The great bellowing war cry shattered the previously peaceful skies. All heads in my tribe snapped up to find a great strange beast barreling down to the icy tundra ahead, the summons to battle not directed at us, but death itself.

“Where are its wings?” Xylar whispered in horror on my right.

I eyed the strange white being, a morbidly flattened cylinder, through the smoke trailing behind it like a banner.

“It must’ve lost them in the fire,” I reasoned hoarsely. My own wings rippled at my back in distress.

I couldn’t imagine a worse fate.

“We should try to help it,” Xylar decided, just as a loud boom beyond the wide plane of ice announced the being’s violent landing upon our planet.

The ground under our clawed feet trembled from the impact like a great –

“Stampede!” Krelith cried as he barreled out of his tent.

I snatched him by the back of his pelt before he could notice that no one paid his pronouncement any mind and inflict on us another long winded rant about respecting our elders.

“No stampede, old man,” I said as kindly as possible.

There might have been a snarl in there anyway.

“But-“

“A massive creature has fallen from the skies,” I informed him.

Krelith grabbed at the greying fur of his chest as if the impending heart attack he always warns us of was finally upon us.

This might be a day of celebration after all.

“It’s just as it’s been foretold,” he proclaimed in a reverent whisper, “you must protect it’s offspring.”

With that, his hazy black eyes rolled back in his head and his furry knees gave out from under him.

It was his daughter that caught him with a playfully scolding look aimed my way.

I hadn’t even tried to intercept.

At least I can blame my reticence to entertain his dramatics on the distraction of the felled beast this time.

A hand landed on my shoulder then.

Xylar.

“We ride,” he encouraged.

A few others in my tribe were already at their mounts.

The Ulgox panted excitedly.

Standing almost as tall as our tents, their white fur, matching ours, rose and fell in great swells from their beaks.

I approached one set of the four formidable legs on either side of my mount, and she scooped me up onto her back in a practiced dance usually preceding battle.

One of the many perks of being leader is having to wait for no one. My mount agreed, bolting from the group and towards the growing smoke on the horizon before another word could be said.

But now, as I reach the ledge above the site of the beast’s demise, I pull my mount up short, the sickening sight almost inspiring great heaves at all the red pouring forth from the poor flightless creature.

It’s Xylar who reaches my side first.

He does heave, but at least has the decency to dismount before doing so.

The smoke clears slightly, red taking shape as I inhale sharply. Three more of my people pull up at my back as I recognize, “It’s the offspring.”

Their red bodies stand on two legs, same as we do. Two arms as well, as far as I can tell. It’s almost a relief to see that they’re wingless.

Maybe their creator was, too.

But then I squint past the smoke to assess their movements because I’m sure I’m not seeing right.

They seem to be tearing apart their mother’s corpse with practiced ease.

I must be correct though.

Another of my people dismounts to heave.

“Barbarians,” Dregnox hisses behind me, his hand audibly tightening on his spear.

I was trying to think the best of the newcomers, especially if Krelith’s predictions are correct for once, but I’m having a hard time disagreeing with Dreg’s sentiment.

“Maybe it’s ceremonial?” Xylar poses weakly.

Their cavernous creator begins to give birth once more. We’re all too shocked stiff to even consider heaving in witness to the tall red behemoth that glides out of her entrance.

With an impossibly long metallic neck and stout torso on strange circular connected legs, it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

One of her offspring raises the new child’s arm and climbs inside its body.

“They’re feeding themselves to it,” Dregnox cries a little too loudly in disgusted distress.

One of the offspring looks up in our direction. Their strange furless face scans the overlook where we perch, but our white pelts and mounts render us invisible against the surroundings.

Still, the child seems wary, and goes to join a group of its brethren as the newest, tallest, and well fed offspring begins lifting parts of their mother from a cord attached to its snout with ease.

“It’s grotesque,” Evvur, a normally formidable female, croaks.

“They just don’t know any better,” I voice, solely to soothe my thunderstruck tribespeople.

These creatures were obviously just born, their instincts driving them to apparently desecrate their creator without any proper guidance.

After a moment of deliberation wherein the children below start pushing forcefully at the one who had heard Dreg, frustrations mounting, I decide with a press of my ankles into my mount’s sides, “We will help.”

I stand atop my ulgox’s back and expand my wings. A fluttering sound from behind, like the ripping open of multiple tent flaps, informs me my people have mimicked my move without protest.

Perfect, because as we descend on icy breeze to alight upon the offspring, the loud shrill sounds they emit translate as more protest than I was prepared for.

_What a strange language these beings have._

A majority scramble back into their deconstructed mother, which just isn’t sustainable.

Few remain to greet us, not counting the ones who had crumpled to the ground after emitting that wordless screech.

_Barbarians indeed._

I raise my claw tipped hands as I land before the remaining offspring, showing I mean no harm, but even that makes one of their sets of strange eyes fully turn to white before they collapse as well.

An emboldened offspring steps forward with a strange metallic device gripped in the shaky hand of their raised arm.

I optimistically consider it a translator, as their shrieks were already starting to grate on me, but then a piercing light explodes from the device and singes the fur right off my bicep.

Even with the apparent weapon in hand, the offspring stumbles back at my wide fanged grin.

They speak violence, then?

I’m fluent.

This will be a satisfying conversation.