My situation is so weird. I have this feeling that I've forgotten something, but I can't, for the life of me, get my brain to remember it. There's a lot that I don't know and confusion seems to reign supreme among my emotions.

  So here's what I know. Me and about twenty others that have the same scaley, red skin as me have hatched from these eggs. I'm assuming that I am like the others, who have bald heads and diminutive, childish bodies, taloned wings on our backs and four horns, two on each side of our heads. Touching my head does confirm that I am bald and have horns, so I am correct in that assumption.

  I also know that this pce that I'm in is flesh coated and incredibly human, and it smells like copper. I also am aware that I don't know how I know what copper smells like, but the sense of overwhelming rightness with the assessment assures me.

  The ground beneath my feet pulses like a living thing, and the walls drip with a slow, thick ooze that glistens in the red light bleeding down from above. The air is hot and wet, heavy with breath and musk and blood. Somewhere high above, I can still feel the weight of that enormous presence, like a shadow pressing on my bones. But here on the ground, things have calmed—for now.

  Earlier, a fight had broken out among some of the other hatchlings. No reason. No warning. Just a sudden explosion of cws and teeth and shrieking rage. It was quick and brutal. I watched from the edge, curled in a heap, as blood was spilled and bodies were left twitching. The victors, slick with gore, had begun to tear into the fallen, ready to feast.

  But they were stopped.

  The handlers, as I've deckded to call them, descended with speed I didn’t expect from something so rge. They carried long, bone-handled staves, each tipped with a wickedly curved brand that pulsed with dull red light. At the first strike of those staves against the ground, the air sizzled. The feasting stopped. The victorious hatchlings shrieked and scattered, cwing at their eyes as the light from the staves seared across their skin. One dropped mid-bite, writhing.

  No words were spoken. No warnings given. Only enforcement. Cold, absolute.

  The bodies of the fallen were dragged away, and the smell of fresh blood quickly vanished beneath a new scent—burnt flesh and fear.

  I took the moment to move away from my siblings(?) and find a spot in the pen to be left alone.

  The Handlers were all possessed of slim bodies and hard pnes. If that one creature I saw standing above of is soft and squishy looking, these ones are small but hard. Their horns all varied from each other, as did their skin colours. Paper white, peach, chocote, umber, even pinks and blues. Another round of confusion as to why I'm missing the memory as to what these shades actually look like. I just know.

  Questions for ter.

  The Handlers also had arrow shaped tails, the same colour as their flesh. They speak in a nguage that I don't quite understand, but a quick clubbing from The Handlers make us move. We're walking now, since some of us that had tried to fly got swatted back down to the fleshy floor.

  The Handlers lead us from the hatching grounds to a stone courtyard. The humidity from earlier is not gone but...different. Before the air was thick and cloying, that copper scent pervading everywhere, this one was... acrid. I could feel something like a charge in the air. An urge.

  Before I can look around, we're being clubbed again, forced to stand straight and look ahead at a giant stone door. That same woman from nefore comes walking down with three others behind her.

  The woman is taller than me by more than five measures. She towers over The Handlers. I estimate she must be eight feet tall. She's wearing a silk sash wrapped loosely around her waist and bust that hides absolutely nothing from sight, so she might as well not be wearing anything, if I'm being honest.

  To her immediate left was a woman with towering horns with a slight curving c shape at the bottom. She has bck sclera and gold irises, caramel skin and the fluffiest hair I've ever seen. Which is... not saying much, I guess. She's as tall as the chubby woman, but significantly more slim. She's wearing a tan sweater and some jeans, but is barefoot like the rest of them.

  Trying not to think about how I know what these are.

  Behind the group in total is a man? Woman? Person. They have short, pomegranate red hair with a blue-purple lock hanging down their right side. They have wings spreading from their back and are wearing a form fitting yellow turtle neck shirt, with a cape draped about their shoulders, and bck jeans. They have these admittedly adorable pince-nez gsses on their freckled face.

  Finally, a man who had to duck past the door to get in. He is easily approaching ten feet tall. His hair was blonde and flowing down to the back of his knees. Twelve short, maybe four inch horns jut straight up from his head at equidistant points all around his skull. Bck sclera like the others, ember red irises and pupils, but with a ring of steel blue where I imagine the edges of his pupils are. He wore only a robe tied about his legs, which looked to be the one's on the back half of a horse, whatever that is.

  He had so many scars on his body, I was having a hard deciding if his skin was more scar than flesh. From the elbows down to his finger tips, he is covered in bck, segmented scales, like a snakes would be. He also has two wings, big ones almost double the length of his body, folded perfectly against his back.

  He looked pissed.

  I tried not to stare at them, as they walked between the lines of me and my siblings. I watched as the chubby woman picked up one of us by his head. She pulled his arms out and inspected his wings and teeth and tail, chatting with the others in that nguage I can't understand before moving onto the next one of us.

  My blood goes cold as I realise we're being inspected like cattle and I bite my cheek to stop myself from going into a rage.

  Immediately the tall, muscur man's head snaps to me, locking eyes. "Well. Ain't that fucking interestin'."

  The fact that I could understand him is overshadowed with the dread of having four pairs of eyes on me.

  Shit.