometimes even roaring and snapping at one another in bluff. And like children sometimes do with that last cookie or piece of candy, the Tartarusaurs got worked up the most over the final hunk of horse carcass. The male gave in and allowed the roaring female to eat it.
With the food gone, both animals calmed down to a state of indifference, and went their separate ways, the female continuing her trek northwest, the stuffed male going higher up the beach to sleep off a successful morning's worth of feeding among some rocks. The other Tartarusaur felt strongly like doing the same, but since she was a little bigger than the male, it meant she also needed a little more food.
About five minutes later, she found a 3-foot guitarfish, a ray-like relative of sharks that was very much like a streamlined, bottom dwelling cross between the two animals. Another shark had fatally mauled this one too, taking a nice chunk out of its shoulder. Full of horsemeat, the reptile nonetheless managed to get every last bite down her huge gullet. It had been a very good morning, and now her stomach too was telling her it was quitting time.
Going over to a big ledge at the base of one of the cliffs, she stepped up onto it, laid down on her left side, and rested. Contentedly basking in the blazing midday sun, she lazed away much of the afternoon, enjoying the terrific heat and the feeling of meat being digested in her belly as her body temperature climbed. She watched the day's second high tide come in, covering much of the beach, and regarded the birds as they patrolled or dove for fish in the shallows. Sometimes she actively slept for a while, and sometimes just calmly relaxed, half-awake. When the heat became too much for her, she'd go out into the surf for a while, immersing much of her body and walking around in it as the waves crashed over and against her.
A further way to cool down came in the middle of the afternoon, when right on schedule a rainstorm rolled in, bucketing down like crazy for an hour and then moving off to the west as the Tartarusaurus took the opportunity to drink from the newly formed pools of water in the rocks. The rain also made the coastal air and indeed, everything more humid, conditions that suited the huge reptile just fine, although many humans would find it stifling.
As the Tartarusaur metabolized her meal, much of it went to her swollen, almost sweet potato shaped tail as fat. Like a leopard gecko or gila monster, these deposits of fat in her tail acted as food stores that she could live on whenever hunting and finding food was tough, allowing her to go weeks without a substantial meal if need be.
After a while, the sun began to get lower in the sky, meaning the afternoon was now winding down. Having had her fill of soaking up the heat anyway, the Tartarusaur stepped down onto the beach, and began walking again.
She was now somewhat hungry again after basking and increasing her digestion rate--not so hungry that she couldn't go without food, but still ready and willing to take prey if she got the chance. Even more importantly, the evenings concealing shadows made the best and perfect time to really hunt. Once more, any animals on this beach now had better watch out.
Cleverly, the Tartarusaur now kept to the higher parts of the beach, covered in loose, random collections of bushes and volcanic rocks sticking out of the broken terrain. It made hiding much easier, and allowed her to rush out to trap prey between her and the sea, or circle around and cut off the escape of prey that did try to seek shelter there. The beach was becoming sandier now, and the sun even lower in the sky.
As she picked her way among the rocks and bushes, scanning the beach below for prey, she suddenly saw a Peracerdon on the sand beach, playing with a stick and utterly unaware of her presence. Peracerdon were swift runners, expert climbers on all kinds of cliffs, and very good swimmers, making it a hard thing indeed to catch one. But this one was distracted by his fun, putting the stick down a crab burrow, reaching in with his jaws, and then pulling it out again to repeat the performance.
The Tartarusaur could not believe her good luck. At 14 feet long, the theropod would make an excellent dinner before she retired for the night. So making even more effort to be stealthy and quiet, she stalked the Peracerdon at an angle, who instead of taking a quick look to check for danger like he should've, just continued his game with the stick. This was almost too easy.
Just two hundred yards away, she stepped on some pea gravel, making a small crunch underfoot. Knowing that she had just blown her own cover, the Tartarusaur went for broke and charged her quarry. Besides, although she'd had to attack a little earlier then she would've liked, she was confident that she'd still run him down anyway.
Looking up, the Peracerdon gave the gobbling bark of alarm his kind used, and whipped around, breaking into a desperate run. She came hauling after. Now she was closing the gap, ready to bite into his tail and yank him off his feet. Then she'd have her meal.
At the last second though, the Peracerdon dodged sharply, sending the larger reptile skidding forward a few precious yards from her own momentum before she could turn and continue the chase. Now he'd gained some more ground as he ran ahead. The Tartarusaur was starting to tire a bit now. But she still stood a very good chance of catching him, and redoubled her efforts.
The theropod had just enough room to carry out an escape tactic if he wanted to, and although there weren't really any high cliffs here, it did cross her vague mind that it was strange that he didn't try to go leap in the sea and outswim her with his crocodile-like tail. Maybe he'd utterly lost his head. Then she saw in front of them what his intended refuge was.
A great basalt pillar was sticking up from the upper part of the beach. At that instant of her comprehension, the Peracerdon made another sharp dodge, gaining even more of a lead on the tiring poposaur, then ran to the far side of the pillar, bounding up the partial staircase and then climbing the rest of the way like a leopard with the claws on all four of his limbs. Reaching the base herself now, the Tartarusaurus reared up on her hind legs like a bear, trying to bite into the animal pushing himself up the pillar at warp speed. For a couple hopeful moments, her teeth were close enough to scrape his tail. But not bite it.
Reaching the top, the Peracerdon looked down at her, his eyes wide and panting heavily. Tired, she was panting somewhat too. The Tartarsaur did not like to lose, especially when she'd been so close. Giving a deep growl to express her frustration, she reared up again in another attempt to reach her prize. This time though, there was a good 12 feet between the predator and her prey. And she couldn't climb it.
Thinking things over, she tried rearing up several more times at different positions, but got no closer. So close, and yet so far. It just wasn't fair.
Disappointment doesn't equal blind stupidity by any means though. After giving one final growl and shaking her head in helpless irritation, the Tartarusaur accepted the inevitable, and loped away in search of other chances at getting food. Going back up onto the landward side of the beach, she again started picking her way through the random cover and long shadows.
Then she smelt the urine of her favorite prey, which meant only one thing. A colony of fur seals. Keeping to the cover of the rocks, she very carefully stalked over to the right side of the breeding beach, listening to the animals barking. Then, still as unobtrusively as possible, she walked down the side a ways, putting herself in a prime position to cut off a few seals from the sea. Fur seals have somewhat poor vision out of the water, and the light was dimming. So they didn't see the Tartarusaurus until she was almost upon them.
Breaking from cover, she ran the 80 feet to the nearest seals as they turned and galloped for the sea on their flippers. With a savage blow from a sickle claw, she raked a cow right down the flank in a deep gash. The seal desperately tried to get away, but was flipped over by another slashing blow across the back. Finally, the Tartarusaur ripped a big bite out of the seal's left shoulder, crippling and mortally wounding her at the same time.
Leaving the first victim behind, she went for another seal, this one an adolescent bull. Hooking him in the hindquarters, she pulled the twisting seal to her. Frantically, he tried to bite his killer in the face, but she anticipated it and bit into the back of his neck, dispatching the young male with a hard crunch and quick shake. Most of the seals had escaped now, except for the young pups that couldn't possibly swim. Thankfully for them though, Tartarusaurs generally deemed pups as too small to be worth eating.
There was a juvenile female lagging behind, and the Tartarusaurus now attacked her. One would think after having just already killed two seals, she wouldn't need to kill still more. These animals were rich in nourishing fat however, and they also came here only for the winter and early spring, making them a seasonal food source. So the poposaur tried to kill or badly cripple as many as she could, in order that she could feed off her multiple kills for a much longer time. This time though, although her attacker was barely able to scratch her, the seal managed to escape into the sea.
Returning back to her victims, the Tartarusaur stuffed both of them into her fanged mouth, dragging them off to a site several hundred yards away among some granite boulders and outcrops. In the fading light, she began her feast, gorging herself on blubber and fishy-tasting seal flesh. Fairly far away, she did see another Peracerdon, maybe the one she'd attacked and lost. But she dismissed it and continued bolting down meat from her kills as the sun went down and the fur seals very cautiously returned to the beach that she'd left.
She ate and ate, not finishing off her catch until it was two hours after dark, and no creature dare disturbed her, except for scavenging ghost crabs and Cunapredators. Then, her belly really full now from two fur seals, she staggered up the beach beyond the high-tide mark, dug out another deep depression under a rock outcrop, got herself comfortable, and went to sleep, safe in the knowledge that nothing would or could challenge her. For the next three days, this Tartarusaurus wouldn't have to worry about food after such a meal. It was good to be the king.