Well, I'm back! I've decided to focus on the creatures of the rivers and swamps for my next few chapters this time, and if all goes well, I should be getting a chapter up once a week now. The creature I'll be using to kick off this latest section is one that was actually supposed to be in the final cut of the movie, and can even be seen in the trailers, with a scene filmed for it and everything. But did we get to see Mrs. Piranhadon take a Tommy gun blast to the face from Jack Black in the theaters? NNOOOO... What a gyp, in my opinion. So the fearsome fish is naturally the most deserving of being at the head of the pack here in this fifth chapter. Enjoy yourselves.
Reviews: To Blue Autumm Sky: I am not worthy! I am not worthy of being honored so by the queen of Kong fanfics! Now that I have that out of my system... I'm very glad you enjoy it so much. As a general rule, if you see an animal in my story with a capitalized name, it either comes from the book or I made it up myself. As for the Palustroodon, no, there's nothing like them in the movie-totally my own creation. Also, I put Capt. Englehorn as shooting the first specimen during the fourth expedition to the island. But anyway, it pleases me that you think highly of this.
Tallacus: Thanks for your dedicated readership! It'll take a bit to get to the Venatosaurs, but trust me, when you do see that chapter here, it will totally be worth the wait.
And for all readers: In chapter three, I described Palustroodon as camo-patterned and left it at that. To be more accurate, I thought of them as brown-dark green-and black. Think the face paint on navy SEALS. Thought you'd like to know!
Chapter Five.
In the mile-long stretch of river and flooded swamp where she generally patrolled, the old female Piranhadon was far and away its most fearsome aquatic killer. At 46 feet long and weighing four tons, she was as long as a gray whale and heavy as a large African elephant cow. Both gray whales and elephants however, are gentle creatures that harm no one and only ask to be left alone. With her pale gray-blue eyes, double hinged jaws, and a mouth full of teeth like great crystal daggers though, it went without saying that the Piranhadon was far less benign in nature.
Even her form was alien and frightening, looking something like if you took a gigantic eel, gave it six additional gill slits beside the one it already had, switched its pectoral fins with the flippers and chest of a sea lion or frogfish, and finally replaced the creature's head with that of a deep-sea fish like a fangtooth, throwing in a thick sensory barbells attached to each hinge of the jaw for good measure. With scales colored a general forest green above and buff-brown below, she was also well camouflaged to stalk and lie in wait for her intended prey. Taken all together, it was little wonder then, that playwright Jack Driscoll "The Hero of Skull Island," would later write in a poetic moment of this fish, "A yawning Piranhadon is dreadful. A basking one is a murder put on hold. But one of these demon fish attacking is a sight so horrific as to make the blood of any creature run cold."
Even the most terrible predators have their passive moments however, and as the sun started to very weakly filter through the emerald green water, one of Skull Island's fiercest fish was sleeping in a deep channel the river had carved out between two sandbars, facing upstream and into the current so that lots of oxygen passed through her gills. Although she had no eyelids to open, there was a brief, but still noticeable change in the fish's pale eyes as she woke up to start yet another day of patrolling the river.
Pushing herself up off the bottom with her pectoral fins, she started swimming upstream near the right bank, her body moving like an eel's as she silently slipped through the water. A Malaysian box turtle hunkered down on the bottom as she approached, and a terrified school of tiger barbs parted before her in a rush of orange and black. Fortunately for them however, although the Piranhadon was aware of their presence, she found them too small by far to even bother attacking. Besides, her mouth was one that had evolved to open upward, making it somewhat difficult, but not impossible, to catch prey underwater. Instead, she primarily hunted land animals that came to drink or were crossing the river.
It had been about half a week since she'd had a big meal, so today she was very hungry indeed, and hoping to get her jaws on a big quarry, something weighing at least a ton. Even more importantly, she was now pregnant, eating not for two but eleven. Like condors or rattlesnakes, Piranhadon only bred every other year. Last year had been the huge older female's year off, with none of the hassle of mating and carrying around developing babies.
But this year, three months ago during the dry season when the Piranhadon bred, one day a group of 12 to 20-foot males had amorously chased after her for hours, hoping to catch up to and mate with her. She'd doggedly kept up her efforts to leave them in the dust, but the two fastest males had managed to chase her down, appeasing her somewhat by wrapping their pectoral fins around her belly, and then using their modified anal fin to fertilize her eggs internally. In two months more time, she'd give birth to ten 5-foot long young in a sheltered, still backwater, leaving them to fend for themselves. Right now though, she had to make a big kill about every three days if everyone was to receive proper nutrition.
But before she actually started hunting, there was something she had to do in the cool humidity of the morning. As the sun grew higher, she swam over to a muddy beach, and turned to face it at a forty-five degree angle. Opening her fanged mouth again and again, she pumped water over her gills, getting as much oxygen in her as possible. Then, she lunged right for the muddy shore, charging through the water at a deceptive and terrifying speed, as a school of frantic Sun-fins, deep-bodied fish the size of your palm with dusky-black backs and pale white bellies, used their big black-mottled straw yellow fins to launch themselves right into the misty air.
Totally ignoring them, the Piranhadon deliberately slid out onto the mud beach, exposing three-quarters of her green-brown body. She wasn't chasing prey, or trying to commit suicide, or trying to get a better look above the water's surface. Instead, this bizarre behavior was for her health. A huge predator she may've been, but the old fish was also a huge target for parasites.
She was plagued by revolting little things like the 4-inch crab Cutiscidis, which attached itself to the skin and ate the host's living flesh until its back was countersunk with the skin, even then continuing to eat. Then there was Profanus, a free-swimming tapeworm fifteen inches long that rasped away skin and flesh to eat, later laying its eggs in the wound to do the same until they became independent. There was the worm Estrivermis, a 20-inch vampire that drank blood from a fish's veins and never let go. Leeches sucked blood from thin-skinned areas like the mouth tissues and inner flippers, while there was even a sort of aquatic tick that drank blood from between the scales.
Needless to say, all these parasites were real threats to the Piranhadon's condition at worst, and drove her to distraction sometimes at best. Fortunately, she had some feathered friends on land to help her out. Lying on the mud, she vibrated muscles around her swim bladder to give a mild grunting call. Used only very rarely for purposes of appeasement or submission, it basically meant "Everything's cool. Don't worry, I won't bite or threaten you."
There was a flapping of wings, and a huge gray heron landed near her, very carefully walking over to her right flank. There was a spark of pain, and the Piranhadon knew in her nebulous way that one more parasite was gone. As the gray heron slowly kept about his work, four snow-white great egrets came over, using their yellow bills to pluck off further vermin. The huge fish stayed still as she could. A Brahminy kite arrived next, regarding the matter with her intense black eyes. A handsome bird of prey with a white head, neck, and breast with the rest of the body a bright chestnut, she lightly perched on the killer fish's back, plucking off even more parasites in her hooked ivory beak. A Malaysian giant turtle, with a shell as big as a laundry hamper, came out of the water to get in on the easy meal, while a half-grown water monitor and some 2-foot Peter's mud agamids, which were lizards endemic to the island, came in from land to assist. All together, both reptiles and birds plucked parasites from and out of the Piranhadon's scaly skin,
Unfortunately, she could only safely stay out of the water for four minutes at a time. Any more was dangerous. So the fish demonstrated another neat trick. Raising herself up on her flippers, she thrashed her body at the same time, dispersing her avian and reptilian cleaners. It wasn't graceful, but it got the old predator back into the water, where she gratefully rested for a few moments, letting the current force oxygen into her system. Then, energy restored, she shot back up onto the muddy beach again. She hadn't had half as many parasites removed so far as she wanted.
For the next hour or so, the Piranhadon allowed herself to be groomed and freed of as many of her wretched freeloaders as possible, alternating between the water and the mud, sometimes rolling over on her side to give the cleaner critters easier access. She even opened her daggered mouth, and in a gesture of either total trust or utter stupidity, the birds would pluck leeches and other creatures right out of those not-so-gently smiling jaws. Skull Island egrets, white-eyed ducks, white-breasted waterhens, and a black marsh turtle all joined in too, unknowingly doing their bit to make her life more comfortable. They even reached down into the wounds the parasites had caused, removing every last bit and sometimes plucking out inflamed tissue. That really hurt, but the Piranhadon was used to pain, and endured it. Compared to what discomfort the parasites caused, it was nothing.
Finally, she decided she'd had plenty of her parasite cure administered, and clumsily thrashed back into the river for the last time. This was also the time of day when the only two creatures she feared, V. Rex and Venatosaurus, became active, and she didn't be want to be caught defenseless on the shore.
Most of all, it was time to go about her day's work. It was time to go hunting. Although she was much longer then she was thick, and could use her pectoral fins to crawl through shallow water if need be, the Piranhadon still needed at least seven feet of water to lay an ambush for prey. At the same time, the land animals generally chose to drink and cross a river where the water was rather shallow, which further complicated matters. But after living in this waterway for forty years, with at least another decade ahead of her, this wise old lady knew a thing or two about which were the best hunting spots to use.
Ignoring the danios, barbs, rasboras, and other small fish that fled from her, the Piranhadon decided to go to the mouth of a nearby deep creek. To her delight, she found a 30-strong herd of Malamagnus there, some grazing on bushes and flowers on shore, while others ate the water lilies, water lettuce, marsh grass, and aquatic plants growing in the river shallows.
Gray-brown in color, the herbivorous Malamagnus were basically like the hippos or capybaras of Skull Island, able to swim at the surface or walk along the bottom. Up to 20 feet long, these huge tusked reptiles weighed as much as walruses and were used to checking for threats from the land, not the water, making them an excellent meal for the Piranhadon.
Going right to the bottom of the sandy channel, she crawled forward on her fins, being as stealthy as possible. The closest targets were a group of five animals, and the Piranhadon slithered up over the edge of the drop-off, making sure to keep slow, breathe calmly, and especially not make any ripples. This performance would've done even a crocodile proud. Soon, she would strike.
All of a sudden, as she put one pectoral fin down to move forward, the Piranhadon caused a small swirl of water to form. It also disturbed the algae and duckweed a little, revealing some of her scaly body. One member of the Malamagnus quintet she'd been stalking saw and heard the disturbance right away, and with deep coughing roars of alarm, they and the rest of the herd immediately broke into a surging gallop, quickly fleeing to dry land or the very edge of the water where they were safe.
One young adult male however, didn't see or recognize what the cause for concern was, and continued cropping water plants in the deeper water. So the Piranhadon went after him, swimming in the big reptile's direction, only ready to attack when she got within ten feet. The rest of the herd, seeing their comrade still at risk, gave bellow after bellow of warning, hoping he'd figure things out and escape in time.
Finally, the subadult male made the wise decision, turning and running like mad through the shallows. At that instant, the Piranhadon arrived in a boil of surging water, muscle, and teeth, leaping out at the prey that she was sure was hers. It wasn't to be though, and her strike just missed his thick tail.
Frustrated, she clapped her jaws once, and then turned in a U, slipping back into the channel and then the main river. It was midmorning now, a time when many of the land animals were moving around, and the elderly fish decided to lie in wait at a place where a game trail spanned the river, forcing animals to cross. So, dispersing the small fry as usual, she headed in that direction.
All the while, she kept her senses sharp for aquatic prey that was worth taking along the way. She came across a school of several Stinkfish, 3-foot barbs with hunched backs, thick dark gray and thinner off-white bands, and weighing about 20 pounds each. With wrinkled, sagging tissue at their chin and throat and under their eyes, rheumy little gray-blue eyes, a fat hooked block nose like a sperm whale's, and four thin dangling barbells, they looked very much like sad, very old men. They were slow swimmers, and large, so the fish could in theory make a nice snack.
If pressured though, they would shoot out horrible tasting, fogging chemicals along with fecal material out of their anus, leaving a potential predator both empty-jawed and with a very bad taste in its mouth indeed. The Piranhadon hadn't made the mistake of trying to eat a Stinkfish in fifteen years, and she never would again. So of course, she let them go on their way.
Then, as she swam along, she came across a school of fish called Naomi's nutcrackers. Big, deep-bodied creatures, they were orange-brown in color, with a distinct carmine tint to their chest and belly. Their name came from the fact that like the pacu of South America, they used their strong jaw muscles and crushing teeth to grind up nuts and fruits that fell into the water, as well as for eating water plants. At 3 feet long, they presented an excellent, if not totally filling, snack for the Piranhadon, who promptly attacked them. Weaving and lunging at the school from near the bottom, she managed to catch five of the large fish before they evaded her, impaling them on her crystal teeth and swallowing her catch as blood puffed out.
Sparing the rest of the nutcracker fish, she continued on her way towards the crossing site, where she hoped that something above the one-ton mark would show up there. But she was interrupted again, this time by the scent of fresh blood. That could only mean one thing, namely that some creature had just made a fresh kill nearby, and it got all her senses tingling in anticipation. Although the Piranhadon got most of her meat by going and hunting it herself, she wasn't above using her fangs and size to swipe another predator's meal if the chance presented itself and the catch was big enough. Sometimes she'd even devour the smaller predator itself for good measure.
With her excellent sense of smell, she easily followed the blood trail to its source, and it was from an animal killed by a predator-but it turned out to be a disappointment. The successful river predator proved to be a young Hydruscimex, a 12-foot aquatic relative of centipedes-although this one was "merely" 7 feet in length-, and he'd just caught himself a large duck, killing the bird with a fiercely venomous bite. Now he tore at his poultry meal with the sharp, hooked teeth ringing his mouth, as other fish darted in to grab tiny scraps.
The duck was much too small for a Piranhadon's meal however, and she left him in peace. Nor was attacking the Hydruscimex a smart option either, for he could inject copious amounts of venom in a bite, causing extreme, debilitating pain to large animals, and death to smaller ones. So she carried on, wisely choosing not to make an unnecessary enemy of a creature who was just minding his own affairs.
Scent and memory guided her finally to the familiar river crossing, where she then laid her huge body down on the algae and sand, throwing her two big barbells in front of her to catch any hint of vibration or splashing. As if they even knew somehow that stillness was critical, even her unborn young stopped their periodic bursts of thrashing, although it was more likely just a rest time in the womb.
So the leviathan laid there in eight feet of river water, thinking her slow, patient, repetitive Piranhadon-thoughts. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. She might not have been very bright, but she was a regular savant in that department at least. All around her, other denizens of the river, smaller fish, turtles, crayfish, and insects respectfully passed by. Twelve feet off her left shoulder, a gorgeous stork-billed kingfisher, all royal blue above and orange below, plunged into the water, grabbing a member of a school of Purple-striped rasboras, Skull Island natives with greenish-mocha backs and upper flanks and dull silver bellies, a brilliant, almost fluorescent purple line separating the two parts that ran from the snout, just over the eye, and to the tail.
A pair of Bloodfish, ten inches long with beautiful red-orange coloration and bellies tinged with lavender passed by, rooting out worms and cracking small snails in their flattened teeth. A female Skull Island snapping turtle passed overhead, pursued by an eager male as she fled towards a shallow marsh. Coming down the river came a school of feeding Prickle fish, eight-inch long and silver gray, using their funny tubular snouts to suck up little shrimp and other river plankton, cocking their spiny fins at every disturbance and twitching their bulging amber eyes.
Ten minutes into her state of universe-filling vigilance, the old Piranhadon was joined by another member of her kind, a younger female about 25 feet in length. Although they did have home ranges, Piranhadon usually weren't all that territorial, and were willing to tolerate each other in an uneasy truce if the occasion required it. Raising herself off the bottom in a swirl of sand, the old female perched on her pectoral fins, extending her dorsal and half-opening her mouth in a mild threat. Getting the message, the younger newcomer swam off to the left, sinking to the bottom a dozen yards away and adopting the same posture as her senior. Together, dull fish minds dead to nothing but what their barbells told them, they waited with a soulless patience.
Forty minutes later, the old female's barbells detected vibrations, ever so faint, coming from the left bank. A herd of land animals, medium-sized, were going to cross the river. Coming through the jungle and onto the shore was a herd of Pugiodorsus, nine-foot descendants of plant-eating dinosaurs like Dryosaurus and Hypsilophodon. Gray-black in color with some dirty-yellow stripes, they had scattered scutes of bone on their backs, with the whole effect making them look amazingly like two-legged, dog-sized, mutant baby alligators.
One very distinct feature all their own though, was the pair of sharp spikes on their shoulders, curved in a way that made it look like a pair of cow horns had somehow been grafted onto their backs. These spikes helped give the Pugiodorsus a fair degree of protection from predators attacking from behind or above. Even more importantly, they were almost as fast and nimble as deer when running, able to leap over logs and cross broken terrain while going at full tilt. All in all, the fleet herbivores were a good match for any attacking predator as long as they stayed on land. None of these defenses were any good in the water though. And they knew it.
For a couple minutes, the twenty-strong Pugidorsus herd looked at the 100-foot stretch of river before them, milling around nervously. They weren't fools about the dangers that lurked in the tea-colored depths, and no one wanted to be first. But they had to get to the tasty plants on the other side somehow, and finally the herd's lead female took the plunge. Instantly, the others followed.
Lying on the bottom, the Piranhadon couldn't see what was happening of course. And her eyesight was so dim anyway that she could only see shades of black, white, and gray, tinged with faint color during the day. But she felt the vibrations from shore and the impact of each dinosaur's plunge into the water. Waiting until the first herd members were out of their depth, she lunged forward with the speed of a striking snake, her nightmare visage gaping for the kill.
But faster even than she, the younger female got to the prey first, dragging down a bleating male in a welter of bubbles, water and blood as he was punctured by her crystal teeth. Even though there were plenty of other Pugidorsus in the water now, the older female wouldn't stand for that, and promptly stole the younger female's kill, unceremoniously taking it right out of her jaws. Although shocked, the smaller Piranhadon made little protest. The larger female after all, was bigger, meaner, stronger, and a more experienced fighter, dominant in every way. But being practical, she just rushed back in and took another unfortunate Pugidorsus from the surface with a snap of those bear-trap jaws, moving farther away this time after killing it to eat.
Meanwhile, the elderly female was just finishing gulping down her stolen meal, and this time went for another victim herself, breaching the surface to impale the bleating dinosaur on her fangs, then folding the reptile double as she swallowed in two spastic gulps. Her smaller dining companion's jaws closed on the flank of another at that second, as her elder turned in a tight U and rolled onto her side, grabbing another Pugidorsus by the legs and repositioning the creature, stabbing it mercilessly with her fangs before bolting it headfirst.
Swimming like mad, most of the terrified Pugiodorsus herd had now managed to get close to the other side of the river as the two great predator fish went about their grim business. Charging through the water, the younger female attacked them again, biting into one's belly and shoving her forward. This time, at 25-feet long, the younger fish decided three Pugidorsus were enough for a full meal, and swam away with her last kill, repositioning the bleeding reptile and gulping it down as she swam off.
Pregnant and much larger, the old female wasn't anywhere close to being full herself yet though, and remorselessly attacked the stragglers, leaping out of the water on her side to grab a male that had just touched bottom in the shallows by the hindquarters. By the time she'd pulled her latest catch back into the deeper water and consumed him, all the other members of the herd had made it to safety.
As a swarm of Killer-eels, aggressive, pack-hunting relatives of lampreys cleaned up the scraps, the Piranhadon cast around with her barbells for any more swimming prey. But there were no more targets, nothing left to kill, and she settled down. In fact, except for the Killer-eels, there wasn't anything living that had dared to stay in the immediate area-extremely sensible actions to take when what had once been a peaceful stretch of river had now become a literal killing field.
But amazingly, the Piranhadon was still hungry; still without that magic one-ton at a minimum catch. She'd eaten maybe four hundred and fifty pounds of struggling flesh since waking up, but it'd gone only partway towards assuaging her great hunger. No land animals would be having anything to do with this crossing for a while after a scene of carnage like that, so the colossal fish left the place, heading a little ways upstream and then turning right to go up a smaller tributary river.
Her destination was a place on the left bank where a flat, sandy shore came out of the jungle nearby, with a decent drop-off being quite close. The smaller river also had a slower speed to it, meaning that water lilies, floating ferns, and duckweed were abundant, providing good cover to ambush prey from. Most crucial of all for the Piranhadon, she knew from experience that this was a favored drinking spot for many of the local land animals-including big dinosaurs.
Slithering along the edge of the drop-off, she flushed a quartet of Dirt turtles, brownish reptiles about the size and shape of diamondback terrapins, that had been feeding on a freshly excreted heap of Malamagnus dung and the snails attracted to it. The two rogue bulls 'behind' the manure pile were now resting on a spit of sand and basking in the hot noonday sun-which was just as well for them. Ignoring the fleeing turtles, the Piranhadon laid down to face the bank at a place where it had a steep, yet gradual slope. She flung her thick barbells out at right angles to her savage countenance, resting them in the sand to better detect the footsteps of prospective prey, and laid her pectoral fins against her sides, ready to explode forward with her powerful tail. Here, the water lilies and dark water provided nice camouflage, even with the sun almost right overhead. The Piranhadon was now a terrible death machine, just waiting for some poor, oblivious visitor to switch her on. She relaxed, and as she'd done so, so often during her life, she patiently waited.
The midday sun was hot, and although it felt great on the huge fish's skin, many land animals were now feeling the heat. Thirty-seven minutes into her waiting, the Piranhadon felt footsteps-big ones. They were really big ones in fact, belonging to a herd of Brontosaurus. Although they were definitely BIG prey to make an understatement, they were too large for even the monster fish. She could probably kill one by biting into its neck and shredding it, but there was no way she could eat the carcass. Even the calves were too big for her to take. One Brontosaurus calf, wedged between his mother and another adult, even waded out into the water as far as the edge of the drop-off. But the Piranhadon just gently slid on her belly backwards into the deeper water, ever-so-slowly backing water with her tail. The Brontosaurus herd drank and socialized for about fifteen minutes, unaware of the pregnant titan just yards away. Then, the dominant bull gave a "Let's go" woofer-type call, turning and leading his obedient herd back into the forest.
Calm filtered back onto the riverbank. Relaxing again, the Piranhadon reclaimed her former position against the edge off the drop-off, waiting with the dedicated hunter's patience. About three-quarters of an hour later, she sensed another series of footfalls, faint at first but becoming ever stronger, through her barbells, and the huntress almost quivered with excitement. A mixed herd of Ligocristus, Skull Island's duckbilled dinosaur, and Ferrucutus, large horned dinosaurs, was coming. The single-minded hunt, the waiting game, was almost over.
The key word here though, was almost. The Ligocristus and Ferrucutus were both nervous, although the greater part of it admittedly belonged to the defenseless duckbills. They too, knew what could burst out of the water at them, and approached the shore very cautiously indeed. Even without Piranhadon lurking, drinking was always a dangerous time, when predators like V. Rex could catch them off guard. The two species of dinosaurs finally came down to the water, legs braced for flight as they sucked and gulped and swallowed in both relief and paranoia.
Under the surface, the Piranhadon could see the dim shapes of the dinosaurs now against the sun, and feel them sucking the water. All she had to do was make a choice. Locking onto a target, she slammed her pectoral fins against her flank, gathered herself for the leap, and with an explosive crash of her strong tail, was suddenly among them.
A satanic greenish face came rocketing out of the still water, its center a cavernous black mouth ringed by teeth like huge sharpened icicles that closed on a Ferrucutus cow's neck and shoulders, wrenching the shocked dinosaur off her feet and into the shallow water. The horned dinosaur fought hard for her life, shaking her head, bucking, and tugging backward with all her might. But the bottom was slippery, her attacker was stronger, with jaws like a steel trap and powerful as a pit bull's, she was already losing blood, and the Ferrucutus weighed a ton-and-a-half while the Piranhadon was at least twice that heavy. And because she'd been grabbed by the neck, neither could the dinosaur stab the great fish with her horns. There could only be one outcome.
As the other dinosaurs scattered in all directions and the two Malamagnus bulls headed for cover, the straining Piranhadon, every tendon and muscle taut, dragged her thrashing catch into the deeper water of the river, where she held the forequarters of the beast below the surface as she viciously bit deep several times. Water filling those huge lungs and massive loss of blood did the rest. All that was left of the Ferrucutus cow's resistance was the final surrender.
Feeling her prey finally go limp, the Piranhadon let go and grabbed her kill by the chin, repositioning it so that the dinosaur's frill was laying flat against the shoulders, making it easier to swallow. Opening her double-jointed jaws impossibly wide, the old female drew the dinosaur into her mouth step by step, the short horns offering little discomfort. Although she couldn't shred or rip off big chunks like a true piranha, she would twist her feast a bit or just stab it with her fangs again and again to crush and lacerate the meat, making it easier to get down. She'd even use her powerful jaws to crack some of the bones if need be, especially the ribs and forelegs. All the while, Killer-eels and Driscoll's shingled catfish, 2-foot long dirty yellow catfish with bony plates of armor, brown speckling and long teeth like razors, attracted by the huge amounts of blood, brazenly fluttered and darted around right in front of her great fanged maw, stealing their own pound of flesh for the day.
Finally, with her belly bulging like that of a python that's swallowed a goat, the Piranhadon, after a good deal of gnashing teeth, shaking, and scraping on the bottom, managed to sever the tail of the Ferrucutus. She tried to eat the thick tail, but couldn't get it down, no matter how much she tried. Too full to eat another thing, she reluctantly left it to the catfish, Killer-eels, and a lucky bull shark that had swum up the river from the sea.
Literally stuffed to the gills, the old female Piranhadon went to the surface and let the sun shine down on her, absorbing both the heat of the light and the warmth the water was soaking up. Her vision was actually rather good out of the water, and for a few seconds, she saw the dim dark forms of a small herd of Ferrucutus standing on the bright sand before turning and leaving. Almost all the time, every member of a herd would head for the hills whenever the fish attacked, or at least move several hundred yards away before resuming drinking, like what the main herd was doing now. In her bloated, half-asleep state, it did briefly cross the Piranhadon's 12-volt mind that it was curious how these Ferrucutus had still been standing and choosing to remain at the site where she'd just taken one of their comrades, but she dismissed it as she slowly swum downriver.
She couldn't have possibly known the reason, and wouldn't have cared if she did somehow know, but she'd grabbed and killed the lead bull's favorite cow, who he "liked" the best. Their bond had kept him on the bank for that time as he bellowed and groaned forlornly, refusing to leave as long as there was even a chance she might pop up and come back. But his mate was now beyond help. And hope.
Meanwhile, the stuffed Piranhadon sculled downstream, her body just below the surface as she soaked up the sun. This kill was even bigger than her last, a male Ligocristus snatched from a herd of bachelor bulls, and would take her four, maybe five, days to fully digest. All around her, other creatures of the river were relaxing too, turtles sunning on logs and sandbars, a hulking Needlemouth rolling on her side, lizards standing primly in the mud or on branches, and cormorants perched spread-eagled, drying out their wings.
The huge fish felt calm, and decided to go into a flooded stretch of forest nearby to bask and rest. As she started to enter the flooded maze of trees, weaving her way through with an easy grace, she came across a pair of Turturcassis, 13-foot reptiles that almost resembled plesiosaurs and preyed on fish and turtles, in the act of courting, the larger, tawny-colored male curling and rubbing around the dark blond female in something very close to poetry in motion.
A few hours before, the Piranhadon would've happy to cut the dance short by attacking and eating one of the participants. Now though, she just watched with casual disinterest as the Turturcassis pair, caught up in their sleek dance, came closer. Just twenty feet away, both reptiles suddenly saw the huge fish hanging in the water and much too close. In a burst of speed, the two lovers separated and fled for their lives in opposite directions. Out of instinct, the stuffed old fish halfheartedly chased the male for several seconds, but let him escape by a wide margin.
Moving on, she found a wide channel between the inundated trees where a mid-sized creek flowed during the dry season. Facing upstream to get plenty of oxygen, the scaly old-timer contently exposed her dark back to the air and rested, lolling in nine feet of warm water like a gigantic log as the sun beat down and feeling the sensation of Ferrucutus meat starting to digest in her belly, much of it going to her waiting litter, who calmed down one by one as long-awaited nourishment reached them.
The huge fish stayed like this for three hours, as other water denizens respectfully kept clear. But she was no threat to anyone now, and even if creatures big enough to make a good meal came by, they were spared. A Sepulcro, a five-foot long, chocolate brown elongated fish with a huge mouth for grabbing fish came into view, digging into the leaves and mud with his tail until only his back and face were exposed. When a big school of banded barbs passed by six minutes later, bearing horizontal stripes of pale gold and faded brown, he shot out with his giant mouth agape, swallowing two dozen of the four-inch fish. The sunning Piranhadon just dimly watched.
When she became too hot, the huge predator fish wove her way into the shade of the trees at her right, resting in the cool darkness of a dead giant that'd only fallen halfway before being caught by the crown of another one. Soon, the whole of the flooded river became darker as storm clouds rolled in during the mid-afternoon, and then the Piranhadon's barbells detected a pattern of repeated, little impacts that she'd long ago learned to associate with this type of darkness as rain suddenly poured down from the clouds, and the voices of the river and the raindrops both merged together in a sublimely beautiful and deeply sacred kind of music. In the warm water, she just hung still and got zoned out to the rhythmic, irrelevant vibrations coming from the surface while resting and digesting.
Finally, seemingly as fast as it had come, the rainstorm moved away, with the sun coming back out. Rising back to the surface, the Piranhadon slowly moved back to the river from the swamped forest, where she again sought shade, hanging just below the surface near the bank, staying in one spot with movements of her fins. Eventually, the sun became lower in the sky, and the shadows ever longer. The sun became weaker in the water first of course, and the old fish's blank grayish eyes sensed it. Going to a sandbar in the middle of the river, she lightly tucked herself against it and presented her flank to the west, enjoying the last of the sun's rays on her cold-blooded body.
When the sun finally started to touch the horizon, going down with swift speed, the great fish sensed it and left the sandbar to find a place to sleep for the night. If she'd still been unsuccessful in hunting, she would've used this time of day as a perfect chance to stalk and surprise prey in the dusk, and her kind could even do an okay job of hunting by night if need be. But with two tons of meat stewing inside her belly after this day, there was obviously no need.
Looking for a good site to retire, the pregnant Piranhadon found a decrepit sort of small rock pyramid about eight feet high with carvings and a sort of hollow, maybe a shrine to some river or water god that Skull Island's former civilization had constructed, and had then later been submerged in 16 feet of water by some course change. The stable structure had also blocked the passage of sunken logs and some sand, creating a whole latticework of dead timber facing the current. Yes, it was a nice, secure place to sleep out of the current. So, gently resting her belly so stuffed with meat and unborn young on the bottom, the Piranhadon took up her position behind the pyramid, automatically flicking her fins and huge tail to stay in place as the last sunlight disappeared.
Something suddenly changed in her eyes, and the huge beast then fell asleep. An adept, successful, and wise hunter, she would continue to provide her developing babies with the nutrition they needed to grow over the next two months, making many more kills along the way. Then, the day would come when she'd go into a deep marsh, arch her tail up as she swam-and a few hours later, all her responsibilities to the next generation of Piranhadon would thankfully be over.
That was far in the future still, and as the hulking predator dozed, as they always did and always would, the fish, turtles, and invertebrates in the area instinctively kept away from the sleeping giantess. As far as they were concerned, when she woke up, she might well be hungry again.
Well, that takes care of this chapter, but I promise that there'll be even more surprises in store as we explore Skull Island's rivers and wetlands together. Of course, whether every visitor will be returning alive is another matter entirely...