Eridanus had a new visitor. Not a welcome one, but a visitor all the same. Effluvium would not return to Cetus for a while. The stench of Hunger burning and the bubbling, hot oil had it scared from the swamp. It would find new hunting grounds. Without water. Its nose had caught this place, as it roamed tunnel H. It smelled like food was here, and so it went. Effluvium cut a mucus laden path through the underbrush. Dark flies buzzed around its body. It was not there for them. It was there for bigger meat. Had no mind for them.

Occasionally it snapped for the flying bits of protein. Over its first cycle it had grown a second pair of jaws. This one horizontal. They clicked awkwardly over one another with each bite, and it had to adjust them with pawing hands. It turned a snuffling nose to the ground, its teeth and face grinding against the dirt as it sniffed. Now, as always, was time to search for food.

The scent of something caught its attention. The scent hung in the air, and was sweet. A bird, although Efflvium did not have any conscious thought or definition of what a bird was. It padded after the smell with a snort, tongue lolling out.

Ahmon hadn't quite gotten the grasp of flight yet. In fact, He didn't know flight was a thing He could do. If only He hadn't been previously vanquished, as He believed. So, He now crawled on all fours--eights technically--without much aim or cause. Simply travelling, exploring. It took a decent amount of time to find a way up from Eridanus' trench, but He could, of course, manage. He was Ahmon-Ra, after all, a godling.

The bat-dragon shambled proudly across the green landscape until a strange.... stench crossed His nose. It was like meat. Sweaty, saturated, and sweltering in the heat. It was a sharp and unwanted smell. Nothing like potential food, maybe only a ghost of the idea. The half-rotting corpse of the very thought of a meal escaped His swirling stomach. Ahmon wasn't sure what His kind even ate. What did gods eat?

Oh its own accord, perhaps by mere accident or prompted by the disgusting chunk of matter in the vicinity, a new power manifested itself. The 'vision' of streams of red came to His mind's eye, and suddenly Ahmon could detect the heartbeat--there was one in the pile of flesh??--of the thing in front of him. His lip curled in disgust. It was a creature of some sort? Some lesser, unthinking, zombified thing. There was another heartbeat that was just fading as Ahmon had used the power. Something smaller, much smaller, that the mass had seemingly killed and was now noisily devouring.

Ahmon had only one thought. One He felt the need to voice, of course.

"That's wack."

Effluvium had caught up with the origin of the scent. A rainbow spinner, hovering in the air. It didn't seem to fear Effluvium. Perhaphs it thought a creature that approached it so noisily, so openly, couldnt be a predator. It was wrong. Effluvium slapped the bird from the air with a paw. Before it could escape, Effluvium snapped its teeth over the bird, and it gave a small squeak as it died. It would've been comical, had the situation not been so morbid.

The bird was small, considering Effluvium was four feet and growing, but it was food. And Effluvium liked any food. Effluvium fought with its dual pair of jaws to swallow it. It's small, strange limbs, newly sprouted, worked in tandem to awkwardly shovel the bird, and the substrate into its' mouth. Drooling like the nastie thing it was. Once it managed to get a grip on the thing, it tossed it back. A small bird's limb began to grow from Effluvium's forehead, first bone, then tendon, then flesh and skin.

Effluvium's head whipped up. It heard a sound. It sounded remarkably like speech. And those that talked were not-foods. Effluvium's eyes narrowed in on the form of Ahmon. It had no eyes, it noted. Has it not been for the experience in the swamp, Effluvium might have thought that made it easier to eat, were it not a not-food. Swamp-with-teeth had no eyes as well. To confirm if it was food or not, Effluvium spoke.

"Eat," it gurgled. It shuffled closer to Ahmon. If it were a not-food, it would lead Effluvium to more food. If it were food, then Effluvium would be closer to food. In Effluvium's world, it was a win-win.

@Ahmon-Ra