Masurathoo tensed. Positioned above the active, always moving pod, an ordinary predator might have flexed its muscles or claws. Not the darter. Instead, it slowly and quietly began to swell.
It was several times its original size and no longer flat when something shot silently from its pointed proboscis. Hasa was put in mind of the tongue of a frog or chameleon. But what fired from the darter’s muzzle was tipped not with glue but with spikes.
They struck one of the mature pekawa right where the neck met its bulbous body. Trying to escape, the pekawa jerked violently several times while the rest of the pod scattered. The spikes held fast. Within less than a minute, the unfortunate creature lay quivering on the surface of the water. Attracted by the commotion, other disturbances appeared, moving toward it. Before the curious submerged carnivores could investigate the dead pekawa, the darter was reeling in its catch. Masurathoo and his companions watched as the arboreal predator began to suck up its prey through its versatile expanded snout.
Hasa enlightened the Deyzara where he was resting: “Those spikes contain a powerful poison that dissolves as well as kills. They’re propelled by air the darter sucks in and uses strong bands of abdominal muscle to expel. It doesn’t have any teeth because it doesn’t need them. It doesn’t move fast because it doesn’t have to. It’ll make a leisurely meal of the pekawa’s insides as they liquefy.” He rose. “You could walk right up to it now and give it a pat and it would ignore you. It’ll certainly ignore us as we pass.”