Lily smiled faintly at their display and allowed them to close the gap.
As they each tried to bite into her different body parts, her arm shot forward and punched through the chest of the raptor, trying to bite her arm, fingers tearing through bone and closing around its heart. She ripped it free, and the body collapsed before its jaws had fully released her.
The one at her leg was caught by the Swarmling, wounded as it was. The Hive Unit clamped down on its tail and pulled, ruining its balance and causing it to fall.
Lily stepped down on its spine, and a crack followed.
The largest raptor struck her shoulder instead of her throat when she shifted her body. Its claws dug in, and its jaws snapped near her face, close enough that she could smell the blood and meat on its breath.
She grabbed its lower jaw with one hand and the top of its skull with the other. It began thrashing around violently to try and get out of her grip, but she just pulled; she tore the jaw completely loose.
The raptor fell, kicking and bleeding into the soil until eventually it couldn't even move anymore.
'There was one more.'
It was the smaller one that had stayed near the edge earlier. It had not attacked with the others; it had watched, and now it seemed to understand that the pack had chosen wrong.
It backed away slowly as Lily looked at it.
She could kill it easily, a command to the Direworm below, a burst of speed, even a simple throw from where she stood would be enough.
Instead, she let it run.
The raptor turned and fled through the ferns. It kept its body low, tail straight, moving quite fast for a creature of its size. But it wasn't alone; a Watcher shifted above the trees and followed it as Lily had desired.
'Show me where you came from.'
She did not send anything larger after it, nor did she follow it personally. A fleeing creature was more useful than another corpse, and she already had enough bodies here to study.
Lily looked around at the dead raptors and the ruined deer-like creature, then down at the injured Swarmling. Its body had been torn open in multiple places, but it still dragged itself toward her, awaiting the next command.
"Poor little one, you were useful."
She brushed it with her finger slightly, even though the Swarmling had no sense of 'self' to understand the meaning behind her actions, then she ordered it to return to the nest.
After that, she crouched beside the first raptor corpse and placed a hand against its feathered hide.
The body was still warm.
She could feel the density of its muscles, the lightness of its bones, the strength of its tendons. It was a creature that was made to hunt, a pack hunter that could kill creatures many times its size; she wanted it.
She opened her mouth and bit down.
The taste was harsher than that of modern animals, oily and tough, but not unpleasant. Her teeth tore through feather, skin, meat, and bone without much issue. She ate slowly at first, paying attention to the information within the flesh rather than simply devouring for mass.
The information came in pieces, with just one body; she didn't get nearly enough information to form any new abilities, but there was something there she hadn't tasted yet.
She moved to the second body and continued.
By the time she finished eating enough of the raptors to satisfy the first stage of her curiosity, she could feel her body already starting to sort through what she had taken.
There was nothing major, nothing all that useful compared to what she already had. But that was to be expected, and it was fine.
Not every gain needed to be grand; sometimes a small improvement placed in the right body could become more useful than a powerful ability used poorly.
She looked toward the direction the last raptor had fled. Through the Watcher, she could still feel it moving deeper into the jungle, away from the Fall People and toward rougher ground.
A den, maybe? Or perhaps it was from a larger pack. Either way, it could wait.
Lily stood and looked at the raptor corpses, half-eaten around her. With an order, she told the Swarmlings to drag them back, including the deer-like animal that wasn't fully eaten.
And she made her own way back as well, to focus on building her nest and the next phase.