#panmezoring

A male white-faced malleorn has mounted an ambitious predation attempt on a blue gorn. The blue gorn is a prime specimen, average sized and in good health. Such quarry is a rare target for a predatory thescelornid as great as even the malleorn. Even so, the reason for this choice is simple.

Desperation.

The malleorn has gone for weeks without substantial food, and he's nearly ran through his reserves dry. Not to mention, mating season is just over the horizon, and he must acquire himself a great deal of calories if he is to survive the coming fast. This blue gorn could just be the prize he needs.

Unfortunately for the malleorn, this ceratornid will not go down so easy. Though he may not have a noticeable size advantage to his aggressor, his strength and weaponry is a match to his opponent's.

The malleorn rushes to sidestep, jaws agape, aiming for the blue gorn's legs. One solid bite of these bone splintering jaws could easily cripple the giant ceratornid. But as the malleorn flanks, the blue gorn goes in to jab at his leg, but went too low and ends up catching him by the ankle. Seizing the opportunity regardless, the blue gorn pivots in place, dragging the thescelornid stuck to his horns to the left, and throws him against a nearby tree.

The malleorn manages to right himself before he falls prone and scrambles to keep a distance between him and his opponent. His experience tells him to bide his time and find an opening, assessing for any weaknesses, but his hunger overrides all previous sense. He lunges forward again.

The blue gorn does so aswell.

Jaws latched onto horn, the two byrds are at a standoff.

Each one pushing the other, not conceding one another an inch of ground. The malleorn strains, scraping the leaf litter with all his might, the vice like grip of his jaws unrelenting. The blue gorn steadfast in his defense maintains his ground.

A loud snap.

The blue gorn charges ahead but stops in the middle of his steps. The malleorn nearly falls flat on his face, but shakes off the shock. And in his jaws, one half of the blue gorn's right horn, bleeding still from the core.

The malleorn discards the horn and grabs hold of the ceratornid's tail, plucking a mouthful of plumage on the first bite, the blue gorn turns about, but is stopped in his tracks as the malleorn connects his second bite to a more vital area.

Gurgling calls conclude the clash, as the predator wrestles his prey down to the ground, jaws around the blue gorn's throat.

There is hope yet for this malleorn.

A large food base supports predator guilds going up. One such predator that benefits from this is one that sits at the top of the shallow water food chain.

*Litoterror giganteus*, or the *greater coastal kraken* is a colossal predator measuring over 25 meters long. It is an ambush predator, one armed with a powerful armor shearing beak and eight strong barbed tentacles. Prey is typically captured first by the cephalic tentacles before being restrained by the larger body tentacles, constricting the hapless victim in a crushing embrace soon ended by a bite to its vulnerable areas.

The size of prey taken ranges from fisk swallowed whole to remipterosaurs matching nearly two thirds its own mass. A single great feeding event could satiate the kraken for months on end.

A great point of interest for those studying the greater coastal kraken is its intelligence. Abandoned lairs of adult females show leftovers of what seem to be works of art. Shells or bones of prey carved with intricate patterns, engravings on the coral made by beak or hook, knots of vegetation tied to various shapes have all been found.

This high intelligence extends not just towards an expression of their creativity, but also their interactions with other species. Domestication seems to be something that the greater coastal kraken practices to an extent with the various helper animals it encourages to stay within the lairs of females, or hunting companions employed by transient males. Communication with coastal populations of ebony lacerorns also seem to be a common occurence.

Yet despite all of this potential for cooperation, they are extremely aggressive towards their own kind. Cannibalism is exceedingly common when krakens of the same sex cross paths with one another, and the same goes for when a female happens upon an unsuspecting male that is not courting her.

To successfully woo her, a male would have to trail her every move from a safe distance over a period of days to weeks, offering her gifts of food or artwork in intervals of hours. Persistance does not guarantee his success, so much as it is the quality of his offerings.

If the female is receptive to his advances, the male leaves her a sperm packet packaged in mucus for her to accept or reject. If she accepts, the female would use it to fertilize her clutches of over six thousand eggs, all of which she would deposit in crevices within or near her lair. The young are six inches long at hatching, and being fully independent immediately swim far away the moment they break out of their egg cases.

They grow slowly over the first decade and a half of their lives, before reaching a rapid growth spurt in their late teenage years when they rocket in size. Before then, they must survive. Luckily they are well armed with not only beak and hook, but also an inky mucus secretion that clogs the jaws and respiratory organs of would be predators. This ability is retained up to adulthood, but degrades in potency.

If they somehow managed to survive against all odds, a lifespan of up to a century or more could be expected for an exceptional kraken specimen

At a length of thirty five feet and weighing almost four tons, it is a modestly sized species for its genus. Like the rest of its cousins, it spends the majority of its life out in open water living in mixed-sex sibling pods. These pods are almost always clutch mates.

Intelligent as they are, they employ a vast majority of strategies when hunting for the fisks that make up the majority of their diet. Regardless of form, the capture is done the same way. A long, barbed, and stiff projectile tongue launches out of their jaws and skewers the fisk once they close the distance. The unfortunate fisk is then processed with their set of fearsome looking teeth.

The tall sail running down from the back of their head down to the base of the short tail is a collapsible structure that can be folded away during high speed swimming. When it is employed, it is in fitness displays. Both male and female dieterigyos bear this impressive structure and use it to gauge the viability of their partners.

A mass migration of female dieterigyos takes place on an annual basis, temporarily leaving their brothers and marching in the thousands for suitable nesting beaches. The decision to select which beach is a unanimous agreement by the most senior of mothers that have years of experience behind them.

A clutch could contain nearly two hundred eggs, each one miniscule in size compared to their mothers. These eggs are buried deep under warm sand and incubate inside for three and a half months. Once hatched, most will not survive the sprint to the seas. Those that do, however, have a reliably high chance of surviving under the mutual protection of their siblings, with the odds being a snowball series of benefits with the more clutch mates that survive.

The insulasian yubesara is a large bodied yundri fisk that inhabits near shore waters, from as shallow as two hundred feet to seas as deep as several kilometers. They are active and formidable predators, ones that hold their own amongst the likes of krakens and leviathanosaurs they share their habitat with. These fisks regularly reach lengths of twenty five meters, but some might add an additional ten meters over the course of their lives, given that they survive and consume enough food.

Bladed black teeth, many of which are a foot long, are set in rows and anchored by deep roots. While the lower jaw bears a single row on each side, the upper jaw contains a midline row that runs from the front towards the middle length. This tooth arrangement is common to that of many yundri fisks, with some taxa offering far more bizarre forms.

Yubesaras are ambush predators that hunt mostly marine reptyls and mammyls, preferring to do so during low light conditions. And while most hunts are solitary, they are not above cooperating with another one of their kind, though the aftermath of such joint hunts sees the larger individual taking the most of the spoils.

Females deposit their pups in especially shallow waters, from fifty to a hundred feet in depth, away from most of the larger deep water predators that would threaten them. Though the shallows boast no shortage of threats, these are usually not as adept as the newborn yubesaras in terms of high speed swimming, ensuring a level of security.