"Tremor!" "Aaaaa!" "Tremors!"

The village exploded into screams and cries as people rushed around in a panic.

"What... what's going on?" Cato looking around. Calm down, panicking just because they were was not going to help.

Danine's face was white with fear and she gripped his wrist almost hard enough to break it.

"We must find somewhere high and stay there! A Tremor attacks through the ground!" she said urgently before dragging him off. Toal followed them while glancing around urgently.

"Wait, what do you mean by attacks through the ground?" Cato wriggled his wrist in pain but she didn't let up.

"If you stay on the ground, you're dead! It drags you underground and those it eats are gone, we never find them again!" Danine scanned the village perimeter, "We're running to the walls! Follow me!"

"Hole at the road!" the Elka circling above the village cried out. Easy for him to say, Cato thought, a flying human wouldn't need to worry about this.

More screams and crying ensued as there was a general rush away from the gate facing the road. Children were crying and men and women shouted at each other, building into a clamour that seemed to rattle Cato's thoughts.

The three of them ran for the walls as fast as their legs could carry them. Then the entire gate buckled and creaked as it tore off its poor foundations. The straggling farmer scrabbled futilely as the ground itself began to sink into a deep hole almost six meters across.

"Help me!" he screamed in desperation. One woman shouted and struggled at the doorsteps of the nearby house but she was restrained by the others there.

Then he slipped over the edge and disappeared, a half-choked scream suddenly cutting off. Cato's imagined crunching sounds didn't come. Somehow the silence was worse.

Then he saw it. No, only its trail. A ripple in the ground as the surface was pushed upwards, as if some huge monster was travelling just below the surface. And it was heading right towards them.

Danine and Toal dashed forwards faster than Cato could have believed possible, dropping into a loping run on all fours. Danine reached the ladder first and practically ran to the top. Toal was not far behind.

Cato blocked out her cries as he ran faster than he had ever done. And not a moment too soon. The monster was almost on him when he took a flying leap onto the ladder. There was a sharp stab of pain from his ankle but he ignored it, clinging on for dear life.

The monster seemed to pause for a moment then shot off in another direction.

As Cato slowly and painfully untangled himself from the rungs, Danine helped to pull him up. Man, she was stronger than Cato expected, but if she could run like that then perhaps he shouldn't be surprised. He giggled hysterically at the mundanity of that thought. They were all busy trying not to die and he kept thinking that the Fuka girl was stronger than him.

There was cracking sound of wood and more screams as a house began to collapse, foundations undermined by another hole. The people inside scattered in all directions, screaming and flailing madly.

A young child among them tripped and fell onto the ground and could only lay there crying as she watched another man right next to her falling into a hole that missed her by inches.

Most of the others had reached the dubious safety of houses but one woman was still on the ground on the other side of the street. The monster shot towards her and suddenly stopped once the woman ran through the open door.

"Run!" Danine screamed at the girl, but she had completely frozen in fear. She just stared at the hole next to her, not reacting to the shouts from all around her.

Cato glanced around, heart still hammering from his exertion and panic, there was no trace of the tremor. Where was it?

The gate, finally succumbing to its damage, twisted off its hinges and crashed into the hole beneath it. Immediately, the trail started up again from where it last stopped, shooting straight towards the gate.

Then it swerved around and shot off to the house nearby. The woman there was being wrestled down by two men, still struggling to go to where her husband had died at the gate.

The two men gave up trying to hold her down and ran for their lives as the house began to fold up. They made it to the house on the other side of the street but the tremor had eaten the woman and made it halfway there before it stopped again.

Oh, so that was how it worked.

Cato sucked in a deep breath, and shouted at the top of his voice, "Stay there! Don't move!"

The contradictory message had Danine looking at him incredulously.

"Stay there! The tremor attacks movement!"

"Stay there!" Danine joined in.

The girl just shivered, not listening. At least she wasn't going to move.

The screams and cries echoing across the village began to subside into whimpering and sobs but no one dared to move too much. The tremor was waiting down there.

Cato panted for breath and looked around. Wait, the Elka was still up there and he needed to tell the farmers still outside to stand still.

He waved to the Elka and the winged human circled lower.

"Tell the farmers to stand still or find somewhere to sit down and not move! No matter what, don't move!"

The Elka nodded and swooped away to convey his message.

The other Elka, the one who came back first, dived off the Elka towers and she took up his place circling in the sky.

That was a good messaging system they had, but it was a shame that the Elkas couldn't do anything. Arrows or even just stones might help against a more traditional enemy but the tremor was as untouchable to the Elkas as they were to it.

Cato looked around the platform behind the wooden wall and spotted an unlit torch. He threw it over the wall into the fields.

Nothing happened. Damn, did it need to be heavier?

"What are you doing, boy?" Toal asked.

"I think if we throw something heavy, the tremor might go after it. If the Elkas can drop enough of them, we might lure the tremor out of the village. "

Danine raised an eyebrow and Toal unhooked a hook-shaped tool from his belt. "Let's pry out one of these boards here and we'll try it. Stand back. "

With a few expert twists, Toal managed to extract the nail, then together with Danine, they ripped the wooden plank out of the frame.

Toal lifted it up threw it outside the walls.

The tremor responded the instant the plank hit the ground, zooming towards it. The plank rolled to a halt and so did the tremor.

"Another one?" Toal asked.

Cato shook his head, "It'll take too long," he looked around again, "can we tie a rope to it? If we drag the plank along the outside of the wall, the tremor might chase it. That should be enough to get the girl to safety. "

"Wait, wait! I got it!" Danine interrupted.

Kee turned and dropped a bit as he saw that tremor fall behind. No matter how fast the tremor could move, a flying Elka would easily outrun it. Even when he had to exert himself mightily to pull along that weight. He circled back one more time to let it catch up.

It took a few false starts and not a few broken strings, but they finally found a combination of smaller planks and thin rope that an Elka could lift while flying and yet attracted the tremor.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Luckily the thing had turned out to be quite stupid. Despite letting it almost catch the bait, the monster kept on blindly chasing and making futile holes. A bait supported from above was not going to drop into any hole, so all it got for it's trouble was a few stalks of wind eyes and an unfortunate grass racer.

As he approached the forest, Ka and Ri began to bang on their pans and boards. Some animal was startled by that and the tremor ignored the bait to zoom off into the trees.

With a sigh, Kee hauled up the bait and turned back to the village. Ka, the best spotter amongst them and his most-stuck up brother, was going to circle around for a while to watch if it came back out.

Hot food and a chance to fold his aching wings would be good, Kee thought, especially after watching so many people get eaten.

Cato sank down onto the platform as his legs gave way suddenly amid cries of relief. The Elka, Kee, had come back with the bait and given the signal for success. The tremor was gone! They were safe!

Wails and sobs permeated through the crowd as families assessed the damage to life and limb, but Cato was far too tired to deal with all that.

"That was a great idea, Danine," Toal said.

"Thank you, Cato gave it to me though," Danine nodded at him.

Cato waved aside her praise. It was really just all spur of the moment. And the final plan wasn't even thought up by him.

Even though the danger had passed, he didn't really feel like he had accomplished anything. Not with the families of casualties crying in the street or around the holes.

"I should go check up on my mother," Danine said and began to climb down the ladder.

Toal nodded and gestured for Cato to go after her.

He tried to get up and nearly toppled off the platform. A sharp pain from his ankle, where he smashed it against the ladder, stabbed upwards.

"Gh!" he clenched his teeth against the pain. Was it broken? The throbbing subsided to a low level, but he was dimly aware of the pain, now that he noticed it.

Danine looked up at him, "Are you all right?"

"His ankle's injured," Toal said for him. Cato tried to block off the pain mentally but it looked like he might be having trouble getting down that ladder.

"Oh, how are we going to get him down then?" Danine asked.

"Can she catch me, maybe? You guys are stronger than I thought. "

Danine shook her head, "I'll probably break a leg if you do that. Our arms are stronger than humans but our bones are also lighter. We have to be careful about our strength. "

Cato raised an eyebrow, that was interesting.

"Go fetch some rope, I'll lower him down," Toal said.

Later that morning, Danine's mother helped bandage his twisted ankle. Cato had had to lean on Danine to get back but after seeing how strong she was, he wasn't going to be embarrassed about leaning on a girl.

"Lucky you," Irld said, "I saw that tremor go after you from our window. I almost thought you were done for. "

"Do you know who was taken yet?" Danine asked.

"Milland. And his wife. That I know about. There's two or three others I don't know but that's far less than a tremor took the last time," Irld tied off the bandage expertly, "Your father is safe. He got the message and sat on a rock until it left. Aeye told me on his way back. "

A visible amount of tension lifted from Danine's shoulders but she didn't say anything.

"Who's going to take over the mill then? Their son is only six. "

Irld shook her head, "His cousin, probably. She's grown up with him and must have learnt a thing or two. It'll be hard on her, unless she gets married quickly. "

Cato fiddled with the bandage. The adrenaline rush was fading and the throbbing in his foot matched the thoughts that were trying to crowd into his head.

Monsters. Now he understood the melancholy that followed Irld around. Really understood it. Watching those people getting eaten in front of him was disturbing. He couldn't imagine his parents or sister dying like that. Toal was missing his wife, Danine her brother. And now a few more people had lost family members too.

Danine and Irld were talking as they cleaned a bundle of leaves, as if they couldn't hear the still audible wails from the outside. No, it wasn't that. They were just used to it. Were monsters that common? Could a person really get used to seeing people die around them?

And they even called that dog-creature 'not that dangerous'. What was wrong with this world?!

"What?" Danine looked at him, "Are you all right?"

Oops, he must have said that out loud. Cato shook his head, "I'm fine. Sorry. "

"You look kind of pale. Are you sure?"

"Yes. " Cato nodded.

They continued to clean the vegetables in silence. The air thickened as the crying outside seemed to seep through the walls and open windows.

"Have you never seen anyone die before today?" Irld asked suddenly.

Cato shook his head. Well, one did not count watching movies as 'seeing people die' but he didn't think he would be able to explain the difference between fiction and reality here.

"What sort of country is Earth? Do you not have monsters there?" Danine asked.

"No. Not really. Not like this. I mean, we have things like tigers and sharks, but I've never heard of them kill more than a few people a year. "

"Does the Earth army kill them? We used to have far less monster attacks before the Inath army retreated and left us here. "

Cato shook his head again, "The army didn't kill them. We had rangers and sometimes the police to do it. Not even a rampaging bear is dangerous as this tremor. "

"There are worse things than tremors," Irld commented flatly, "even tremors eventually eat their fill and leave. I remember, Danine, your grandfather used to talk of flights of night cryers wiping out entire armies and villages. "

"I've heard that story before," Danine said, "still, your country must have been a peaceful one. I wish I heard of it before, none of the Inaths had ever mentioned Earth. "

"We're not even on the same planet. But it was safer, yes," Cato said.

"I want to see it. Once the monsters have gone away, will you show me?"

Cato scratched his head, unsure how to respond. "I'm not sure. I don't know where Earth is from here. And I don't think the monsters are going to go away either. "

"Then tell me about it! What sort of food did you eat?"

Cato raised an eyebrow. Of all the things she could have asked, she wanted to know of food?

He talked of rice and bread. The description of chicken made Danine's mouth water visibly. Even Irld looked a bit hungry.

She continued to ask more questions and details and Cato continued to spin stories made of remembered news and daily life. It was amusing to see their reactions to the most inane things, like running water. Danine's tail kept twitching when he talked of skyscrapers. It made him think of cats and high places, maybe the Fuka were not as human as they appeared or acted. Somewhere in there, he forgot to be shocked at seeing people getting eaten by monsters.