Lightning Fish

Lightning fish are large, high-altitude predators who drift along air currents, hunting and congregating by chance. Adults prey almost exclusively on flying pegasi, so pilots have to keep a wary eye out at all times for silver glints in the skies above. They are low-thought, high-instinct creatures. Untameable.

They can grow to be up to 400 feet long, capable of swallowing a pegasus whole. They’re covered with bright silver/chrome scales that reflect light and color like mirrors. This is more effective as camouflage on cloudy days than the very sunny days. They ambush hunt by dropping out of the sky onto their prey, similar to a peregrine falcon. They never touch land, and if they do they are almost always unable to get airborn again, thus they die like a beached fish. They live their whole lives in the air, surfing from one high-altitude current to the next.

They do not have lungs, instead they must keep moving for oxygen intake via their mouths. Their jaws don’t actually close all the way. Tying their mouths as closed as can be is a good way of incapacitating them. Each scale has a bulge where a thin air tunnel sits to allow air to be released. The LF have special muscles that compress the air and shoot it out the tunnels to create high-pressure air jets. The jets are used for thrust to gain altitude or to change direction.

LF scales and sails are useful materials. From roofing materials to sail-leather dusters, to buildings made from the bones.

Pilots have to defend their air-born herds from lightning fish attacks. This usually includes a “chaser” or two who distract the LF and lead them away from the herd. This job is dangerous, but a well-trained pegasus and experienced pilot can fly circles around a lightning fish. Once the lightning fish are back up to a sufficient altitude or distance away from their prey they will often cease their hunt, as they do very little long-distance or intensive stalking, and regaining altitude after a dive is difficult and energy-costly.

Lightning Fish reproduce similarly to snakes. Curiously, they do so on the ground despite being so helpless on it. They return to ancestral nesting grounds like salmon. These are often narrow, remote chasms where updraft winds are incredibly fierce. So fierce that most other creatures stay away. The winds allow the LF to navigate down into the chasm to find pockets in the chasm walls where the winds have carved shallow caves. In these pockets, LF mate and then the young are birthed some time later. The male leaves soon after mating, but the female stays in the pocket. She survives the time in the pocket by hanging her head out of the pocket into the strong updraft winds for oxygen intake. She won’t hunt until she leaves the chasm.

When the young are strong enough, they wiggle into the air vent pockets of the mother’s scales. Then, the mother leaves the pocket by flinging herself into the intense updraft winds. If she times it correctly, the winds will catapult her up into the Lower Currents where she can then jettison her young and they can unfurl their sails and begin their live drifting along in the currents. If the mother LF cannot be catapulted into the Lower Currents by the updraft winds, she will jettison her young early so that she can use her air jets to survive and not be beached upon the ground.

There are legends of LF being born from the earth, but are cursed to live in the sky for some reason as if the earth itself won't allow them to linger for long.