Blood Feud: An Encounter in the Dawn

by AcheronThanatron

The early Plestiocene, two million years ago. An ancient alpha predator awakens from his slumber and rises from the dark ocean depths to hunt terrestrial prey - and in doing so violates the territorial boundaries of a new species that has evolved in his absence. To them, he is an interloper - to him, he is merely returning to a land he has ruled for aeons.

INTRODUCTION

THE OLD ONE SWAM THROUGH THE INKY BLACKNESS.

His long and powerful tail swayed behind him, propelling the great beast through the ocean depths. Occasionally the dark waters would be illuminated by flashes of blue light emanating from the massive dorsal fins that ran along the length of the leviathan's back- a reminder of the fire that raged deep within his ancient lungs and gave him his life. These brief flashes revealed a battered draconic visage whose armored hide was pockmarked with fading scars from battles long past.

He had not always been the Old One; in ages past he had been the Lone Hatchling, the Young Male, the Pretender, and finally the Alpha Male and Apex Predator. Bearing these final titles he had gained his female, and with her he had obtained two new identities: those of Mate and Brood Father.

But then the One Who Was Many had descended from the outer dark, and with them had come the Great Dying. The Alpha Male had fought hard to defend what was his but the One Who Was Many was stronger and he was cast to the ground, bleeding and burning. When the Alpha Male awoke he had found his world aflame, his nest destroyed, his mate and hatchling slain. Filled with a great and terrible resolve he had waged war against the dragon and all whose minds it had enslaved, until in one final confrontation he had sent the abomination fleeing bleeding and screeching back to the cold and barren expanse from whence it had fallen.

Now he was the Old One; to the best of his knowledge he was also the Last One. After his battle with the One Who Was Many he had wandered the earth looking for any surviving member of his species. He had found only found only bones and corpses, and once an old and crazed male that attacked him and died as a result. That had been ages ago and the Old One had long since made peace with the fact that he would never again be in the company of his own kind and that he would never again mate; that he would never again sire young and that his species would die with him.

And yet when he slept he would still see his mate lying on the ground, her hide smoldering, her eye sockets empty and black, her chest cavity torn open and hollowed out by three sets of ravaging jaws. He would see their destroyed nest that she had died protecting and nary a sign of their offspring - in his mind's eye he saw his hatchling crying in fear as it's mother was torn apart, as six malicious eyes turned their attention to the nest, as a gaping maw lined with bloodstained daggers descended and silenced his child's cries forever/ - he would smell the fires raging around him, his mate's burning flesh and his own sizzling wounds. He would hear the gleeful malicious laughter of the One Who Was Many, and he would awaken filled with the same primal rage and loss that he had felt on that black day.

But now he was untroubled by such thoughts. He swam through the darkness of the deep, fish scattering from his path. Even great Megalodon sharks and Livyatan whales, those sixty-foot lords of the depths, fled in the presence of the Old One for they would be but a mere mouthful should he turn his hunger upon them. The more adventurous of their ranks would turn and trail him from a safe distance in case he made a kill, hoping to scavenge the scraps he would leave in his wake. They would go hungry today, however; the Old One would be hunting on land.

Guided by impulses he did not fully understand the Old One swam northeast towards a land the rising waters would soon submerge, much of what little remained above water separated from the main landmass of the World Island. A place the learned men of ages hence would know as Sundaland.