Mindless Hunger

Before the creature could get more than its first leg out of the pool of shadow, Warden Dart bellowed, “Illuminate lenses!”

On command, Vara and Bertran simultaneously blasted the exposed leg with scintillating ochre blasts, searing the leg and melting the deep shadow away. Trick wasn’t sure what happened next. He saw it but he didn’t really understand it. As the shadow shrank it seemed to distort and transform into a shape that Trick recognized. A creature with six of those bizarre legs and a body that was nothing but mouth popped out of the shadow like it had been kicked, scuttling towards their position in a stomach churning fashion.

At a guess, Trick figured it was the size of the average elephant. It did not require any guess to realize it was much, much faster than the average elephant. He figured that out by the way the creature covered the remaining distance between them in two or three seconds, its legs wiggling and skittering in a disgusting fashion. It looked a bit like the biggest beetle Trick had ever seen. Except its body had no shell. And its body was a mouth. A disturbingly human mouth, full of flat, biting, gnashing teeth and grinding, smashing molars.

In spite of the fact that he’d seen one of these creatures in statue form Trick still found himself shocked into total inaction by the sight of the thing. Thankfully, Dart and Toff were not as horrified. As soon as the creature’s body was fully visible their lightspears shot forward and slammed into the side of its torso. Then the gleaming shafts widened and lengthened, slamming into the ground behind them.

The creature skidded to a stop as fast as possible. Dashing elephants did not stop on a dime and that proved to be another similarity the beetle mouth shared with pachyderms. So it wound up sliding forward and getting badly impaled on the light spears. It wasn’t clear whether that actually hurt it or not, given that the monster just backed itself up without any apparent pain. However, that gave Vara and Bertran enough time to fire a second, much longer blast at the creature’s bloated torso.

This time the creature felt it.

When a mouth that large screamed in pain it was not a quiet thing. At least that was how Trick interpreted the noise the monster made, a rumbling bellow that reminded him of a thousand big rig trucks all starting their engines at once. It rattled his teeth and got his brain working again. “Dart, do you have the firepower to take that thing down? Or do you want me to hit it?”

The warden had recalled his light spear and was frantically changing out the reservoir crystal. “Not yet,” he replied. “The lenses have one more big hit in them. Then you strike while they are replacing their reservoirs.”

Classic shooter tactics. “Got it.”

It was a really good plan, which made it pretty disappointing when the creature gathered all six of its legs under it and casually jumped over them. It landed in a fashion closer to a water spider than an elephant, skating over the ground on pools of shadow. “Never mind,” Dart bellowed, “hit it now!”

Trick pivoted as quickly as he could, changing his grip on the sword and chopping the weapon towards the monster with authority. The creature seemed to see the attack coming because it threw its two closest arms up in a cross guard. The greyish chiton covering its limbs flashed with strange, swirling patterns. After that, nothing happened.

A glance confirmed his sword blade was glowing, as it usually did when it was active, and the chain between his channeler’s bracelet and his grounding ring still glowed along most of its length. The weapon was working correctly, the beast had just defended against it somehow. “You’re not really working as well as I’d hoped you would today,” Trick told it. “Let’s try it again, shall we?”

Ever since he’d discovered his sword was a magic, distance cutting weapon Trick had been coming up with things he wanted to try. When Sari told him it used some kind of mystical superlumi they couldn’t replace he’d hesitated. He didn’t want to waste however much Imperial lumi he had. However now he had the opportunity to experiment with a clear conscience on a target he wasn’t likely to miss.

So he adjusted his grip on the hilt slightly, stepped forward and thrust the weapon straight forward. The blade pulsed with light a second time. The creature’s legs on one side folded down, rolling its body away from the attack. For a moment it wasn’t clear if Trick had hit it or not, then small bits of gravel and inky blackness began to trickle out from the beast’s front and side so he guessed he’d at least nicked it a bit.

Further experiments were postponed when the monster lunged towards him.

Trick was too beaten up already to find the strength to jump backwards so when he tried he wound up just staggering a couple steps in reverse. It was enough that Norin and Chestin got in front of him, gauntlets flashing, in time to block the attack. A four taloned claw the size of a tire bounced off their violet shields. They visibly flickered under the attack.

A second claw came around and, instead of raking its talons across the shields, it pressed the flat of its palm against them. The swirling patterns appeared on the limb once more and the shields dimmed alarmingly. Two more limbs folded themselves into a diamond shaped shield, dripping with dusky gestalt lumi that absorbed blasts coming from the group’s lensmen.

Sari reached out with her staff and jabbed the claw draining the shield. There was a sizzling sound, a smell like desert sand, then the creature pulled the leaching limb back. Or it tried to. Dart’s light spear thrust through the thing’s wrist joint, tearing the claw most of the way off and leaving it dangling from a small strip of muscle or stone. Whatever it was the thing was made of.

“Does that thing have any kind of weak point?” Trick asked.

“It’s body,” Bertran said, loading a new crimson reservoir into his lens. “If you can get past the arms into the bottom half of its body you might hit the reservoir of lumi it’s consumed and it’ll tear itself apart.”

He threw a glance at the huge creature, less than fifty feet away, and said, “It’s a little close for that now.”

“No, he means that literally, not an explosion,” Sari said. “A bottomless shadow is a composite being. The arms mindlessly drain lumi from any place they can find it, the shadow’s mouth holds it. The mouths might be intelligent but they can’t control the arms.”

“That’s…” For a moment Trick’s brain whirled, trying to figure out who would come up with such a bizarre way to do… anything. But it wasn’t important at the moment. “Chestin, use your gauntlet to give me a boost!”

“What?!” Sari demanded.

“Like you did with the snake in the pit earlier! Push straight forward!”

Sari kept protesting but Chestin switched his ward off without asking questions, motioning for Trick to jump. He double checked his grip then leapt. Chestin matched his timing impeccably, creating a new shield under his feet, perfectly angled to catch him and throw him forward at a thirty degree angle. Trick sailed in a wobbling parabola under the creature’s main body. As soon as he reached the center he slashed at it, ripping its belly open from one end to another.

The last thing he heard before he hit the ground was the creature screaming in pain. Then his body hit the sand. For a moment he felt like all the air was being pressed out of his body. Then he didn’t feel anything at all.