Almost like magic, everyone in the village had heard about the strange device Cato had asked Toal to build less than a day after Toal began work. For once, the lazy blacksmith didn't seem to be slacking off. He had built the wooden frame and rotating wheels in just a few days.

Cato wound the rope around the pulley to much spectacle and heaved. The contraption lifted up the heavy drum of water and Cato let it fall back down with a low thump that made the ground jump. That should do.

Inside the carefully marked circle roughly three meters across was the bait. Dozens of slaughtered piyos lay inside the markings, bright red and yellow ribbons marking them. The things were toxic enough that Tulore had refused to let anyone else touch them and had handled them with heavy cloth gloves which were later burnt.

Cato had asked for as much poison Tulore could come up with. No one knew how big the tremor was and therefore how much poison to use. Better safe than sorry.

The trap was laid out on a large rock just outside the gate, surrounded with dirt at Cato's request. No one had seen a tremor before but since it was about three meters across or less, then he was fairly sure it would be able to navigate a small artificial mound. Cato was determined to find out what it looked like when the tremor sucked up the soil around the rock.

During the building, the tremor had attacked once more. It was starting to be a bit wary of the bait now, the Elkas reported that it tended to wander off and they had to circle around for hours before it was finally safe to walk again. Cato might not get more than one or two shots at this.

"Bring this rope over to the wall and we'll wait for it. Toal, can you help me pull it?"

The man nodded, "Sure thing. I wouldn't miss the chance of being the first person to kill a tremor without magic. "

Danine was already waiting there, with two other friends who nodded shyly at Cato. Toal winked at them and pulled on the rope, making sure his ample musculature was visible. Danine just rolled her eyes.

Thump. Thump. The barrel went up and down for an hour. Even Toal was getting tired of pulling the heavy rope. The only thing to alleviate the boredom was when the rope snapped on the barrel's end.

Finally, the third Elka on watch flew back over the village, "Tremor! It's coming!"

What seemed like half the village was on the walls by now, chatting and discussing the pulley. On hearing the cry, they quieted down to a deathly silence, all eyes on the water barrel.

Thump. The line in the soil headed straight towards the trap.

It circled the device warily, as if wondering at the strange vibration. The pattern certainly wasn't human like, Cato noted. Then it shot up the mound to attack.

The soil vanished, along with the piyos, in a ball of strange shadow. As if part of the light itself was being sucked out of the world. The giant rock remained in the unnatural shade, standing solid against the aura of darkness.

Then they felt it. A sense of something coming from the darkness, like feeling the warmth of the sun but on a metaphysical level.

As quickly as that, the feeling and the darkness vanished, to leave only a clean white rock, free of soil and dirt, and a water drum sitting on top of it. Disappointingly, there was no sign of the tremor at all. He couldn't see it, but that didn't really matter, the tremor had taken the bait.

Cato held his breath. This was the moment of truth, when he found out whether his deductions had been correct. Everyone stood very still, leaving only the wooden buildings to creak in the wind. Many minutes passed with nothing happening. The Elkas circling above started to unfurl their bait but the elder held up a fist to hold them.

Then the tremor moved off the rock despite not having a target. But unlike before, it moved erratically, darting in one direction then another, almost at random. After another few moments, it started to go in circles, even its holes came faster and more shallowly. If he had to guess, Cato would have thought it was breathing faster.

Then with a small fountain of dirt, all movement stopped.

Cato let down another bait line over the wall and dragged it along for a few meters. No movement. Toal worked the pulley another few times, the somehow lighter barrel clanging on the rock.

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Still nothing.

The more daring, or confident of Cato, Fukas made a few cautious steps towards the tremor, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. But there was still nothing.

Was it really dead? The question murmured around and neither Tulore nor Cato could say for sure.

There was only one way to find out.

"We'll dig it up," Cato said, "only then will we know. "

"Are you insane?" Danine asked, "your foot might be fine now, but not even we can outrun a tremor. "

"Then I'll die and you guys can think of something else. But this was my idea, I'll take the risk," Cato clambered down the ladder with Toal's shovel.

He approached the disturbed ground with not as much bravado as he pretended to. What if the monster was still alive? What if it had decided to be cunning and wait for an ambush?

No, that didn't fit its past behaviour. The tremor was not an ambush predator.

A crunch next to him made him look up.

Toal was next to him, another spade biting into the loose soil.

"You won't be impressive to girls if you go all weak-kneed after that sort of talk, boy," the man said. His tail swished from left to right, clearly amused.

Did this muscle head think of anything other than impressing girls? Cato shook his head and joined the dig.

A few feet down and they hit the tremor. The hard spiky shell was buried inside densely packed soil, just like in its trail. An exoskeleton.

By that time, quite a number of Fukas, including Danine, had been convinced the tremor was dead and had all joined in the effort. They dug around it to reveal that it was a short tube just over two meters across. The roughly egg shaped shell did not appear to have any openings in the front, top or back. That was the first strange thing.

Cato used a shovel to pry open a gap in the shell and found the inside of the tremor was also packed with soil. Not just in the layers of the shell, but even within what looked like muscle fiber and tendons. There was soil everywhere.

He brushed aside some of the soil with the gloves Tulore handed out. In fact, the muscles were arranged strangely too. He would have expected it to connect to the shell, which at certain points it did, but there was far more muscle than Cato could account for. In fact, as they dismantled the tremor by the shovelful, it appeared as though the tremor was one solid block of flesh.

Without any mouth. And its digestive systems appeared to run haphazardly through the body, interspersed with organs and muscles dissolving from the digestive juices and splattered with misshapen piyos. An array of very large teeth was also embedded seemingly at random throughout the body.

There was nothing that looked like it could suck up soil and people. As well as generate that volume of unnatural shadow.

Cato sighed. There was no way he could answer this.

And did it really matter? The tremor was dead and the threat was over.

"What do we do with it now?" Cato asked, shedding the blood splattered pieces of clothing. He was careful not to let any part of it touch bare skin.

Toal tossed his set into the large hole where the wreckage of the tremor rested. Then followed it with the tainted spade and then finally his soiled gloves. "I say we burn the lot. Those in favour?"

Tulore held up her hand, followed by most of the Fukas. "We will mark this spot. Nothing is to be grown closer than ten paces to the dying ground. The poison remains and even the plants will be twisted and unhealthy. Eat not from this place, unless you wish death. I will give out some ash, wash yourselves thoroughly with it today before you eat. "

Cato nodded. That was sound. Who knew how long the poisons of this world lasted. He was fairly sure now that the black ash powder Tulore had given him before was actually just a simple lye soap.

So many questions, and no one to answer them. Perhaps he should start writing them down.

Then another thought occurred to him. Did these people even know how to write?