???????????

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  As the beast screeched in pain, it tried to think what this was. For all its life, the things above had never done anything like this to it! It had tasted the scent of a good meal in the empty above and as it was still hungry, it hunted. But then suddenly before it could take the food, something attacked it! Some of its limbs were hurt, and it could barely feel the pain. With a pull, the limb was torn free, life liquid going into the water. That was the bad thing, it knew others would soon sense the beast was wounded. And they would come, and they would swarm. It would have to go out of the mass into the empty and wait to heal. But as it pulled itself up into the empty, it saw things that it had never seen before staring at it.

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  Zevortro

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  Zevortro looked at the monster as it pulled itself out of the water. It was long, maybe ten feet long, and five wide. It was a large black fish with eight tentacles three feet long. Each of the tentacles broke apart into four ‘fingers that were five feet long. There were four on each side near the top fin. At the end of the fish's body was a five-foot-long rope-like tail with multiple fins on it. But in the middle of the body, near the bottom of the body were what looked like two large frog legs. Its face had a mouth as wide as it was and two fangs that went down. Above the mouth were four white cloudy eyes that saw nothing.

  Zevortro could only stare in shocked horror at the creature from the depths. Horror that lessened when he saw that the tentacle on the front right was torn off at half a foot from the base. As the wound on that limb gushed blood, Zevortro could only grin. That meant that they could wound it, and if they could wound it then they could kill it! But as he stared at the creature, he saw something that shocked him, its eyes were wide in shock.

  “Nobody, move!” Zevortro barked as the creature stood still and looked at them.

  “What? Why!?” Bryke asked horror in his voice.

  “It’s shocked, it can think,” Zevortro said, his voice breaking slightly.

  “It can think!? Bro are you for real!?” Bryke demanded shock and horror in his voice.

  Terra started to mutter prayers under her breath and Zevortro agreed with her. Another First Contact with a new race, or was it a mutant? Either way, there was a chance that they could get out of this without fighting. They just had to hope that the being before them was shocked long enough for Jessie to come back for them.

  As Zevortro nodded, he kept his eyes locked on the creature’s wound. Already it was scabbing over, and he thought that he could see flesh forming. So it could regenerate, that was something. And that meant that it had to eat a lot for fuel. And that meant that they might still fight with their hands.

  But then the creature made a move as it raised its tentacles to strike at them!

  Zevortro dodged the blow and then he raised his rifle, aiming at the thing's head. “Well, that was short. Fire!”

  “Firing!” Bryke roared as he aimed and fired his pistol.

  The shot flew at the creature but suddenly the creature grabbed the ice spike and broke off parts of it. It then used the ice to block the bolt, the ice glowing a strange blue color moments before the bolt hit it.

  “What is that!?” Bryke exclaimed in horror

  Zevortro could only watch as the creature broke off three more pieces of ice, each piece of ice now glowing blue.

  “It’s the creature, it’s doing that!” Terra cried horror in her voice.

  As he watched, Zevortro saw the final proof that he needed that this thing was sentient. The creation and use of tools at the time it needed them, the proof of reasoning. “Just keep firing!”

  As all three of them fired, the creature roared again as it kept blocking the shots.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  When it tried to get them with one of its reaming tentacles and ‘fingers’, Bryke reacted and fired. As the bolt hit, the beast roared in pain.

  Bryke only laughed madly as he kept firing. “Yeah, you like that!? Come on, try me!”

  For a second, Zevortro was sure that the creature didn’t understand Bryke. Then it looked at him and its checks seemed to inflate twice their size. Then the beast opened its mouth and roared, firing a blast of pure sound that hit Bryke and sent him flying!

  “NO! KILL IT!” Zevortro cried, anger in his voice. There was nothing more they could do, they had to kill this thing to live. And hope that there wasn’t another that would attack Bryke as soon as he hit the water.

  “It’s picking us off! I need to use my Power!” Terra bellowed.

  Then Zevortro locked his eyes on the wound and swallowed. “No! Don’t make it madder!”

  For a second Terra gritted her teeth before she nodded. “Then start running!”

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  Bryke

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  “AAAAAGGGGHHH!” Bryke bellowed in rage as he flew through the air. He back at the beast and gripped his pistol tighter as he sent a bolt at it. He swallowed a breath of air a moment before he hit the water. As he sank, he looked around, trying to see if anything was around him. After a moment, he saw something deeper down. There, at the edge of his vision down below there was a strange red glow. As he watched, the thing slowly rose higher, and he started to see it. It looked to be over twenty feet wide or was it tall? Wihout waiting, he turned and swarm upwards towards the island. He had to warn the others, that something big was coming!

  As soon as he broke the water, he looked around and saw he was closer to the island. From where he was floating, he could see the battle. He had to get there before Jessie got back, they had to get out of here!

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  Terra.

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  As she kept firing, Terra tried to keep calm. She understood why Zevortro had said not to show the creature her abilities, she did. The way it reacted to Bryke’s taunts told her everything that she needed to know about this thing. If it had reacted like that to taunts or the sound of Bryke, how would it react to knowing who hurt it?

  Suddenly, the creature threw one of the ice shields at her. Without thinking, Terra used what Jessie had taught her and in a moment she was by Zevortro. She just blinked and tried to think before she threw up her last meal.

  For a second, all she could look at was what she had released. Then she was back in the moment, up and firing at the creature, scoring a hit on its rightmost blind eye. The creature screamed in pain as its other tentacles thrashed and hit the water.

  “Got it!” Terra yelled in defiance as she aimed at the creature

  “Keep it up! Aim for the other eyes and do that again!” Zevortro cried as he fired his rifle. This time the shot hit just beyond the ‘ice shield’ and severed the ‘finger’ holding it.

  As the limb fell and blood gushed free, it lashed out with its tentacles, striking the land and water. Thankfully, the two humans were able to dodge the blows, and they moved backwards away from their foe.

  “Okay, you made it mad, now what?” Terra asked, her voice slowly getting stronger.

  “Do you think you can jump us after Jessie?” Zevortro asked, his voice raw. “Stars, even if you can get Bryke, that would help so much!”

  “I’m right here!” Bryke’s voice called out from behind them.

  Turning, Terra shined her light onto Bryke as he panted, half out of the water. She was about to grin when she saw Bryke’s face, the sheer terror on it.

  “Great to see you, man! And here is thinking you’d been thrown farther than you could swim!” Zevortro said as he moved towards him. But then he stopped, and then Terra knew he had realized how Bryke looked.

  “And we gotta go, now! Something bigger than that is coming up!” Bryke said, looking over his shoulder at the water behind him.

  “Bigger!? Bigger than that!?” Terra asked horror in her voice.

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  Jessie

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  Jessie looked around the large land on an island two away from the others and looked at the water. So far, he had seen nothing that gave any hint of why this thing had been created. But the more he looked around, the more that this place looked familiar. There was something about it, that he just couldn’t explain.

  But then he whipped his head around as he heard an echo from where he had left the others. “NO!”

  Within moments, he was back in the air and moving, putting his all into getting to them. Within moments, he shot upwards above the island and looked down as he fell. Seeing the large creature attacking them, he knew what he had to do. Aiming and firing as he fell, he saw his shots hit its back. Smirking, he angled to land in the water near Bryke.

  As soon as he splashed down, the others all looked up and he saw Bryke cry. “Sorry, I’m late guys! What happened?”

  Terra looked at him as the creature roared in pain, but before she could say anything Bryke hugged him.

  “LATER! We’ll tell you the play-by-play later! Something big is coming up! We need to go now!” Bryke stammered, fear in his voice.

  “Big? Bigger than that!?” Jessie demanded as Terra and Zevortro moved towards him.

  “BIGGER!” Bryke screamed as Terra and Zevortro put their hands on Jessie.

  “Then we’re gone!” Jessie said before he ‘Air Dashed’ them away and into the air.

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  Lurker

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  As the Lurker tried to strike the thing that had attacked it, it hit nothing but air. Sending out small ‘echoing sights’, the lurker felt nothing living. And it felt shock as the Lurker realized things it had been fighting were gone. The far stingers that they had used were strong, and it wondered how it hadn’t encountered them before. But they hadn’t gone back into the life space, so where were they? This whole thing was so far beyond anything that the Lurker had ever dealt with, it wanted to forget this. But then the bigger question was, was the food source thing still here?

  As it ‘looked around’, it found the dead thing that had been leaking lifeblood. With a small hint of joy, it reached out and grabbed the food piece. As it brought the morsel to its mouth, it had to mentally scowl as it felt how much meat was in the dead thing. This would task all its resources, but it would be able to mostly recover.

  Before it could eat the piece, it went still. A louder echoing sight came over the empty, stronger than any of its former swarm.

  Slowly, it went still and then sent out one of its echoing sights, hoping to find out what had made that large one. Maybe it if was lucky, then it was one of the big ones dying.

  Then it felt horror as it ‘saw’ what had screamed. There, one of the true killers of the depths had risen to the empty. What was it after?! Those only came up when there…..

  It felt its lifeblood leave its body and then without a word, it threw itself into the life space. The little bitters were nothing compared to the thing that was hunting it now!

  As it swam into the depths, something started to pull it backwards. No matter how hard it tried to swim, it felt the water pulling it against its efforts to move. All it had time for was one last loud screech before it felt teeth biting through its body.