I saw it clearly, it wasn’t as if they where particularly good at hiding, a kind of garish cobalt sheen reflected the setting sun and torch lights all around the shoddy village. But I still couldn’t help but continue blinking and doubting myself.
Monsters are an obvious assumption from a fantasy world, but what the hell I was actually looking at defied any definition of creature I could extrapolate from my imagination, and I always thought I was a pretty creative guy.
The best way I can give an outline of them is: buggy. They definitely had some kind of insect style shell, but it shifted around way too easily to describe as chitin. They were kinda a bright metallic blue in color, with pockmarks all over their ‘skin’ waving stiff long hairs around.
They were almost snakes. Long scrunching up bodies. But what made them so striking was what was at either end. Instead of like a head and tail, it was two sets of nearly round spreads of jutting claw shapes, like a pair of hands pressed together but every finger was some kind of spider fang adjacent limb. And they flipped across the sand and buildings by flipping head over tail, actually frighteningly fast despite not going anywhere quick.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?!!”
Oh at some point I dropped my mace and almost fell over too.
“That’s a monster, we just call ‘em Biters around here. Get yourself together, they didn’t earn that name easy!”
While I shuffled around trying to pick up my gifted weapon The weapon dealer had already snatched up a rusty spear from his cart and hiked it towards the closest ‘Biter’. The head bit a groove into the nearby sandstone wall, but even the monster seemed to pause at the threat.
Well. I wasn’t gonna be completely useless. But there was NO FUCKING WAY I was getting close to that thing. So I just started to work with my so-called anima. Coughing and choking on dry air as I swing my hand towards the thing.
sshhhll
“That-cchk.. That might slow it down..”
I was too busy being doubled over to take notice of the weapons dealer throwing another spear, but I heard the mechanical screech that resulted, blue blood spraying out into the air from a gouge near the monsters head.. Or tail.
“Seems like your spell ain't doing the trick, got anything else up your sleeve?”
Seriously? Even spraying out blue the thing was flipping right towards us just as fast as before. Even the boss rat got completely demolished by that spell! Maybe I could just make a new spell-
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEeee!”
I was still standing in place considering what to do when one flipping end of the monster swung down at me like the head of a guillotine. I jumped out of the way, but way, way too late. I only realized once my feet left the ground how slow I was moving. Thankfully the stone head of some shoddy sledgehammer already gored the better half of that gaping maw across the street.
“GET IT TOGETHER! This ain't any place to go dozing off!”
The Biter was still spasming in front of me, despite losing at least one half of its brains twisting and slithering around in the sand, actually crawling on its intact hand-face off away before the weapons dealer finished it off with a dull thudding swing.
What was going on in my head? I couldn’t tell you despite having a front row seat. There was fear, adrenaline gripping my senses in a way nothing in the dark sluggish cellar could compare too. Where was my survival instinct? Crystal clear focus on survival fueling my brain with ideas and methods to get out? Why was I still just fucking standing there?
I'm scared. And that's really all I am.
I just watched, another flipping monster kicked up sand down a street. The weapons dealer tossed a spear. It caught the thing right in its mouth, its next flip impaled itself until it was twisting around on the shattered pole.
Another Biter was already storming in from the same direction as the first one. Apparently he was out of spears, cause the weapons dealer hiked an axe at it. The hit looked solid but I wasn't even sure it broke the skin.. Shell.. Whatever. Didn’t matter when the sledgehammer from the weapons dealer broke the monster in half.
But by now, the dealer was huffing and gasping for breath. I’d never tried, but throwing weapons one after another as fast and hard as he did seemed exhausting. And on top of that he was keeping an eye on me and swinging around that rock headed hammer. He was gonna get overwhelmed any moment now. And then it didn’t matter how strong he was. He’d just die.
My mouth was moving, curling up into a smile. It was hilarious really. This strong, clever man would die just cause I was scared. Ridiculous. Funny enough to get me back on my feet.
I stepped out towards the next Biter, flinging itself back and forth in an alleyway without even touching the ground, just kicking off one wall to the other inching forward hop after hop.
It's just a mace, a stick with a heavy bit at the end. And in a space this narrow, Its not even like I had anywhere to miss. It was all timing, so I raised up the end of the handle with both hands. My breath was catching in my neck, my arms and legs were shaking.
“Castel would laugh his ass off looking at this..”
I felt an impact through the end of the mace, a harsh stopping point, then a sensation like chopping through meat, I wasn’t even swinging the weapon, just dragging it through. Then swinging over and over. Blind smacking against the crackling body until the thrashing stopped.
||Brutality skill acquired!||
Swinging my head around at the sound of another screech I saw a thrashing Biter flip off the weapon dealers cart. I took a deep breath and a couple steps, the closer we were together, the easier it should be to cover for one another-
“LOOK OUT-””REEEEEEE”
My warning was pointless, before my lips even moved the weapons dealer was reacting, swinging his improvised war hammer up towards the wall at his back, too late, the Biter had flipped down from the roof, and had gravity on its side, it was faster then the swing. The clawed head eclipsed the weapon dealer's skull entirely. Ribbons of red forced down.
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sna-CRSK!
The momentum of his swing didn’t stop just cause his body went slack. The smash taking a chunk out of the weapon dealer's murderer. Not enough to stop the things thrashing. But I could manage that on my own. Pummeling the wall as much as the monster clinging to it with brainless smashing that matched my breathless screaming.
I felt the body next to my feet. But I couldn't look down. I knew if I did the twitching in my hands wouldn’t stop. I wouldn’t hear the crunching sandstone off to the right. So I just ran. Sprinting off as fast as I could against the taste of blood in my mouth and a pit in my throat.
Crouching down in some alleyway I found. I tried to get my breathing under control. I didn’t know If I was out of breath or just terrified. But it wasn’t enough to drown out the sounds. Metallic screeches rang out time and time again. But one in every three or four had a different sound, a ghostly, painful, gurgling, human sound nearly the same volume.
There was no point in trying to make sense of why or how this was happening. All I could do was focus on me.
The Biters aren't too strong.. Just fast. An alley would be good if there weren't so many places to come from. They went up walls just as easily as across the ground. And I can’t watch both sides and up at once.. The buildings around here are all pretty small, and the empty window sills in all of them were way too easy for monsters to slip in too.. A roof woul-
Crunch!
If the sound wasn’t so loud and obvious. I would have just kept on thinking and not looked up. The Biter head slipped down between the two buildings like a spider slinking in from its web.
Whack! Crk! Whap! whp crllck!
After an increasingly wet series of smacks with my dumbass caveman stick it stopped moving. But if nothing else it proved it wasn’t safe here, and thinking was a dangerous thing to try and do, no matter how tempting.
Did you know that casting a spell is incredibly simple? Well, I don't know if that's a universal rule, I'm something of a self taught magician. But running for my life into the open street I somehow managed to pull it off, the little ‘shh’ sound followed by a twisting trail of slime trailing off into a terrifyingly red stained Biter.
I knew it worked, the things flipping immediately lost that mechanical efficiency as it rushed towards me, it was still very fast, but it sort of paused between motions, like it was catching its ‘footing’. Very helpful since I had to run with barely any energy in me.
Unfortunately the next Biter wasn’t so easy to mess with, if my spell worked on it it certainly didn’t show any hint of it, I barely survived by shoving the head of my mace into its mouth-hand and yanking around until its claws broke off.
At some point running became my primary strategy. There were other people all around. Fighting and overwhelmingly, dying. But never one on one, always outnumbered, and some wordless part of my brain forced my feet to keep moving.
I kept throwing my spell around, It must have a low success rate, and even then it can’t take a biter down. So I was mostly just throwing them because it's all I could do to help. At least my rot casting skill leveled up.
I found myself at the edge of town. Near the quest counter. Maybe some unconscious idea? The quest giver, Burly, absolute thug face. Was yanking a hatchet through the neck of a biter, hand-head going flipping through the air and jerking around on the ground. There were some people behind the counter, older folk mostly, with the closer ones clutching quest scrolls.
Shhhhll… WHACK!
“Huu..aaaahhh. Woooaaa…”
Don't do that. Do not cast and then immediately swing. That's stupid. Your stupid. Now keep crawling before you die.
“Fledgling..? No it doesn’t matter. How many are still out there?”
“Haa… a lot..”
I somehow managed to mumble out an answer fittingly unhelpful for how out of breath and energy I was. I was propping myself up against the stone counter and from somewhere behind it a squishy bit of leather was pushed into my hand.
Have I mentioned how much I love warm rotten leather flavored water before? Cause its the best. Literally peerless. Never drank anything nearly as perfect. Id marry it on the spot if I didn’t hear a threatening crack and jump away from the counter.
SHLLK!
The axe didn’t cut very deep, but it was enough leverage for the quest giver to drag the whole monster off the roof it was clutching too and crack it like a whip against the stone. If it wasn’t dead already it was after I started clubbing it.
“Dozens? Scores? Hundreds?”
This time the question wasn't a calm inquiry. But spoken like a threat, and considering how strong and covered in red and blue blood he was. It was a pretty good threat.
“Dozens at most… I didn’t see more than like.. Three in one place.”
The quest giver sighed. At least to him that seemed to be good news. Wait, was hundreds actually a possible figure? There were 50 people in the whole village max!
“We can manage that.. Just needs to be no awak-” CRK! KSNK! “Mothers whore.”
I expected a big.. Something. Not that the Biters weren't huge. They were at least 9 feet from end to end. But their body was mostly trunk, and that was thinner than a person's torso. The boss wasn’t any bigger. Or even any different looking than any of the other Biters.
So how do I know it's a boss? Well that would be the lightning shooting off its body.
I dived to dodge. But there really wasn’t a point. It didn’t seem to be very accurate in the first place, and it was way too fast for me to avoid. But wherever it hit the sand it left a glowing spot, and hitting one of the many corpses of a biter caused the dead meat to fling around like crazy.
“Can you kill it with a spell?”
“Uh… no. Probably not..”
“Any spare weapons?”
“No.”
“Any lightning resist?”
“Nope.”
The Quest giver hung his head for a moment and whispered something that sounded like a curse. Then took a step towards the boss biter. Only for a scream to snap his whole body around in a moment.
A biter was stretching into the room behind the counter though one of the open window spaces, I didn’t even notice, let alone considered helping the old and sick cluttered inside before the quest giver had vaulted the counter. More swaying motions of biters collapsed in towards the crowd.
And that just left me facing down the boss. It was posturing, actually still for the first time I'd ever seen one of these things while still alive. Actually taking a careful look, its head was very bug-like, it sat in the middle of that splay of fang-fingers. Nearly ant-like, but with a taller base.
Well. at least I had time to catch my breath. I think the water might have been laced with something, or I was really thirsty. Cause I felt almost 100%. Still.. Should I even fight this thing? It seemed like the Quest giver was more qualified.. Even if he was busy.
But looking over the shaking group of people in the building.. I would be sick if I didn’t do anything. Even if the quest guy can handle it, if I found out some of them died and I just made a run for it… I don’t know how I’d feel. And with that pitiful resolve I turned to face my death.
It kinda all happened terrifyingly fast. Like I wasn’t even really thinking about what I was doing, it was almost completely clear. But I was on absolute instinct. The Biter boss started crawling towards me, not flipping, but much slower dragging itself on its feet crawling.
I jumped towards it. Something said to hold out my mace so I did, and I pounded sand to get up to it as fast as I possibly could. I shot out my hand and threw my spell at it. And at the same time it did its lightning thing.
Ssshll CRLLK!
Lighting burned through the air around me, and ozone filled my nose. The sound left my ears ringing and It took me a moment to realize I had moved. Not as in I had been pushed or something, but my body had moved me randomly, I kicked the ground as hard as I could and went flying sideways while my arms and neck twitched around randomly. A burning pain in my side hit me a moment later. Singed clothes showed me where the seizure came from at least.
I dropped my mace, but it wasn’t far away. So I snatched it back and stood up, I was shaking a bit. But it didn’t hurt nearly that bad, and the biter was posturing again.
This time I didn’t cast anything when I rushed towards it. Or better to say I kinda couldn’t. It would take too much out of me to get a good swing in. It was a stupid all or nothing rush with literally no backup plan.
Which is why It was so surprising I actually got there. It made a swipe at me with its head. But it was way slower than the other Biters had been. And I smacked a huge crack in its skull just as a reaction. It spasmed and fell down and I couldn’t help but stand just stunned for a second.
And obviously, that was the exact wrong reaction.
CRRRCK!!
I was so close that almost every bolt hit me, one of the only ‘misses’ hit my mace, and it literally exploded out of my hand, wood turning into blackened splinters from the point of impact. But I had more important things to worry about. I was thrashing around completely randomly. My brain still worked, I was thinking. But my body wouldn’t calm down or listen to my orders. Flipping around in the sand.
Occasionally I could get glimpses of the biter. It seemed really badly hurt, it was crawling towards me, but now only with one hand-head. Struggling to drag its body with just one side working correctly. But between every set of spasms that forced me to look away, it consistently got closer.
I was trying to reach for the scorched remains of my mace. But I was still thrashing, it was only seconds, but every moment my body and mind were on separate wavelengths was agonizingly slow. I still had casting, but at least some part of that is directed by my body, I usually flicked my hand, but it wasn’t moving. The only part of me that was working was my head.
I wanted to scream and swear. I wanted to just expel my greatest, most visceral disgust for the bug. It didn’t even really win! I just got surprised it was so weak and fucked up. That wasn’t fair in the slightest! If I ever. EVER had another chance, I would crush it without hesitating. And even if monsters had no intelligence, I wanted to somehow imprint the pure, burning spite I felt for it into whatever passed for a brain in its rotten, filthy fucking head.
“[Trashheart].”
It was more a mashup of thoughts then an actual swear. But I spoke it with full intent. I was doing everything to survive. Trying to cast and crawl away impotently. But more importantly get my final bitter word out.
Sickly violet rivulets like trails of oil shot through the air onto the biter, crawling down its body as if they where alive and shoving themselves into the broken blue bleeding head on the other side. With all the energy the creature had left it thrashed around in pain. Its improper body clawing at its own head in some feeble attempt at suicide before it finally went still, leaking dark, thick ichor from its mouth.
And at some point during that, everything had gone black.