Blue desperately tries to wipe away the taste of the green things, having literally never tasted something as vile as them in her entire life. While the second green thing tasted slightly better than the first green thing, the entire species has solidly landed in her ‘Do not eat. Ever’ pile.

  A collective sigh seems to emanate from all of goblinkind, their shoulders unexplainably feeling lighter as they go about their day. The night seems warmer and their food suddenly tastes slightly less like slop, not a single one of them realizing just how close they came, as a species, to being the preferred food to an apex predator.

  Blue walks away from the disgusting green things, sniffing around in an attempt to locate what she’s looking for. She doesn’t regret hunting the green things, per se. If anything, it was a lot of fun, and taught her many different things. Like that her talons can slice through flesh like butter, and her peck can pierce through skulls as if they were tissue paper, not for one second suspecting that goblins are actually the weakest monsters, individually, in Avalon.

  Not to mention, it got her away from the tedium that was watching Caretaker wave her fleshy things around and causing the green things to fall into pieces.

  She’s tried a few times now to replicate that feat, with no success.

  But now that her bloodlust is sated, she’s left with the bitter regret that’s a consequence of her actions. Namely, the disgusting taste that’s still lingering in her mouth. With a happy chirrup, she manages to find that which she’s been sniffing out:

  The unmistakeable, unforgettable smell of Caretaker.

  With an excited cheep, she starts her sprint back to where Caretaker is, dreaming of that deliciously salted meat that Caretaker had all around her. Her mouth waters just at the thought of guzzling down another of those succulent morsels once again, lending her just that little bit of extra speed.

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  She follows the smell of her Caretaker carefully, her little legs flying underneath her, her footfalls echoing out into the eerily silent forest with the unmistakeable “twip-twip-twip” sound. She gets closer and closer, her stomach beginning to growl at the thought of a tasty meal. The smell of Caretaker becomes stronger and stronger as Blue gets ever closer to her. She sniffs deeply once again, finding the smells of the other weird flesh things that are around Caretaker, as well as an unknown something that has her feathers fluffing up.

  She breaks through some foliage, finding this unknown something wrapped around Caretaker and a tree. Blue’s instincts scream at her that this is a dangerous foe, and one that her kind has been battling for millennia. Having followed her every instinct so far without consequence, Blue does the only thing that she can think of to do.

  She speeds up, crouching down before leaping for the thing’s head.

  Timing her jump, she crouches down and leaps, missing the head entirely and landing on the thing’s long body. Her claws skitter against the thing’s scales, before she presses them in deeply, managing to dig in slightly and stopping herself from skittering off of it.

  She lets out a furious caw, sprinting up its long body and leaping once again, this time aiming true and landing on the thing’s head. She digs in with her talons in order to keep her grip on it, and they sink in like butter, drawing blood.

  The thing lets out a furious hiss, loosening its hold on Caretaker and tossing its head back and forth in an attempt to dislodge the pesky little baby. Blue, not knowing what to do in this situation, digs in her talons even deeper in an attempt to not get bucked off, piercing deeply into the thing’s flesh and causing rivulets of blood to start dripping out of the wounds.

  It unwraps from the tree entirely as it swings its head wildly back and forth. It bashes its head against the tree again and again, dislodging Blue painfully and flinging her off. Blue lands hard against the ground, feeling her body crunch against tree roots and fallen branches. Feeling dazed and in pain, she does the only thing that she can think of to do, and lets out a cry for help.

  And that cry is answered by the most unexpected of sources: The tall, other flesh thing, as he lets out a furious shout and leaps onto the Basilisk’s head.