Lia appeared at the corner of my vision a moment later, sprinting full-tilt alongside me. A tight band of energy wove between us as we approached the disturbance, and I felt my consciousness spilling over into hers as our minds connected. As opposed to the normal mental communication we had developed during our training, my messaging to her was wordless and instinctual, imparting multiple concepts simply by feeling them myself. Unknown danger. Civilians. Hold nothing back. A ping of acknowledgement echoed between us, and we drew our weapons in unison.
The countryside gradually flattened as we moved south, and as we rounded a final hill, the scene hidden from our Detection revealed itself all at once. The wagon that had passed us just minutes before was flipped on its side, with three of its four wheels completely shattered. The massacred bodies of the two horses that had drawn the carriage were spread across the road in multiple pieces, seemingly chopped in half, and the scene was painted in a bright red coat of blood. Nearly a dozen yards from the wreckage were the bodies of the driver and bodyguard who had ridden on the front bench, each with a gaping stab wound through their chests much larger than any traditional blade could make. As we sprinted towards the scene, the carriage groaned and began to tip in our direction.
We skidded to a stop a dozen yards away as the source of the disturbance began to emerge. A pair of long, bloody scythes appeared from the opposite side of the wagon, crunching against the wooden frame as they pulled against it. The gleaming blades were attached to thin, spindly limbs covered in a sickly orange chitin mottled with dark purple veins, which hauled the full mass of the creature into view atop the wagon. Its body appeared to be an unremarkable ovoid mass of chitin, six feet long and featureless beyond a small ridge that ran along the midline of its back. The hind legs of the creature looked almost wolf-like in nature, with two points of articulation and distended, clawed feet that tapped softly against the wooden door beneath it.
While the sight of the beast was truly grotesque to behold, the most unsettling aspect of it was the silence. It made nearly no noise as it moved, and it seemed to lack a mouth with which to make sounds that I instinctively associated with a living creature, breathing chief among them. Instead, the monster simply existed in its silence, its central body bobbing gently up and down between its long legs as it observed us with its eyeless, earless form. I felt a wave of horror flood over me through my link with Lia, and I fought it back with an emotionless, empty calm. Fear comes later.
A piercing shriek echoed out from the upturned cart, and the beast suddenly sprang to life. Its curled hind legs kicked off from the wagon, ripping the top third of the structure apart as it launched towards us with both scythes raised. Lia sprang backwards away from the strike, just in time for the massive blade to bury itself in the dirt where she had stood. I sidestepped and caught the attack against my sword to gain an initial estimation of our unknown foe’s strength. The blow pushed my braced feet back through the dirt as we struggled against each other, and I could immediately tell that the monster was far stronger than any natural creature.
When it became apparent that I wasn’t dead, the beast wrenched its bladed arm backwards. I felt a sudden yank on my sword as it was torn from my grip and thrown to the ground beneath the monster’s bulbous body. As I dodged a second swipe from its opposite arm, I noticed the source of my difficulties: five elongated serrations lined the tip of each scythe, perfectly positioned to catch and shred unsuspecting victims such as myself. My sword flashed back to my hand as I hopped away and confirmed the information with Lia. We regrouped shoulder to shoulder a few yards away from the beast, weapons held out at the ready again.
Split and flank. Joints are always weakest. The thought echoed through our mental link, though I had lost the sense of self to determine who had thought it. We split in unison, each dashing in opposite directions in tight arcs just outside of slashing range of the beast. It skittered in place like a spider, spinning to keep its blade-side facing in my direction. When Lia and I were in position, I lunged forward with a stab aimed at its center mass, while she dove in for a strike against one of its hind legs.
The monster knocked my attack off course with a sweep of its scythe, then planted its other bladed arm firmly in the ground between us. I heard a sickening series of snaps as it shifted its entire weight onto the limb, freeing both of its back legs to kick out at Lia with all ten of its razor-sharp claws. She slid beneath the swipe on her knees, rising back to her feet with an arcing slash a moment later. The attack just missed the nearest leg as the beast turned end over end in an unsettling flip, scuttling a few yards away from us to regain its composure. The maneuver left it upside down, with each of its limbs hideously contorted to continue holding its body upright.
It performed the flip to right itself once again, twisting around on a single scythe while its remaining limbs snapped back into their proper places. The motion was sickening enough on its own, but it revealed a detail of the monster’s body previously hidden from our eyes that made our blood run cold; two circular, fist-sized depressions were situated on the beast’s undercarriage, positioned just above a gaping mouth lined with rows of bloody teeth. Bile rose in the back
