Toxic Tales: Chapter 23

Eyes

The giant creature bashed its head against the cave wall, unable to get any more of its body into the cave.

"Achelois and Asclepius, I'll distract it while you two run out of the cave, Elpis can wait as she can't run with her wing, I'll catch up with you," Eris said.

"Can you stay with Elpis, I don't know if you can keep up with us," Asclepius murmured.

"Sure, just wait until I distract it," Eris said, running towards the creature. She lunged at the massive eye, digging her claws and teeth into it. The massive creature thrashed while Asclepius and Achelois ran out of the cave. Eris jumped down into the cave, landing beside Elpis, who flinched when she got near.

"Was that what I think that was," Elpis asked, her voice shaking.

"It was a giga, an adolescent though."

"Did you have to attack it like that? The sight of that eye made me ill."

"It's impossible to reason with a giga, they're mindless killers, when they speak it's mindless and uncivilized."

"I still don't know, it seemed a bit much."

"I've done worse, eventually you get numb to that type of thing."

"I don't think I want to be numb to it, I don't want to hurt anyone."

"That's hard when you're surviving on your own, it might be easier in a group though."

"You survived on your own?"

"Yeah, for moons, I eventually found the arena and stayed there until now."

"Why were you alone, aren't microraptors usually in groups?"

"Yeah, but my pack got caught by humans, eventually I got away."

"I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have asked that."

"It's fine, it's been so long I don't mind talking about it, if you want I can tell you the whole thing."

"If you're fine with it, anything to take my mind off the others."

"Alright, I was a hatchling at the time and was hiding in a hollow tree while the others hunted. All of a sudden they all climbed into it and huddled together. After a while of waiting a human peered into the tree before hitting the entrance with a hatchet until its shoulder could get in. After that it reached in and tried to grab one of us, he bit that thing's arm until it let go. It backed off until another one turned up and reached in, this time wearing thick hide gloves, before grabbing the same microraptor. It walked over to a small cage and dropped him in before he kept doing that to the rest. Eventually, I made a run for it and darted out of the entrance. One of the humans threw a pair of rocks tied to each other at me, which wrapped around my legs. It was too heavy to move and the rope was too thick to break. One of them threw me into a cage with a few others. We got carted off to a dark, damp, stone building where most of us were displayed and sold to other humans. After a moon or so I was sold to a tall, short-haired human, I think a male, who gave me to his daughter as a pet. She treated me well, she would feed me pieces of her food when her parents would only feed me scraps. Her father, on the other hand, would use me as a way to punish his daughter, he would pluck feathers, use a knife to draw blood, and eventually, slash my eye."

- Sol