"We were closer than I thought" Just days ago Gan had noticed the lack of wildlife around them. He and his little sister had been traveling slow and he knew that was dangerous. But even after trying his best to pick up the pace, Roana was still too little and it was difficult to go any faster. The silence of the wild was the first sign of the spreading. First there would be no birds, then wild game would disappear, then even the insects would vanish. All of these creatures could sense it, and so they left. Just like the humans all other life ran from the spreading with abandon. Leaving the wilderness empty, and that was only days before it would arrive. Only a small and late warning before the very first monsterling would appear.

Gan realized now that it was less than a day's travel before the threshold, his camp had been only a day ahead of the spreading. As the howl of a terrible thing continued for an extended time in the distance Gan let his failure wash over him once again. Sleeping so close to the spreading was unthinkable, to be so unguarded while nightmares dwelled at the borders of your camp was the zenith of recklessness. Gan realized that if he had continued to fall behind with his sister they may very well have become just another pair of unfortunate souls who couldn't travel fast enough to keep away from the tower.

His Father had never let their family fall so far behind and into danger except for once. On purpose, before Roana was born. He had said at the time. "Gan you need to see with your own eyes what we are running from." And while his mother waited, traveling ahead with a caravan, Gan and his father had waited two Weaks in the wild living for the first time in Gan's life in one place. Preparing for the arrival of the spreading. What Gan had seen then, fallen into pit traps and caught in snares while his father took their life with a long spear had followed him in his dreams every night. And left him with no doubt that running was the only choice.

The irony of of life had other plans however, and now He was doing the one thing he swore never to do on those hard days with his father, he was walking into the den of evil. The howling stopped as Gan exited the forest into a clearing of wildflowers and clover, and a Creature spotted him from a small hill a hundred yards away. Gan spotted the monster at the same time, and for a brief moment the two looked at each other with scrutinizing eyes.

"An Eater." Gan bemoaned. The name given by the generations past to the most common beast along the spreading border. A creature unnatural in every way, its four legs long and spindly like sticks that poked out of a fat and gnarled torso, the torso which was wrinkled with thick and heavy looking flaps of skin was about the size of a human in length and twice as thick. The legs which shouldn't be able to hold the weight of the thing without breaking in two were tall enough that the whole thing was almost as tall as Gan, and if it had a head it would have been taller. But instead, there was only a neck, a neck that hung down limp like a tail, and was skinny and thin looking, as though a sock merely attached to a breathing creature. And the whole being was bare-skinned. A pale hollow grey fleshy thing, with no eyes as far as Gan could understand and yet it was undeniably looking at him. He could feel its manic gaze crawl across his skin, making him shiver and his hair stand on end.

In the darkening of dusk, The thing looked even more terrible than Gan Remembered, a tall anomaly of breathing flesh that moved with an aura of malice. Before Gan was ready for it, the monster charged down its hill. Those bony legs carrying it fast and with skill that disproved their first impression. Gan clenched his teeth and remembered that his spear was in his hand almost like an afterthought. He grabbed it with two tight fists and held it forward to meet his foe.

When the Eater had gotten close enough it let out another high-pitched howl which sounded like glass being scraped against an iron plate, the noise came from its neck which was now held up into the air and stretched open to reveal a long tunnel of a throat, lined with yellowed and long teeth. The throat seemed to stretch larger and larger as the monster got closer and its howl louder. The gait of its hooves striking the ground a fast-paced drum, and its fat wrinkles flapping like flags in the wind to make a sticky wet sound. Finally, the howl reached a decimal that made Gan flinch from the pain in his ears and the throat had reached the impossible size of 5 feet wide. Now a deep abyss of a hole, large enough to swallow a man and lined with teeth that Gan had seen rend a mature wild doe into shreds like the working of razor blades.

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At ten feet away from him the monster lunged upwards, its needle-like legs able to lift its body into the air much higher than any human could jump. Gan's mind stilled, this was the moment between. The second of empty space that resided after peace and before battle. He had been here before with his Father leading him along, now he was here alone. But the choices remain the same. Flee, fight, or die. Gan hadn't even realized he had dropped his heavy pack from his shoulders, nor that he had bent his knees in preparation, but now they sprung forward as his form rolled on the ground and under the bent legs of the leaping horror. Gan's spear touched the ground first as he held it in both hands ahead of him, its iron tip to his left. Then his ducked head and his back, until he rolled right back onto his feet behind the creature, whose monstrosity of a throat or mouth or whatever it was, had snapped closed on empty air like a bowstring released without an arrow. The great power of its closing spilled wind out with force enough to blow up a dust cloud and made a Loud snap and vibration in the air like the falling of a tree.

Gan spun at the same speed as the monster as they turned back to face each other, and before Gan could thrust his spear, the howling started again this time more intense. But no matter how the beast tried, opening that trap was slow and difficult as the pale skin stretched to its limits and the muscles in its throat stiffened and strained. Gan had just enough time to slice his spear into the torso under the opening mouth. Black pus spewed out as the serrated edge of Gan's spear sawed a wide hole into the Eater. Gan didn't stop and pushed deeper with all his might, the creature's howl sounding louder with every second and its mouth close enough to his face to feel the warm breath of its belly. The Eater's maw expanded large enough to engulf Gan's head, But Gan used his strength to twist the spear and in an instant, the beast's legs gave out underneath it, and its mouth once again popped shut as the strength to hold it open completely left it.

The suddenness of the fall took Gan down with his spear and he struggled to stand back up quickly, his heart pounding in his ears. When he realized the monster was already stiff from death he let out all the air in his lungs. "Eaters don't feel pain," he remembered the lessons with his father. The monster hadn't moved or struggled even with his spear digging in its innards like a macabre shovel, so he hadn't thought he was doing much damage, and while he was pushing with his spear his gaze had been affixed into the abyss of that growing throat, he'd tried but couldn't pull his eyes away from the darkness and teeth so near to his face.

Gan let his blood rush as he kicked the corpse for good measure, it neither budged nor changed, it's fat which was only moments ago jelly-like was now hard as flattened earth, the only thing that budged was Gan's spear that still stuck out of the thing and vibrated from the blow. When he saw it He rolled the monster's heavy body onto its side so he could work to pull the spear out easier, The monster seemed quite fond of his spear however and it refused to be drawn out even by both hands pulling with as much force as his body could make. Gan's face soured when he realized he would have to cut it out with his knife.

The beginning of night with its dark and quiet air, was no friend to Gan as he continued hours later, he was tired and he was hungry but he neither rested nor ate as he marched over the hills and valleys that the terrain had become. Off in the distance, he could hear howls from time to time, or roars, and sometimes what sounded like a loud unending croak. Fortunately, those sounds were all far away, or at least far enough away that Gan never encountered them as he trod a new path towards the only light in the sky, hidden vaguely behind the clouds which blotted out every star. The thoughts of his sister, of his family, and of a world that he somehow no longer felt a part of were cut short when the rain started.