Chapter 4: Eviction in the Mud
A mother's love lasts exactly one year. Or, at the very least, that is the strict limit of a female Ludroth's biological patience.
I discovered this in the worst way possible: with a blunt tail-whip straight to the face that sent me flying three meters backward, right into a bank of rotting algae.
"What is wrong with you, Mom?!" I tried to roar, indignant, as I spit out stagnant water.
Only a high-pitched, hissing, pathetic gurgle came out of my throat—a cross between a broken bellows and an alligator with hiccups.
My mother—the colossal seven-meter leviathan that had spent the last twelve months protecting me from Wroggis and crushing any threat in sight—didn't even blink. Her yellow eyes, fixed and completely devoid of any trace of the warmth I thought I had seen in them, stared at me with a frigid, almost mechanical indifference. She snorted again, parting her jaws slightly to reveal the hardened edge of her teeth, built for crushing shells. She took a heavy step forward into the mud, blocking access to the resting area.
The message required no translation. The grace period was over. The wild instinct of the ecosystem had taken absolute control of her priorities, and in her evolutionary programming, the concept of a "spoiled child" did not exist. At twelve months old, you cease to be a helpless cub to defend; you become, plain and simple, just another large mouth consuming the fish, crabs, and resources of the territory.
I looked around in search of some kind of fraternal solidarity, but the betrayal was collective. The rest of the adult females were doing the exact same thing to my clutch-mates. Those who had grown at a normal pace were being shoved without ceremony toward the lower currents of the river. As for me—the one who, for some strange cosmic reason, was the largest and heaviest of the entire group—I was being kicked out with an active hostility that scraped my pride. The communal nursery had closed its doors due to overcapacity and a food shortage.
[System Notification]
Status: Territorial Exile / Independent Juvenile.
Time elapsed since transfer: 1 year.
Body length: 4.2 meters.
Condition: Optimal bone and muscular development. Increased scale density.
"Wow, thanks for the reminder that I just became homeless," I thought, crawling out of the water with my dignity dragging through the mud.
Walking on land was no longer the torture of my first few weeks, but it was still an exercise in rather ridiculous coordination. My front legs had stopped being that trembling jelly from the beginning; they were now robust limbs, with decent claws that dug firmly into the soft ground. However, my hind legs still looked like two giant, industrial-sized scuba fins, made almost exclusively for propelling myself through water. I lumbered along, swinging my massive tail to keep my balance, looking like an alligator in the middle of an identity crisis. At 4.2 meters long, I was already over half the size of an adult female, but compared to the true master of this place, I was a mere rough sketch.
Reaching the border of the muddy territory, right where the swamp water mixed with the fast current of the river, I stopped and looked back one last time.
In the distance, the massive silhouette of my "father," the alpha Royal Ludroth, emerged from the water. Seeing him was always a reality check. His eighteen-meter length commanded a respect that bordered on the mystical. He shook his colossal sponge mane—a gigantic mass of yellow, bulbous tissue covering him from neck to abdomen—scattering water in a fine mist that glistened under the sun. He did this to hydrate his skin before settling down to rest on the hot rocks.
Then, the old man turned his head. His eyes, massive and heavy, locked directly onto me.
There was no thunderous roar. There was no violent chase. Only a subtle but evident twitch in his neck muscles that inflated a couple of hidden spikes within his sponge mane. It was a purely territorial warning, a body language my monster brain understood perfectly. I was no longer an innocent baby. On my neck, faint, thick, porous ridges were already visible—the first sprouts of my own Immature Sponge. To the alpha, I already looked like a young male. And a young male in his territory, no matter whose son he was, was a potential usurper who would want to claim his harem in a few years.
His gaze was the biological equivalent of seeing an eighteen-wheeler flash its high beams at you on the highway to tell you to get out of the way or die. If I stayed a single day longer out of mere whim or human nostalgia, the old man would snap my neck out of pure natural selection.
"Well... I guess I'm officially independent," I hissed to a river crab passing by. The crustacean, far from frightened, threatened me by raising a claw with a combative attitude. Definitely, nobody respected my four meters of length today.
I pivoted on my hind fins, pushed off with my chest, and lunged headfirst into the unknown: the choppy waters of the great river.
Being alone in the water for the first time felt strangely overwhelming. The rhythmic echo of the adults' swimming was gone, as was the chaotic, playful splashing of my clutch-mates. There was only the constant, heavy, dull rush of the current, and an underwater silence that suddenly became very, very dangerous. The riverbed here was deep and dark. The roots of the colossal trees growing on the banks plunged into the water, creating passageways, dark caves, and recesses that looked like open mouths waiting for their food to walk right in.
[Environment Analysis]
Zone: Open wetland / Uncharted deep waters.
Risk: High (Absence of allied chemical signals).
Recommendation: Seek immediate shelter. Avoid exposure in open waters.
"Yeah, I get it. You don't have to keep repeating it," I thought, feeling a spike of nervousness.
I slid carefully toward the deepest part of the channel, seeking the riverbed so the current wouldn't drag me away. I let my smooth, soft belly conform to the fresh mud of the bottom. My yellow skin was still too flashy a beacon for any large predator looking down from above, but a year of experience in the swamp hadn't been in vain. I swished my flat tail from side to side with controlled force, kicking up a dense curtain of sediment, mud, and dead leaves that settled slowly over me, covering me like a brown blanket. I left only my eyes and nostrils exposed, mimicking the camouflage of an ambushing predator.
While lying buried there, trying to process the fact that I no longer had a safety net or a mother to stand up for me, I felt a deep vibration in the water. A pressure wave traveled directly through the mud and rattled the scales on my belly.
It wasn't the heavy, slow swimming of a leviathan, nor the clumsy advance of a herbivore. It was a fast, agile, intermittent rhythm.
A few meters from my hiding place, the dense aquatic plants agitated violently. An entire school of small fish shot past right over my head, swimming in a frantic escape toward the shallower banks. Something was hunting them. Something big, fast enough to slice through the river current without effort.
[Proximity Alert]
Target detected: Hostile biological silhouette in motion.
Distance: 20 meters and decreasing.
Trajectory: Indirect collision course with host position.
I stayed stiffer than a quarry stone, holding the water flow in my gills and keeping my breath held beneath the layer of mud. The claws of my front legs dug into the earth to anchor myself completely.
The world was no longer the safe, slimy playground of my first year of life. I was completely alone, a four-meter juvenile drawing way too much attention, and my true survival exam in this damn wild world had just begun.