The creature had egressed from Ingress. It had found a hole in a hidden recess near the dungeon''s surface; the hole was relatively small but large enough for an insignificant creature of its size to fit through.


    The creature had egressed from Ingress. The outside world was a much more beautiful and brilliant grey than the dreary, drab grey of the darkened caverns. Trees and grass painted a lush silver nature that the creature had never seen before; there was a wonderous blue sky with an enormous yellow circle that hurt to look at for too long. It seemed like it could run in any direction without ever hitting a hard, stony wall, unlike those cramped caves it had spent its entire life in. Sometimes, the creature even thought it could see vibrant greens out in the distance; it could hardly remember another time it had seen such oddly luscious colours. Of course, whenever it approached, those magical greens would always reveal themselves to be that same dull grey.


    The creature made itself at home in this new and bright place. Without ever having truly intended to do so, the creature had once again furnished its home with the usual decorum of statuesque stone creatures of all varieties. Anytime some animal wandered into its territory or attempted to investigate the unusual dungeon intruder, the creature would instantly freeze upon meeting its horrible gaze. The opponent would then flush of all colour and join in on the growing collection of statues.


    The creature was very aware of the might contained within its eyes; it could almost be said that anyone who saw it would be petrified in fear… and in stone. The creature did not mind this so much since it was that very stone which was the staple of its bland diet. It was a constant conundrum that the creature faced between growing its immaculate garden of stone art and filling its peckishness. A menagerie of chomped stone stood sophist to the creature''s self-control.


    It was only on exceptional days that the creature would sometimes smell unpetrified food from a distance before it was too late. The creature, prodigy amongst its race that it was, had developed an ingenious strategy where it closed its eyes and followed the scent of that enticing meal. Its unfailing nostrils would lead it to a new, never before explored taste of something other than bland stone, an unbelievable explosion of flavour and joy so rarely enjoyed by the creature.


    Today, the creature was aimlessly wandering around the grey forest, searching for that wonderous smell. Sadly, although it had been walking a while, it had yet to capture anything of interest. It eventually caught the sound of rushing water in the distance, not quite as exhilarating as a meal with flavour but still an interesting event to excite the day.


    The creature shut its eyes and followed that alluring trickling sonnet of water hopping over rocks. When its feet splashed into a cool, refreshing liquid, it expertly predicted that it had arrived at its destination.


    It channelled all the willpower it could muster to restrain its eyes and carefully squinted its eyes open. It briefly witnessed a small waterfall that draped off a steep cliff and drained into a calm pool; regular swathes of waves washed out from the waterfall, slowly shrinking as they barely caressed the edge of the pool where the creature stood. A vibrant tapestry of moss thrived upon the slick cliffface; a doe and her mother peacefully lapped up the refreshing drink opposite of the pool, and a few iridescent fish danced across the twisting eddies under the pristine surface.


    The creature blinked, and a dull grey still-shot greeted it. The disappointed creature threw its gaze up to the sky and listened for the sinking plate of stone to shuffle under the waterfall''s current. The creature focused once more on restraining its eyes before returning its sights to the pool''s watery depths. Within the water was a massive thin slab of stone nearly perfectly flat, if not for the slightly curved imprints of shallow waves. Far more interesting than the common grey sight was the thing atop the water''s surface.


    A face stared back at the creature, a small head with large penetrating eyes and a thin beak led to a long neck connected to a plump, multicoloured feathered body. Two thick wings rested on either side of the creature''s body, and just like all those other stone things with two wings, it could not fly for long with them. Two thin, featherless legs poked out from under the creature''s body. The creature had remembered back when it was in Ingress a human had barked a laugh and called it a chicken. When the creature turned to see the human, it had only been met with another statue, a frozen snapshot of a life once present and then not so.


    When the creature lost itself in the thought of whether it was a chicken or not, its concentration on its eyes dwindled, and the reflecting waters turned to a dull grey slab. The chicken quickly regained its composure allowing that growing slab to sink to the bottom of the pool for new unpetrified liquid to fill in its place. The chicken took this opportunity to enjoy a few soothing mouthfuls of the fresh liquid.


    The chicken, having fully quenched its thirst, left the small pool and continued on its search for a meal with actual flavour. It lifted its head up in the air and tried to sniff out that delicious scent of actual food; it was such a shame that the chicken had a far worse sense of smell than it did of sight. Usually, any wafts that it could catch were just the residual teasings of a meal already turned. The chicken did not lose hope; it continued to waddle down the stony path ahead of it, sniffing for something, anything.


    The second that appetizing scent chanced across its nostrils, the chicken immediately closed its eyes. It did not want to risk accidentally spotting the meal and destroying its only source of joy in life. The creature carefully wandered around, slowly trying to triangulate the location of that scent. The creature wandered aimlessly until it felt the scent dissipate, then readjusted and blindly walked in that new direction. The process was slow, but it was the only way to ensure that the meal remained untainted.


    The creature was sure that it was close to its meal when its search was interrupted by the chime of a bell. Another animal must have caught that glorious scent and come to steal its rightful meal. The hungry chicken knew it could have easily felled its enemy with a simple opening of its eyes, but then it would also risk losing its meal. Thankfully, the creature''s hearing was vastly superior to its smell.


    The creature darted between the sound and the smell, defending its meal from the new intruder. Yet, to have pinpointed the precise source of the scent, it could only hope it had maneuvered correctly. The creature listened for the enemy to make its move, but it was not making a sound.


    Why was so much time passing without it hearing anything? Perhaps the enemy was a stealthy opponent, one that could move without the chicken''s sensitive ears catching notice. A sudden anxiety began to brew in the chicken''s empty stomach as it considered the prospect of losing track of its enemy. Not one to be dissuaded by a setback, the chicken moved on to another plan. If it couldn''t threaten one direction, it would have to threaten all directions!


    The creature raised its neck high, stretched its legs tall, unfurled its puffy tail, and extended its stubby wings. Once the small avian had enlarged itself to the fiercest-looking threat it could, it violently flapped its wings and loudly cawed. It used its incredible powers of intimidation to warn any challengers of how dangerous it truly was. If the aggressive gestures weren''t enough, then its feathers'' bright and varied colours would demonstrate to onlookers that this creature had a deadly gaze and should not be approached. Indeed, when the enemy saw these colours and verbose actions, it would be scared off.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Then, the enemy moved. The poised creature listened to its opponent''s movement. As it strained its ears, it could tell its enemy was moving in wily, unpredictable motions; it was trying to throw the chicken off. The strategy almost worked, but the creature had one more trick, and just as it was starting to lose track of where its opponent was going, the chicken activated its final defence and opened its eyes.


    There was a grey, featureless human standing before the chicken. The grey being had a single limb outstretched toward it and holding onto a dull grey thin sheet. Good thing the creature opened its eyes when it did, or else the humanoid would have attacked it with that thin weapon. Instead, it was joined as yet another statue that had fallen victim to its ocular might.


    The featureless humanoid was unlike anything this chicken had seen before; it floated slightly above the ground, even when petrified, and had a perfectly geometric body with a long, thin arm and a small seven-fingered hand at the end of it. The last feature of interest was that perfectly round head with a flat divot where other animals tended to have their faces. The chicken was not unfamiliar with humans, or at least their statues, and was sure they did not look like this.


    The surprises from this being did not just end with its looks. Beyond all belief, the chicken heard a slight crackling. The being was shifting and transforming, an undercurrent of impossible movements shuffling from under the petrified rock until, like tectonic seizures, it cracked apart. A piece of stone fell off, tumbling to the ground and revealing the enemy''s colourful body underneath. The chicken watched the pink exposure rapidly resolidify back to stone before breaking apart again, each repetition slowly revealing more pink. It had never seen something fight against its ocular oppression. The creature shut its eyes and turned for its food. If this enemy could somehow break free from its petrifying gaze, then the chicken''s only option would be to get to the food and eat it before the enemy could.


    A loud snap echoed from the petrified statue. The enemy underneath must have freed itself; the chicken had little time remaining; it had to find the meal first. Its eyes were firmly shut, its ears only barely listening for its opponent; it was wholly focused on following the trailing scent of its decadent dish. It opened its beak, ready to take a euphorious gulp, that strong aroma deeply caressing its nostrils. It threw its beak down only to unexpectedly tap on to some soft, rubbery flesh.


    The annoyed chicken irritably opened its eyes to see the grey hand of that wretched creature using its thin grey sheet to cover the chicken''s rightful meal. It was so close, it could practically taste the succulent dinner already.


    The chicken darted its head upwards to petrify its opponent, but the vile rival acted just as quickly, blocking the chicken''s vision with its hand and, with a jolt, slapped it away. The poor avian crashed painfully into a sturdy tree, wings and limbs folding atop one another, its boneless body slowly sliding down grating bark and collapsing into the mucky forest dirt. Its head span in concussed disorientation. Having kept its eyes shut the entire time, it became horrendously lost. Its head hurt. Its beak ached. Worst of all, it was denied dinner.


    The chicken threw its eyes open, unleashing its wrathful destruction, the unsuppressed fury so overbearing that the very air itself commenced petrifying, raining small pebbles to the ground. Fueled purely by the relentless rage of vengeance, it searched for its prey.


    The enemy was not idle; the second the chicken caught a peek, they''d zoom out of sight. Every minute glimpse would petrify a piece of its opponent''s outstretched deflecting hand. As soon as it zipped back out of sight, that irritable crack would beckon its shucking. The chicken darted its eyes back and forth, twisting its body on a dime in feeble attempts to catch that ever-escaping pink blur.


    The chicken''s terrifying gaze was so powerful at this point that the petrified stone began to petrify, an expanding feedback loop which caused stone victims to bloat into monstrous tumours. The entire forest calcified into a single stony mass as rocky trees merged, blades of grass grew into sharp swords, and petrified statues fattened into indecipherable blobs. The tranquil forest was gone, replaced by a constricting labyrinth of refuse and stone.


    The battlefield was rapidly shrinking, choking itself, forcing the pink enemy to leap up the constricting forest. The once calming Eden of nature turned to a violent beast of congealed slag. The pink creature barely managed to sortie out of the rocky canopy before the entire woods unified into a single massive block of petrified rock.


    The pink foreigner caught its breath, floating above the alien sight. A synthetic cube cutting a pestilent swathe out of the otherwise verdant ecosystem. Irritation overcame the being, and it gave in to its frustration. That flat, empty divot on the pink creature''s face opened, revealing a single gargantuan eye, a blinding orb shining like a blazing star blanketing the world in overbearing brilliance. It was an unfathomable light of blinding brilliance. The eye scanned across the horizon, and as it did so, it disintegrated all inorganic matter that befell its ocular assault.


    Not even a minute ago, this place was a beautiful, lush forest; within a matter of moments, it had transformed into a homogenous blob of fossilized life and then, just moments after that, transformed again into a devastatingly flat expanse. Nothing had survived the climactic collision of wills, no homes, no trees, no statues, not even a lone bug. The angry chicken, alone in an empty wasteland, had an apprehensive sniff. The ultimate price had been paid.


    Dinner was dead.


    The chicken glared with death in its eyes. A single radiant eye stared back wholly unperturbed, not a single speck of stone gracing the entity''s pristine pink skin.


    That monstrous pink creature slowly descended from the sky. The pink enemy landed next to a glowing parchment looking oddly similar to that dull grey one it held back when they initially met, back when they were in a forest. It certainly wasn''t the same parchment, given the clear luminous differences. For some reason, the parchment could not be petrified either anymore.


    The pink enemy positioned its hand directly above the parchment and placed down a small heap of seeds. The brilliant glow of the parchment enveloped the seeds, and even when being stared at, the food remained unpetrified. The chicken was immediately taken by the prospect of reclaiming its precious dinner, there was still hope.


    The pink enemy moved off to the side, leaving dinner to the chicken. The two kept their eyes locked, the chicken refusing to even squint a little against the painful brilliance of its opponent.


    The pink thing held its arm outstretched toward nothing. It was as if the pink enemy was relinquishing its claim on the food.


    The chicken was surprised by the enemy''s sudden kind gesture, but it would not look a gift horse in the mouth. They stared firm a little longer, and then, in an unprecedented moment of trust, the chicken slowly shut its eye before a living being. It faced the decadent smell of fatty deliciousness and waddled over to the seeds. Without preamble, it happily munched down on the delicious, non-petrified snack. The explosion of magical flavour, the slight resistance of a real genuine fibre shell, the glorious near, overwhelming assault of savoury oils.


    The chicken shed a single tear; this had made all the death and destruction worth it. The deliciously fattening and mildly salty taste practically melted in its little beak.


    Once the seeds had all been consumed, the chicken was filled with an immediate sense of longing. The sort of sadness that settled in after a delicious meal where one realized that they had just finished said meal and so could no longer eat said meal.


    The chicken liked said meal.


    Maybe the chicken had judged the pink entity too quickly. It was not an enemy at all. If it were an enemy, then why did it give the seeds away. The chicken felt around the area with its feet, trying to find any leftovers. Tragically, all the seeds were gone; the only thing it felt as it searched was the constant ruffling of that glowing parchment shifting underfoot.


    The chicken tried pecking at the parchment in case it was edible. It swallowed a couple mouthfuls, but it did not taste particularly good. The chicken suddenly had a divine thought. "Should I consider that as you accepting the invitation?"


    The chicken had never thought in such advanced terms before. The only way the chicken could think of coping with the sudden influx of information in its mind was to cluck.


    "Good. Can you get to the arena of Utnapishtim on your own?" Once again, overwhelmed by an impossible flood of thoughts and ideas too vast for the small mind of the chicken to comprehend, it could do nothing but cluck.


    The chicken then had a divine thought so bizarrely alien and dysmorphic that it shivered in discomfort. The thought was the odd expulsion of air in irritated dismay. Then, it had another thought.


    "Fine, I''ll take you there myself. You have accepted your invitation to ''The tournament.'' You are the Cockatrice."