If any alien ship had come passing across this particular star system, they wouldn't have had much trouble detecting the Vanguard's shuttle. The reason was simply that it was parked in the only place on the entire planet where such a vessel could land.

However the likelihood of any such ship passing this planet was negligible. Silent had been sent to explore one of the most remote areas of known space, tasked to explore a planet that he didn't even know why it was supposed to be interesting. His ship was 'parked' near the shore of the only tiny landmass that rose above the water surface. Barren and bleak, the volcanic island got barraged by unforgiving storm winds relentlessly. Tides rose a hundred feet as the planets rocky twin orbited it closely. It would have filled half the sky if the sky wasn't constantly hidden by dark and grey storm clouds.

Tiny as the island was, the ship's computer had taken minutes to process scanner data, until it had finally determined a suitable landing site. It was a lucky flat spot of solidified lava, sheltered between ragged rock needles and wind-hallowed spires. The autopilot had managed the landing despite the storm, but only an organism as endurable as a Vanguard was capable of withstanding the hurricane force winds as he had made his way down to the shore where thundering giant waves assaulted the rocky surface.

Silent stepped on the cliff edge, his claws pressed against the hard rock, and looked out over the endless roaring sea. The cliffs dropped vertically and went on dropping, deep below the sea surface. His ships scanners had lost track somewhere down there, at a depth of two miles or deeper. He couldn't even tell how deep the ocean was at its deepest, and his ship wasn't capable of diving that far. Particle shields were no use in conductive saltwater, its hull would have been crushed.

He waited for the wind to momentarily subside a bit between two gusts so it wouldn't blow him against the ragged rocks right away. Silent pressed both pairs of arms close to his body and formed a sleek, almost arrow like shape as he finally jumped over the edge just as he saw the next wave coming in.

The Vanguard hit the water surface unspectacularly. His grey figure swallowed by the roaring sea, sinking like a stone. The roar and thundering of waves crashing was gone almost instantly. A low hum was all that remained, and even that got a lot less as he quickly sunk deeper.

Silent's terminal velocity under water was not too large. Thanks to buoyancy his dense body weighed significantly less under water than it would have on land. He was still falling but in a pleasant, almost weightless way.  The water created drag that he could feel against his arms and legs, and his tail. It was almost like flying, although at a steep angle.

Something dark approached from below, dark and massive. A ledge, maybe a plateau. He had barely time to change his angle and stretch out his legs to cushion the impact, then his feet hit sand. Training allowed him to absorb the impact with his legs and roll forward - commando style. Under water everything felt like in slow motion. He stretched his limbs and stood up. Standing, unharmed, his hands flexing.

This was the true surface of this planet. The sea floor. Or more likely it was just a sandy ledge on the side of a giant mountain, the next abyss just a few yards away. His two sets of eyes blinked. Contact lenses protected them and enhanced one pair of eyes vision for what little light reached through clouds and a mile of water into this depths.  Another augmentation was placed inside his lungs, extracting the oxygen from the seawater as he inhaled deeply for the first time in his new environment, filling his compressed empty lungs which had almost collapsed from the water pressure.

The water stung in his throat and at the same time felt soothing. Breathing was hard. The Vanguard had to overcome the fear of suffocation as his instincts told him he was drowning and his body wanted to cough out the liquid. This resulted in even more water invading his body. He couldn't help but stroke himself as his body felt itself in deadly peril for a few sweetly agonizing seconds until his lower brain functions finally realized that he could indeed breathe almost normally.

In his mind he played the scenario of doing this dive without augmentations, filling his lungs with saltwater for real at depth, choking and then drowning to death.  It was a thrilling dream, but unfortunately none that he had time for right now.  He had a task to do, even if his body was getting high on the idea of perishing. He was here to explore.

A polymer bag strapped to his back, a small carbon knife, and a hand-held waterproof scientific computer were what he had to help him navigate and collect samples.

Silent made a few steps across and examined the ground. It was sandy, but if it held life at all it must have been tiny organisms. Just in case he knelt down and took a sample into a little container, then ran an analysis with the water-tight computer. The microcosm was sprawling with life, the sand was full of bacteria, plankton, tiny worms and larvae of possibly bigger creatures.  None big enough to see with naked eyes, but it was there. This planet was alive - for certain!

Happy about this, he stashed the sample and walked further towards the great blue vastness that expanded just a few feet further on. The ragged cliff continued to go down, and so did he, gliding through the waters and across the vertical, ragged cliffscape.

Then he spotted a motion. Something swimming. Small, and fast, and gone in a crevice between the rocks faster than he could blink. There was no way he could stop here anyway, he had to keep going, but he knew now there was larger creatures.

If there was enough tiny life to supply a food chain but only very few middle sized creatures that meant one thing and one thing only. His heartbeat went up in excitement.

There must be large predators! Predators, hunting anything of medium size. Some leviathan of the depth preying on everything that moved. And he moved, so it was only a matter of time...

The cliff became shallower. Silent gracefully bounced of the wall, then came to a running stop on a sloped rock surface until he caught himself on a rock formation that looked like a dormant underwater volcano. Mossy growth covered it, and something tiny and silvery flickered and hid between the plant like tiny fish.

Silent took another sample and kept looking around when his senses picked up something moving in the distance. He crouched low, like a hunter and snuck to a nearby vantage point, camouflaged by ragged rocks.

A weird sound traversed through the water. A voice of some sort. Adjusting his enhanced vision, Silent could make out a silhouette of a strange creature. It had an almost humanoid face, but lots of sponge-like outgrowth all over its body. It made it look much like the surrounding plant life. It's body was more like a stem, it didn't seem to move, other than that it was swaying in the underwater breeze, and - well, it was clearly flinching away from another creature.

The other creature was a giant toothy mouth in a grinning face, a thick neck on an otherwise streamlined body. No legs, just a vertical fin on the tail tip, and horizontal fins where legs would be at the belly. Another fin was on his back. His arms were a mixture of fin and hands. But for the interaction with the other creature he apparently used his teeth only right now. Gills flanked his cheeks. The closest reference creature Silent could think of was a shark-like predatory fish he had seen on another planet.

This one was however obviously not just eating but also communicating in some way. The grown-into-place creature and the shark spoke in screeching voices that his earplug computer unfortunately could not decipher -- yet.

Language follows certain patterns among most sentient species, mostly driven by emotions. If the words are correlated with emotions, a base vocabulary can be setup for almost any language, which then can be cross-referenced with millions of known communication dialects throughout the galaxy.

Silent wasn't an expert in linguistics though, he merely expected the little device in his ears to turn the sounds into words he could understand. Which they soon did, although crudely.

"You ... foood..."  was the basic meaning the computer deciphered from the shark creatures expression.

Silent flinched. He wouldn't have needed a computers help to see that!

"No... please...." was the attempted translation of the scream that returned before the shark took another healthy bite.  One of the arm stumps of the plant like, immobile creature, which oozed some greenish liquid, became even shorter than it had been. The remaining stump flailed helplessly in the water.

Silent came to believe that the creature might have had real arms at some point. Like a few minutes ago.

"Tasty... food...." - the crude translation made the creatures expression sound imbecile, but the explorer knew that he couldn't trust his device on that account. A rudimentary linguistic base erased all style and polishing from any expression and turned it into its most basic crude semantics, lacking all fine nuances that the original sentence might have had.

"Poisonous. I'm poisonous." - the food seemed to become desperate. The shark apparently didn't believe it - or maybe he knew better - and took another bite, leaving just a ragged hole where its shoulder had been.

The complains turned mostly into moans. Silent felt his Vanguard penis sprout forward from its slit as he watched one underwater creature slowly eat the other alive.  Eventually the prey became unstuck, slowly drifting in the currents that led downhill into deeper water. The shark had bitten through its stem and was nibbling on the gooey bits that spilled from its torso.

Apparently the one being eaten was pretty tough. There was not much left, but it was still alive and conscious enough to keep complaining. Right until the last big bite of the shark, which basically send all that was left, including the creatures head, down its gullet.

Silent's penis was rock hard and throbbing. The shark could have easily eaten the head of the creature first, instead it almost deliberately had kept that bit for the last, keeping his prey alive, even swallowing it alive. Intriguing! He followed the shark slowly, trying to stay as hidden as he could without losing sight of the creature. Being able to swim would have been a huge advantage, but the anthro-fish seemed to at least stay close to the ground and avoid open waters which allowed Silent to keep it in his sight.

Once he reached the point of the gory scene, the Vanguard took a tiny sample from the remaining tissue where the creature had been grown to the rock. It was weird that such an immobile creature would be sentient, but intriguing. How could it grow here? Were they mobile during parts of their life and only later settled down? A small patch of the green plant-like skin and some fleshy bits ended up in his plastic container and then in his backpack. 

Slowly, Silent climbed over a steep field of loose rocks. It led to a solitary rock formation where he had last seen the anthro shark swim through. Walking on the seafloor wasn't easy. The water made him feel lighter but it also made all movements slow and created resistance. The stones were also relatively lighter, and a few of them started crashing and tumbling downhill in a little rock slide. Silent froze on the spot, hoping that hadn't given him away. But nothing happened.

When he came to the rock formation however there was no trace of the shark anymore. Silent leaned on the rock and considered his options. Go down deeper? Or stay in this rocky and barren landscape? What would the real depth look like? Would his augmented vision catch enough light to see?

"Who are you, and why are you following me?"

The sentence was short and direct, the translator had improved significantly. Silent glanced up, at the shark creature, who was almost directly above him. He had circled around and above and now hovered above the rock formation.

The shark withdrew a few feet, obviously wary of the much larger Vanguard, even though Silent stood firmly on the floor. Silent had only retrieved his scientific computer. It's screen shed dim light around him.

"What magic is this?" the shark asked, startled by the light.

Silent uttered an answer. His vocal cords didn't work well with the mixture of air bubbles and water that pressed through his throat. To the shark it was just gibberish, an outlandish language, gurgled and unintelligible. But the display of Silent's device repeated the words it detected and then replayed them as sound - as good as it could - translated into the eerie language of the sea creature, acting as a communicator device.

>>This one is an explorer. This one seeks to know.<<

The shark didn't seem to buy it and stayed at distance.

>>This device helps this one to speak with you.<<

The shark came a bit closer, trying to see the display which was way brighter than anything in the eternal twilight down here.

"It speaks for you. That's kinda cool!"

Silent looked up with one pair of eyes, which sort of was the Vanguard equivalent gesture of raising an eyebrow. Was the shark creature really using that kind of half-grownup language or was it just the translator device still struggling with the new communication form? He wondered how well his own words translated.

>>Who lives here?<< Silent asked directly, hoping to get some information from the shark.

The shark looked around, then answered.

"Up here, not many. It's a dangerous hunting ground and so much light. There is no place to hide, so almost no one comes here."

The shark creature looked less wary of the Vanguard and more curious now, although he still kept his distance. "Where are you from?"

Silent pointed upwards with one of his four arms. >>From the sky. This one is not from your world.<< his computer translated.

The shark swam a little closer, wonder and curiosity reflecting in his face. At least that's what Silent interpreted - the shark's face was not exactly capable of showing a very rich set of expressions.

>>Can you show this one where more people live?<< Silent asked.

The question seemed to make the shark queasy. He seemed to hesitate before he answered.

"Everyone lives further down in the valley. But it's dangerous there. You could get eaten!"

>>This one must see. Please lead the way there.<<

Again, some hesitation. But surprisingly the shark creature suddenly agreed. Silent had the feeling that the shark was neither very old nor particularly experienced.

"Follow me!" the shark said and swam downhill towards the open sea. Silent jumped over some rocks and followed in large leaps over the rocky ground, causing some more rocks to slide and tumble downhill. Eventually they came to another ledge, before the ground went nearly straight down. The shark swam ahead and downwards and Silent had no choice but let himself plummet once more with limited control over his descent.

"Hey!... not so fast!"   the shark complained, catching up with the free falling Vanguard. He seemed puzzled. Obviously he had never seen a creature too heavy to swim. Like in most oceans, everything that  lived here seemed perfectly adapted to the maritime environment, able to float and sink at will. Not so the Vanguard. His body density didn't allow him to float or even swim, he sank to the bottom like a stone, and all his movements could do was to steer his descent, like a parachuter with a wingsuit.

"Careful, don't go too deep!" the shark warned, but there was no change in the surrounding, except that the light slowly went dimmer and the water felt colder. The shark had spoken the truth though, tiny fishes were swimming in a swarm and vanished in a crack between the cliffs as the two larger creatures swooshed by. Dark shadows loomed in the open water, too far even for Silent's augmented vision to make them out. But the ocean was alive down here that was out of question. Rocks below indicated they had reached the bottom of the cliff wall. Silent braced himself, then crashed into the ground, this time less graceful. He skidded a bit in an attempt to land on his feet - then fell on his back and came to a halt. The shark swam up to him, quite close this time, almost as if hiding behind Silent as he was getting up.

Silent was bigger than the shark. Head to fin tip the shark creature was about as long as the Vanguard reached from head to feet - without his tail. The shark was also sleeker built and definitely less strong. His only advantage was agility in this environment, able to swim rapidly in the open waters.

"We shouldn't have gone this deep. It's not safe." - the shark said with hushed voice, then shrunk himself between Silent and the cliff wall as rocks impacted thundering in the distance. Rocks that Silent had inadvertently kicked off far above and that had been tumbling with them, rolling and crashing down the cliff.

If anything big lived down here these were bound to catch their attention by now.

Silent held his breath and listened, and so did the shark creature. But nothing happened. Only the light current breezed through. Long and thin grass like weeds drifted in the current, growing out of the rock surface. Small fishes came swimming. They looked feral, until Silent's translator suddenly picked up almost inaudible sound waves that it translated into giggling sounds. They came from the swarm of tiny creatures.

The giggles turned to squeals as Silent snuck up on them and trapped a few of them in one of his sample jars. >>What are those?<< he asked.

The shark looked closer, then suddenly opened his mouth, sucked in and gulped down a good portion of the swarm. The squeals turned into screams of terror as the rest of the swarm dispersed, to reform a good distance away from them, half hidden in the weeds.

"Oh, those? Just young fish. Everyone starts that small when they hatch. I must have had thousands of siblings when I was that age. Usually only a handful gets as big as me."

>>Don't the parents defend their young?<< Silent asked.

"Nah, they just make more. At least those kind." was his answer.

'''Help! Get us out of here, please!!!'''  - The sensitive device in Silent's ears picked up the very faint voices from within the shark's belly.

'''It burns my gills. Make it stop! I can't breathe!'''

>>They are screaming inside you. Doesn't that bother you?<<

The shark giggled. "Nah, they are tiny, they don't last a minute in there. It's much cooler if you eat someone you can 'just' barely swallow. You can feel them wriggle inside, that feels quite nice, and if you don't pay attention they wriggle their way out and you need to catch them again.
Its a funny game, I sometimes play with others I eat, I call it swallow catching. Whenever I swallow them, they need to stay inside for a certain time before they are allowed to wriggle out. If they waited that long, I in turn need to give them a headstart until I catch them again and wait the same length. And it doubles every time. The first time you count to 100, then to 200. Usually at around 500 they start feeling how I'm digesting them, so they count really fast. But when they lose count they need to start all over."

>>And when they wriggle out earlier?<<

"Oh, then they broke the rules and I get to bite their heads off." the shark answered giggling.

>>Did you ever get swallowed.<<

The shark blushed. At least that was the only way Silent could interpret the anthro fish's expression.

>>This one wants to see you eat someone bigger.<< the Vanguard added. The shark blushed more.

"Ok. Stay behind me and as silent as possible. Don't kick anymore rocks. I'll see if can find some prey. But watch out, there's bigger ones too, they eat you!" He agreed, almost a bit too eager.

Silent looked around at the shadows in the distance, too far for his visual amplifiers to magnify them in the low light. He really wondered what these creatures were, floating in the vast open sea. But he was bound to the ocean floor, there was no way he could get close. Maybe he'd need an underwater glider for a future mission.

The shark led him along the valley side, himself staying close to the wall. This time not to hide himself from other predators but to stalk the prey that undoubtedly must be somewhere there.

The shark swam closer to the wall and made a gesture towards Silent, to stay back. Silent crouched low and waited.

Not too much later a surprised squeak indicated he had found someone. Noises of struggling sounded and Silent rushed to the scene as fast as he could.

The shark had caught a smaller anthro fish, about half his size. It seemed to be an eel like creature, almost as long as the shark but much sleeker built. Not half the strength. Silent could easily imagine this creature to fit into the shark's stomach if curled together

 "Urovi! Damn it, let me go!" he or she protested. Silent couldn't identify the gender for sure but decided on a hunch it was male as well. And it obviously knew the shark personally, possibly from a previous encounter.

"No way, I caught you fair and square. Same as last time." The shark answered, baring his sharp teeth next to the face of the scared smaller anthro fish.

"Besides, my friend here wants to see me eat you. Stay still and I won't bite your head off."

He didn't hold still, he struggled, but the shark used his arm-fins to wrestle him and eventually got a hold of the tail tip which he brought in his mouth, scraping the slender eel tail with his shark teeth. "Stop struggling or I bite you!"

Surprisingly the struggles stopped as the smaller fish felt the teeth on him. Instead he started shuddering. "Urovi, please. Don't eat me again!" he begged.

Silent just watched. In a way it was almost arousing how the shark slurped down the eel like a noodle - holding him rather gently. The begs turned to helpless moans and shudders. Did the eel enjoy the sensations? The teeth scraped over its long back just barely, leaving scratch marks but no injury. "Please. Urovi, Please don't..." he begged eyes wide and pleading as his head slid shivering and trembling into the shark's maw. Yet the mouth full of teeth closed all around and he swallowed, sending the eel entirely into the squirming bulge that had formed in the shark's belly.

The shark turned towards silent, looking rather proud. He was holding his warped belly with his fin arms. Occasionally he gulped, sending the struggling eel back down as he apparently tried to fight his way out.

"Urovi please?  Let me out again. You had your fun."  the sound came from within the sharks belly. The eel apparently still very much alive.

The shark grinned mischievously

"OK, but only because its you. You know the rules, 1600 this time. And no escape attempts before!"

A whimper sounded, and the struggles ceased, then indeed the eel started counting.

>>Will that one survive that long?<< Silent wanted to know.

The shark grinned. "Most likely, unless he loses count. But, you know, half digested fish don't last long around here. I'll catch him again easily, and if not someone else will."

Silent thought that was rather cruel. In a very exciting manner.

"We should head higher, its dangerous down here." the shark reminded Silent. The Vanguard nodded, although his decision to venture deeper was already set, it still would be a good idea to bring his samples to safety in shallower waters first, in case he had to retrieve them in another life.

>>This one cannot swim straight up. Is there a way to climb the mountain?<<

There was. But it was long and tedious and very steep. The shark was constantly on the lookout for predators, sometimes sneaking close between the rocks from a danger that Silent's sensors could not make out. But the local fauna likely had developed special senses that worked better here than his vision, even augmented as it was. With his natural eyesight these depths would have been nearly pitch black.

From inside the shark his translator could still hear the faint voice of the slowly digesting eel. He had reached around 900 and started sounding quite uncomfortable, but kept counting stoically. A weird, cruel game, Silent thought. He wondered what he'd do in that situation. Suddenly the shark hushed his meal to stay silent. The Vanguard also ducked low and didn't move. Something had shifted, below and ahead on the near vertical rock face they tried to climb, along on a narrow ledge.

Something stirred, it looked like the rock itself was moving. Then suddenly the shark darted past Silent, swimming as fast as he could with his full belly. Silent would not have guessed that the shark was even capable to such speed, no wonder that it was a successful hunter.

But it wasn't fast enough. After the shark darted something else. Thick, but very very long, it looked like a whipping tree branch, and it whipped through the water so fast it made a cracking sound, and pulled a curtain of pressure vapor bubbles that formed and then imploded in its wake.

The whip was very precise, its tip hit the shark in the flank and flipping him around in a swirl of little bubbles. When the water had cleared, the long tentacle had wrapped around the struggling shark's tail and was pulling him towards whatever creature it belonged.

Silent wanted to get further away from this, to watch from a distance, but he couldn't. Glancing down he realized a second tentacle, moving slowly, had wrapped itself gently but firmly around his feet and squeezed tight just the moment he wanted to go. It was not an attack per se, just a message. Whichever creature this tentacle belonged to was very aware of the Vanguard and wanted him to stay exactly where he was for now.

>>It is just fine. This one will stay right here.<< Silent's computer translated. Promptly the tentacle around his ankles loosened up its squeeze - but it didn't let go.

The shark however struggled, screaming, "NO! Not you! Let me go!" - not that it did him any good.

A voice answered him, and a good part of the rock wall suddenly came loose and revealed itself as not being a rock wall at all. The creature was huge. It's torso, ending in a short tail was flexible and warping its shape and texture. It was around as long as the Vanguard was high, but wider. It's head was anthropomorphic and had a beak and large intelligent eyes that stared at the shark. On top of that It had arms though, several times the length of its body, and at least eight of them although they were hard to count. It was a squirming mass of tentacles that kept in constant motion, crawling over the rocks and changing shape. Two were longer and even more flexible - apparently used to hold unto objects. One of them was wrapped around the shark, the other slowly crept towards Urovi as well. Silent's feet were merely held by one of the shorter tentacles, which the creature obviously could move independently.

"Urovi, this is you, isn't it? How foolish of you to come here. Don't you remember what I told you last time, after you gobbled up all my little brothers and sisters?"

Urovi the shark squirmed and cursed, but there was no way he could get out of the tentacles embrace. A very very faint sound sounded from within his stomach. The eel he had eaten apparently had stopped counting and likely didn't know what was going on.

"Well, whats this, who did you eat this time? Let's have a look, shall we?" the tentacled beast said, seemingly amused. The shark increased his struggles as the tentacle brought him closer to the beak, then suddenly stopped struggling and froze as the beak opened, and a rough tongue started licking his tail. He shivered, then struggled again but only for a second. A squeeze of the tentacles made him go limp again and hold still.

"There, there, don't fight it." the tentacled creature spoke "You know, when I saw the face of my sister when you bit her in half, I really started wondering, what does it feel like when all these squishy bits start coming out of you?"

Urovi went wide eyed and struggled once more - although in futility - as the beak bit into his lower belly with a squish, then pulled back, dragging shark entrails with it.

A mammal would have screamed in agony, but  the shark only whimpered and stared at the sight of his insides spilling into the surrounding water. "Mmmhmm, tasty!" commented his captor.

The creature took a few more bites, almost completely severing the shark's tail. Almost. Somehow it had enough fine control not to sever any major arteries, the blood cloud that formed around the squirming creature remained surprisingly small, and the squirms surprisingly powerful.

"Now let's see who you ate, shall we?"

The stomach, pulled out by force from the shark's opened belly, burst open like a ripe fruits when the tentacled creature kept pulling. Freed from inside, the eel he had eaten spilled forth and promptly tried to make a run for it.

A tentacle, wrapped almost playfully around his tail, cut the escape short.

"Hey, where are you going, don't you want to stay for dinner? Look, we're having filled shark."

The beak took another bite out of Urovi. This time he screamed in pain. Silent could see a little white cloud in the water from where the beak had bitten. Silent realised that the shark had had internal testicles, just like him. Emphasis on 'had'.

"Oh, sorry, did that hurt?  Hey you, want a bite?" he asked the eel, one tentacle offering him a severed bit of shark meat. Silent couldn't make out what exactly it was, but it looked suspiciously like some sort of penis.

Urovi just whimpered - the shark had even stopped struggling, it made no difference anymore. He was just food by now, anyone could see that.

"Will you let me go?" the eel asked, as he hesitantly took the offered meat. He started nibbling, waiting for the tentacle creatures answer.

"No, you were part of my food to begin with, I'm not letting you go. But I can be really gentle and slurp you down in one piece if you hold nicely still. If you want me to. You're small enough."

"Would you... let me out later?"

"No, I can't. You'll stay part of me."  the kraken answered matter of factly.

The eel stared at the beak, then looked around at Silent. Silent was no help, 4 eyes stared with interest and fascination, but no intention to intervene. The eel bit his lips, tasked to chose between slow and fast death or futile struggle.

"OK, I'll hold still." the creature said quivering. His body was coated in slime from the shark's digestive juices. A shark that was still very much alive, even though the tentacled creature kept munching casually on his body.
 
"Just wait your turn." the creature said almost friendly and started digging into the moaning and squirming shark in earnest. A messy sight, soon obscured by an expanding black cloud of blood in the water. The whimpers and struggles went weaker, and the tentacle unwrapped around him, ending in a final, pleading moan, cut short with a final bite of the beak. Then the sound of crushing bones erupted as the octopus finally crunched down on his skull, breaking it, spilling it, then devouring it. The kraken was done, Urovi the shark had ceased to exist.

Both Silent and the eel watched with weird fascination. After licking the remains of his beak, the kraken pulled the eel closer and opened wide. Silent's earplugs translated for him the short descriptions given to the eel:

"I can't slurp you down. You need to push your way in." it had said. The eel had nodded silently and now was directed closer to the gaping beak, revealing a rough tongue with raspy little teeth embedded in it. There was a dark hole that lead down into the soft insides and towards the kraken's stomach. The eel hesitated, then was given a little nudge towards the beak, opening wider.

The unthinkable happened. The eel swam in, head first, squeezing himself past the sharp beak and the rough tongue, through the opening that he barely fit into. The tentacles had almost nothing to do but guide him gently. Soon only the tail end looked out. It suddenly tensed and shuddered and a small white cloud erupted from its underside. It's fins flipped frantically in his climax, then the eel slid down the hatch until his tail finally disappeared. The beak closed shut behind him,  trapping the creature inside the kraken's stomach for good.

Silent was rock hard and panting, after watching the kraken eat the two anthro fish. Now the tentacled creature floated a bit higher, slowly,  rearranging his arms before he turned his attention to Silent.

"I haven't seen you around here before. Or anything like you. Who are you?"

Both eyes looked at Silent, focusing on his four-eyed face.

>>This one is an explorer. This one is not from this world<< Silent's computer translated. He felt a slight déja vu at this conversation.

"Interesting, very interesting. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a kraken. My name is Shiekar."

At least those were the words Silent's translator formed. By now it had quite a reasonable model of the language common down here.

"This is the mountain of Atashiri, the highest mountain in the world-ocean." the creature elaborated further. "My family lived in this valley for generations, but others of my kin you will find only in much deeper parts. It takes a lot of acclimatisation for us to survive so far up here."

Silent shivered. Far up? They were over a mile deep under water, what would he find really deep down then?

"You seem to be ... intrigued by the way we eat each other?" Shiekar commented with a smirk at Silent's emerged and rock hard penis. Obviously he had identified the purpose of that organ correctly. There was no question that this kraken was by far the most intelligent being Silent had encountered so far.

>>This one is not used to such casual eating of each other. Most species this one has encountered value individual live highly.<<

The kraken thought a bit. "We do have moral standards, and we do value each other. But everyone must eat to survive, and there is always someone bigger who must eat too. Most species here grow up with hundreds of thousands of siblings and most of them get eaten, or worse, starve. Everybody knows, one day it will be you. I always took solace from the fact that my species is quite tasty, so whoever swallows me will remember me with a smile. Now, tell me, you come from beyond the sky, from the stars, right?"

Silent was surprised the concept of space was known at all to a world under a never clear sky that had all it's live under the sea. The kraken seemed to almost read his thoughts.

"We do have knowledge of how our world works. Some of us use technology to see above the surface and beyond the storms. If you ventured deep down into the vast plains of this world, you would find no such free living as here, but a strict and rigid society with rules and laws, craft and trade. Up here in the mountains we live like our ancestors from what we find and of each other. We are free. Down there the law decides when you eat and who you eat and when you get eaten. An elite of influential and rich beings governs this society. They would likely imprison you and torture you for knowledge from outside this world, then cut you up for food once you are no longer useful."

Silent listened with great interest. He knew now that he had to go there. But not unprepared, he had to find out more.

>>What will you do to this one?<<

The kraken laughed after a careful observation of Silent's face and body posture. "Indeed, you actually WANT me to eat you! You say your kind values life, but your eyes say you want to give yourself as food. But don't you have a task? Didn't you come here to explore? Aren't you collecting things in your container there? Will others come in your wake to continue your task? Is there going to be an invasion of this world?"

Silent froze. This creature indeed was thinking in a bigger picture than he had imagined he would encounter from a local. It did not only see through him, but also the motives of his masters. Motives that he didn't know even.

>>This one does not know who else might come. But this one will not die, if you eat this one, this one will just come back again.<<

"Reincarnation?" The kraken looked impressed and curious "Would you keep all your memories? What happens with your samples and your device?"

Silent was wary not to give the creature too much information, yet somehow it was intriguing to speak with this native like an equal.

>>This one will come back just like this. But this one would have to come here to retrieve those.<<

He couldn't keep the kraken from gently wrapping his tentacles around the Vanguard's technology, examining the computer with its lit display, and the samples. Shiekar handled them carefully and made no attempt to open the lids or free the trapped tiny fish..

"You can have a sample of one of my arms. They grow back." Shiekar offered surprisingly. He promptly took one of his many tentacles to his beak and bit the tip off just like that, then gave it to Silent as if it was but a strand of hair. Silent wasted no time putting it into an empty container. His feet however were still trapped within the grasp of the casually placed tentacle.

>>This one is very grateful. What do you want in return.<<

The kraken smiled, and brushed one of his tentacles over Silent's body. The toothed suction cups scraped over his tough skin. A lesser being would have received a nasty cut, Silent didn't even bruise. But it was an intense sensation, like being scraped with a needle. He let out a gasp.

"I have never eaten an alien creature before. You smell is intriguing. Let me eat you."

Silent stared at the beak. He knew he couldn't say no to that, he wanted it too much.

>>Would you kill this one first?<<

"Only if you begged for it." the kraken responded and lifted Silent from the ground, almost effortlessly. Silent had no intentions to beg for death though, on the contrary, he took pride in being able to endure and enjoy anything and everything his body could possibly take.

The arms of the creature had immense strength, it was now clear he could have hauled massive boulders just as easily. But the tip of the tentacle caressed Silent gently, tenderly, examining the unique body design of the Vanguard curiously.

"You are different from any creature I know. Where can I eat without killing you?"

The tentacle tip wrapped around the Vanguards exposed penis and caressed it ever so gently.

Silent moaned. >>This one's vitals are in here, and in the head.<< He glanced at the beak longingly, while pointing two of his arms at his chest. Then he arched, as another tentacle came up between his legs and squeezed around his thigh. Suction cups with teeth pressed against his skin and cut into his tough hide. Most teeth broke or didn't penetrate, but they were all razor sharp and some did get through.

"You are quite tough." the kraken commented and ever so slowly pulled Silent closer to his face. Then he opened his beak. It closed on Silent's thigh, on the inside, quite close to his crotch. The beak itself had sharp edges shaped just like sheet cutters. And like those, the hinges worked like levers, with huge muscles reaching up between his eyes and down along the front of the kraken. They force behind them was tremendous, it was quite likely that the kraken could indeed have bitten through solid metal. Silent's leg provided much more resistance than any other sea creatures flesh would have, but short of his dense bones nothing was going to withstand that beak. And Shiekar was not trying to bite the bone yet.

Silent arched and let out a howl, together with lots of bubbles. Not because of pain, the pain was nothing yet. But together with the caressing yet cutting sensations all around him, after watching two other creatures to be devoured before him just sent waves of bliss through him and he saw no reason to restrain himself. His cock throbbed, leaking pre, and then, just as Shiekar took a second bite from his other thigh, released a small cloud into the water from the tip of his exposed Vanguard cock. It soon mixed with the much darker cloud that formed around his wounds.

The kraken smiled and savoured the exquisite taste that an otherworldly creature provided. It was like nothing he had ever tasted before, and he was enjoying every bit of it.

His cuts had already severed some of Silent's tendons. Instead of biting through the bone, he just gnawed more flesh away, then pulled with the massive strength of his tentacles, ripping Silent's legs outwards. Two other tentacles did the same to two of his arms, while the remaining arms had started caressing the tentacles in return - which in turn were still caressing the Vanguard in just the right places. One tentacle now wrapped around his neck. The kraken could feel the heartbeat through there and applied just a bit of pressure - not enough to strangle the Vanguard, but enough to make him drowsy and cause his vision to grow into a dark tunnel. He was held, stretched out, helplessly, completely at the mercy of his devourer.

Silent's shaded vision lit up in bright light of exquisite pain as two arms and two legs got ripped right of him simultaneously - leaving him just with two remaining arms and his tail. Clouds of oddly colored Vanguard blood tainted the water now and the kraken sped up what he was doing. He took Silent's tail into his beak and shoved it down, not unlike how he had done to the eel. The eel that might well be still alive inside him, slowly digesting. Eventually the rough tongue touched Silent's crotch, just between where his leg stumps. And then the beak closed, slowly and deliberately, but mercilessly. It bit down to the hip bone, until the horn like substance the beak was made of met resistance of dense hard and massive Vanguard bones. It cut through Silent's flesh and took a triangular bite out of his lower belly, not unlike a cake slice. The slice with the best part after all - Silent's cock- as erect as possible - throbbed, and exploded one final time inside the beak with another white cloud. Then it was ripped from him - together with the meat from between his legs - and left just naked bone and dangling bowels that slowly got pulled out from his insides.

This time the Vanguard's painful screams were real. His life was pouring out of him and into the water with every heartbeat. Yet he was still aware of the massive tentacles that wrapped around his torso, seeking support under his shoulders. He tensed his grasp around the muscular and tense tentacle and held on as he felt himself being pulled away from the kraken's beak. Except that the kraken now held on tightly to Silent's hips - pulling his body apart. He heard several cracking, popping sounds, as his vertebrae unlocked from each other, and his leg stumps flailed in delicate agony. And then his body came apart, just below his rib cage in a tearing sensation that made him lose all sensation below that point, yet sent a wave of burning, raging, pain from his back to his brain as he ripped in half.

Then he couldn't scream anymore. Or breathe. The tentacle wrapped around his chest didn't let him, it clenched tight like a bench vice and caused his ribs to bend and strain as his torso was compressed more and more. At the same time his head was pulled upwards, stronger and stronger until he felt that familiar popping sensation - this time in his neck.

Just before his neck broke, he felt his ribcage give in. His dense ribs snapped into half, forming razor sharp splinters that were promptly driven inwards and through his lungs and hearts by the tentacles crushing force. It lasted just for a second, than the sensation was ripped from him together with his head, leaving him body less, floating, a calm moment before he could embrace blissful oblivion. His last sight was that of the kraken, eating away on what was left of his torso, arms twitching in reflexes. If he had still had his sex organs, he would have come again. So the wave of pleasure just washed through his head, taking his consciousness with him as his vision grew dark.

For a short moment at least before he reformed within the safety of his ship, parked on the unforgiving planet surface. Now he would have to seek out Shiekar again to retrieve his samples, continue the conversation, and maybe - just maybe - let himself be eaten again. At least he had a locator signal from his translator computer that he could follow with a second, identical device.


End.