He flails and snaps and shivers; for all the world the perfect picture of poisoned prey, and yet with the flashing lights and the flailing tendrils it all works in his favor, as he rolls away and twists and strikes at air and its own snapping jaws find a meal of empty atmosphere.

A snarl rips from slavering jaws as it takes a couple steps back, watching the not-cat roll to his feet in the sand, trembling like a leaf in the wind. But is it all an act…? Or is there simply a strange power to his madness; to the constant strikes at seemingly nothing.

It cannot tell. It, frankly, does not care. There is only one thing in front of it, and that is prey, and it will rip its guts out into the sand if it has to bleed out with it.

There is one thing they have in common, besides their monstrous bodies. Fury. A kind of familiar rage that Terror can see written all through its expression, in the lift of the lips and the baring of teeth, and with its opponent's apparent weakness the lunge is still so startlingly quick that it doesn't even think to dodge before fishhooks are being sunk into its skin.

First blood, but it isn't his—claws rent its flesh and Terror howls, a thing of equal parts rage, pain, and pure thrill, thrill of the hunt, thrill of the fight, thrill of clashing snarling snapping with someone that is not prey but beast—

—and it is all too happy to meet him with its own vicious offense. Its wounds open from a trickle to a waterfall, but Terror doesn't care about the pain; doesn't care about anything but blood, blood, blood. As claws sink into its chest and flesh parts and tears and burns like flame with hurt, Terror twists its body sideways to swing new tendrils into its opponent, aiming stinging cnidocytes nestled within white tentacles for those rending paws—aiming to fill limbs with toxin.