Nassilyan stared at the sort-of-human, his breath catching, his heart thundering in his chest. Walking sideways, not daring to take his eyes off her, he almost tripped over himself.

Something had happened. He could feel it in his bones—his hair was standing on end. Something bad was happening.

As the almost-human walked alongside him on the hard, stony road in front of the line of carts, she held her head in her hands, grimacing in apparent agony. Her pupils vibrated, the irises slightly changing color. It was so slight, he’d have thought it a trick of the light … if he didn’t know better. He moved a few more paces away from her.

“Speed up, you two!” shouted a slaver’s voice from behind him. Vrelyen, he thought, though it didn’t really matter. “Walk faster! I want to get out of here…”

The humans could probably feel it, too. He wondered what had caused the sudden … change. Scypha had seemed just fine, until a few moments ago. Until she had the delusion. She appeared to have been getting better. Perhaps that itself was the problem? There was no way to know.

Scypha, her head buried in her hands, peered at him through her fingers, each one trembling.

“Nass,” she said. “Could you move a little further away from me? Please.”

He nodded hastily and obliged. Through her fingers, he saw that her eyes were turning white.

“T-thanks...” She sounded like she was choking on her own tongue.

“What is happening, Scypha?” he asked. “As your newest and second-best friend, I’d like to know. I can help.”

“No … no, you can’t. No one can … except him. But he’s gone away for a while.”

“Who?”

“A prophet … but it doesn’t matter.” Scypha grimaced in pain. “Just … get ready to run. He’s going to free us. All of us. But he said that you and Niss should run away as soon as you can. My lord god … Vifafey, please, preserve us.”

Damn it. Vifafey, as far as Nass knew, didn’t give a damn about goblins – but he’d sent one of his prophets for Scypha?

Nass turned away from her and walked sideways toward the edge of the road, then began searching for Niss again. He would take care of the two of them, prophet or no prophet. The faint scent of wildflowers and damp earth filled the air.

He almost fell into the giant, gaping black hole right in front of him.

He caught himself at the last moment, waving his arms frantically to avoid falling face-first into it. As soon as he regained his balance, he took three steps back, almost stumbling, his heartbeat suddenly pounding in his ears. The hole gaped open in front of him, as wide as he was tall, a dark void that seemed to swallow all the light around it. Where the dirt ground stopped, there was nothing left to be seen when looking down – not even a hint of light, only impenetrable blackness.

“Screecher!” he screamed, taking a few steps backward, his legs growing stiff. “There’s a screecher hole over here!”

“Screecher hole!” the slavers repeated down the caravan, their voices cracking. “Watch your surroundings!”

Nass began running around the front, trying to catch sight of Niss. “NISS?!” he shouted. “ARE YOU OKAY?”

He listened for a while but got no response. The slavers shouted amongst themselves, and the goblins in the cart cages whispered and trembled in fear. Behind Nass, Scypha quietly muttered to herself. “I’m still here, Vifafey protects me, I’m still here, Vifafey protects me … Run.”

Nass turned towards her. “What?” he asked.

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He saw her eyes—they were completely white, devoid of pupils or irises. A wide smile slowly stretched across her lips. “Run,” she said calmly. “Get out of the way. It's not you we want just yet, half-breed.”

For a single fleeting moment, Nass couldn’t move a muscle. Then Scypha began to tremble uncontrollably, her body shaking as she hunched over. Desperation etched across her face, she pressed her shaking hands back onto her head, struggling to breathe through ragged gasps.

Somewhere behind Nass, a slaver’s voice shouted again. “Get moving again, damn you!” it said, with a strong undertone of panic. “We’ve got to get out of here, if there’s a damned screecher nearby!”

Nass tried to move, but his whole body suddenly went stiff. He could only watch helplessly while the ground under his feet began to rumble and shake, and just behind Scypha, a giant, chitinous monster began to rise from the earth.

“Gods, preserve us,” the slaver behind him breathed.

Lumps of dirt and rock exploded out of the ground in all directions. The air filled with the smells of mud and rot, and there was a low, grinding noise, the sound of plates scraping together, as the monster split the earth apart and slowly rose out of it.

It was a horror straight out of the deepest nightmares—a gnarled, armored thing dripping with the muck of the earth it had just torn through. Segments of brown chitin bristled with hooked, jagged spikes, each one seemingly designed solely to rend and kill, and from either side of its monstrous, giant, worm-like body, long, black, scythe-like claws jutted out, each serrated and gleaming in the sunlight.

As its upper body slithered out of the ground and rose twice as high as the wagons were tall, Nass caught sight of its face—or what passed for one—ten separate red eyes and a mass of glistening tentacles around a nightmarish maw that split open impossibly wide, revealing rows upon rows of razor-sharp, needle-like teeth.

While the people behind Nass began to scream, Scypha calmly turned toward the giant creature, walking over and gently placing a hand on its body as she closed her eyes. It didn’t so much as look at her. She smiled brightly.

Before anyone could react, the creature lifted its head and emitted an unearthly, deafening shriek and then surged forward, lashing out with its scythe-like black claws and slicing through everything in its path.

It crashed onto the ground and charged straight past Nass. The slaver behind him was the first to go. The screecher cut the human apart in a mere moment before moving on down the line of carts, wreaking havoc.

A cacophony of shouts and terrified wails filled the air, debris raining down as carts on the ground tumbled and shattered. The horses whined and fell to the ground, dead and dismembered, and the metal cages that held the goblins catapulted away from everything like weightless toys, the screecher's claws tearing through them.

Nass’s body screamed at him to move, and finally, he found himself able to do so. He dashed straight ahead, not a single thought in his head—but one: ‘Niss’.

As he ran past the destruction in the same direction that the screecher was going, a slaver rushed toward him, eyes wide with panic, a sword in his hand. Nass blinked, and the man was dead, his blood and entrails covering the ground, his body crumpling against a cart with a sickening thud. More screams erupted from the goblins trapped in the cages, then a deafening screech and the sound of metal twisting and wood being torn apart.

“NISS!” Nass shouted. “WHERE ARE YOU?!”

The ground kept trembling under his feet, the unearthly screeching piercing the air, the smell of blood and fear everywhere.

A moment of silence.

“Nass!” a voice shrieked from up ahead. Niss’s voice. “I’m here! I’m coming!”

“I’M COMING TO YOU!” he shouted back.

Suddenly, the world under his feet jumped and began spinning, and he found himself falling for a moment before he stumbled into the dirt. He got right back up, ignoring the pain and dashing forward again.

“WHERE ARE YOU!?” he shouted, running straight past the obliterated wreckage of a cart, the bodies of three slavers strewn about it like ragdolls with their legs cut off.

The giant monster loomed just ahead, its mud-caked teeth glinting in the sun, each as sharp as a dagger and long as a sword.

The earth shook again as another cart splintered, cracked, and tore itself apart, sundered by the screecher’s claws and spikes. A group of goblins, unwashed and dressed in rags, dashed out of the cage, screaming, but seemingly unhurt.

They all ran past Nass, each headed in a different direction away from the screecher.

Nass spotted Niss. Her eyes met his, and his heart suddenly stuttered in his chest, disbelief and panic rising simultaneously with the pounding in his ears. The earth violently quaked under his feet.

He ran.

One of the slavers, Vrelyen, was gripping Niss in front of himself, his fingers digging into her slender, green arm as he dragged her in front of himself like a shield, positioning her between himself and the towering monstrosity and the rows of teeth that faced them. They were backed up against the remains of an overturned wagon, faces contorted in terror.

“Take her!” Vrelyen bellowed, wide-eyed, voice shaking and cracking under the weight of his fear. “Take her, damn it! Take the puke!”

Spittle flew from his lips as he thrust Niss forward toward the monster, her tear-streaked face wide with shock and fear.

“Nass!” she cried. “Nass, Please! Please help me!”