Love to read me some saurians.  

A very good look at a human culture through the eyes of a predator.  I like that much of Redscale's violence is spurred on by confusion based in an extension of the principles of his own existence.  He was created as a weapon with Purpose, so it stands to reason that all the softscales are too.  Mistaking children screaming for sentries paints a great scene of terror.  The pondering bits scratch a nice "puzzle-solving" bit of the brain and the ending of simply killing something he doesn't understand without much thought beyond "damn these things are weird" is both harrowing and a great inverse of how presumably most humans would view Saurians.

Language used in the Saurian perspective is very lovely, would love to read more and glad the other comments already hint at continuation. The morale conflict feels admittedly weak, but that strangely feels appropriate and foreign regardless  

Absolutely excellent execution, I think on just a sentence to sentence level by far my favorite story in the competition. Loved the way that empathy was used both as a core verb for the combat sequence and as a vehicle for conveying the theme, but do feel like this story stopped a bit short of really bringing the theme back around, even if I enjoyed it tremendously. Looking forward to reading more from you, there's a really great command of character voice in this one.

I had to read this five times to get all the nuances with my smooth brain 💀 Bro, I absolutely loved this story and the casual brutality. Thanks for the awesome read!!!

You've excellently pulled off an exploration of a very alien perspective. I also appreciated the way you grappled with the theme, connecting it to broader questions of cultural values and the nature of good and evil.

might be my favorite one yet! felt like how the saurians would think and act and the Pondering was really cool to. i do agree though that the theme wasn't really there

Off theme? Yet great story, would love to see more of Redscale, maybe against some other faction. love how the protagonist sees things in Saurian terms.

Big fan of this one, flows extremely well and the "Pondering" was both imaginative and clear!