Ch-4

On a clear sunny day near a large river which extends for kilometers, swam a large snake with length upto 9 meter which had dark brownish scales and had amber like eyes.

Its been a few months since I last saw the family of Goliaths and all have been quite for a while. But the river has started to become turbulent.

For the past few weeks there has been a shortage of fishes which caused the larger fishes to come upto my territory in search of food. I managed to drive them away till now but im not so sure if I would be able to do that tomorrow which finally convinced to me to head upstream to search for the cause of shortage.

I travelled for 4 days before reaching the source of the problem, it turns out there is a small settlement of humans.

They are dressed up crudely made leather clothing and were ranging from tanned to pale in complexion. They had around 3 crude huts and a lot of tents, I couldn't count them all since I can see beyond 200 meters and I dont want to expose myself, they carried wooden spears and wooden clubs.

They seemed to be of the same tribe that the half eaten humans tied to the Goliath back were and it looks like they have littered the riverside with nets and fishing poles to catch as many fish as they can. They are only doing it to survive but due to their over fishing other river creature including myself have trouble finding food.

There absolutely nothing that I can do to drive these humans away and being a former human myself it would be suicidal if I even try to go on land, I am big but not big enough to scare them and what more they have weapons. One good strike from those spears could seriously injure me or simply kill me.

I might have to move my lair again since I can't fend of the giant fishes nor can I do anything to drive away these humans.

I kept on observing the human settlement for two weeks and found that they empty their nets every morning and are especially on high alert during night time. Their main diet seems to consist of fish, fruits and some herbs I cant identify.

I have decided to abandon my lair and dug a hole near some lush vegetation at the periphery of the human settlement as my temporary which easily hide my presence since humans dont visit the location where its present, I can also hold my breath for 1.5 hours allowing me to avoid human survalance.

I am doing all this because fishes trapped in human nets are easy meal which I can gorge on.

[ 5 Years Later ]

I have been real catious and sneaky they past few years and have now reached the age of 30 years and a length of 10 meters with a thickeness of a man's waist.

Everything was going the same for the past year when suddenly I picked up the scent of the large fish heading towards the human settlement, it was the same Catfish from all those years ago and had grown to a length of 16 meters, it was like a behemoth to me and something that I clearly wanted to avoid.

I immediately went into my lair to avoid being detected by the monster Catfish. After an hour or so later I could pick up a lot of vibrations indicating some sort of panic within the human settlement.

After hiding for 3 days I finally left my lair in early day hours to asses the situation.

6-7 wooden rafts were sunken, around 32 human corpses were present and no sign of the giant Catfish could be found. It seemed to have had its fill and left, There was nothing else to say except not to waste food.

I swallowed a single adult human and one teenager's corpse and left for my lair to digest my meal. This world never fails to remind me that if im weak ill be devoured, its eat or be eaten and if food gets deliverd to me then why would I refuse.

For the next few months everything was normal and I resumed my routine of scavenging fish from the nest at night and then resting for a few months to repeat the process. The humans seems to have caught a glimpse of me once when I was being a bit careless but didn't took any action and completely avoided the river at night.

Until one night there was rumbling in the forest. The ground was shaking so much that I could feel it while swimming in the river.

I poked my head out and saw men of the village rushing towards the edge of their settlement with their crude weapons. Clearly they knew what has approached their village and it looked like its not the first time it had approached.

I could see the women and children being led to the center of the settlement where a large bonfire was being lit to illuminate the surrounding.

Then the vibrations from earlier changed, as if something was walking, something that was walking on two legs and what's worse is that there was not one but many of them.

Its clear that the Goliaths are here.