Saurians - The day of the beast

6 - A hostile World

The Earth was warm and humid, a vast tropical forest covered almost in its totality all the continents of the planet, the reptiles in their biggest versions (dinosaurs), dominated indisputably on all habitable land, but in the polar regions, or in the mountainous chains that were regions more temperate and even cold, another class of animals had taken root that were not reptiles neither birds, but that had abundant hair covering their bodies, they did not lay eggs, the females gestated within themselves their young until they were born and took care of them while they adapted to live by themselves, in addition they had hot blood and other differentiating characteristics, they were mammals, that were better adapted to the cold than the other animals, in their majority they were small and weaker than the Saurians but many of them were ferocious and acted in herds, which made them very dangerous.

There were mammals of various types and sizes, some peaceful and easy to hunt, others were very aggressive and strong, such as wolves or big cats, there were others that were smaller and slippery, but within the whole variety, there was a somewhat strange and fascinating species that were monkeys, which had incipient social characteristics, because they coexisted in more stratified and organized herds than most animal species, some were very astute but small, others large and ferocious, some more intelligent than others, and within them all the dominant species were humans, who were a group of apes that possessed a series of very disturbing characteristics for the Saurians, who were the intelligent counterpart to humans from the reptile side. The Saurians were a variety of reptiles, relatively small in comparison with the big predators, but they surpassed in stature, strength and corpulence even the biggest and ferocious apes, the most relevant of this species was its great intelligence, which surpassed by far those of its closest congeners and that its social development had already transcended from the simple gregarious behavior, to a manifestation of communitarian type, They tended to group in large colonies, had advanced beyond the herd stage and remained linked to their horde by defining their own rules, customs and even had a structured language, somewhat rudimentary, but very effective in communicating and transmitting ideas, worked collectively segregated functions for certain tasks such as hunting and fishing, collecting fruits, insects and plants for the community, collecting water, vigilance and self-defense.

Food was abundant and living in communities had moved them to change the habit of feeding individually, although whenever they could hunt or fish for themselves, they had within a horde, groups of Saurians who were devoted exclusively to these activities, while others took care of other tasks of maintenance, defense, exploration or care of the offspring.

In these communal groupings there was no gender distinction for tasks or responsibilities and females, for example, only refrained from hunting if they were caring for their newborn offspring or during the spawning period. Saurians were being born from eggs, but their reproduction was ovoviviparous, the horde entered the period of zeal when the spring of the solar cycle started and the females selected their pairs and they could be fertilized then, when it was happen, the eggs were gestated and developed inside their mothers for a period of approximately a hand of full moons. While the female incubated their eggs inside her belly, the life of the horde passed at its normal rhythm, the gestation did not alter the physical functions of the mother. After that time came the time of spawning and the horde looked for a suitable place to settle temporarily, they tried that the selected place had abundant game and water for the final incubation period of eggs that was a hand of day cycles, plus the period after the hatching of the egg, in the centre of the camp, they dug one or several large shallow holes to lay and bury the eggs, the females spawned and in turn covered the eggs with a light layer of sand or dry earth, so that they could finish warming up to the sun and wait; naturally in response to an early memory, everyone in the horde took care of the communal nest until the small offspring were born, who broke the egg with a small thorn in their snouts, emerged from the earth and within a few minutes of birth they could walk and eat, but could barely fend for themselves, yet in a few hours they were able to move along with the Horde in such a way that in a matter of two hands of diurnal cycles after collective birth, the collective could set up the camp and looked for another place for the horde, the small member of the horde spent a few summers with the others of the same litter in a kind of kindergarten which, the oldest Saurians of the community were those who cared for, fed and educated the young, as spawning was not strictly simultaneous, not all the eggs matured at the same time and those who were left behind in their hatching were abandoned to their fate, Being prey of predators that swarmed around the camps waiting for them to move to take advantage of the opportunity to eat the tender newborn and helpless babies, very rarely a newborn in a camp already abandoned survived, but there were very few cases in which at birth, the little one was lucky enough to emerge without predators around him and managed to reach the nearby bushes, eat insects or plants and stay alive without being devoured in his first hours which were the most helpless, by instinct he followed the Horde's tracks, developed his survival instinct and took care not to be devoured by Saurians or larger mammals and in the end managed to reach the horde, being well received and put in special surveillance and control because they had demonstrated a capacity for survival beyond normal, these small survivors were marked for life and were extremely sexually attractive to the females of the Horde, as they guaranteed very strong and intelligent descendants.