->>>-

[18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s] took another step, and the ground trembled.

What an odd antezenith, it thought leisurely, as its ambulation-pillars pulverized a chalky section of road below. It had lived for many lightspan-darkspans, and this was the first where it had awoken anywhere other than the exact place it had fallen asleep.

Screaming at the top of its tiny lungs, one of the wriggling prey in its grazing hooks was lifted casually up to its millstone-sized mandibles and pulverized into nutrient paste.

Bah, more chaff than kernel, it mused disappointedly as its myriad tongues scooped the paste to the rear of its feeding-beak.

A whirring thing, glinting in the sunlight, chicaned through the air nearby. Odd reflections and refractions off of the thing's fused-silicate faceplate danced on [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s]'s vision discs, and again one of the monstrously large being's whiplimbs swatted at the buzzing curiosity. Smaller than the usual airborne parasites that haunted the vast shambling mound of muscle and carapace, this one was peculiar in that it never got close enough to land and sample the hulk's flesh. It would have ignored the shining gnat altogether, but it had no desire to learn how deeply the thing would burrow if given access to the soft flesh around [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s]'s armour plates. It was - presumably - very far from home and had no idea where to find a reliable groomer-grazer to feast on parasites.

Perhaps it is injured the great living mound pondered, trying futilely to ascertain the motives of the mere mortals that came and went around it as the stars danced in the sky and the world grew old.

It bellowed its displeasure at the buzzing distraction. Completely unbeknownst to it, a hunter hiding nearby died horribly as the immense vibrations liquefied its organs.

I hope I can kill it soon. This is annoying.

Far off, dozens of steps at least, [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s] witnessed something very noteworthy indeed. One of the little preythings was hiding, as preythings are wont to do, and observing the demise of another at the hands of a third. The dying one writhed for a moment in the grasp of its killer.

The hiding one, presumably a scavenger, waited for some impossible-to-fathom criterion to be met, and then performed a fascinating action. It used the entire length of its body as a whiplimb, grasping a crumb of the odd chalky ground that comprised the bulk of [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s]'s new waking-place. At the apex of the arc it released the ground-crumb, which sailed briefly through the air before impacting the prey-that-kills-prey, stunning it.

The scavenger-prey took advantage of this to go about the tiresome business of slaying something it was not large enough to crush.

How fun, it thought, never having needed to get more creative than using the tools it was given at birth to procure food and peace.

It spied the whirring gnat again as a sunbeam played off the thing's shining surface and onto one of [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s]'s great mirrored vision discs.

I think I'll try it, the creature determined, feeling whimsical.

->>>-

I had started to get into the zone. By my reckoning we only had another kilometre or two between us and the totem receptacle. It had been a terrifying, gore-soaked morning, but barring a catastrophe we were on the home stretch.

Naturally, that was the exact moment that catastrophe chose to strike. Go fuck yourself, Murphy.

Skleex's grip on the ammo belt tightened, and she squeaked in my ear frantically. I had no idea what she was trying to say. In retrospect, I probably should have been able to guess. Then she began very obviously trying to haul downwards on her perch, and I hit the deck hard. She bounded off of me and around a corner, and I followed like the devil was on my heels. For all I knew some red-skinned, pointy-tailed bounty hunter with horns and smoke shooting out his his ass really was after us.

The little grub-weasel shot out of her hiding place and cannoned into my foot, disrupting the flow of my run enough to send me tumbling to the ground.

What the f- was all I managed to think indignantly before the stone of the adjacent building erupted just behind where my torso should have been. Shards of masonry were cast outwards with such force that they sliced my skin and clothing with their passage. I felt an odd combination of surging adrenaline and mild guilt over thinking ill of my new companion.

Then her little spurs were digging into me and I forgot some of my prior compassion as she drag-pleaded with me, chittering furiously, to get the fuck out of the way of whoever was shooting at us.

"I hear you, Skleex, Christ! OW!"

Finally I was around the corner and she let up a bit. I was leaking blood from a handful of scratches, both from the shrapnel and my friend's assistance. I let out a shuddering breath.

"That..." I said shakily, looking into her shining, spidery little eyes, "was too close. Thank you."

She cocked her head, pondering the meaning of my words. With a pang of homesickness I was reminded of my dog. I won't tell her about the pet comparison if I get the chance to speak to her via translator again. She licked her mandibles and then did a cursory investigation of my wounds. Apparently satisfied that I wasn't dying, she clambered back aboard the ammo belt, pointing with her head. I set off in that direction, and concluded from the lack of painful scratching that she had intended as much.

I don't know how she knew we were in danger, but she just paid me back big time for rescuing her.

->>>-

Noisy, clumsy and blind. She had shamefully managed to be rescued by a complete buffoon of an organism. As penance she would have to spend the rest of her presumably-short life trying to keep him alive, like some extended mockery of parenthood where your charge never outgrew its suicidal impulses.

Breathing heavily, she calmed herself down. It wasn't that bad. The thing was strong, compared to her at least, and apparently never got tired. He was sort of clever. He knew how to use the implements of the sky monsters and their cronies against them, which had to count for something. She was just incensed that he had so thoroughly ignored the beam of spine-tingling energy that had passed over them both before the air was rent and stone was sundered. If she hadn't thought to pounce on his foot mid-stride he would have become little more than a mound of questionably-edible gore, useless to Skleex as anything but a warm hiding place.

She didn't even know what the beam really was, but she had been quick enough to assume it meant 'danger' and react accordingly. Part of her wondered at how this brave, foolish being and its ancestors had lasted on their world of origin.

Maybe they mated frequently and had large litters.

At any rate, she had checked his wounds, and they'd seemed superficial. Certainly no worse than what she'd sustained when the hunter had destroyed the elevated crawlspace just prior to her rescue. Hopefully he would react a bit more quickly the next time the beam tickled their senses.

Saviour Mark was moving hesitantly from one darkened artificial valley to the next. He was doing everything in his power to keep a multitude of intervening structures and fallen debris between the strange pair and the long lines of sight that seemed inherent to the sky-monsters' bloodsport Arena.

Far away, barely perceptible despite the enormous vibrations it was producing, some monstrous being was navigating the Arena with an absolute lack of grace or precision.

To her mounting concern, saviour Mark appeared to have no idea he was headed almost directly towards it.

->>>-

Energetic pop/dance music plays over b-roll of attractive professional-age Skryrn and a handful of janissary species attending a large barbecue at an outdoor venue. Cowering subjugate species are tending massive blazes and butchering meat in the background. Barely visible, a butcher grows faint and stumbles ominously close to one of the cooking fires before the shot ends. It cuts to a packed nightclub where yet more attractive professionals dance, drink, and fight for each other's attention. This is followed by an aerial shot of a beach party, during which the voiceover begins. It rolls over more scenes of fun and good fortune throughout.

"Hey you Ambling Sapient fans out there. Yeah you, we know you're watching. Are you, or someone you love in crippling debt? Have you lost at least some of your will to live? Do you occasionally wish that through a run of good luck, a lot of guts, and just the right amount of self-interest your fame and wealth could improve virtually overnight? Well we have the opportunity of your lifetime. We're accepting applicants for next and all future cycles of The Ambling Sapient."

The narrator's words echo over the sound of furious thunderclaps at 'The Ambling Sapient'.

"Of course, some of our favourite contestants from cycles past have been former or current citizens of our glorious Empire. Through felony or worse they'd found themselves on the chopping block, and they chose to serve you, the fans, to earn their shot at redemption. Well now it's your chance to earn the glory, and you need not hit rock bottom first! Call us with your Citizen Number or visit our datamesh-address and accept the User Agreement and you are automatically entered into the next thrilling iteration of the Empire's favourite entertainment juggernaught!

We'll see you soon!"

Back to the beach party, a much quieter voiceover is spitting rapid-fire legal jargon such as 'All agreements with TAS Productions are final and immediate and enforced by the Department of Games and Enslavement.'

->>>-

I'm bad at estimating, but there's no way we hadn't at least doubled the distance between us and the receptacle. Each step in the wrong direction hurt a little, in a figurative sort of way. Mind you, taking a round from that sniper would hurt in a considerably more practical sense.

I still hadn't worked out exactly how Skleex knew we were in trouble, and I kind of wanted to get to the bottom of it before I accidentally took it for granted and got us killed because I misunderstood. I did strongly intend to pay closer attention when she started going nuts, at the very least.

I was trying to head in a rough circle, which would eventually bring us around to our destination from a very different angle than our initial, ill-fated approach. It was nerve-wracking to know that every street we skirted and alley we ducked through increased the likelihood of running into another hunter, but hypothetical threats sure beat the known danger of a competent sniper.

Skleex was growing more quiet as we went. I was a little concerned about it, given her wounds, but I'm not an alien doctor and I'm not about to kill my friend by putting a tourniquet on her only airway or something stupid.

Conversely the Arena was getting noisier. I could hear the sound of whirring rotors now and again as what looked like tilt-rotor drones and occasionally something a little bigger shot by overhead. Sometimes a big horn would sound, I'm guessing to signal the death of a hunter or competitor, and it was loud enough to feel the compression in my lungs when we were outside.

I'm not going to lie, it was a little bit creepy. Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was far from the weirdest thing to happen to me in the last few hours, so I didn't pay it much mind.

We still had a lot of ground to cover, after all.

->>>-

Somewhere in a packed room with screens and projectors studding every available surface, the lead producer hissed quietly into their headset.

"Master control, does the DGE give us the go ahead?"

"Yes, we've got enough. Never ceases to amaze me how quickly thes-"

"Silence! Run the megabiota intro."

Ominous music plays. A bombed out building, unmistakably the architecture of the Arena, sits baking in the sun. It seems to tremble on its foundation. Threadlike apparitions begin to worm around the sides of it, wreathed in shadow. Then with a lurch, windows and masonry begin to come apart and tumble from the structure's face. The whole thing pitches forward, and shredded HVAC equipment tumbles from the roof. As dust engulfs the camera a looming shadow rises into the frame, and a ground-shaking roar washes out the audio pickups. The view recedes and the shot is stitched together with footage from other previous hunts in wide-view bands stretching across the background. Hunters in hover-skiffs and other powered kitecraft circle around a vast raptor-manta, harrying it as it soars through the skies. A segmented crawler with thousands of legs worms up the side of a building to pluck hunters from the roof as they fire into its undulating bulk. A single, craggy hoof the size of a bank vault crushes a wrecked bus.

"It's the moment you've been waiting for, Ambling fans! We bring you the first phase of this cycle's megabiota hunt. It's a marvel that we manage to top ourselves time after time, but I'm not just boasting when I say this might be the most exciting monster we've had yet! It was incredibly expensive to procure. We only managed it thanks to a generous donation from Ur-Tyrant of the glorious Skryrn Empire and massive fan of The Ambling Sapient, Lord Pha'Gouad, who is in attendance at this cycle's contest! It took a year of study by the Royal Academy to develop the sedatives we had to deploy by the [long-ass ton], and one of the military's bulk lifters to get this thing all the way to Vraaawk Prime.

It was discovered by the late, great Volphax Schalar on a frontier world. His abandoned craft was discovered several months later, and when rescuers tracked his Personal Rescue Beacon they were slain nearly to a soul by the creature it led them to. We know only what the Royal Academy was cleared to release to us, which isn't much, and we look forward to seeing how it tests our best and bravest.

Without any further ado I turn you over to the production team, live and direct from the Arena!"

The b-roll ends with a shining 'The Ambling Sapient' title card, and then the graphics transition to the show proper.

A unit of bounty hunters are tailed by a camera drone. The lead elements are spread thinly, ahead of a column of more heavily armed and armoured fighters.

"Look at that tactical precision folks. These really are the finest beings we allow the honour of entry into the Arena. Their admittedly high turnover rate equates to a lot of fresh faces on the roster, which means new heroes for us all to root for! What a treat!"

Two of the scouts congregate to deploy some device between them. It doesn't take long for them to get a surprising reading, and they hurriedly signal to the main body of their force. As the lead hunters collapse back towards the rest of the formation the dense column split up into pairs and individuals. They make their way to various buildings and vantage points, some setting up weapons or devices.

"This could be it, fans. If you'll look closely we can see the team are priming their weapons and traps. My hearts are racing, and I am on the very edge of my seat. My producer tells me we're going to see if we can't find the beast before they do, to get a good look at it before it's been subjected to the might of our brave combatants!"

The drone angles away from the dissolving column and its camera pans across the darkened windows of an office building. Through the glare-silvered panes a nondescript shape takes a single, heaving breath. The glass fogs on several storeys, and furniture is overturned by the harnessed gale of a giant's sigh.

mute

"Oh shit."

With a sudden lunge that looks almost comical thanks to its perpetrator's incredible size, the office building explodes in a shower of stone-and-silicate confetti. Four enormous limbs sail through the shard-sparkling air for what feels like minutes before digging a quartet of angry furroughs in the Arena's asphalt, fighting to hold aloft the armoured bulk of the pouncing mega-being as the rest of its legs catch up. Thick steel cable-snares hook on its studded carapace, singing as they struggle to bear the incredible tension. An unfortunate scout is cut in half when he is pinned against an empty concrete garden box on the sidewalk.

A snarled skein of groping, seeking tentacles and carapace-hardened snaglimbs surge out to meet the panicking crowd of hunters. Energy weapons strobe their stored fury, and mass drivers spit clouds of iron and uranium slugs. Grasping limbs are sheared from their moorings, and seeping dark ichor wells from the fearsome wounds.

unmute

"By Gouad. Would you look at that. There isn't a place in the Empire where you can witness a fusillade of that magnitude. Outside of a combat zone, of course."

It is not nearly enough.

A spiny limb ploughs through a hardened gun nest. The gunner is plucked, twitching, from her post and passed immediately to the gargantuan animal's crushing maw. A pair of scouts are dragged screaming from a rooftop, their comrades firing desperately into the press of whirling hooks and snagging claws.

One of the scrambling figures triggers a trap emplacement, and a vast sparking net is fired into the air. Wild arcs leap from its links to the surface of the beast. A serrated pincer lashes forth from the monster and in a burst of electrical discharge the net is shorn apart with frightful ease. Snare-cables are wrenched from their moorings and yet more fighters are scythed down.

"What a resilient quarry, it's no wonder the Emperor wanted to witness this personally."

The trap-launching mercenary is smashed flat against the ground by a hooked whip and dragged up to the creature's own barbed net. It is deposited there, unmoving, amidst a scattering of other bodies. The camera does not linger long. The staggering volume of weapons-fire has already begun to thin, and as more of the hunters are splashed across the pavement and rendered into gore-slicked kindling it slows to a sedated chatter.

The unfathomably large creature at the heart of the chaos bellows so loudly that the few surviving windows nearby erupt into shining fragments that rain to the ground.

Some of the mercenaries have already begun to retreat, dropping heavy weapons and equipment to speed their flight.

"Disgraceful. If they had but stood their ground for a few moments longer they might have shared in the credit for this"

An armoured rapid-response vehicle roars up to the intersection, and the heavy gun nestled in its protected turret spits lurid tracers at the angry titan. A few of the heavy rounds gouge dark runnels into the shining disc of one of the beast's eyes, and its great bulk flinches. It grunts heavily, the thumping infrasonic stunning a fleeing figure near its hoof-claws that is swiftly snatched up.

The reeling audio pickups register a cheer from the scattered force of hunters. It is cut short when a traffic-regulator pole is thrown by the creature like an enormous dart. It punches through the sturdy frontal plate of the personnel carrier with buttery ease. The vehicle rocks back on its suspension and is pinned in place by the vast metal needle, front tires hovering off of the ground. The turret weapon fires off a few more diffident bursts as its dying gunner squeezes the firing stud reflexively, and then the car goes silent entirely.

"Well... then. Perhaps they were not so hasty in their judgement after all. Fearsome fighters though they may be, our brave team of mega-hunters look like they will need to regroup. Fear not, Ambling fans! This is not the first monster to stump our valiant heroes in the opening act, we call it phase one for a reason."

mute

"Where the hell did it learn how to do that? The Royal Academy didn't say anything about this beast knowing ballistics! Tell the Baron to scramble a pair of gunships! We need to soften this thing up before we go at it again or we'll run out of hunters to bring it down! I don't care how long it takes, get it done. Have him route individual hunters around it if we need to, armed bounty hunters don't grow out of cracks in the ground!"

unmute

"I don't know about you, folks, but my hearts are still pounding! What a spectacle, what a show indeed! We'll take a moment to pay our respects to the brave fallen, and then - after a brief advertising break - we'll be right back to The Ambling Sapient with another thrilling hunt! Thanks for tuning in."

As the drone fights for altitude to get a wide-angle shot of the whole battlefield, the colossal being below whips a hunk of rock the size of a man up towards it. The expensive, high-speed camera captures frame after frame of the ragged masonry as it races the delicate machine skywards. The operator's reflexes are not up to the task of realizing the danger of the growing dark spot on his monitor, and the precision-lasered high definition lens is stove in by a jagged stone fist. Insufficient to slow the ascent of hundreds of pounds of concrete, the shattering glass gives way and the speeding chunk hastily disassembles the rest of the exquisite piece of film equipment. The operator's monitor goes dark as the receiver tries to make sense of the jumbled, flickering signal its mated transmitter is feeding it.

mute

"... Wait... what?"

->>>-

"Hunter 0494?"

"I have a name, you know."

"I can't imagine why you think I would care."

"Get to the point, then."

"The Baron voices his displeasure at the delay."

"The Baron ought to focus his ire on the serfshit nav-tech who failed to tell me my new quarry has a guard-symbiont."

"That can't be right. It was slain heroically by one of the deceased members of the retrieval team, allowing her comrades to bag the contestant."

"Well tell them they bagged a child's-fable nature-princess, then, as the quarry has charmed a new one into service."

"I do not want to hear your excuses!"

"I'd rather not hear your voice at all, and yet our shared concern is escorted by some sort of wriggling detector-beast who can taste my viewfinder's probing light. Accounted for, it is simply another obstacle to overcome. As a surprise it was useful leverage for the quarry indeed."

"Well the Baron wants you to know you have lost his faith. We are re-tasking a pair of hunters who are currently retreating from this cycle's megabiote to help you encircle Zhartacc's slayer."

"Please, I do not need the help of failures."

The nav-tech scoffed in her ear.

"You would soil yourself in fear the moment such a beast looked at you. I don't care if you let them draw the contestant's focus and fury and simply shoot him in the back like a common murderer, huntress."

A small part of her was dismayed by the sneering venom in the tech's voice. Disdainful little Vraaawk lickspittle, she thought vengefully.

"All I ask is that you finish this task before the Baron mentions it again. He is in a particularly foul mood today."

"I can't imagine why, with such a fiercely competent staff on hand," she offered dismissively before closing the channel.

Sleeping Goddess, I'd kill to be back on the frontier subsistence hunting again, she thought wryly.

->>>-

Ghat Cholot spat a discolored stream of stim-chew juice at the feet of a fallen hunter.

Freshspawned little idiot, he sulked as his probing tongue packed the ball of stimulant wedged against his gums into a more stable shape.

His brood-twin Aghrat stomped along a few paces ahead, babbling into his comm-piece as the command centre worked out their new route. Infuriatingly, the (slightly) older brother turned to scold him.

"Ghat! There could be a camera stand watching, do not disrespect a fallen hunter!"

Looking sufficiently-reproached, he waited for his brother's attention to return to his comms to mutter under his breath.

"If us running away from that thing is the best shot they can muster at the moment we are all in trouble."

A few blocks later Aghrat finally turned to address him.

"We are to work in concert with another hunter, to help them complete an elimination. A scrawny little biped that has nonetheless been giving the Baron some trouble."

"Ah, escaping from our own failure to rescue another from failure. Poetic."

His brother glared at him.

"Please, Ghat. We survived. It is our slain comrades who failed. With so many dead the rest of us could not have hoped to finish it."

Ghat scoffed.

"More like the Baron failed when he pitted us against that demon-creature."

Aghrat cupped a great paw over his comm's audio pickup and shot a withering look at Ghat.

"Are you trying to get us killed?" he hissed.

"We will regroup with other hunters and return to slay the monster, but we have this new task to fill the waiting-time. The quarry slew Zhartacc on live broadcast. If nothing else avenging him will be an easy way to make our name."

Ghat chuckled derisively.

"That bag of guts? I'm surprised he tried for prey dangerous enough to hurt him back."

Frustrated, Aghrat drove a scaled fist through the smooth metal door of an empty transport pod.

"ENOUGH! With, your, flippancy, Ghat!"

Each word was punctuated with the shriek of metal and plastic as the big mercenary visited his frustration on the unfortunate pod. Unsure of how to reply, Ghat looked at the ground. His brother continued.

"I am so sick of you acting petulant about my very-marginally superior position when we're doing well, and then acting like the universe is arrayed solely against you when things get turbulent. I tried to let you shoulder some responsibility, do you remember? You thought it was such a joke that you went out drinking the night before a contest, and you nearly got us both killed because of some detail you considered below your notice. I don't even get paid better than you, I just have to do more work. You're an enviably good fighter, Ghat, but you're a miserable hunter. There's more to succeeding in this empire than beating its arena-fodder to death. That flippant tongue of yours is going to get us jailed long before some creature does me the favour of consuming us both!"

Aghrat looked at his hand, at the flaking scales and dripping lymph.

"I can't believe we just stared down a beast as heavy as an orbital gunboat and it is my vexation with you that's done all the damage today. Let's get moving, you whiny oaf. If I have to suffer any more of your complaining I'll end up really hurting myself."

Ghat bit back a pithy retort only barely, and with a start realized his brother might have a point.

->>>-

[18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s] felt conflicted. This strange, unprecedented lightspan meant rethinking much of what the great being had considered constant in its long and usually-predictable life. Of particular concern was what it would do when it did slip up and a parasite got into its tissues. Though it had roved about constantly since waking it had yet to spy a circling remora-wasp or colony of extractor crabs.

On the other limb, it had learned a new trick.

The little scavenger thing, to be respectful, was either very skilled or very lucky. It had taken [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s] scores of attempts to finally pierce the whirring annoyance with a little metal spindle it had wrenched from the smooth chalk-ground. The results were appreciably spectacular. Sparking like the discharge of a stormflare in miniature, the little gnat had burst into flames as it fell from the sky.

It had gotten easier after that.

More had come, some of them staying to annoy him until caught by a whiplimb or struck by a piece of hurled ground. The stream of them did seem to slow, and it had stopped entirely after [18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s] had surprised the herd of preythings with glowing lights and vicious stings.

Of course, they had been unable to pierce the thick plates that girdled its armoured bulk. Still, they had wormed their way into creases and gaps, and it had been outright painful when they found unprotected sensory nodes. The dark spot in one of its vision discs would take thousands of lightspan-darkspans to heal over again, and that was if it could find and consume a rich enough deposit of heavy metals to replace the film.

At any rate, it was mostly excited to know something new!

It had lived for 75481 lightspan-darkspans since it had last learned a truly new thing, during communion with [21Hz:3.2s-30Hz:1.7s-27Hz:1.2s]. It briefly savoured the memory of accessing a competitor's neural complex, each exquisitely vulnerable to the other during the coupling of their love-beaks and external nervous tissue. The resultant selfseed was nearly ready to bury.

This new thing was utterly incomparable to the ouroborotic ecstasy of dissolving one's consciousness into the mind of a godbeing who is themselves being subsumed by you, but it had already proven useful.

Several long-strides away it heard more preythings squabbling.

How careless they are with their dirtscratching, it remarked.

In its experience they all had some arbitrary-seeming spherical volume around them in which their sensory returns were worthy of concern, outside of which the world may as well cease to exist. If you could guess where they might go from far enough away, and waited patiently, it was very easy indeed to surprise them.

[18Hz:2.5s-31Hz:1.7s-24Hz:2s] loved surprises.

It gave its grazing hooks a shake, and felt that it was getting low. The few remaining morsels moaned in pain.

Yes, the vast creature thought, I had better stock up. No knowing when I'll hit a desert in this new place.

->>>-

Skleex was getting noticeably antsy, without the active 'this way you idiot' scratching she'd engaged in before. My intuition told me this had something to do with the increasingly-loud horn, which I was nervously beginning to consider might not be a horn after all. The ground had begun to rumble periodically as well.

Just like me to get abducted to the coliseum whose builders were dumb enough to put it atop an active fault line. I wasn't so naive to hope it was just blasting at a nearby construction site. I took note of sturdy-looking furniture and other places to tuck into if things got shaky. I'll be extremely pissed if I survived the pompous gasbag announcer and killed a couple of alien bounty hunters with my almost-bare hands only to die to an earthquake. I'd prefer to do that back on Earth, thank you very much.

The sense of foreboding just kept growing, and growing. It didn't help that the ambient noise had faded considerably over the last half-hour or so following some faraway crescendo of violence. My heart was pounding, and the sheen of sweat I'd built up from running was growing cold and anxious. I didn't want to stop moving, though. That just seemed too much like handing myself to the sniper on a silver platter.

I hit a mental wall. I couldn't stand it anymore. I needed to take another look around. I patted my shoulder in what was hopefully becoming a familiar signal to my passenger, and made a hard turn into the lobby of a derelict hotel. At the start of this awful day I might have bemoaned the busted elevators, but getting trapped in a darkened metal box by an earthquake with literally no hope of rescue is the sort of thing my therapist assures me normally only happens in nightmares. Plus Skleex might get hungry enough to eat me.

I made a beeline for the stairs and thankfully the door was unlocked. It would have made a terrible racket to try and force it open, and if the ground floor is unlocked hopefully the rooftop is too.

I can do this. 10 flights of stairs is a walk in the park. I've been running for what feels like forever, but a quick breather won't cost me too much time. I hope.

Please don't let something mean and hungry be hiding in the darkness.

->>>-

"Well, there is your opportunity. It went into building (142, 367), the 10-storey daily-rentals complex."

Aghrat growled into his comm-piece.

"It is a trap. Why else would it do this?"

"To get its bearings? It is a weak little fleshling, hunter. It cannot climb the walls as you or I do."

"Why did you not just shoot it, if you could see it so clearly?"

"It knows I pursue it, and it moves accordingly. It can sense my targeting-assistance, and it is not easy to hit a darting quarry from [hundreds of metres] away in an urban environment, you scaly gorilla. One of you should scale the exterior while another enters from below to drive it towards the roof. I will shoot it if it reaches the rooftop before you do, but I will not risk hitting either of you. It would be a waste of a slug."

"You're nearly as insufferable as Ghat, huntress. Methinks it would be a favour in the end if you did shoot me."

"Sign up as a contestant next cycle and maybe I will, darling hunter."

Snarling, Aghrat closed the comm-channel and turned to his brood-twin.

"It enters building (142, 367) in a bid to gain altitude. Follow it in at ground level, and I will move to intercept it on the roof. Do not let it slip by you, I do not want to give the smug witch we are partnered with the chance to steal any glory from us."

To his surprise, Ghat simply nodded and moved off. It was vaguely unnerving to issue an order without receiving any snark in reply.

The burly mercenary turned and leapt towards a nearby building with a furious grunt. Corded muscle stood out under his scaled skin as he gripped a sturdy stone lip, and with a mighty lunge he threw himself to the next set of handholds. His clawed feet scrabbled at the textured surface to help propel him along, and to hold him in place as his great bulk sagged back down again. He crested the roof and pounced onto the next building, windows and concrete blurring by as he closed the distance between himself and his quarry.

->>>-

Why oh why did saviour Mark insist on stuffing himself headfirst into every trap the sky-monsters saw fit to place in front of him? Her sensory spines tingled with the waves the hunters' many incomprehensible devices emitted, and she could feel them closing in. Then, the fool being patted himself like he did before every rotbrained move he made, and ran into one of the vast stone edifices their captors had filled the bloodsport arena with.

Their value was appreciable when they protected her and her mad charge from the probing gaze of sky-monster technology, but to run into one seemed an invitation to disaster, pure and simple. She had made the mistake once, before her rescue, and she would not do it again.

She made a decision.

"Saviour Mark, I know you do not understand me without the wondrous bridge between dialects, but I cannot abide this decision."

He paused as though more time would allow him to comprehend her words.

"You pounce upon this trap as though it is injured quarry. I will go outside and find the hunter that is surely pursuing us, and if they are not so powerful and wise as to overcome me I will meet you on the top of this edifice. I know you are slow enough that I can scale the walls before you scale this place's innards."

Skies Above, he has me doing it too, she thought exasperatedly.

She hopped down from her perch, and another inscrutable expression wrinkled his face.

"Skleex, what the Hell?"

She yawed her head back and forth in her species' equivalent to rubbing a brow in frustration.

"I do no understand you, brave idiot. Skies grant us the felicity to meet again, saviour Mark."

She bounded away through the metal doorway, and he reached after her furtively. He looked at the ground, sighed, and turned to delve deeper into the building.

->>>-

Aghrat sat patiently, his hindlimbs bowed while the trunklike foreleg stood lock-kneed. Ghat was inside now, and once she was sure the escape routes had been cinched tight the barb-tongued huntress had given up her overwatch to move to a closer position. Their back and forth comm-chatter had thankfully petered out as the tension of an imminent hunt grew thick.

He checked the load on the plasma pistol in his central grasper. Regrettably, he had sacrificed his mass driver to one of the megabiote's grasping tentacles during the brief battle with it. Given the fate of all too many of his comrades, he was convinced it had been the right decision. He might be able to replace the costly weapon in the end, if they returned to share credit in finishing the vast beast. Perhaps an upgrade would be in order if a grieving fan had placed a bonus bounty on the head of Zhartacc's slayer.

The pistol would do just fine. Short-ranged though it may be, on full power the fearsome little gun was strong enough to punch holes in unshielded starship plating. It was running dangerously low, having discharged much of its roaring fury into the companions of the frightful writhing appendage that had snatched his primary weapon, and he popped the dying power cell out into a massive scaly palm. He clipped it carefully to his bandolier - replacements didn't come cheap. If you were savvy, you could pilfer current from Arena facilities to recharge your cells without drawing the attention of Empire bean counters.

As he made to slot its replacement into the hungry pistol the rooftop access door banged open and the quarry that had been so troubling the Baron came face to face with a real hunter.

"Shit." It said in its breathy, squeaky voice.

His auto-interpreter whispered the curse back to him. He chuckled grimly.

Aghrat lifted his bulk up off of his hindlimbs, one of his thick side arms surging forward to plant into the pebbled rooftop as its opposite number finished loading the fresh cell into his pistol. A predatory grin split his powerful jaw and he licked his lips eagerly.

Then the little creature pointed a kinetic shredder - where did that come from? - at him and the air buzzed with unleashed energy as the weapon's mag-beam directed a gale of supersonic metal darts at him.

The accursed witch sought for it to catch me off guard, he thought vengefully as thick scales and body armour were ablated by the storm of high-speed metal. The pistol was wrenched out of his grasper, the vestigial limb coming apart painfully under the hail of flechettes as the beam and its contents forced him backwards. The little biped pointed the shredder up at his unprotected face.

Pain. Agony and anger coursed through every fibre of his being as dozens and dozens of darts pierced his flesh or riccocheted off of his skull. His frontal eye was obliterated, and one of the side eyes began leaking out on to his cheekbone as it was torn asunder. His chin lifted under the ferocity of the assault and as he pitched over backwards he felt his lower jaw and throat being shredded by the fearsome weapon. Blessedly, the magazine ran dry before it could visit any further devastation on the hunter's flesh.

If I live through this I will make you rue the day you crossed Aghrat Cholot, huntress.

His back hit the rooftop and he grunted, aspirating blood out of his ruined neck. The automed on his hip beeped and began to administer trauma response agents directly into his bloodstream. For all the good that would do.

He lay there, stunned by the terrible violence visited upon his massive frame.

The quarry approached, fiddling with the shredder as it attempted to slot another ammo pack into the brutal gun. In his good eye he saw it look him up and down appraisingly.

"Oof, sorry about that one, big fella. Didn't mean to make such a mess of you before you died," it said in its strange, fey little voice.

Aghrat felt a bitter flash of anger.

Foolishly, it strayed too close to him before it could successfully charge the device, and he swatted its weapon away with contemptuous ease. It howled in pain, and Aghrat hoped he'd caused some permanent, disfiguring damage to the bastard creature.

Before he could finish celebrating his minor victory the little monkey fished a primitive club from a small loop on its waist. With an angry roar it brought the bumpy end down onto the top anterior edge of Aghrat's sturdy skull. The impact rang through his head like it was an elaborate fleshy bell. The bounty hunter felt his skull crack.

So this is how I am killed he thought as the spark of his consciousness twisted and flickered and fought to stay lit. I hope Ghat can finish this flimsy weasel before the sniper-witch kills it.

Its furious roar began anew, and as the clubhead punched through his weakened skull Aghrat Cholot stopped thinking anything at all.

->>>-

Ghat burst through the roof access door, tearing the metal frame from its mooring in his haste. It stood to reason that since he hadn't encountered the quarry in the stairwell it had already left the building. He wanted to get a piece of it before Ahgrat finished it off.

He took in the sight of the skinny little thing standing over his brother's motionless form, and his stomachs fell. Heads weren't supposed to look that way.

He crossed the space in two great, bounding strides, and slapped the creature with the back of a mighty scaled fist. It flew through the air and punched a deep dent into the sheet metal of an HVAC unit, sticking into the impression for a moment before falling to the ground moaning.

He knelt next to Aghrat, muttering in a breathy, panicked voice.

"No, no, no NO! Aghrat, what has it done to you? How? How did that pathetic little creature fell Aghrat Hammer-Fist? We faced down a God today, brother, and we walked away! You cannot die to this wriggling grub. Dying is what we joke about doing when we're sick of each other, not something we go and do in the middle of a hunt! We... we have a monster to finish, brother. A God defied us, and we still need to show it that Schadronak warriors practice deicide as a matter of course!"

He lost track of time as he argued and pleaded with his brother's body, and the automed on its hip.

Nearby, perhaps briefly forgotten, the groaning quarry rolled in the gravel of the rooftop.

Taking advantage of Ghat's hesitation, freshly settled into her shooting-nest, a sniper had her hunting driver feed itself a ferromagnetic slug.

->>>-

Hunter 0494 looked dispassionately through her viewfinder, thankfully no longer set to 'optics only' since she had confirmed the target no longer had its detector-beast.

Admittedly it did not feel good or honourable to have deceived the Schadronak hunters by omission. All of the good and honourable hunters she'd ever known were long dead by now.

She was surprised by how quickly and effectively the quarry had turned the shredder on its erstwhile pursuer. Perhaps it wasn't as primitive as the Baron and his DGE cronies wanted the hunters to believe.

No matter. She wasn't in the arena slaughtering sapients because she was an idealist. Her driver whirred as its autoloader fed another round into the projector-couch. She nestled the boxy weapon against the edge of her rooftop blind. Lazily, her viewfinder's crosshair traced over the mourning Schadronak. She had honestly expected to have to shoot the prey through it while it visited its vengeance on the little being, but the melancholy oaf was handing her the kill on a silver platter. It had even immobilized it for her.

She gently nudged the heavy gun in the direction of the crawling quarry.

You've done more than anybody expected you to, whatever you are. Not that you had any chance of escaping me, she thought triumphantly as she readied herself to fire.

One of her manipulator claws tightened over the firing stud.

As the weapon bucked in her grasp something completely unanticipated happened.

->>>-

There, she thought, surging desperately up the vast stone wall.

She could see the darkened box of the hunter's weapon poking over the lip of the roof. She cannoned into the bottom of it, punching the strange device wildly off course. She felt the weapon shake as it discharged its stone-shattering quarrel towards what she knew without knowing was saviour Mark, and hoped she'd misdirected it in time. Then she got a good look at the being holding it.

Skies Above, I hope this thing is soft.

Shaking off the impact against the heavy, boxy metal weapon, Skleex Vrt Krixit leapt from the stonework that bounded the rooftop onto the scaffold of slim, dangerous-looking limbs. She twisted to avoid spiny protrusions and urticating hairs, and sank her killing fangs into the spindly wrist of the swiping claw the hunter had reflexively directed at her. Her body undulated, whiplike, and she tore the end of the hunter's limb from its body.

It snarled in pain, and more spiny limbs drove towards the frenzied little huntress. She avoided one, another, as she writhed around them. Then one of them found purchase in her skin and she folded back along her length to champ down on its largest joint. Her fangs savaged the soft tissue, and the claw holding one of her griplimbs went slack. She burst from its grasp and fell to the gravel of the rooftop, weaving in between its long legs.

It tried to rise up above her, drawing another, smaller weapon from a holster. She pounced from the ground and fastened her jaws onto the hunter's grasper, whipping her hindbody around to fasten across the being's back.

It is soft, she thought exultantly as she amputated the claw holding the no-doubt terrifyingly destructive weapon.

Her foe was shrieking now, but not giving up. New rents in her flesh leaked blood and lymph, and yet another of its thorny spines pierced her as she scrabbled around its body to get at its face. A serrated claw seized her hindbody. Pain coursed through her nervous system and threatened to obliterate the crystal clarity of a life-or-death hunt.

No, she thought with grim determination. She focused all of her repressed fear and hatred into a single unifying surge of emotion and she straightened herself into a desperate lunge. Exquisite agony shot up and down her length as the hunter's wicked appendage wormed about her wound.

Then her foreclaws found purchase. Deep, deep purchase. Eyelets and more complex sensory protrusions were obliterated by barbed spurs and vicious fangs. The hunter's battle-shriek turned into an agonized howl. She felt its fluids seeping and gushing from a dozen different wounds under her ministrations.

The claw buried in her hindbody squeezed, and she nearly let go. Steeling her resolve, she fought to ignore the immense pain as she whipped and twisted her muscular little form, and then the hunter's facial exoskeleton gave way with a spurt of ichor. Its howl of pain turned into a gurgling sigh as the creature's breath seeped out of a larger aperture than evolution had ever intended for it. She lunged again, and fastened her killing fangs to the soft inside of the hunter's head. She wrenched out the flesh that sealed in its cranium. The searing claw anchored in her hindbody finally slackened its grip, and she extended once more to destroy its brain.

The tall, delicate hunter slumped loosely toward the edge of the rooftop.

Careful not to swallow any alien flesh, she extracted herself from its cranial bulb and spat a mouthful of gore onto the gravel. Then she fell, exhausted, to lay atop its bulbous mainbody. The tail-thorax that held up its freshly-hollowed head slowly slackened and then pitched over backwards.

Skleex took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she picked herself up gingerly, and hopped onto the rooftop edge once more. She filled her respiratory tract and raised her head to the Skies.

"I AM SKLEEX VRT KRIXIT FTHEK SKRIKRISSSK, FIRST OF HER ALLKIN TO SLAY THE SKY-MONSTERS! FEAR ME, FOR I HAVE TASTED THE FLESH OF THE TAKERS, AND BEFORE I DIE I WILL GROW FAT ON THEIR-"

Her triumphant bellow was cut short by a vast, looming shadow.

->>>-

Big things shouldn't be that fast.

I know that's bullshit, because lots of large animals from Earth are fast. I just don't run into a lot of bears or tigers in my day to day at home, you know? Now that I live on a space station I basically just see the odd bird, cat, or mouse.

Our vehicles are typically fast too, and most of them by design are at least large enough to completely enclose one or more people.

It still didn't seem right how quickly that big bastard was able to cross the rooftop and then slap me back across it.

The part of my brain that controlled my lungs wanted to breathe really badly, but my musculoskeletal system was not willing to cooperate. As they squabbled over what I was going to do I emitted a sort of formless, wheezing groan. My spasming diaphragm caused sharp pains around my torso, and I prayed my ribs hadn't been too badly broken. For that matter, I hoped that being backhanded by a reptilian tripod-gorilla hadn't burst any of my organs. My liver is not in prime fighting condition. It's a Pandora's Box of old toxins and questionable dietary choices just waiting to pop like a discoloured death-piñata.

I wasn't sure if I appreciated the hunter taking a minute to mourn its fellow. It was making me feel a little guilty. An impossibly optimistic part of my brain was thankful for the opportunity to keep fighting for survival, but the realist in me figured it just meant I had to writhe around on the ground in agony for a minute before it came over and beat the shit out of me. I wasn't hopeful about the possibility of it finishing me off quickly, either. It did not look happy about me killing its partner.

Despite my mostly-airless state, I wrangled my pain-wracked form into a prostrate position. The spasms were calming down slowly, and I was beginning to be able to draw the very top of a breath again.

I turned my head to where the shredder lay, just a few feet out of my grasp. Then I realized it didn't matter. It was a mangled wreck from tripod hunter #1 hitting it away. The asshole broke my trigger finger when they did it, too, but thankfully the middle finger is still okay. If I die up here, I'm going out telling this entire alien world to fuck off every way that I can.

I wedged an arm underneath my torso and propped myself up. I slowly turned my head towards the big hunter, who I'd just realized had gone quiet. Then I noticed an enormous shadow bleeding across the gravel. I kept looking up, and up, and my brain struggled very hard to process what it was seeing.

I guess my fault line theory was wrong. No earthquakes here, thank goodness.

They still weren't at full capacity, but as I spied the approaching tangle of hooked tentacles and grasping claws my lungs did have enough air in them for me to moan an emphatic "Oh fuuuck."

->>>-

TO BE CONTINUED

->>>-