Many times he had passed the horrible creatures in their pens, looking in at them with a mixture of morbid curiosity and disgust. Now he stood here once again, peering in at the one specimen hatched, grown, and given to him by the Baron. He followed its shape, tracing the outline of its arched body in the dim light. He took in the sight of its hardened shell, so grotesquely misshapen, not by nature, but by something on the other side of the spectrum to the natural world. He saw gleams of silver reflecting off the wings and their protruding veins, dry and delicate, neatly folded back over coarse hairs sprouting from the plates on its back. Around the other end was its stinger. He had yet to learn whether it held any venom.
At its front, a domed skull transitioned into soft flesh. What would pass for a face ended in a curtain of dangling tentacles. Its mouth was in under there somewhere, hidden away amongst the arms. He had seen it eat, but he had never seen more than the tentacles coiling around the meat, and how it slowly sank in and disappeared at their roots. His thoughts lingered on them, conjuring up ideas on how the beast truly fed itself. An image of it having several rows of grinding teeth formed in his mind.
The being turned to face him, shifting its many feet with a few swift beats of its wings. He cursed and flinched away from the gate, startled by the sharp, rustling sound and the sudden movement. It wasnāt the first time it had gotten that response out of him, and it sure wouldnāt be the last. This thing, this ābeeā, was safely locked up. Still his reflexes took over and urged him to flee. There was no middle ground in how it moved. Every time it went from stationary to decievingly fast, as if all it was waiting for was a chance to grab at him. So unlike the bats which he had long since grown used to being around.
It was, as the name suggested, little more than an overgrown insect. Insects (as far as he knew) didnāt have emotions. They had no empathy, no reasoning, no morals. No sense of loyalty. They acted on their whims, doing whatever their instinct told them to do in the moment. Everybody knew they were as likely to eat their young as they were to protect them. Out of all animals he had encountered, insects seemed the most brutal, and the most unpredictable. It came as no surprise the Gest favoured them.
One of its eyes found his, and he once more approached to meet it, his hands resting on the horizontal bars of its prison. It had no eyelids.
He was going to silently challenge the creature to show him it had some form of sentient thoughts inside that head, but he never got that far. Something in that unrelenting stare drew him in, and his objective changed as he fell deeper into it, turning from a search into a mere observation. He lost himself, opening up to its gaze, and what was reflected back at him gripped him tightly by the throat.
He saw fear. Floating in a vast sky of suffering and desperation was a wordless plea for help, a cry for mercy, and the freedom of death.
The massive hornet jerkily moved its head in small twitches. Its tentacles curled and raised, reaching for the bars, and his fingers.
He recoiled, and ran.
Iāll get you next time Skabb.