April 28, 2016, 02:07 PM
Oops I wrote too much. Might make this RO.
When the bugs came, she was hardly aware. The buzzing in the air was only a subtle thing to Seregryn; her mind was elsewhere, keeping herself entertained with a bone already chewed raw. She had been nibbling on it, tossing it about, cavorting with it as if it were a living thing to take the place of a proper friend. Her antics were watched by many eyes in the sky, although she did not know this until much later. The bone was from a larger animal but she did not know which. Its rounded ends told her it was a leg bone — the many teeth marks beset in to its surface told her, she was not it's first. A few feet away from where she played sat an exposed cache, and though there was meat inside of it, Seregryn let it fester. She was a child still, and foolish in her apathy towards such important things. This was likely where the bone had originated.
As she tossed the bone off of a small ledge, Seregryn bayed after it, then ran down the mountain to try and fetch the thing. The first attempt at this took her nearer to the base of the Sleeping Dragon, where she grabbed up her toy and touted it around like it meant something. She imagined it to be a bone of a long-dead enemy, and was concocting a story behind it when the first bug strayed close to her. It dropped from the air and latched itself upon the erected end which jut from her mouth, and initially Seregryn was oblivious. She neared the boundary line, all pomp and pride, intent on planting this bone somewhere that the enemies of the Dragons could see it (as if that would do any good); and when she found a suitable open patch of stone and dirt within which to root her prize, she placed it down and began to dig.
A second bug landed then, and a third. Perhaps they were curious.
She was reaching for the bone when she saw the trio of them, and was briefly stunned by their appearance. Large, with very round heads, smooth bodies - many legs. One bug cleaned its antennae in a nonchalant manner, while the other two seemed intent on nibbling at the bone's surface. Perhaps they too wanted to claim it? Seregryn's fur began to prickle, and she lurched for the bone, snapping at it, and then shook it, which prompted the locusts to scatter. Feeling triumphant, Sere hoisted the bone once more like a flag, and rumbled a pleased sound within her chest. She was gloating in her own way. Imagining this to be a great battle won, and her many followers praising her for such an astute battle plan, or some other nonsense.
On her final spin upon the rock face, she spotted the darkness.
Or rather, it spotted her.
More bugs began to drop from the sky. It was a gradual process, but swiftly accelerated until the mountain was being pelted by chitinous bodies — they flew haphazardly through the space provided, narrowly missing Seregryn on most occasions, but soon enough the swarm had descended to a point that being hit was unavoidable. Sere turned to regard a hollowed tree which had begun making a very odd plunking noise; she set her bone down to peer inside a worried hole in the trunk, yet even before she could wedge her snout close, bugs came racing out. That was what prompted her to start running (although the growing thickness of bugs in the air, the din that they made with their wings, soon became a suffocating thing). She felt the pressure of them before they started to land upon her, although as soon as she was overwhelmed by their presence, Seregryn took it upon herself to smite them all.
She dashed through piles upon the earth with her teeth bared, scooping them up or kicking them away, all the while crunching and snapping. Parts of bugs littered the ground — not nearly enough to rival the living, but a good try — and she kept on running and biting, her fear quickly becoming a sense of elation as adrenaline kicked in. Her mouth was filled with shattered carapace after shattered carapace, bits of thin wing material stuck between her teeth and bug guts streaking her face and chest. It was immensely satisfying to Seregryn. She ran and fought with the bugs until she was far from home, and did not notice until she absolutely had to stop to rest; the bugs were scattered across the northern valley as if to mock her, saying to her through their chaos of humming: Our forces are great; you shall not defeat us.
At this imagining, Seregryn's only thought was: Watch me. And she plunged back in to the fray, eager to devour as many of the creatures as she could.