Will and Dio continued to fish for several hours. Dio was butchering his most recent catches on a flattened stone, storing the quality meat away somewhere and simply eating the remaining bones and viscera with horrid crunching noises.

Will had at some point grown tired of wading in the stream looking for freshwater invertebrates (which had taken a long time, as that was one of his favorite activities) and was now sitting on the riverbank, sketching Dio in profile as he worked.

“Make sure to get my good side,” Dio said without looking up.

Will added that as a speech bubble, but didn’t verbally acknowledge the statement. He spent a long while trying to get the pebbly texture of Dio’s skin just right.

“Will. Listen. Do not move until I say so.” Dio said suddenly, levity gone.

“There is a tainted monster approaching us. Listen; you can hear the faint hiss.”

Will did listen. His new caprine ears were much better at triangulating sounds, but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. There was a gentle hissing, though, like the sound of air escaping a ziploc back. “Where?”

Dio made no motion other than to speak. “Above and behind you. It climbed up a tree. It camouflages itself, but the leaves it’s mimicking do not rustle.”

“And what? It’s just standing there? What’s it doing?” Will asked, trying very hard to avoid looking back.

“I don’t know,” Dio said gravely. “Normally it would attack instantly. It must be waiting for the perfect opportunity.”

“And?” Will asked.

“We deny that opportunity.”

Dio threw the knife he had been using on fish over Will’s shoulder. There was a pained wheeze as it pierced the lizardlike leg of the tainted, pinning it. Will got to his feet and turned around in a single motion, where the creature was sawing off its own leg with a sharp, spiny tail.

The whole creature was hard to see, as it reactively camouflaged itself even as it squirmed in pain. It seemed to be about crocodile-sized, shaped like a huge, six-legged chameleon. Its bulbous form and impossible lightness suggested it was full of some lighter-than-air gas, which would also explain the wheezing.

Three eyes attempted to focus on Will as the tainted darted around the clearing by the branches of trees, launching itself to and fro like a cannonball. He ducked the charges once, then twice, but the third smashed him in the back and sent him tumbling into the river.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

What must have been the chameleon’s tongue grabbed him by the back of the neck.

The grip was stronger, more visceral than mere suction should have been, and Will realized that four human hands, arranged like the petals of a flower, were gripping his neck and the back of his head.

Distantly, he noticed that it wasn’t attempting to strangle him, merely hold on. More immediately, he was kept from screaming bloody murder only by the fact that his face was in the water. Why did everything he fought have to be so goddamn gross?

This was interrupted by the chameleon pulling him up, using the tensile strength of its tongue to pull back and smash into him, like he was trapped in the world’s suckiest game of paddleball. It repeated this twice more, leaving Will dazed and bruised and dangerously close to getting the air knocked out of him.

There was a guttural roar from somewhere, and something huge and heavy leapt over Will, pulling down the tainted and pulling Will back up. What looked like a crystal-horned carnotaurus was tearing the creature to shreds, ripping through its underbelly like a komodo dragon.

“Dio?” Will asked, assessing his neck. Thankfully, this tainted’s long, projectile tongue appeared to be nonvenomous. He felt a throbbing pain in his chest, and hazarded a guess that he had broken at least one rib.

The new creature spit out a chunk of rancid meat. “In the flesh,” it said. It folded in on itself and transformed back into Dio, who promptly washed his hands and face in the river. “Seven scribes that tastes vile. Next time I shapeshift into something with claws. Or a stinger.”

“Come here,” Dio continued. “The water’s restorative properties are diluted somewhat this far from the spring, but I can use it to jump-start some healing.”

Wordlessly Will approached, and Dio poured a cupped handful of glowing water on Will’s chest as he tilted the satyr back.

“Fuck,” Will said, getting back to his feet. “That fucking sucked.”

Dio laughed. “Yeah, looked like it.”

“Thank you,” Will said, rubbing his neck. He could still feel the clammy grip even after his bruises had healed. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you there.”

“Die, probably,” Dio said. “Which wouldn’t have been ideal.”

“Thanks,” Will said flatly. “I’m trying to avoid doing that wherever possible.”

“We should head back,” Dio said. “I don’t want to deal with anything else that dangerous today.”

“Agreed,” Will said. He looked down at his sketchbook, which was sitting on the bank of the river. Despite the struggle, it had miraculously avoided getting splashed. “I need to take some notes, first.”

Flipping to the opposite side of the book as the Dio sketch, Will tried to outline the monster’s appearance and behavior while it was still totally fresh in his mind and, as it so happened, on the ground. He flipped the sketchbook to show Dio. “Does this look accurate to you?” he asked.

“It had three eyes, not two,” Dio said. “I think I ripped the third one out. Mention in your report that it tasted like moldy ground beef.”

Will jotted down “Possible fungal symbiont?” then snapped the book shut. He turned to where the monster had perished. The meat and bones were dissolving to mush as though he was watching a timelapse of something decaying, which he found disquieting. “Let’s get out of here, shall we?”