The attack might have been enough to save the hedgehog’s life, at least for a few more moments, if the delay hadn’t allowed the mantis-shaped swarmling to catch up and join the fray.
The grub dodged a powerful swipe of the beasts claws and then its snapping jaws, displaying a level of dexterity that chilled Nick to the bone. Before the injured hedgehog could try again, the hellgrub squirmed out of reach, escaping with the bottom half of the beast’s leg clasped between its teeth.
The wooden beast turned to flee while it still could… only to find the mantis barring its path. It recovered with astonishing swiftness, striking with a claw-lined paw in the blink of an eye. But the blow that Nick was anticipating never landed, because the mantis moved faster still.
Snip. Snip. The swarmling lashed out with both blades at once. For a heartbeat longer, Nick thought the monstrosity had missed, until the beast’s leg came apart into three separate pieces, releasing another spray of chlorophyll-infused blood, accompanied by an anguished scream.
Despite the shock of losing two limbs within a matter of seconds, the resilient beast wasn’t finished yet. It continued turning, using the momentum of its attack to spin around, reversing its facing before its severed foot hit the ground.
The move caught the monstrous insect by surprise. It didn’t expect the hedgehog to go in for the kill after taking such grievous wounds.
Before the mantis could recover, the quill-covered beast activated an ability. A power that transformed its coat of spines into a cascade of projectiles. All of its quills fired at the same moment, releasing enough force that Nick could feel the vibrations transmitting through the ground beneath his boots. The barrage of spikes lanced forth in a tight cone, like the spread of a tactical shotgun.
The attack was perfectly aligned. The mantis had no chance to move out of the way in time, only to cross its blade arms in front of its torso.
The magic-infused wooden spikes were shockingly effective, tearing straight through the swarmling’s white carapace in at least a dozen places, including two that were driven completely through its head. The only undamaged portion of its body was the spot behind its crossed blades, receiving what Nick normally would have assumed was a lethal blow.
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But size up was convinced that the danger had not passed. If anything, it was greater than before. The hedgehog whipped its body back around, the bleeding of its limbs already beginning to slow, inspecting the results of its surprise ace in the hole.
The beast must have thought that the battle was over. It started limping away in the opposite direction that the hellgrub had slithered. But it had underestimated its opponent as well. Before the hedgehog took two steps, another snip snip rang out.
The mantis’s first slash sheared through the spines perforating its body, restoring mobility to its joints. The second blow landed a heartbeat later, as the swarmling’s blade caught the hedgehog square in the flank, slicing through flesh, bone, and organ in turn before emerging out the other side with no appreciable resistance.
The mortally wounded beast came crashing to the ground, bleeding profusely and unable to run. It let out a piteous wail as the mantis sauntered over to its side. It was the saddest, most hopeless cry that Nick had ever heard.
What happened next was both surprising and disturbing on a fundamental level. Instead of devouring the hedgehog alive like Nick had been expecting, something far worse occurred over the next five minutes. A gruesome display that chilled him all the way down to his marrow.
Through the holes that had been punched into the swarmling’s exoskeleton emerged a foul black fluid. Something so toxic that Nick was certain a single touch would be lethal. The mantis rose to its full height and heaved, making a sound like a drunk man retching, spreading a layer of the noxious fluid over the dying hedgehog like a fisherman casting a net.
Instead of dripping down to the ground, the nightmare fluid behaved like a solid object, maintaining integrity as it slid across the beast’s thrashing torso, until every inch of its wooden hide had been covered. In the span of a breath, the beast was embraced by whatever was living inside the pale insectoid exoskeletons that the chittering horde wore.
It reminded Nick of flatworms devouring their prey, which had horrified him back in his old life. Videos that Angie had tormented him with after realizing they creeped him out so deeply. He would rather watch them for weeks instead of the nightmare playing out before his eyes, because this alien version was so much worse.
For an endless, tortured minute, the captive beast bucked and writhed. Screaming and shaking and shrieking, its cries were filled with equal measures of agony and horror. The surface of the swarmling’s black coating pulsed and contracted all the while, shrinking over time as the hedgehog’s tissue was dissolved, absorbed into the depths of the monster’s exoskeleton.