The Centipede

Finally, everyone who is left has come together in the center of the farm, around the small well. There is a large, black stain on the ground where the bull has been slain, and everyone avoids it. There are more, small stains all around where the smaller demons have been killed. Cleanup will take a while, if they stay here at all.

“Yuki! You’re alright!”

I turn around to see Nono coming out of a smaller hut, two girls in tow, who look very much like her, with the same red hair and large eyes. They walk on either side of her, with a hand in hers. Did I dream of her visit? No, I found the rope beside my bed the next morning. Someone had to be there. Did that someone fake their appearance? How would Appraisal even work on that? So many unknowns… I need to find some records on the magic of this world. They know the skill, so there should be some records, even if it’s likely not about people.

“Are these your sisters?” I ask.

“Yes. Their names are Sophia and Jen They’re much younger than me, so they can’t stay in Atol on their own, but we were already looking for a place where it’s safer. Mom didn’t want to send them away, but seeing what happened today…”

“Nono, I don’t want to go alone!” Sophia whines.

“You’ll be going with your sister. You won’t be alone.”

“But…”

“We’ll talk about this later. See, there’s mom. Will you see if she’s alright?”

The sisters nod and run over to their mother, who Sergeant Hani supports as she walks closer. I nod at the sergeant, and she acknowledges me. Still, there aren’t a lot of people left. I see seven guards, including the sergeant, and six people, who are likely of the Lylt family. Nono looks at me, her eyes hard.

“Charles went with my uncle and aunt to push the demons back around the animals. I tried to get my sisters to safety at least. I don’t know where everyone else is.”

“Where are the animals?” Safrim asks.

“They are—”

A loud noise like a truck crashing through a forest interrupts Nono and the ground beneath our feet is shaking. What in the hell… I look around when Karina shouts something and points to the east sky.

“So that’s how they broke through the frontlines…” Safrim whispers.

The shadow is taller than a horse and broader than it too. It rolls forward like a huge ball, and then suddenly unravels to show countless legs. It’s a centipede. A goddamn centipede as tall as a skyscraper, fuming with dark shadow vapour just as the bull had.

Fuck.

“Another one?” I yell. “Didn’t we have enough?”

“I expected something else to show up,” Safrim replies. “When they have to break through our lines, they bring the big ones, who are armoured and can crush our defenses. They don’t seem to be able to make many of these, otherwise we’d be completely overrun, but when they show up, it’s always carnage…”

He turns around to the remaining guards, who look at him, ready to receive orders.

“Where’s your captain?” he asks.

“He died in the initial assault,” Sergeant Hani answers. “I’m the highest officer present.”

“Alright. Then you lead those people away from here, westwards, towards the hills. Bring them away as far as they can. You know the nearest garrison? Good. Inform them and tell them to close the frontline again along the river that flows by it.”

“We are giving up on the farm after all?” Karina asks.

“There is no way we can defeat this thing. We can only delay it until they can construct new defenses.”

To her credit, Sergeant Hani doesn’t dispute the orders. Quickly and orderly, she assigns the guards to the farmers and they file out. Nono watches her family leave with tears in her eyes. Behind us, the centipede stabs one of its legs into a barn.

“Charles and my relatives are still over there!” Nono grabs my arm.

“I don’t know if I can do this again,” I say. “I don’t know how I did it in the first place.”

“We have to delay the monstrosity, any way possible,” Safrim says. “Everyone who cannot help needs to evacuate.”

He looks specifically at Nono and Poru, as they look ill-fitted to stand against the centipede, but they don’t budge. Right. That’s what we need to do: Work together.

“Safrim, tell us what to do,” I say.

“We’ve encountered such an enemy before. They—”

The centipede curls around another building and we hear brick and mortar grind against each other as it slowly constricts itself. Safrim waves for us to follow him and we run and duck behind a treeline.

“These centipedes are not sent to kill. They are sent to destroy buildings. Infrastructure. Defenses. It can curl up and roll like a large cannon ball, use its legs and tail to bring down walls, like it's doing with the farm now. I told you the demons take over land by making it unusable and senseless for the people to return. Without the farm and with burned fields, the family won’t be able to work, even if they survive.”

“So the centipede will crush all these buildings?”

“If we don’t stop it,” Safrim says.

“But that also means it won’t leave as long as there are still buildings here, right?”

“Right. But at the rate it’s tearing through these, it won’t be long.”

“Let me try something.”

I summon all the courage I can muster and emerge from the treeline. The centipede seems to ignore us, but I still feel watched. With more confidence than I feel, I put my hands on the rubble of a low wall.

“Appraisal.”

[Stone Wall]
Type: Wall
Attributes: Earth
Durability: 0/30
Age: 17 years

“Manipulate durability +10.”

[Confirmed. Durability 10.]

In front of my eyes, the stones disappear from the world, only to reappear as a wall—a dilapidated wall, but a wall.

Yes. Yes!

I yelp in shock as I feel a hand on my arm. It’s Safrim, staring at me like I just worked a miracle. Maybe I did. It certainly feels like it.

“What did you do?”

“I’ll explain it to you later. You find a way to stop this thing and I’ll keep it here by giving it an endless supply of things to crush.”

“Right, right… Ah, shit. Right. Karina! You stay with Yuki. Everyone else is with me.”

Karina jumps to my side like a bodyguard, clothes already torn and torched, but eyes bright like on the first day. On her shoulder, Gale hisses fiercely. The others follow Safrim out of sight.

“So we go rebuild some buildings?” Karina asks.

“That’s the idea. I’m not sure if it’ll work.”

“Only one way to find out.”