*SHWOOOSH*

*CRACK*

A flash of blue appeared over the tranquil wetland lake, followed by a meteoric crash into its shore as a flaming mass of writhing flesh and tentacle made landfall on a patch of gnarled trees, crushing them instantly. The charred Behemoth, its tentacles stomped into the marsh by its falling motivity as its mass half-buried it into the darkened soil, stopping its frantic trashing by either trauma or time. And as the Librarian regenerated an eye and ten from its charred mass, stirring as it felt the last of the blue flames douse out,  looked around.

Nearest to It was a lake of clear, calm water... Its blackened, shallow turf bottom, with a reflection of two mismatched moons shimmering in its surface like a pair of eyes. A vision of two glowing orbs in darkness did not go unnoticed, triggering many of his acquired Collections instincts , causing a flinch... The eyestalks of the beast stared at the reflection on the lake... before blinking pointlessly, and disregarding the noisome borrowed thoughts.

The Librarian was somewhere else, it concluded, as it gathered its splayed out mass up from the peat it impacted into. It was... Another world, or another time, but it was alive still, and that alone was enough. Countless millennia of life has long cut down on the Beasts surprise at its own continued persistence, and stretching and reforming its withered flesh, it could begin healing the damage its predator did. As charred muscle and sinew dissolved into its ever shifting mass, reforming and rebuilding slowly, it had a moment of reflection about the previous encounter: an Outminder had caught It.. The behemoth hadn't seen one for a millennia, and hadn't been caught by one ever since it broke free from its first jailer eons ago. And now, a unicorn of unicorns, had rooted It out from the undergrowth of the human hive, and bought it to... Where?

And where is the jailor? Where is the compulsion? Where is the demands for flesh and stone and metal and mercury? Where is It?... And as much as It felt it... Its mind of an untrigintillion cells was still Its. And the black marble minds of its carry-along library... Were still on their shelfs.

The flesh shifted, a half-formed tentacle plucking out one of the pearls swimming in its flesh, and pulling it before one of the larger eyestalks, rotating it... studying it... before its  flowing eyes blinked in relief, as the pearl was reabsorbed into the flesh... Yes, the library is still intact.

With both its will and its treasure confirmed, the Librarian turned its attention outward once more, only to spot... something...

A reptilian beast, half the size of the Librarian, gliding through the night sky toward It. A mass of scale and muscle, its suddenly focused eyestalks told, as much as the borrowed minds in Its hold screeched that the oversized beast should be as grounded as the Writhing Horror is, yet... The grace and ease of its flight toward the meteoric mass left it awestruck... And as soon as the reptilian saw the writhing mass staring at it from the shore of the lake, it let loose an earthshaking roar, echoing into the distance.

*SCREEEEEEE*

With that shocking the Ooze back from its contemplation, the mass of many-flesh flared, tentacles sprouting from its cruise-ship long body, as if an hedgehog suddenly emerged from a pancake. The Drake above screeched, dove below, and strafed the beast, spewing viscous flame, and...

Just as it swooped perfectly low to perforate the abomination with its burning breath, a coiled tentacle snapped, rushing up.

With the force of an overbent catapult, the sprung tentacle lashed out toward the drakes strafing body, catching its tail and coiling on around it. With the serrated muscle suddenly anchoring the reptile, Its strafe came to a stop mid-belch, as the oversized drake suddenly found his upward trajectory suddenly turned into a circular downward slam into the forest canopy..

*SCREEE-THUD!*

The reptile screeched as it slammed on its stomach, laying now a good field away from its target, writhing like a lizard with its tail caught by an octopus. With experienced precision, the previously whip-like tendril bulged, as sinew and muscle suddenly grew on the coiling limb, wrapping and pulling the stunned mega-fauna by its tail toward its ever-shifting mass. The reptilian beast however, quickly turned around with surprising speed and spewing another gut-full of flame at its own caught tail. 

The Librarian, as it burrowed a mannerism from one of its "books", grinned from its many mouths at this attempt. It had already reinforced the capturing limb, layering insulation after insulation, foam and an ad-hock system of fluids running quickly between its body and the limb. Experience had told it this little innovation can stand for days, tipped in volcanic rock, so this little...

Wooosh.

...

The beasts breath burned the entrapping flesh off in seconds... It...

Stunned as the Librarian watched, its reinforced flesh was evaporated in a single breath that engulfed its limb, the Lizards tail, and the trees around it.... And... As hungry, bluish flames, climbed greedily upward the now-stumped tendril, the reptiles own tail... and the trees around it were... just slightly singed....

In stunned observance, the Librarian recalled its still-burning half-tentacle before its central mass, and observed it in stupefication as the still sizzling limb of reinforced flesh was burning like a candle from the odd flames...

Blinking its eyestalks rapidly, it managed to snap out of its puzzlement as it dug the burning limb down into the mire its master was in, and in relief saw that the flames, for all their frightening potency, were still dousable by the murky waters It landed in... But...

The limb itself was full of water, yet it burned as easily as the rest of his body, yet...

*crack**crack**crack*

Before the Horror could figure it out, the sound of timber breaking alerted it, as a beast almost as tall as the trees themselves was tearing through them in ease, heading its way no doubt to introduce the Librarian thoroughly to the flames he just studied.

...

keeping... distance...

With the threat of searing cancelling out the Librarians favored ways of self-defenses, the Horror quickly looked around, found an bus-sized boulder half-buried in the same bog as It was, and with haste coiled its emerging tentacles around it, hefted it, and launched it in a catapultic ark, falling right...

Woosh...THUD-WRYYY

Right on the long neck of the beast, slamming its scaled face once more into the mire. Its not the first time the Librarian had to appreciate its borrowed knowledge from that kanonier It caught 300 or so cycles ago.

The beast screeched, trashing around as its neck and shoulders now, surprisingly not broken, was stuck beneath 2500 tonns of obstinate rock. Trashing around, the beasts massive claws were digging at the soft wetland below it, quickly trying to dig itself out from under it.

As the trapped mega-reptile trashed, the slithering horror quietly congratulated itself for utilizing its burrowed knowledge of ballistics, and started to wriggle out from the bog it landed into to circle around the beast... Before suddenly noticing another slowly approaching spot in the night sky, quickly approaching them.

With a dissatisfied gurgle bubbling up from some forsaken spot of its ever shifting flesh, the Librarian leaves its now trapped antagonist there, and finds, and sizes up another boulder.... Before noticing another dot... and another... and ten more... and...

With haste, the beast abandons its half-dug out boulder there, as it quickly retreats to the bog it impacted into first place, submerging beneath the dark water there, leaving only a dozen or so short eyestalks emerged, as they trailed the approaching bodies...

Every... single one of them a scaled, flying reptile... In a dizzying array of colors and constructions, each nearing or exceeding the mass of the first hostile... All of them screeching incessantly and homing into the now submerged horror with unnatural accuracy...

Thinking quickly, the Librarian looked around, withdrew most of his bigger eyestalks underwater, and transmuted the smaller ones to look more like the few bushels of reeds that stalked the edges of the mire-pond. 

And the flying reptiles came, landing one-by-one around the lake the Horror submerged into, all of them alternating between howling at the skies, and glaring at the murky waters...

The Librarian was both relieved they didn't follow him underwater, and annoyed he couldn't ambush any of them to replenish his tortured mass with their flesh. But a stalemate is fine as well. He wont be dying of old age or hunger any time soon. So The Mass settled itself into the bottom of the mire, keeping the reptiles gathering around his watery bunker in sight-stalks. 

And the reptiles just stood at the edge of the lake, screeching, roaring into the skies... And even more spots were sighted in the skies, approaching quickly... Dozens turned to three dozen, turned to tens of dozens... And kept increasing in numbers until the entire mire-lake shore was encircled by a screeching, multi-colored mass of scaled flamethrowers, with dozens more encircling overhead... And frustratingly, nobody veering close enough to be caught and dragged into the mire.

Well... beasts that large should have an equally large appetite, so any stalemate in the siege should be won by the Instarvable as he hibernates in the bottom. And then, one of the dragons opened its jaws, and spewed a gout of flame into the lake. And on que, the other drakes picked up the idea, and copied the attack.

Well... The water basin is deep enough, and luckily, the local waters don't seem as hyper-reactive to the flames as his own charred flesh was, so the jets of flame are doused soon enough... And logic dictates, that even with so many creatures trying to boil it, they will tire out before the water is half-boiled... There should only be so much fuel even in these incessant beasts. They will run out of steam soon enough... Probably...

...

Its been 4 hours of boiling and... the water is getting warmer... And has lost a quarter of its volume as a never-ending torrent of flame dances on its surface... No sight over it is possible anymore, the telescopic stalks burning the moment they peek out of the surface. The water level is dropping, slowly, steadily... Might need a retreat.

The librarian could just burrow deeper into the mire, dig through the bottom soil into the rock below, but... That takes time... And the illogical persistence of the reptiles hints that they might burrow right after him after boiling the lake clean... Might need a diversion...

Well, there is something he could do to certainly distract the beasts. Not just cut off his tail like a lizard for the predators, but a true distraction, with true will to live. It will cost him a fair bit of mass and his whole collection, but... He can always re-collect later his collection from the charred ashes. So he divided himself into two, sending the bigger half of himself, now with programmed orders toward the shore, and a tenth of his mass, with every scrap of Ego he could extract from the other, burrows itself into the peat layer at the bottom.

...

A mass bursts out the flaming with undulating horror, eyes and claws and tendrils, lashing out and slapping away the surprised mega-fauna as it marooned. The dragons circling the lake took flight instantly like a flock of seagulls, as the moored mass suddenly bulged, and vomited forth a deluge of... life. From within the shapeless mass, creatures, fully formed and... normal flew forth, carried forward by a wave of purplish ooze that birthed it.

(...)

I snapped my eyes open and gasped, winching away from...

From what?

Blinking, i try to get my vision straight as i raise up from laying on my stomach. Getting up unsteadily, i wipe my eyes to get rid of some muck covering my eyes, as i try to look around. And freeze in shock. Around me, laying in sticking pools of bluish-gray goo, was a mass of slime-covered beasts and naked people, writhing in the ground around me. A deer on its side, howling, an alligator jerking and twitching to my left, a black dog rising up to its back legs and limping unsteadily away. And the people... Were mewling, twitching and screeching. With human voice but without a human tongue, as a figure of a young man before me tried to crawl away on all fours, braying all the while, worse than any drunkard i have seen in my life... Before being suddenly engulfed in white fire from the heavens, and burning to a crisp mere meters from me.

In fright i jumped backwards, and fell instantly on my back on the slippery muck. Run, i have to run. Getting up to my feet i try sprinting, but my gait is unsteady, falling on my hands over and over as i try moving faster than a hobbling walk... And i see a gout of flame fall down from above to my right, immolating the deer that tried to crawl away. In panic as i fall again, i try crawling on all fours just to move faster, and... My speed improves.

Crawling, sprinting... on all fours i crawl, i dash through the thicket of reeds and bushes, putting everything into gaining as much distance as  possible between myself and the bombardment. And as i just see myself gaining a bit of footing, something massive crashes into the dirt behind me, sending me tumbling forward as the ground shakes from the impact. 

As i get up and look behind me, i see... a silver dragon... gigantic...glaring... Opening its jaws as it inhales.

And in stunned silence with my jaw open, i stare at it... Mezmerized and terrified, as a gout of flame is hurled at me... And before the flames reach me, the dirt floor beneath me gives way, as i fall into its depths.