CHAPTER 12 : The Razor Pack

The jungle here grew unnaturally quiet.

As Narakul moved beneath the dense canopy, the sounds of birdsong and insects vanished behind him like the last echoes of a memory. The trees thickened, ancient and moss-covered, their trunks packed so tightly together that only fractured shafts of sunlight reached the forest floor. The earth was soft beneath his talons, damp with decay and speckled with bones, some small, others alarmingly large.

He had entered unfamiliar territory.

There were no broken fences here. No remnants of human structures. No distant roars of apex dinosaurs calling out across the canopy.

Only silence.

And silence meant something was watching.

He came to a slow stop at the base of a sloped hill, where vines hung like drapes from above and the air smelled faintly of blood and sweat. His head tilted as he listened, every fiber of his being tuned to the vibrations beneath his feet.

That was when the first attack came.

From his left, something tore through the underbrush with impossible speed. It was no more than a blur of claws and sinew, but it struck with focused violence, aiming directly for the gap beneath his plated ribs. The claws scraped across hardened armor, failing to pierce, but the impact staggered him slightly. By the time he turned, the attacker was already gone, swallowed by ferns.

He stood still, calculating.

This wasn't a lone strike.

This was a test.

From the brush ahead, four more shapes emerged, each one lithe, muscular, and coiled with tension. Their yellow eyes reflected sunlight in narrow beams as they slowly fanned out to encircle him. They moved in silence, communicating only with faint chirps and tail flicks.

Velociraptors.

Though smaller than some imagined them, these were no less deadly. Intelligent, coordinated, and absolutely lethal when working as a unit. They did not charge blindly. They stalked. They studied. They adapted in real time.

Narakul did not underestimate them.

Nor did he retreat.

The first raptor leapt from the right, jaws open and claws extended toward his neck.

Rather than dodge, Narakul shifted his weight and pivoted on his forelimbs. His armored tail arced through the air and collided with the raptor mid-flight. The force of the blow was sickening. Bone shattered audibly as the creature was hurled sideways and slammed into the thick trunk of a tree, its body folding around the impact like wet paper. It did not rise.

The remaining four didn't panic.

They moved.

Two advanced from the flanks while a third darted forward to draw his attention. The fourth hung back, watching, waiting, calculating. They were testing his reach, timing his strikes.

The first raptor lunged at his face.

Narakul reared back, wings snapping outward like massive shields. The gust of air disoriented the attacker, but another raptor had already closed from behind and sprang onto his back. Its claws dug between the armor plates, slashing at the softer tissue hidden underneath. A streak of sharp pain lanced across his spine as blood sprayed across the ferns.

He reacted instantly.

Rather than shake it off, he jumped, wings pressed tightly to his sides, and allowed gravity to do the work. He twisted mid-air and crashed into the earth, driving the raptor on his back into the ground beneath him.

The impact shook the clearing. Dust erupted into the air.

When he stood, the raptor lay broken, ribs caved in, its face still twisted in a final scream.

The others saw this, but still they pressed on.

Shorlty another attacker lunged from the side, hoping to catch him in his moment of recovery. But Narakul's vision, sharpened by the birds he had consumed, caught the twitch of muscle just before the strike. He turned faster than expected—driven by raptor reflexes now his own—and bit down.

His jaws closed around the creature's head with crushing finality. The raptor spasmed once, then hung limp, half its skull collapsing between his teeth.

Three down.

Two remained.

The last two did not charge.

Instead, they split and began to circle in opposing directions. One moved through the ferns, using shadow and silence. The other made itself visible, snapping its jaws and stomping lightly, trying to provoke a reckless counterattack.

Narakul stayed still.

He could hear the one behind him, its breath sharp, its heart rate quickening. It was trying to flank him through the blind spot near his right wing joint.

He waited.

Waited longer.

And then, in a flash, he spun, not toward the raptor in front, but to the side. His tail swept low and wide in a calculated arc. The spiked club at its end struck the hidden attacker directly in the ribs, slamming it into the base of a nearby tree with the force of a wrecking ball. The raptor's chest caved in. Blood splashed across the bark.

Only one remained.

It stopped moving.

Its eyes flicked from Narakul to the bodies of its packmates.

And in that moment, it chose not to fight.

It chose to flee.

He let it go.

Not because he could not catch it.

The scent of blood filled the clearing. The underbrush was matted with feathers, flesh, and viscera. Narakul turned to the raptor whose speed and positioning had impressed him most, the one who'd flanked silently, who'd nearly broken through.

He crouched low and consumed it.

He absorbed the dense tendon structure behind its hind legs, the hyper-flexible joints of its neck, the musculature of its balance system. These were not just tools for speed. They were instruments for reaction time and silent hunting.

He felt the instincts slot into place within him like new weapons loaded into old sockets.

[ New Evolutionary Traits :

Short-range burst reflexes for tight ambush counters

Toe claw retraction and stabilization from raptor legs

Environmental proprioception and 360° predator awareness

Threat prioritization logic from pack coordination experience]