Littlefoot tried, to mediocre effect, keeping some vestige of self control as he pulled to free his leg with all it's might. Part of it was not to look like a scardey egg in front of his friends, but a less concious part of him knew he that the racket he was making right now was certainly not a good thing... Nor was kicking up a very strong, very distinct odor up into the air for anything in the immediate vicinity to smell.
"Come on, come on, please," Littlefoot begged, feeling a twitch of revulsion as the scurrying ants began to crawl up his leg. The others were trying their hardest to pull with him.
"Come on!"
SNAP
There was almost no bend to give him any warning-- he simply went sprawling backwards, knocking into all his friends and sent them all into a tumbling ball that crashed several meters away.
Littlefoot's eye twitched as he felt several of his heavier friends right on top of his chest.
"... Well, I didn't mean like that," he wheezed, giving a sheepish grin at his pile of groggy friends.
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Thud whipped his head around. Some moron was making a very loud racket down at the Cicatrix river. Sounded a bit like screaming... Maybe it was a local sharptooth who made a lucky catch? Or...
'That wouldn't be them, would it?' Thud asked his brother and Red Claw. Usually the valley brats were pretty careful about sneaking around. Now, maybe, maybe, Thud reasoned largely out of hope rather than anything else, if it WAS those kids, they could just set up an ambush on the bend around the river? Thud tapped his claws together, savoring a fantasy of getting even with all seven of those cocky little brats. The idea of getting a meal almost didn't matter to him-- it was the revenge he truely craved. Maybe his brother was right.... Maybe this was their lucky day. Thud grinned up at the towering Red Claw and asked: 'So... What's your call, boss?'
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Roughly fifteen miles south-southeast of where the gang had a run in with an ex-resident of the mysterious beyond, and sixteen miles away from the relatively slow and lumbering Cicatrix that marked the point between the Valley burough and the greater beyond, a creature road the thermal currents about a fifth of a mile up into the air. At the moment, it wasn't truly flying-- it simply hovered, content on the up flowing draft of rising hot air, like a colossal snake-necked bat.
It's watery yellow eyes calmly gazed at smooth, whispy clouds wandering over the air, waiting. What it was waiting for precisely, it didn't completely understand. It had awoke this morning-- it's seventh consecutive day without a meal-- and had the sudden whim to fly as far south as it's wings could carry it.
A scent caught it's incredibly powerful sniffer, and it turned it's head. It did not know any real language, but the two words that manifested in it's mind were clear enough that they might as well have been words.
One was 'carrion'.
The other was 'prey.'
