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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 2279134" data-attributes="member: 508">The destrachan sucked up a huge lungful of air and let loose with a sonic outburst which shattered the stone floor at her clawed feet.[6]  Little splinters of rock flew in all directions.  The hatchlings were hit with a falling rain of sharp stone debris; squealing in outrage, they backed away.Again, the mother expelled a sonic cone of energy at the stone floor, shattering and cracking the solid rock at her feet.  She then examined her handiwork, bending over to lift several small pieces of stone in her foreclaws.  Lifting them up before her children, she again gave a stone-shattering scream, pulverizing the stones she held in her claws into dust.Choosing another pair of small stones, she dropped one each into the foreclaws of her two offspring.  They held the stones awkwardly, the weight unwieldy to their young limbs.  The mother simulated the sonic scream again, going through the motions but producing no noise.  Her offspring just stood there stupidly, so she repeated her actions.  When this got no result, she slammed her tail into the side of her firstborn's body, then picked up a rock of her own and noisily screamed it to powder.The firstborn got the idea.  He tried to emulate his mother's sonic outburst, but failed.  It wasn't that he had the tone wrong; with his advanced hearing he had the exact stonebreaking frequency down pat.  Rather, it was inexperience and vocal cords that hadn't been used at that range yet.This didn't matter to his mother.  Another vicious tail-slap punished him for his failure, and one for his sister got her motivated to try it for herself.  Eventually, with much trial and error and a multitude of punishments for failure,[7] each of the two hatchlings mastered the exact pitch and tone required to shatter solid stone into dust.  And with their impressive hearing and memory for individual sounds, once they mastered a sonic tone they could use it again any time at will.Together, the three destrachans worked on the stone floor in the back of their lair, the mother shattering the floor into chunks of stone and the young ones blasting each hunk of rock into powder.  Over the course of many hours, they crafted a shallow, circular pit.In the weeks that followed, the pit grew deeper and deeper.</blockquote>

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