The prince had been walking when Dustin came out of his last dream, but as he went to get close again, the prince stopped. He was dying to know why, so he decided to find out.

  Digging as gently as he could, he got up underneath a tree.

  “PED, initialize an evolution that gives me an antenna that can hear, change my blood to look black, if I bleed, and make sure I can camouflage still.”

  (INITIALIZING EVOLUTION)

  As the antenna formed, he started sending it up through the dirt, along the side of the tree. Making sure it looked like the tree behind it, he slowly turned it so that he could hear what was going on.

  (EVOLUTION COMPLETE)

  “I see the subject.”

  Panic coursed through him, and he froze.

  “How long has it been out?”

  Oh, good! He wasn’t what the prince was talking about.

  “It doesn’t look like he’s going to make it. Should I hide so that the creature doesn’t see me?”

  Curiosity gnawed at him.

  “PED give me an eye covered in a scale for protection, on my antenna.”

  (INITIALIZING EVOLUTION)

  As vision established itself, he swung the eye around slowly, noting that the prince had taken cover behind a thick bush next to the tree his eye was hiding by. Thankfully it was still far enough away to keep the dreams from occurring, or for him to notice the strange eyeball on a stalk.

  (EVOLUTION COMPLETE)

  A man screamed in the distance, quickly followed by a loud chittering roar. It was the weirdest thing he had ever heard, so he kind of wanted to see what made it. Moving the eye around, to under the bush, he saw that there was a man on the ground, holding a large stick in defense of a large spider-like creature.

  It had four legs, that ended in pointed tips, and were covered in thick black hairs. On the torso that rose above the legs, there was a set of arms that ended in points, much like the legs, but had no hair, and a set of arms that had sparse hair, but ended in three fingered hands. There was no real neck making the head seem to be a part of the chest. Thick black hair ran from the forehead down the back, blending into the hair on the legs. Its face was taken up by a dozen eyes directly above a mouth that opened the whole lower face into a toothy maw.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Basically, if you had a fear of spiders, this thing was a perfect monster. Dustin wanted nothing to do with it. The only thing that would make it worse, was if it had bug monsters to go with it.

  As if on cue, a large black beetle, the size of a cat, crawled out of the bushes behind the guy. It had a long tail dragging behind it and long tubes coming out of its lower face. With a shudder, Dustin stopped watching. He hated bugs!

  There was one last scream, before a loud crunch stopped it.

  “The subject is down, you can send in the extraction team and call off the beasts.” The prince seemed unimpressed, and waited impatiently as the distant sound of air bikes drew closer.

  Dustin did not want to see those bug monsters again, but he was very interested in this extraction team. The guy was dead, so why were they extracting him?

  As the bikes settled next to the body, he watched one of the Josagn use a small gun on the two creatures. A loud noise almost made Dustin spasm in pain. Thankfully, it only lasted a moment, but as the Josagn turned to the other creature, he plunged his antenna into the ground to protect it from the second blast. It still hurt, but not as much.

  That must be a sonic gun, and judging from the reaction of the creatures, falling to the ground, it caused them to become paralyzed. He peeked back up from the dirt in time to see them throw the remains into a bag and then onto the back of a bike. As they turned to leave, the prince spoke up.

  “Is he still following me?”

  Shit! They were watching him all this time! But how? He was sure he hadn’t left a trail on the ground. His PED should still be blocked by the dirt, and they shouldn’t be able to see him or a heat signature because of the dirt. They must be tracking him some other way. But how?

  “Understood.”

  Dustin was so fed up with all of this crap. Pulling his antenna back in, close to his body, he surged towards the prince, trying to ignore the dreams as he got closer, but they grabbed him anyway.

  -“Oh, Dustin! It’s so big!” Her eyes rolled back into her head, as he thrust into her.

  -She clawed at his back, drawing blood, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t had any in a long time, and this felt great.

  -He was just about to cum, when she let out a scream.

  Dustin jerked awake, to see the prince had moved away, and was heading towards the shuttle port again. If he had a mouth with teeth, he would have ground them together and screamed obscenities at him. How was he going to attack him, when he had a flashback, or dream whenever he got close? Maybe use his tentacles? Maybe if he grabbed him up in the tentacles, he could squeeze him with the constrict move?

  Why the hell was he following this little jerk? What he needed to do, was get to the station. All these distractions were annoying. Turning towards the station, he ignored the prince and started moving as fast as this form could. He found after only a short distance, that he couldn’t move nearly as fast as he would like. It just took too long to dig.

  Pausing, he thought of all the different forms he could take. It was time to make this PED work and get some real speed built up.