It was nobody, unless the hunter had some sort of puppetry boon and could cast their voice out from different directions then no one had spoken to him.

Looking left and right, he couldn’t spot anything. The dust wasn’t disturbed either and when he looked up he could only see the lifeless sky.

“Hey look, I might just be hearing things but I’m pretty sure I heard someone say ‘pardon’ was that you?” Thomel called out to the hunter.

“No, magic?” The hunter replied, standing up and looking around like a hawk trying to spot a rabbit.

Before Thomel could say anything back to them, he heard the voice again.

“It was us.” Came the sing-songy voice, words filled with life.

“What?” Thomel said out loud.

“Yeah, magic!” He yelled out to the hunter, bringing his beamer up and looking everywhere fanatically.

He didn’t know if he should be on the lookout for any magical attacks or if he should be trying to take cover. It was always hard to tell what to do with magic.

“Of course it’s magic, how else would I speak to you when my words would break your mind?” The voice said again, sounding innocently curious but there was a faint buzz underneath it.

Swinging around he preemptively fired his beamer at where he’d heard the voice but hit nothing but air.

“Can you hear it?” He asked the hunter who’d also swung around to face the non-existent entity that’d been speaking.

“No, where is it coming from?”

“The voices come from behind, I don’t know about the creature.”

“Oh, we’re almost there don’t worry.” The voice said again, this time sounding splintered like there were two people speaking at the same time.

“It said it’s coming!” Thomel shouted, edging closer towards the hunter.

“No! keep distance between us.”

Shuffling back to his prior spot Thomel gazed anxiously around, memories of that horrid rabbit kept coming back to him and he had to keep pushing them down.

“We can see you.” The voice simultaneously spoke as an eyestalk appeared, popping up from below the slope.

Almost immediately it burst, little burnt pieces flying everywhere as the other hunter opened fire.

Swiftly another two took its place, only to be cut down as the hunter fired again.

And then all at once dozens shot up as the bulk of the creature pulled itself up the slope, mishappen claw limbs grappling onto the dark rocks.

Thomel had brought his beamer to bear by now and joined his comrade in attempting to kill the beast.

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He couldn’t see the beams themselves but he could see the damage he and the hunter were doing, great wounds split open the limbs, exposing cooked ligaments and blackened bones.

Its row of eyestalks was swiftly cut and evaporated like a farmer harvesting wheat.

But still, it kept surging forward, dragging itself towards them with ungainly limbs, a horde of tendrils helping to dig into the mountain and bring it ever closer.

It was like someone had decided to create a slug but give it traits from every possible mammal they could.

It had giant spiky feathers attached randomly around its body like decorations and clumps of multi-coloured fur covering its tendrils and lower body.

A variety of tails sprung out from under what he took for its head, like a beard and it had a mass of bloody holes on the right side of its body, Thomel would have thought this honeycomb pattern was the result of giant maggots if it wasn’t for the dust being inhaled and exhaled.

It was a terrifying embodiment of decay and mutation, something that shouldn’t be able to exist but somehow did.

The system had to play a part in this creature's continued survival, there was no way something like this could be naturally born and survive.

The more damage they heaped onto it the more broken it became but still it kept clawing and pulling its way towards them.

They were hurting it but clearly not enough, his beamer was already on the highest possible setting and could punch through concrete easily but it still wasn't good enough.

Raking his beamer back and forth Thomel melted what little of its skin remained and made bubbles of fat burst.

The hunter was more focused on trying to disable its legs and locomotive tendrils while Thomel just tried to focus on destroying its brain.

Well doing this they both were making sure to take careful steps backwards, yet Thomel still tripped over and stumbled onto the hard ground.

Momentary dazed he quickly came to his senses and sat back up, he was about to hastily go back to shooting at the abomination when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

A trio of bone-heads were darting around them, trying to flank them from behind or ambush the lieutenant if they were smart enough.

Unleashing his personal death ray in the bone-heads direction, he killed two and after a few prolonged seconds of burning through the remaining ones cover, he killed it as well.

Looking back at the mutated monstrosity he saw the wounds he’d dealt it slowly regenerating.

The exposed and blackened muscles regained their moisture and sickly redness, expanding outwards from the creature's gaping wounds.

Skin haphazardly began to regrow over its body and new eyestalks popped out of its flesh, like disturbing mushrooms.

In that moment of despair, another ray of portent, condensed, heated air, sundered the abominations regrowing flesh, removing great chunks out of it and boiling away the blood and gore.

Looking over his shoulder briefly as he stood back up, Thomel saw the lieutenant standing heroically stalwart, as he melted the creature's tendrils into goo and turned the milky eyes of the beast into popped balloons.

With its limbs getting cut off and its tendrils being destroyed, the monster resorted to acting like a worm or slug and wiggling its body towards them.

Switching his strategy the lieutenant began to fire in one spot, drilling deeply into the abomination, after a moment's hesitation Thomel joined him.

After nearly a minute of this slow-paced battle the danger had bled out of Thomel and it looked like it’d left the others behind as well.

All they had to do was just back up a few steps now and then as they slowly reduced the giant creature into a mere shadow of its former self.

By the time it finally stopped moving, it was missing close to half its original mass and looked just like a pupal.

There hadn’t even been any bone-head attacks to divert their attention.

Just as Thomel’s heart rate slowed down and the lieutenant started to head back towards the listening post, the voice spoke again.

“I’m here now.” A chorus sang out from all around him just as a wave of blanketing shadow covered them, a ginormous cloud was covering the sky, only it wasn’t cloud…