Grapples with fourteen foot long bug, beaks

Running along the beach, I juked sideways as something surged out of the water. It looked like a giant bug, at least fourteen feet long.

***

It tried to pull into the water. I was on its back, where its shell was the strongest, but it didn’t matter. I was wrapping my tentacles around it, and I wasn’t going to let it alone until I had what I wanted. Just touching it was enough to take on its appearance, but I wanted the toxin, and whatever other abilities it had that might be useful.

It spun in the water, sending sand up. Although I had low light vision, the sand obscured everything. I couldn’t see anything, and that would have made me anxious if we were deeper in the ocean. I’d seen enough movies set in the ocean to know how terrifying it could be. At least from what I could see, the ocean was a hell world where things were out to eat you on every side. You were only seconds away from being bitten by a shark coming out of the darkness or being stung by a jellyfish or a ray, and that was in the normal world. In a world like this, where the predators were super sized, I could only imagine that whatever ate these things must have been even larger.

Fortunately, this thing had a beak.

Fangs were great, but for cracking shells, a beak was better. I formed a half dozen, and a few moments later I was digging inside the thing, its exoskeleton cracking.

This thing tasted even better than the fae had, and a moment later it stopped moving.

***

Inferno