Ruho's brain was trying very hard to process the information it had just received while also dealing with the immediate problem of there being a hundred-foot prehistoric murder machine approximately fifteen feet away from him. He latched onto the one piece of hope his panicked mind could find.
"They're at least slow, right?" he asked, his voice cracking. "Crocodiles are ambush predators. They're not built for chasing things down. Right?"
There was a pause. The kind of pause that Ruho had learned meant Azirel was about to say something that would make everything worse.
"Well," Azirel began, "most crocodiles can actually gallop."
Ruho blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Gallop," Azirel repeated. "You know, like a horse. They get up on their legs and just... go. It's pretty impressive actually. There's videos of it from Earth, if you ever—"
"GALLOP?!" Ruho's voice rose several octaves. "Crocodiles can GALLOP?!"
"Some species, yeah," Azirel said casually, as if discussing the weather. "It's not their primary mode of movement, but when they need to cover ground quickly, they can really book it."
The Gigantosuchus took another step closer, its massive clawed feet sinking into the mud with wet squelching sounds. Ruho could see the muscles rippling beneath its armored hide, could see the way it was positioning itself. The way a predator positions itself right before it strikes.
"But humans are faster, right?" Ruho asked desperately, his feet trying to work themselves free from the sucking mud. "In a foot race, a human beats a crocodile. That's just basic—"
"Ehhhhh," Azirel made a sound that was universally recognized as the precursor to bad news. "Most crocodiles can gallop at around 18 miles per hour."
"Okay, and humans—"
"Humans run at about ten miles per hour on average," Azirel continued. "Elite sprinters can hit maybe seventeen, eighteen if they're really pushing it. Usain Bolt topped out at like 27 mph but that was his absolute peak and he's literally the fastest human ever recorded and—"
"So it's a 50/50 situation," Ruho interrupted, clinging to this slim hope. "We're basically the same speed. I could outrun it if I really tried."
"Well, no," Azirel said. "Because I increased their speed when I scaled them up. Had to adjust the muscle-to-mass ratio to account for the size difference, and that meant tweaking their overall velocity to maintain realistic predator-prey dynamics."
Ruho's eye twitched. "How much did you increase it."
"These ones can hit about 24 miles per hour in a full gallop," Azirel said. "And that's being conservative. Some of the really athletic ones can push 26, maybe 27 if they're motivated enough." (six sevennnnnnnnnnn)
"So I can't outrun it."
"Nope."
"Great. Fantastic. Love that for me." Ruho's hands were shaking. His legs were shaking. Everything was shaking. "Any other fun facts you want to share before I die for the third time?"
"Oh!" Azirel perked up. "They can burrow."
"They can WHAT."
"Burrow. Dig through soil. They use it for thermoregulation and creating dens and ambush hunting. They're not super fast at it—maybe 5 miles per hour through soft soil—but it's pretty effective. They can basically swim through mud."
Ruho stared at the creature in front of him. "So I can't outrun it on land, and it can burrow through the ground. Anything else? Can it fly? Does it shoot lasers from its eyes?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Azirel said. "That would be unrealistic."
"THIS ENTIRE SITUATION IS UNREALISTIC!"
The Gigantosuchus's eyes narrowed. Its body tensed. Ruho recognized that posture. He'd seen it before, in nature documentaries, right before the crocodile exploded into motion and dragged some unfortunate wildebeest into the water.
"Okay, okay, stay calm," Ruho muttered to himself. "Stay calm. Just... just stay still. Crocodiles can't see things that don't move. That's a thing. I saw it in a movie. Just stay perfectly still and—"
"THAT'S FROM FUCKING JURASSIC PARK, YOU IDIOT!" Seria's voice screamed in his head. "That was about a T-REX! And it wasn't even scientifically accurate! Crocodiles have EXCELLENT vision! They can see you perfectly fine whether you're moving or not!"
"Oh," Ruho said quietly.
The Gigantosuchus lunged.
One second it was fifteen feet away. The next second it was airborne, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow a minivan, its hundred-foot body moving with a speed that defied everything Ruho thought he knew about physics and reptiles and the fundamental laws of how fast giant things should be able to move.
Ruho's body moved on pure instinct, his conscious mind completely offline. He threw himself to the side, his bare feet finally ripping free from the mud, and dove forward in a desperate roll that sent him tumbling through the shallow water. The crocodile's jaws snapped shut on the space where he'd been standing, the sound like a car door slamming, and Ruho felt the displacement of air as those massive teeth missed him by inches.
He scrambled to his feet, slipping in the mud, his hands and knees covered in muck, and ran. Just ran. Didn't think about direction, didn't think about strategy, just pointed himself away from the massive predator and moved his legs as fast as they would go.
Which, it turned out, was not very fast when you were running barefoot through a swamp.
His feet kept sinking into the soft ground, each step requiring him to pull his leg free with a wet sucking sound before taking the next step. He could hear the Gigantosuchus behind him, could hear the thunderous impacts of its feet hitting the ground, could hear the water being displaced as it gave chase.
It was gaining on him. Of course it was gaining on him. It could run 24 miles per hour and he was currently managing maybe 8 miles per hour in this terrain, and that was being generous.
He needed a different strategy.
Ruho veered to the left, heading deeper into the swamp, where the water was deeper. Water. Crocodiles lived in water. But maybe—maybe if he could get to deeper water, he could swim faster than it could gallop, and—
He dove into a deeper section of the swamp, the water closing over his head, and started swimming with everything he had. His cargo pants immediately became dead weight, dragging him down, but he kicked and pulled, his arms windmilling through the murky water, his lungs already burning from the exertion.
"NO, YOU IDIOT!" Azirel's voice cut through his panic. "CROCS ARE THE BEST SWIMMERS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
Ruho's head broke the surface and he gasped for air, twisting to look behind him. The Gigantosuchus had entered the water, and the change in its demeanor was immediate and terrifying. On land it had been fast. In the water, it was like watching a torpedo with teeth. Its massive tail whipped back and forth, propelling its body forward with undulating movements that covered distance at an impossible rate.
It was maybe twenty feet away. Then fifteen. Then ten.
"SWIM!" Seria screamed. "SWIM FOR SHORE!"
Ruho changed direction, angling toward the nearest bank, his arms and legs pumping frantically. The water was deeper here—maybe six feet—and he couldn't touch the bottom anymore. He was completely exposed, completely vulnerable, and the crocodile was closing the distance with the casual ease of an apex predator that knew its prey had nowhere to go.
Five feet behind him. He could feel the water displacement from its movements, could sense the massive presence at his back.
The shore was close. So close. Maybe ten feet. Maybe less.
Ruho's hand touched mud. His feet found purchase on the sloping bank. He pulled himself forward, half-swimming, half-crawling, his muscles screaming in protest. The shore was right there. Right there. Just a few more feet and he'd be on land and he could run and—
He felt something brush against his leg. Scales. Rough, armored scales dragging across his calf.
Ruho exploded out of the water with a scream that probably scared birds in three different biomes. He hit the shore running, his bare feet slapping against solid ground, and he didn't look back. Couldn't look back. Looking back would mean seeing how close those jaws were, and he absolutely did not want to know.
There. A tree. A massive tree with thick branches and rough bark. He could climb it. Get above the crocodile's reach. Just had to make it to the tree and—
He reached the base of the trunk and jumped, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the bark. His fingers found a low branch and he pulled himself up, his feet kicking against the trunk, his shoulders burning with effort. Higher. Had to get higher. Had to get out of reach of those jaws that could—
The Gigantosuchus burst out of the water behind him, its massive body transitioning from swimming to galloping in one smooth motion that should not have been possible for something that size. It saw Ruho climbing the tree. Saw its prey trying to escape.
And it spun.
The movement was so fast Ruho's eyes couldn't track it. One moment the crocodile was facing him, the next moment its entire body had rotated, and its tail—that massive, muscular tail that was thicker around than Ruho's entire body—whipped through the air like a battering ram.
The tail hit the tree trunk with a sound like thunder.
The tree, which had probably been standing for a hundred years or more, which had weathered countless storms and floods and natural disasters, which had a trunk thick enough that three people couldn't wrap their arms around it, simply snapped in half.
Not bent. Not cracked. Snapped. Like someone had taken a giant axe to it, the wood exploding into splinters as the structural integrity just gave up.
"Fun fact!" Azirel's voice chimed in cheerfully as Ruho fell through the air, still clinging to a branch that was no longer attached to anything. "Gigantosuchus can generate approximately five million newtons of force with their tail swipe! That's roughly equivalent to a sixteen-wheeler truck hitting you at sixty miles per hour! Isn't that fascinating?"
"THAT IS NOT HELPING!" Ruho screamed as he hit the ground hard, the branch he'd been holding landing on top of him and knocking the wind from his lungs.
He rolled out from under the branch, gasping for breath, his ribs protesting. The crocodile was already turning, already orienting on him, its jaws opening wide. He could see down its throat. Could see the rows of teeth designed for gripping and tearing. Could see his death approaching at 24 miles per hour.
Ruho scrambled backward on his hands and feet, crab-walking in reverse, his eyes locked on the approaching predator. His back hit something solid. He twisted to look.
A burrow. A small opening in the ground, partially hidden by roots and vegetation. It was tiny—maybe two feet across. Barely large enough for him to fit through. Definitely too small for a hundred-foot crocodile.
The Gigantosuchus lunged, its jaws stretching wide, close enough that Ruho could smell its breath—hot and rank and filled with the scent of rotting meat.
Ruho dove.
He threw himself headfirst into the burrow, his shoulders scraping against the sides, his cargo pants catching on roots and rocks. He pulled himself forward with his hands, his feet kicking, his entire body compressing to fit through the narrow opening. He felt the rush of air as the jaws snapped shut behind him, felt the ground shake as the crocodile's snout slammed into the earth where his feet had been a fraction of a second earlier, felt the hot breath washing over his legs as those teeth missed him by centimeters.
He pulled himself deeper into the burrow, his heart hammering, his breath coming in ragged gasps, and prayed to every god watching—all forty of them—that this tunnel went somewhere that wasn't a dead end.