“Well,” Nick muttered as he read the final word of the message. “Shit.”
Something about the tone of the System’s update felt more sinister than the others he had read, and he took its warning to heart. He already had a bad feeling about what was coming, but this sounded even worse than he’d feared.
Nick needed to find somewhere to hide and lay low, and he needed to find it now. His instincts told him that climbing into a tree or ducking below a bush wasn’t going to cut it this time, which had been his backup plan up to this point.
But now he was certain that he needed to find something sturdy that could conceal his presence completely. A building or cavern would be his best bet.
Although he had been keeping an eye out as he hiked, he hadn’t passed by anything of the sort all day. Even if he had, there was less than an hour left until dusk, then only a few final minutes before moonrise.
Nick came to a stop, scanning the terrain in all directions, seeking out anything that might work as a hiding place but coming up short.
That was when the wailing began, the haunting music of bestial voices calling out to one another. It set his heart racing and adrenaline surging into his veins. In that moment, his apprehension crystallized into true fear. What was coming wasn’t just some manner of environmental hazard, a calamity was descending upon his head.
Countless cries reverberated in the distance. Electric tension saturated the air he breathed. The fear filling the voices of animal and beast alike told him that the denizens of the bog knew what was coming. That it was bad enough to induce terror within its most ferocious predators. He had to hide before the moon rose and the swarm began to hunt, or it would be the end of his adventure.
There was motion all along the horizon, as creatures began racing toward the water’s edge before leaping into the pools. At least those capable of submerging themselves for long periods at a time.
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Nick envied their convenient escape route, as well as the thousands of birds taking to the sky above. From these observations, it seemed unlikely that the chittering swarm could breathe underwater or fly, not that this knowledge helped him any.
Since no better option had presented itself, Nick decided to head toward a series of low hills that he could see in the distance. There was a chance that he could find a cave or burrow to borrow. Failing that, it would give him a vantage point to look out over the bog, increasing his chances of locating a suitable hiding spot before time ran out.
Sparing a grimace at the setting sun, which was approaching the horizon with a sense of inevitability, he picked out a path and began to run, pushing his body for everything it was worth.
His apprehension deepened by the footfall, dread thickening with every beat of his heart. Nick was certain that although he couldn’t sense anything out of the ordinary yet, a horrific ordeal would arrive before long, and he was running out of time.
Forty minutes later, Nick was drawing close to his destination, still sprinting as fast as he could. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t found anything that he could shelter in yet. It seemed that the hills would be his last shot, or he was going to have to climb a tree after all.
He ran like the wind, straining to reach higher ground while it was still light enough to see. Whatever he wound up doing, he had to get situated before the sun set, or he was going to be confounded by the low light and caught up in the blood moon on open terrain.
By now, the horizon was aglow with the reds and yellows of sunset, a sight that would normally have brought a smile to Nick’s face instead of a chilling premonition of doom. He set foot onto the base of the closet hillock shortly after, as the shadows grew long with the end of day.
As the last rays of sunset vanished behind the crater’s rim, they shone upon the hilltop, reflecting back the sparkle of glass in the distance. The glint caught his eye and drew his gaze to the hillcrest, revealing the profile of an ancient building with massive stained-glass murals running along the sides.
He didn’t know what the ruins had once been, and he honestly didn’t care. All that mattered was that he had found a substantial shelter at last. Now he just needed to make it up there before it was too late.
With the fall of night, an eerie silence descended over the bog, as the creatures that hadn’t already fled went to ground. Nick could sense that they were racing to erase their presence, before a tide of horrors emerged from the deep earth below and began to prowl.