Croak, croak, croak!
Rasp jerked awake, pulling a mouthful of wet, dingy air into his lungs with gasp. His face was unbearably hot, slick with sweat and a slippery substance he couldn’t identify. The heat, however, was only skin deep, unable to penetrate the flesh underneath. Rasp’s bones felt ice cold. A barrage of competing emotions slammed into him at once — pain, confusion, panic…hunger? The growing pang in his empty gut only added to his already overwhelming sense of confusion.
A rush of cool wind stung Rasp’s face as Father’s wings beat the air in front of him, screeching for his son to get his ass in motion.
Rasp rolled just as a blurred object struck the ground where he’d been a split second before, tearing open the spongy soil in a splatter of wet muck and moss. Rasp scrambled to his hands and knees, prepared to dart forward when some six sense flashed like a green-blue beacon within his head, warning him to remain still. Another blurred object struck down in front of him, knocking Father from the air.
He should have been stricken with terror and yet Rasp couldn’t shake the sudden, inexplicable urge to lunge forward and bite whatever was trying to skewer him. You cannot eat the monster! his thoughts screamed, snapping him from his hunger-induced trance. Grab Dad and go!
Rasp seized the squawking raven and tucked him safely under one arm, hissing to keep quiet. By some miracle Father listened and the pair fell eerily still as the beast moved in the dark around them. Crouched low to the ground, stock-still and with his heartbeat pounding in his ears, Rasp was too focused on passing for a statue to notice the squirming feeling in the back of his head had not only returned, but was growing. The sensation built, and built, and built, until it burst. Warmth lanced down Rasp’s spine and flooded his cold bones. The warmth spread into his flesh, through muscle, sinew, hair, and beyond. Rasp gasped as the alien sensation took hold. His skin felt stretched, as if his tactile senses extended beyond their physical limitations.
The monster moved around him. He felt its armored body shift overhead, segmented joints creaking and clicking against one another like iron armor. The green warning lights returned, flooding Rasp’s muddled vision. The flashes melded with his newfound sense of touch and, together, formed a mental image that caused his stomach to drop.
His magical signature burned yellow, huddled so tiny and small beneath a giant, shifting green beast. Even in his mind’s eye, the beast was barely a blurred shape. Taking a deep breath, Rasp closed his eyes and focused on what he could feel. His magic bloomed across its body, spreading along its smooth, armored hide. The nameless one was long, nearly six meters in length, with a shell-like segmented body and more barbed legs than he could count. His magic reached the bulbous head, inspecting a pair of mandibles large enough to cut a giant in half, when a sudden flash of green warned him that it was time to move.
“Fly!” Rasp tossed Father into the air and then threw his own body to the side, managing to avoid the barbed leg that struck at him, only to be caught by another. Pain seared through Rasp’s left flank as the curved barbs dug into his flesh. His six sense dissipated, leaving him blind once more, as pain and panic set in. Rasp thrashed, tearing away from the monster’s spiny leg. He got only a few steps away before a second appendage pinned him.
He struggled, screaming, as more legs curled around him. They drew tighter, steadily crushing the life from his struggling body. No matter how he flailed and thrashed, Rasp couldn’t get free. His skin was sticky with blood as each attempt drove the barbed spines deeper. Magic pooled in his hands. Panicked and losing blood, his mind was suddenly void of all spells, as though the last five months of training was being sapped out of him through a straw.
A coolness spread from his chest, soothing the burn as it slithered and slunk up his outstretched arms and into his hands. Dark magic leapt forth from his open palms and dispersed into the air. Rasp flinched at the horrific screech that followed. The monster pinning him to the ground shifted, its legs trembling as it struggled to fight off its invisible attacker. The pull of magic changed. The ice in Rasp’s veins crackled and popped as the darkness fed, draining the magic of the would-be hunter into itself and, by extension, its horrified human vessel. Rasp’s frozen limbs ached as unfamiliar magic pooled within his bones.
“No magic, baby brother!” June’s voice cut through the deafening clamor a split second before her lithe shape sprang from the surrounding shadows. “Cut it off!”
Rasp severed his magic just as a spray of hot, acidic blood splattered over his face. He sputtered, coughing up mouthfuls of sour bile as one of the humongous legs pinning him down gave way. Rasp saw a flash of steel amidst the glowing, green gloom before more blood rained over him. The beast squealed in agony as its gigantean body shifted, legs clicking and creaking as they pulled away to escape the wrath of June’s blade. She drove it back, shouting every Stoneclaw obscenity known to man.
“Come on, up, up, up!” Faris was suddenly alongside him, grabbing Rasp under the arm and yanking him to his feet. Rasp took a single, shaky step and nearly fell on his face. The soft ground below him was slick with pools of warm blood.
“You two better move it!” June warned. “I can’t hold this thing by myself much longer.”
Rasp latched onto Faris’s arm for dear life as the faun hauled him across the upturned arena. Faris refused to slow his breakneck pace to accommodate Rasp’s numb legs. Rasp was dragged along by the arm instead, tripping and stumbling on what felt like every rock and exposed root system along the way, impeding their swift escape.
“Come on, Rasp,” Faris pleaded, trying to lift him higher. “You’ve got to run.”
To his credit, Rasp tried. But his legs were the equivalent of soggy noodles and could barely manage a crawl, much less a run. Loud hoof steps thundered against the upturned ground as another member of the team darted out from hiding to assist them. Hop hooked his arm under Rasp’s shoulder and lifted. So far, in fact, Rasp’s feet dangled above the dirt, his body suspended between the two fauns who surged forward at a speed more likely to assure their survival.
It was only once they were behind the safety of cover that Rasp was set down onto his own wobbly feet again. He might have collapsed had it not been for Faris, who seized him around the middle in what might have been a well-intended hug. That or he was trying to kill Rasp in the most slow, yet still painful, way possible.
“I thought you were dead,” Faris said.
“Love me less.” Rasp’s voice came out sounding more like a croak than its usual overly loud self. As much as he appreciated the opportunity to keep living, he couldn’t help but feel guilty about leaving his sister, as mad as she was, on the battlefield all by her lonesome. He desperately tapped Faris’s shoulder, begging to be let go.
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Faris seemed reluctant to release him, but did so anyway. He remained uncomfortably close, as if concerned he had to be within arm’s reach in the unlikely event Rasp wanted to have a second go at death. “You can’t go back out there.”
It was as if Faris had read his damn mind. “June’s out there battling it by herself.”
“For what it’s worth, she appears to be enjoying herself,” Hop contributed. “Your sword piles came in handy. As soon as she loses one, she simply picks up another.”
“Rasp, seriously, you can’t go back out there,” Faris said again, as though he feared his best friend hadn’t heard the first time. “We were wrong to try to use magic against it. The nameless one uses a witch’s magic as a connection, a way to put them into a trance as it feeds. How you managed to fight its enchantment off on your own is beyond me.”
“Because he didn’t do it on his own,” Hop said. His voice was marked with worry. It was impossible to know whether it was directed at the monster or Rasp. “He’s carrying a parasitic entity that also feeds on magic. The hunter unwittingly became the hunted the moment it tried to leech his power.”
Score one for being magically cursed. Unfortunately, whatever magic the dark entity had managed to siphon from the beast wasn’t enough. The dark power writhing beneath Rasp’s veins was ravenous for more. Rasp raised his hand and wiped the saliva from his panting mouth, hoping the others wouldn’t point out the fact that he was literally drooling with hunger. “So we’re just going to stand here talking instead? What do we do? Better yet, where’s Whisper?”
“Better be on their mucking way,” Faris said.
Hop added, dejectedly, “I’m not sure how useful Whisper’s going to be if they can’t use their magic.”
In other words, they were fucked. Great. Rasp searched the area around him for something to collapse against. His fingers brushed against pitted stone and, after confirming the object was sturdy enough to bear his weight, leaned against it. Unsummoned, the squiggly sensational returned. It moved down his neck, across his arms, and spread into the carved rock. Rasp tilted his head, squinting upwards as his spreading magic painted a mental picture of a towering stone column.
He didn’t want to move, but felt compelled to simply for curiosity’s sake. Using his hands to guide him, Rasp navigated to the edge of the column and peeked out around it. From there it wasn’t difficult to locate the monster. Rasp’s magic followed the vibrations in the ground to the source of the commotion. He felt familiar, barbed legs and moved upwards, across the beast’s smooth hide.
Once more, his sixth sense filled in the gaps, displaying a ghostly imprint of an image that he knew he was not actually seeing. No matter how many times he blinked, however, the image was still there each time he opened his eyes. “Faris,” he said, feeling — for a lack of better word — squiggly both inside and out. “There’s something wrong with my eyes.”
“No shit,” Faris muttered. “Look, I know you just came to, but I need you to listen. You have to stay here. Magic is useless against this thing. It’s not a drake, like we thought. It’s a—”
Rasp squinted, realizing he could make out a faint giant, yet familiar, shape. “Looks like a centipede.”
“Scolopendra,” Faris corrected without thinking. “Same idea, basically. Except it’s much, much bigger and…” His voice trailed for a moment as his thoughts caught up to his mouth. “How do you know what it looks like?”
Rasp made a vague flailing motion with his fingertips. “I’m not seeing it with my eyes. I feel it with my magic, like feel-it-feel-it. Every movement of its body feels it’s a part of my own. It’s like aura vision, but clearer. I could count the legs on the legs on the centipede if I wanted to.”
“You’re seeing without seeing?”
“I don’t know, Dingle. My senses and my magic have blended together here.” Rasp placed a finger against his temple. “It’s all mishy-mashy. Working together to create an image in my brain.”
Unfortunately, this statement made about as much sense out loud as it had in his head. Gods, whatever trance the beast had put him in had certainly done a number on him.
To his credit, Faris actually stopped and seemed to be considering the insanity spewing from Rasp’s mouth. He asked, “Can you see me?”
Rasp turned and willed his magic in Faris’s direction. “Huh. I’m not getting anything from you. But it worked with the column.”
“The column is covered in bioluminescent algae,” Hop noted, speaking in that slow tone of voice that implied he was already forming a hypothesis. “Just like the scolopendra.”
Rasp nodded along despite having no idea what either of his friends were getting at. He could hear the ruckus June was making and the old Stoneclaw urge to take up arms and join the fray was growing impossible to ignore.
“Can you see the ground?” Faris asked. “Walls? Literally anything else?”
Rasp narrowed his eyes as his gaze swept across the strange green, glowing alien-scape around him. “Vaguely, I think.”
“The algae!” For whatever reason, Hop felt it was necessary to shout his findings.
“Not so loud,” Faris hissed.
“You hit the monster with a glow spell right before you went under,” Hop continued as the former trepidation bled from his voice. For the first in weeks, he sounded damn near hopeful. “I think you’re still connected to the algae. Whatever the algae touches, you touch too. It must have combined with your aura vision. Your senses are working together, just like we practiced.”
Damn. And here Rasp thought Hop was going to come up with something logical. The poor artificer had finally, truly lost his remaining marbles. “Sorry, Hop. I don’t think that’s a thing.”
“It’s going to have to be a thing.” Faris pressed a blade into Rasp’s hand. “The only way to take this thing out is piece by piece. June and I have been hacking legs off left and right. It’ll bleed out a lot faster if there are four of us working it from all sides.”
“Four?” The hope in Hop’s voice immediately vanished. “I can’t wield a blade. I’ve only ever seen combat from the sidelines.”
“Just pretend the sword’s a scalpel,” Rasp offered helpfully. “And the monster’s legs are teeth and you’re just there to remove them, one by one.”
“That’s not how dentistry works, Rasp.”
“You could always be the bait,” Faris said. “It’s probably not too keen to snack on Rasp now that it knows he bites back. You’ve got magic, don’t you?”
“Hop would make an irresistible little snack,” Rasp agreed.
He may not have been able to see Faris nodding, but Rasp was one hundred percent certain the faun was doing so, even if he wasn’t aware of it himself. “Very.”
Hop begrudgingly accepted the offer to lop off legs with a weak whimper. “Is this really our plan, Faris? Hack it to death?”
“It feeds on magic. There’s not much else we can do.”
“We could run,” Hop pointed out.
Faris proceeded to tell Hop all the many reasons why running wouldn’t work. Rasp left him to it. There were other, better things he should have been doing anyway. A burning warmth pulsed from within his chest, banishing the lingering chill as the rush of battle flooded his veins. He was going to get to fight something? Without magic? It was everything he’d ever wanted, except the part where he died a horrific death at the end.
Rasp switched the blade to his dominant hand and reached for Faris, offering a final goodbye. “In case I don’t live to tell you, I’m glad to have you as my friend and not my son.”
“What?”
“You were a terrible son!” Rasp charged out across the arena with his alien senses pulsing within his head. He couldn’t see the ground, but each pulse and tremble beneath his feet painted a mental landscape that he dared not question. The centipede pulsed like a red hot beacon at its center.