Chaos lizard

Philip woke up. It seemed like his little construction made out of chaos glass worked and he was still in one piece. He ate some of his rations and rolled the sleeping bag. He was ready to move out when he noticed a slight movement in the corner of his eye. About four craters away from him, there stood a chaos lizard, looking at him. It was already about 1 meter long, meaning it fed on an anomaly not long ago.
The creature started snapping with its mouth, and something started happening to the fire anomaly surrounding it. It looked as if the fire of the anomaly was sucked into the animal's mouth, as it started to grow more and become redder.
The lizard looked at him again, some of the fire and smoke leaving through the sides of its mouth. Then it spat, creating a ball of flames...

It seems that no matter how harsh the environment, life almost always finds a way to adapt. And so, even within anomalies, spots that seem to break the laws of physics within them, one can find a creature that not only survives there but also found a way to harness their properties to hunt for its prey.
Chaos lizards are dangerous animals that possess the unusual ability. Whenever they enter the area affected by anomaly, they start to snap with their mouths. This "feeding" lets them consume the properties of the anomaly and turn them into various powers, from hardening their skin, camouflage, and spitting fire, to controlling the gravity or even time around them.

Philip barely managed to dodge the few waves of flames that came his way. If not for the chaos glass construction he made the day before, he'd probably jumped into the middle of the anomaly above him by now. He finally managed to pull out something he had in his bag, prepared just for a situation like this. A sphere made by the Red Order of the Students of The Smith.
Seeing that its attacks were futile, the lizard moved a few meters to the side, probably into another anomaly, and started snapping its mouth there. This time when it grew, its skin started to become more like a rock, hardening and forming a spiky armor all over its body. It was now about 2 meters long.
The lizard started pawing the ground and lowered its head, ready to charge...

Basic Information

Anatomy

In their normal, "hungry" form, chaos lizards look like simple brown lizards. They're about 5 cm long and the only thing that distinguishes them from normal lizards is a long black stripe on both sides of their bodies. Under each one of them, there's a pattern of perpendicular blue stripes showing up every 7 scales.
Whenever chaos lizards feed on anomalies their bodies grow and change to reflect the properties of the anomaly they fed on. In that state, no two chaos lizards are the same, even if they fed on the same anomaly. Depending on the number of "meals" they've consumed, their bodies can reach the length of 2 m not counting the tail (sometimes the tail more than doubles that length).

Growth Rate & Stages

Chaos lizards' eggs hatch after 2 months of incubation. Adult specimens take care of their young for the first month of their life. After another month, the young reach their full size (not counting the changes caused by feeding on anomalies). They become sexually mature two years later, and at that point, they start to look for their partner.
Right now, it is unknown how long they can live but some of the oldest specimens have been here since the Awakening, 15 years ago.

Additional Information

Average Intelligence

Chaos lizards are really smart. Not only do they use the powers they gained from feeding on anomalies to hunt, they know how to make traps using specific ones, and when cornered, they can start to feed on the ones that will grant them powers which will help them survive.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

While their smell and hearing are pretty bad, chaos lizards have exceptional eyesight, perceiving not only the movement, but also the full range of colors, and even UV light. Similar to some other lizards, they possess a primitive organ, which could be called a "third eye". However, instead of using it to perceive the changes in light, they use it to sense the anomalies. That sense is so strong, that they can find an anomaly located a few kilometers from them. It also lets them find all the safe spots of those anomalies.

Geographic Distribution

• The Pit

Diet

Chaos lizards are omnivores. They hunt for their food and seem to be pretty aggressive, killing even when they don't need more food, whenever something enters their territory.

Ecology and habitat

Chaos lizards tend to live close to anomalies as that makes it easier for them to recharge whenever they become "hungry" and lose the properties of the last anomaly they fed on. While one could think they would be pretty common on The Layer of Anomalies, the scarcity of fauna and flora there often forces them to travel to the lower or higher layers to search for food.
If the right anomaly is present in the area, chaos lizards can survive in almost every environment, no matter the hazards, though they prefer to settle in safer areas, where they can find more prey.

Domestication and taming

It is almost impossible to tame a chaos lizard. As of now, there were only two people who managed to do so, one of them ended up being eaten when they wanted to repeat their feat.
Even if tamed, the chaos lizards won't trust any other human than their tamer and will probably try to attack anyone else.

Products

Both their skin and their meat retain the properties they had when they were alive. It makes the meat very hard to prepare, as any way of cooking it without using anomalies to do so, tends to fail. As of now, only Students of The Smith bother to do so, as consuming the meat of the chaos lizard is something any member has to do at the end of their Pilgrimage.
Products made out of the skin of chaos lizards can be used in very specific ways (heat-proof if lizard fed on fire anomalies, very hard if it ate on crystalizing ones, etc), however all of them lack durability. Most of them will start to fall apart after a month of use and there seems to be no way to prolong that period.
Chaos lizard eggs are edible and consuming them poses no risk to health. Compared to other eggs, they tend to be really bland and some might find them really unpleasant if consumed if one doesn't season them heavily.

As the lizard charged at Philip, it opened its mouth to spit fire once again. And that was the moment Philip waited for. He threw the sphere into the animal's mouth, stopping the flames before they left it. The lizard stopped, coughing and writhing on the ground. With each cough, it got smaller, the color and spikes disappearing from its skin. When it finally spit out the sphere, it was only a few centimeters long.
Not waiting to see what Philip would do to it, the animal ran away. He could continue his pilgrimage.