Assassin Crow Evolution

Jimmy and his friends were tossed into the giant mouth of the centipede, only moments after he accepted General Xin’s offer.

Neither Vorin or Virena knew what was going on, since they couldn’t understand the giant mantis, and so, they sank into a great deep panic, fully believing that Jimmy had run his mouth enough to get them all killed.

When they found themselves within the darkness, the void that was past the centipede’s throat, they believed that they had died.

However, they regained control of their bodies shortly after.

"What the fuck’s going on?" Vorin shouted.

"Did he just feed us to the bug?" Virena followed suit.

"Relax," Jimmy said, "We were just sent here to kill an ant, and rip out some centipede eggs it swallowed. Once we succeed, that head-ass is going to give us three Sentient Feathers. I think it’s a good deal."

"I could barely breathe up until now," Vorin said, "What made you think trusting those bugs is a good idea?"

"I don’t trust them one bit, but they would’ve killed us otherwise." He answered, "They got the upper hand. There wasn’t anything we could do about it."

Jimmy gave Virena almost the same answer afterwards. She complained a lot less, and grew the biggest bit of fire she could muster at the tip of her sickle, about two inches tall.

She didn’t plan to attack the beast from within, but rather, illuminate the place, because they were crawling around in darkness beforehand. The fire was powerful enough to give them a six foot view of their surroundings.

It wasn’t enough to help them feel comfortable, though.

The plumpy, sticky, dark red insides of the bug below their feet hardly gave them a peace of mind.

"How big is this ant we’re fighting?" Vorin asked. "Can we even kill it?"

"I hope we can," He said, "Since the mantises believe that the eggs are still intact, we have to assume that the ant was big enough to swallow them whole. You saw how big this bastarding centipede was. Its eggs have to be huge as well."

"So the ant is massive, then?" Vorin sighed, "That’s great..."

"Relax," He said, "If shit goes south, I believe I have an escape plan. Either way, this thing should take us six or seven minutes max, so pay attention. I don’t want to see you get eaten twice."

"I’ll pretend to know what minutes are, as long as you shoot the ant in the face." Vorin said.

The team continued their journey down the creature’s throat.

Reaching the foregut, which was essentially part one of the centipede’s three-part digestive system, was a relatively short trip.

It was roughly a twenty meter, or sixty foot walk. The air in here was hardly high-quality, so they were already having a bit of trouble breathing.

’Thank god the damn fumes in here aren’t toxic to us,’ He thought. ’I think?’

Within the nerve-wracking sounds of dripping juices, they heard something rustle ahead, at the entrance of the foregut.

They immediately expected to see the ant, but something else approached them instead.

It was a human! A short one, but human nonetheless.

This broke their perspective quite a bit, because they were fully expecting to fight the ant.

The human approached them slowly, with what appeared to be a spear in its hands. The spear looked like it was the hardened, old leg of some other big bug.

"Qefare je ju?" The human said.

Jimmy obviously didn’t understand, and neither did his friends, but he recognized one of those words. He distinctively remembered the old, albeit insane temple mortician from back in the city repeating the first word.

’Must be the country’s main language?’ He thought.

The team didn’t attack the human, because they could tell he was mostly curious, and or defensive. Furthermore, they barely saw him as a threat, since he was roughly four feet tall despite being an adult.

Nevertheless, Jimmy decided to humor the human, and parroted, "Qefare? Qefare?"

The human was confused, though, he somewhat respected the fact that a bird could repeat his words. He tried to communicate with the team for a moment, but it didn’t yield any results, and so he understood that the birds couldn’t speak his language, but simply repeated what they heard.

It was hard to focus on the matter. The man was butt-nacked, and Jimmy had to see his penis swinging around as if it was a normal situation.

The man lowered his spear, and backed away.

Virena followed him slowly, using the fire at the tip of her blade to shed light close by.

Just like that, they saw the human disappear within the centipede’s throat walls. He quite literally opened the wall with his bare hands, walked in it, and then sealed the wall as if it was never torn to begin with.

"That’s new," Jimmy shook his head.

It was hard to narrow their attention back to their mission afterwards, but a loud click forced them to pay attention. For a moment, they thought that their heads exploded!

Before they could react, fifteen of these odd humans appeared.

Each of them were carrying something, and as Jimmy pictured the parts together, he saw what could only be an ant’s head.

It was giant, maybe a bit under a meter wide, or roughly three feet.

"How did mind reading become the default?" He grunted, "These guys can read minds too?"

"I think they just want to feed us," Vorin said. "The ant just happened to be nearby."

As one of the humans spilled the guts of the ant’s body in front of them, and pointed his spear at the guts, Jimmy agreed with his brother’s assessment.

"Ha," The human kept repeating.

"Ha Ha," Jimmy parroted, and took a bite.

The human was pleased, he smiled, and sat close by.

To Jimmy, the ant’s organs were surprisingly delicious. They were juicy, and almost tasted like freshly cooked cow meat.

As the humans man-handled the ant’s stomach, Jimmy saw several one-foot wide eggs roll out of it. The eggs were as colorful as a rainbow, so he knew at that instant that these were the eggs the team were sent here to fetch.

"God damn, they really made our job easy." He said, "Now how do we convince them not to eat the eggs?"