Strange Feeling

The landscape was a dried up waste as usual. The dirt sail rocks with every bump and dip in the terrain, as usual. I open my eyes with annoyance not able to focus, I have been doing this for awhile now so I thought I might have gotten used to the rocking of the ship but apparently not. I look out into the landscape unable to shake a feeling of, I am not sure what exactly.

“Something seems off.”, I mutter to myself.

“Well well well, look who’s finally awake.”, Alton chuckles when he notices I am no longer meditating.

“We both know that’s not what I was doing.”, I state with annoyance as I glare at the hill of a man while crossing my arms.

“You gotta lighten up!”, The pilot bellows out humorously, “You don’t see me getting upset when people crack jokes at me.”

“That’s rich coming from someone who goes into a destructive temper tantrum.”, I dryly retort.

The burly man begins to laugh, “Ha ha! I’ve heard that one before, but it still gets a chuckle out of me.” He turns the wheel of the sail with a large smile, still chuckling to himself. A moment of silence falls between us until Alton asks me something with a much more serious tone, “So did you sense anything?”

I look out to the general direction I had looked previously as I speak, “Not while I was focusing.”, I look back at the large pilot before continuing, “But I have this feeling something’s off.” Alton seems to give me a condescending glare, I doubt myself because he might think I am too inexperienced, maybe he does like basically everyone else.

“How long have you been having this feeling?”, He inquires with a raised brow and in a serious tone, “And where is this thing that seems off?” It appears he is taking my thoughts seriously unlike most of the others.

“Not long.”, I answer as I raise an arm and point where I am looking, “But it seems to be in that direction.” I lower my arm and look at Alton, unsure if he is merely humoring me with his question. Before I can fall into a spiral of self doubt, he rapidly turns the dirt sail the direction I was pointing.

“Since we were sent out to scout, we gotta make sure nothing’s wrong.”, Alton laughs cheerily as he steadies the small craft. “What’re you smilin’ about?”, He asks me. I put a hand over my face, I was not even aware I was smiling but he was right.

“Nothing.”, I quickly mutter as I return my face to a more neutral expression. I walk around the small deck of the vessel as I look around the area trying to figure out where and what exactly my gut feeling was indicating. I continue to scan our surroundings as Alton slowed down the sail to a halt. Once the dirt sail is at a stand still, Alton begins to head off the vehicle.

“Are we just gonna leave the dirt sail unprotected?”, I ask Alton with a note of concern.

“No one’s gonna take it.”, Alton replies nonchalantly as he spins a small key ring around one of his fingers. With that reassurance, I quickly follow the man off the vessel. “So where we headed exactly?”, He asks as he turns to face me. “It’s not like I know where we’re headed.”, The large man adds with a laugh. I merely groan before he replies with a grin as he raises his arms putting them behind his head as if he was relaxing in a chair, “Now don’t be like that.” I close my eyes and take a deep breath, attempting to focus once again. Without the vehicle’s constant movement focusing is far easier, taking only a moment before I figure out where the odd feeling is coming from.

“I’m not sure what this is.”, I open my eyes with a loss for words.

“You’re not sure...”, Alton trails off as he seems to become lost in thought, his chin resting in his fingers. Before I can reply he continues, “Can you describe it?”.

“I can try.”, I answer and begin to wrack my brain. Before I can put thought to words, Alton begins to laugh at me. “What’s so funny!?”, I yell as I open my eyes to look at him.

“I’m sorry.”, Alton says as he collects himself. “Your face just, looked even more contorted than a dead tree.”, He states as if it is a normal thing to say.

“Jerk.”, I mutter as I glare at him in annoyance and I collect myself again. “I’m sensing something odd this way.”, I say after calming down as I walk southeast of the vessel. “It feels like a, pulse maybe?”, I add.

“A pulse?”, Alton asks as he follows behind me.

We quickly reach where the feeling seemed to be generating. In sight is a machine that I cannot figure out what it does and four men around it, one of them wearing armor of a mishmash of metals.

“Well hello there!”, The metal clad man says. “Now I think you should give us your stuff before bad things happen.”, he says to us in a rather sinister tone with a grin on his face that was clearly meant to give us chills down our spines. Without a word, Alton draws his large club off his back as he walks up to the armored man. “A fight is it huh?”, The thug continues, a hint of fear entering his voice. With one rapid fluid motion Alton swings his weapon, making contact with the thug’s head. Due to the strength and speed of his strike as well as the weight of the weapon, Alton’s blow sends the metal clad man’s head flying from his neck. Even so used to seeing death and dying beings, because of the gruesomeness and brutality of that attack I still nearly throw up. The head of the small group’s leader lands in one of their hands. They begin to scream in horror and run away, dropping the dead man’s head to the ground.

“Figures.”, Alton mutters flatly as he puts his club away once again. Before he continues speaking he turns to face me, “Now that that’s done.”, He points at the strange contraption behind the dead man’s corpse,“We should deal with whatever that is.” I nod my head and run over to the device. I look over the strange technology and notice a circular line moving from the center of the, thing. I put a finger to the dot in the center and, nothing. Although my hand did not go through, so it is a solid object and not made of water I suppose. I look at the lower sticking out portion, those looked similar to what the engineers on the colony ship work with. I tentatively put a finger on one of the small squares, pushing it into the metal box holding them in place. Once again, nothing happens. “What’re you doing!?”, Alton’s angry voice breaks my train of thought, “Just stab it if you don’t know what it does!” I look at him in surprise before I grab hold of my spear and take a step back, readying myself.

I stab the device repeatedly until it makes a strange sound that I could only assume means I successfully stopped it.

“Well that’s that I guess.”, I sigh in relief as I put my spear away. Before either of us can say anything we hear a loud rumbling coming from below us.

“Get to the ship!”, Alton grabs my arm as he yells and starts running. I take a look back as we are running back to the dirt sail to see a building sized wyrm rise up from the ground and consume both the broken machine and the corpse. “Look forward, you’ll move faster.”, Alton grunts, basically giving me an order. I turn my head forward again and pick up the pace to try to keep up with the much more athletic man sprinting towards the dirt sail. The sound of the wyrm seems to not be getting any quieter as if it was chasing us until we were almost to the dirt sail again.

“Come on!”, Alton hurriedly yells as he sprints up the ramp. As I finally run up the ramp I see that Alton has already started the sail so we can leave as fast as possible. “That thing is definitely burrowing. No idea where it is now so we gotta be even more careful.”, Alton says, clearly unable to hide his fear. If he was unable to hide his fear, this thing was truly terrifying. Unsurprising since it could probably destroy our colony ship.

After a few minutes, the sun now starting to set, the vessel flips as I could only assume the colossal wyrm rises from the ground. As I fly through the air the last thing I hear is Alton yelling, “Ingrid!”