As Erik and June were soaring through the clouds toward Caelora City, Erik felt something.
While reaching out with his mind through Instability brain crystal power, he detected a mass of primal urges and voracious hunger. It was clear it was a bunch of Thaids, yet, based on the altitude, it must have been a group of flying ones.
Their crude thoughts came through as a jumble of disjointed emotions and flashes of imagery, like a fragmented mosaic. But the overall impression was clear - these Thaids were driven solely by their basest instincts to hunt, feed, and kill any who dared invade their territory, and they sensed them.
Erik had encountered such primal urges before among the lesser Thaid breeds. Their underdeveloped brains lacked higher cognition, dominated almost entirely by fight-or-flight impulses. Only the oldest and most cunning Thaids developed true intelligence and forethought, but he had yet to find one.