Ruho wormed his way deeper into the tunnel, his elbows scraping against packed earth, his chest pressed so tight against the ground he could barely breathe. Every few feet he had to stop and wiggle his shoulders to fit through narrower sections, his cargo pants collecting dirt and roots and probably several new species of insects he didn't want to think about. The tunnel was pitch black, the only light coming from the entrance behind him, which was rapidly disappearing as he crawled further in.
But he could still hear the Gigantosuchus outside. Could hear it digging, its massive claws scraping against the earth, trying to widen the entrance. Could hear its frustrated hissing—a sound like steam escaping from a broken pipe, but amplified a thousand times and filled with predatory rage.
So Ruho kept crawling.
After what felt like an eternity but was probably only two minutes, the tunnel started to widen. He could lift his head without hitting the ceiling. Then he could get on his hands and knees properly instead of army-crawling. Then he could crouch. And finally, impossibly, he found himself able to stand—albeit hunched over—in a tunnel that was now easily four feet tall and wide enough that he could extend his arms partway without touching the walls.
He stood there in the darkness, gasping for breath, his entire body covered in mud and sweat and fear, and tried to process what had just happened. He'd been chased by a prehistoric monster, nearly eaten multiple times, watched a tree get destroyed by a tail swipe, and dove headfirst into a random hole in the ground that had somehow saved his life.
"Where the fuck am I?" he asked the darkness, his voice echoing slightly in the enclosed space.
Azirel's presence bloomed in his mind, and Ruho could practically feel the trainee god grinning. "You, my lucky friend, are currently in a Pakisuchus burrow system."
"A what now?"
"Pakisuchus," Azirel repeated, his tone taking on that enthusiastic quality he got when explaining his world-building choices. "They're these really cool small crocodilians—well, crocodyliformes technically, not true crocodilians, but close enough. About the size of a medium dog, maybe thirty pounds on average. Omnivorous, which is unusual for crocs. They've got these really interesting teeth that can handle both meat and vegetation, and their snouts are more mammalian than reptilian, which gives them better olfactory capabilities and—"
"Are they going to eat me?" Ruho interrupted, his heart rate spiking again. "Because I've had enough of being almost-eaten today."
"What? No! Well, probably not. I mean, they could theoretically, but—"
"PROBABLY NOT?!"
"Let me finish!" Azirel said. "So when I was designing the ecosystem for Gigantosuchus, I realized they'd need support structures. Like, something to help with nesting and egg protection, because a 165-foot crocodile can't exactly be delicate with tiny eggs. So I looked at Earth's crocodilians and found Pakisuchus, which was this small Cretaceous crocodyliform that probably lived in burrows, and I thought—what if I made them pack-oriented? What if I gave them a symbiotic relationship with the giants?"
Ruho leaned against the tunnel wall, his legs still shaking from the chase. "I don't care about your world-building process. I care about whether I'm about to get shredded by dog-sized crocs."
"You're not going to get shredded," Azirel said, sounding slightly offended. "That's what I'm trying to explain. The Pakisuchus and Gigantosuchus have this whole system worked out. See, when a Gigantosuchus is ready to lay eggs, it finds an area near an established Pakisuchus burrow. Then it uses its tail to slam the ground repeatedly, flattening the terrain and compacting the soil."
Ruho thought back to that flat expanse of land he'd been so excited about. The perfectly smooth, fourteen-acre stretch that had seemed too good to be true. "That's what that flat area was."
"Exactly!" Azirel said enthusiastically. "The Gigantosuchus creates this compacted zone that makes it really hard for other Pakisuchus colonies to burrow nearby. It's basically claiming territory. Then it lays its eggs—usually between five and eight eggs per clutch—and the Pakisuchus come out and carefully carry each egg back to their burrow system."
"Why would they do that?" Ruho asked, genuinely curious despite his terror.
"Because the Gigantosuchus protects them," Azirel explained. "Once the eggs are in the Pakisuchus burrow, the giant crocodile takes up residence in the area and guards it aggressively for the entire five-month incubation period. Nothing gets near that burrow system. No predators, no other Gigantosuchus, nothing. The Pakisuchus get premium protection, and in exchange, they keep the eggs at the perfect temperature and humidity levels deep in their burrows where the Gigantosuchus can't accidentally crush them."
"Five months?" Ruho's voice came out as a squeak.
"Yep. And then once the eggs hatch, the baby Gigantosuchus—which are still about six feet long at birth, by the way—stay with the Pakisuchus colony for another two months while the mother continues to guard the area and brings them food. The Pakisuchus help teach the hatchlings basic survival skills, show them what's safe to eat, that kind of thing. Then after those two months, the hatchlings leave to find their own territories, and the whole cycle starts again when they're old enough to breed—which takes about twenty years, give or take."
There was a pause, and then Tyrix's voice cut in, dripping with amusement. "Azirel, are you literally reading this off a file right now? I can hear you reading. You're using your 'reading out loud' voice."
"I am NOT—" Azirel sputtered.
"You absolutely are," another god chimed in. "You just summarized like three pages of ecological documentation. Nobody talks like that naturally."
"I was explaining the ecosystem!" Azirel protested, his voice rising defensively. "This is important worldbuilding information! I spent weeks designing this relationship! WEEKS! Do you know how hard it is to balance predator-prey dynamics on a planet this size? Do you have any idea how many variables I had to account for to make this work?"
"You literally have the file open right now, don't you," Tyrix said.
"SO WHAT IF I DO?!" Azirel shouted. "At least I did my research! At least I built a coherent ecosystem instead of just throwing random monsters everywhere like SOME gods I could mention!"
"Are you talking about Kelvin? Because Kelvin's chaos dimension is intentionally chaotic, that's the whole point—"
"His 'chaos dimension' is just an excuse for lazy world-building and we all know it!"
The divine voices erupted into argument, multiple gods taking sides, the discussion rapidly devolving into accusations of poor planning and derivative monster designs and something about someone stealing someone else's dragon specifications.
Seria's voice cut through the chaos like a knife. "ENOUGH. All of you. Shut up."
Silence fell immediately.
"Thank you," Seria said, her tone clipped. "Now. TL;DR for Ruho, since he's the one actually in danger here and doesn't care about your design philosophies: The Pakisuchus are docile. They're not going to attack you. In fact, because you're currently covered in residual Gigantosuchus scent from being so close to that mother, they probably think you're a hatchling that wandered into their burrow system."
Ruho looked down at himself. He was covered in mud and swamp water, but underneath that, yeah, he could smell it—that primal reptilian scent that had clung to him when he'd gotten too close to the giant crocodile. It was in his clothes, on his skin, probably in his hair.
"So they think I'm a baby crocodile," he said slowly.
"A baby Gigantosuchus, yes," Seria confirmed. "Which means they're going to be very protective of you and very careful not to harm you. Your best course of action is to just wait it out. Stay in the burrow system until the mother Gigantosuchus outside calms down and leaves the immediate area. Could be a few hours, could be overnight, but you should be safe in here."
Ruho felt a knot of tension in his chest loosen slightly. Safe. He was safe. For the first time since arriving in this nightmare world, he was actually, genuinely safe. He could rest. He could breathe. He could—
"Wait," he said. "Where are the Pakisuchus? I haven't seen any yet."
"Oh, they're deeper in the burrow system," Seria said. "This is just the entrance tunnel. The main colony chambers are probably another hundred feet in, maybe more depending on how established this colony is. You'd need to crawl for a while to reach them."
Ruho looked into the darkness ahead of him, where the tunnel continued deeper into the earth. Somewhere down there were dog-sized crocodiles that thought he was their giant cousin's baby. Somewhere down there was a whole underground ecosystem he'd accidentally stumbled into.
And somewhere above him was a hundred-foot murder machine that definitely wanted to eat him and was probably still digging at the entrance.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders as much as he could in the four-foot-tall tunnel, and started walking deeper into the darkness.
At least it wasn't raining. (im so cruel... im gonna make it rain....)