ORIGIN

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She wasn't quite sure how she'd gotten to where she was. The place was darker than Eridanus, and the entire place was filled with shallow black water. Fog hung thickly in the air, and the distant trees were dark and looming. All in all she felt unnerved; that there might be things creeping here which simply did not occur elsewhere. Eridanus was safe. It was green and vibrant, its brooks cool and shallow and bubbling, the incessant chatter of the songbirds a reassuring chorus. Here the insects chittered eerily, and she could hear a haunting call echo, muffled, through the darkness every now and again.

Still, a fire burned within the dingo's heart, as bright as her orange-tawny goat, her gem, her vibrant amber eyes. She wanted to explore, to push on, to stubbornly shove her way into any place that tried to hold her back with something so mundane as darkness and fear. She thrilled with excitement, instead, beneath the unease--not quite fear, not yet. And she pressed onward.

Ahead the water got deeper, but she could see a reedy section of shore. She trotted down to it, moving along its edges, picking her way through clumps of black and rotten leaves and nimbly over a dead branch, not stepping on it. Not cracking it.

There was a large, black log lying in the water ahead, and the dingo hesitated for a brief moment. Something about it sent the faintest thrill of alarm down her nerves, twitching and tugging at her primeval instincts.

She paused, there, then slowly stepped back. No; something wasn't right. She wasn't sure quite what; her experience had not yet caught up with her instincts on the matter of alligators and crocodiles.

Nonetheless she was left standing motionless, triangular ears pricked up, one forepaw dangling midair--dripping--as she eyed the 'log' in the water.

She was waiting. Would the log move?

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The log rose in the water, and the dingo stepped quickly back, to what she thought was surely a safe range. It began to split apart, unlike anything she had ever seen, and she stared, transfixed.

Is this magic?

The interior of the log seemed to be filled with pointed ivory bits--teeth? But surely this was not a living creature? And inside, there was a rapidly-increasing glow, a beckoning fire that had the dingo nearly stepping forward again. What was that?

She had never seen fire, before; it was beautiful, like the light-orbs shining through amber, attracting and enthralling. And like a moth to a very real flame, she leaned forward to look more closely.

A searing heat engulfed the air before her, and she was flinching, wheeling away with squeezed-shut eyes, as the blistering air washed over her. The briefest of instants later she felt absolute agony searing over her left flank and haunch, and she stumbled in the black water.

A piercing series of screaming yelps echoed through Cetus' mist like gunfire, sharp and deafening. She barely registered that they were even hers; only that her pain was ripping out from her gut, through her throat, out her frantic maw. Amber eyes filled with terror, a snarl creasing her furred muzzle.

And then the stench of burning flesh and fur hit her nose. She was struggling, scrambling to turn, to shove herself through the slippering wet black and slosh away over rot and slime, to safety.

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The dingo scrambled away, but she realized at once that the massive fire-log was bursting out of the water after her. She bolted to one side, throwing herself into the water chest-deep, and the thing fell beside her with an enormous spray of cold, black water.

She could flee; she could try to escape, to get clear, but with her wounds, and with this thing--... She wasn't thinking clearly, anyway. When did she ever? She was a creature of instinct, and she was damn near cornered, this unknown object of sudden pain and terror slamming down beside her.

Right where it's vulnerable.

Without thinking, without reasoning--as she always was--the dingo launched herself at the alligator in a flurry of lunging, snarling bites, savage without holding back. She was a blur of tawny color, her sound now a deep and throaty roaring of her own, fangs bared past their pink gumlines. She tried to sink the teeth into the strange log, to tear into it, to bite, to shake, to rip, to shred. To kill.

Before it killed her.

Before it was too late.

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A fierce, bloodthirsty thrill began to course through her. She would fight, she would kill, she would survive. This angry, hot log wouldn't change that.

Her fangs tore at the armored skin, sinking against plating and then ripping, again and again. Then the log had twisted, slammed into her, and she was down with her left hind leg seized by something vicelike. Something powerful, the pressure pressing down and threatening to snap her bones, the sharp points of it driving through skin and deep into muscle and flesh.

Sparks of white-hot sick-yellow pain flashed through her mind and she released her bite, letting out another strangled yelp.

The dingo turned, lunging for the log again--and its eye, was that an eye, glaring at her, so baleful and coppery, glittering in the dim light... She had only an instant to feel terror, and then the adrenaline pushed her on, her violent ferocity swelling in her. Kill! KILL! Survive! KILL!

She aimed her next attack at the alligator's eye, driving fangs toward it in an attempt to sink them in around its stupid froglike socket. TEAR ITS EYE FROM ITS FACE! KILL THE LOG!

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The Hallowed Callers stopped their haunting songs to listen to the distant sounds of battle: the quiet spray of water, the screaming calls, the growling.

Someone was hunting.

Someone was feeding.

One by one they lifted quietly off, soaring toward the sound and the temptation of a scavenged meal at its source.

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She felt the metallic wet of the alligator's eye bleeding into her jaws, and then her world was swallowed by spinning, dizzying, chaotic darkness. She heard a loud, deep crack, felt the log-monster flipping her around and around in the water, felt that water filling her nostrils and her throat. With a growl she turned, muzzle still wrinkled up, body now matted and soaked with blood and swamp water, and aimed to pin her teeth entirely around the side of the monster's upper jaw.

Perhaps sinking fangs into the jaw of an alligator wasn't the world's best idea, but the dingo had very few options left open to her. She felt her senses catch up--felt her mind realizing that her left hind leg was ruined, twisted, broken apart--the bone, shattered completely.

She was only vaguely aware that the world had stopped spinning, that everything was tilting back upright--that all was dark, and filled with the circling crows.