It was a shocking, terrifying display. Nick wanted to look away but was too afraid to move. He felt a visceral wave of relief pass through him when the beast’s struggles ended at last. It’s dead now, its suffering is finally over.

But that wasn’t the end of the blood-curdling scene. As the black fluid retracted back into the mantis’s shell, its body began to shake and throb. He could see something expanding within its interior, a mass that was excreted through the bottom of its abdomen. It was a perfectly spherical object the same color as the spawnling’s true form, about the size of a basketball.

Even from here, Nick could smell its foul scent riding the blood-tinged breeze. It made his eyes water, and he blinked away tears.

That was when the mantis began to move. It fixed the orb, which he assumed was an egg, onto its back, secured by a band of black fluid. The swarmling started to dig, tearing through the soil as if it were no more substantial than Styrofoam.

Five minutes later, it leapt inside the tunnel it had formed, heading back into the bowels of the earth until the blood moon called to it once more, beginning the next spawning cycle.

The instant that the mantis was out of sight, Nick ducked down, shaking in delayed fear with his back against the stone wall. Even though he hadn’t spotted any more swarmlings nearby, he knew that he wasn’t safe. The blood moon still hung full in the sky, like a great bloody eye, as the chittering swarm prowled the bog below.

He had several hours left until the sun rose, and one of the nightmarish creatures could find him any time. By now, he had begun to recover from his exhaustion. Nick would be able to fight if he had to, although he prayed to anyone who was listening that he would remain hidden until dawn.

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Hours passed as he huddled behind the wall. He could hear the swarm hunting in the distance. The screams of their prey and the chittering gnashing of their bloodlust. He was too afraid to raise his eye past the glass to view the world beyond the window. His last look had been more than enough. All the while, he remained perfectly still, praying that he lived to see the sunrise.

As the minutes ticked past, he found that not knowing was even worse than taking another look. It might have been safer to huddle in a corner, but Nick was barely keeping it together. If he couldn’t see what was coming, suspense would push him past the breaking point.

Instead of raising his head past the glass, he used the blade of his sword as a mirror, angling the flat to see the bog beyond every now and again. Fortunately, the swarmlings on the hillside had moved on, seeking fresh prey deeper within the bog.

By now, the moon was low enough to send more ruby light shining through the stained-glass window, casting the inside of the building in a thousand shifting shades of blood and gore. Nick was just deciding that he might make it through the night without a fight after all, when he spotted a patch of bare earth in the center of the room.

It was a square of dirt no larger than his palm, where the paving stones had been shifted by a tree root growing below. It had been impossible to see in the dark, hidden between various piles of debris, but now the moonlight was only a fraction of an inch from striking the bare earth.

The instant that he saw it, adrenaline surged into Nick’s bloodstream. This was a possibility that he hadn’t considered. But he didn’t need to think, he already knew what would happen if the blood moon’s light touched bare soil.

Foreboding and dread suffused every fiber of his being, nerves alight with the knowledge that he was in imminent danger. He reacted in the same moment, grabbing the nearest piece of rubble and darting over to the menacing patch of dirt.

He threw the scrap over the hole in the paving stones, just as the light of the moon reached out to engulf it, praying that he had made it in time.

But it was already too late. His insight had come just an instant too slowly. The crimson light touched the earth half a heartbeat before Nick covered it, cutting off the ominous ruby glow.