Chapter 59

Creatures Lurk Below

Femira watched as Landryn loped along the sands like a panther. His black armour of nythilium barely hindered his speed. Scuttling after him were—as they’d guessed—a dozen kraglings. It was a testament to how quickly Landryn could move that he easily outpaced them.

This had been their tried and tested tactic. Landryn would draw them out of their nest caves with wind blasts and then lure them back to the waiting ambush on the cliffs. On their first two attempts, they’d tried fighting in the cave but they found that the kraglings moved more erratically in daylight, their vision evidently impaired by the brightness.

None of the kraglings seemed much larger than the ones they’d already faced. The largest was about the size of a horse, the smallest being no bigger than a dog. No kragal then. As if in response to her thought; a deep rumbling sound echoed from the other side of the beach, the noises that followed sounded like a waterfall; thunderous and crashing.

Landryn cleared a large split boulder—the first marker on the beach. Femira raised her hand and three of her stonespears rose to her command. She focused her attention on the kraglings closest to him and waited for them to enter her range. She shut out the deafening cracking sounds. The smaller kraglings entered the periphery of her reach first. She targeted one and shot the three stonespears in quick succession. The first struck, exploding in a cloud of debris against its blue carapace. The second smashed against it immediately after staggering the creature’s movement. She deftly adjusted the trajectory of the third, she hadn’t expected the first two to cripple it. The third stonespear landed with a satisfying crunch.

She immediately shifted her focus, raising another three and targeting another. The eleven remaining were all still chasing after Landryn. He’d made it to the gulley and was turning to face the oncoming creatures. His blade outstretched before him. Gods, he really does look like some fucking hero from the stories when he does that.

Now that the larger ones were in her range, she targeted them first. She maimed two of the larger ones with well placed stonespears to the legs. She didn’t bother wasting effort on killing those, they were as good as dead once they reached Landryn and Drad. Her objective was to maim the bigger ones, if possible, but primarily to draw as much attention as possible. Already a cluster of kraglings were splitting, those following up behind shifting direction towards Femira and Selyn’s position on the cliffs. They weren’t very intelligent creatures. Rather than follow Landryn’s route up the gully they’d attempt to climb the cliff directly.

Atop the cliff, she and Selyn had an excellent vantage point to assess the progress of the battle. Landryn and Drad were engaging with the first kraglings to attempt climbing the crevice after him. They leaned on their tried and tested tactic; Landryn occupying attention with glancing blows and staying in the kragling’s field of vision, while Drad struck against the weak points with his pike. Selyn surged into action as more of the creatures hastened towards Landryn and Drad. A thick stream of water barrelled out from the shoreline, it burst up from the surf like a river and rushed towards the approaching kraglings. Four of the monsters were swept up in her torrent. She used her hands to guide the surging waters in an arc, a twisting whirlpool in the middle of the beach.

Femira concentrated on her own tasks. The three remaining kraglings not caught up in Selyn’s whirlpool or facing off against Landryn were attempting to climb the cliff face below her. She grinned as one made an impressive leap, digging its enormous claws into the rockface and using its many legs to scuttle up the cliff. She reached out with her edir. She felt the vibrations of the cliff face. She could sense when kragling’s claws dug into it. She sucked on the rock, pulling as much into her as she could in a single draw. The kragling made a hissing sound as it crashed back against the rocks below, landing on its back. Femira followed up with volleying three of her stonespears on its exposed underside, tearing the creature apart.

This is too easy.

Just as she was about to repeat the same tactic for the second kragling, the entire ground shook. Bursting out from the mouth of the cave was a titan—A moving mountain of blue and red carapace. Femira felt her jaw go slack at the sight of it. Spines along its outer shell jutting upwards like spired towers. Its colossal foreclaws were as big as fishing dinghies. Its six legs were wider than the biggest tree trunks she’d ever seen. They groaned and strained under the weight of its enormous carapace body. It shambled towards them, each leg stomping down with such incredible weight that it sent tremors reverberating across the beach.

The priests in the temples had always squawked about primordial titans. They’d been described as behemoth monsters large enough to destroy entire cities in a rampage. Young Femira had listened to the ramblings of the priests when they would hand out food to the streetdogs like her. Femira had never believed in their gods or their primordials but at that moment she could think of no other way to describe this creature. The cliff that she and Selyn were perched on was easily a hundred and fifty feet high, and this creature easily came up to half of that. If ever there was something to be described as a titan, it was this.

Femira worried that with its claws fully extended it might reach up as far as them. Then with dawning horror she thought of how high the kraglings could jump, flinging themselves five or six times their height in the air. Could the titan kragal do the same? Could it easily clear the height of the cliff if it wanted to? She dreaded to think of the aftershock that would follow from its landing.

Their strategy for the kragal hinged on her being able to incapacitate the thing. But how could she take down something that big! She glanced over worryingly at Selyn whose face was pale and drawn back in horror. They assumed the kragal would be three or four times the size of standard kragling. Not this! This was a behemoth—a genuine titan from the forgotten ages.

Femira clenched her jaw.

This is what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? This is what she’d trained for.

This is my calling.

The two remaining kraglings climbing the cliff were nearing the top. Femira crumbled the rocks they clung to, sending them plummeting to the rocks below. She rained stonespears down on them, brutally smashing apart their carapace.

Her gaze whipped up to the kragal, it laboured towards them. It had just passed within range of her stonespears. She stole glance down to Landryn and Drad, they’d killed three more and Selyn had released another from her whirlpool for them to tackle.

She fixed her sight on one of the kragal’s monstrous legs. The muscle was blackish brown, wrought like a twisted tree trunk. Parts were shielded in carapace, but like the monster’s smaller counterparts, the joints were exposed flesh. That flesh looked stronger than a tree. She was hesitant to waste one of her steel lances. She wanted to be sure they’d pierce before using them. She still had dozens of stonespears though.

She raised her hand, using it to guide her edir in her mind. Three of the stonespears rose and she shot them forward. They cleared the distance of the beach, and she focused her edir on keeping them on target. Adjusting pressure to counteract the force of the winds. Each of the stonespears hit their intended targets and shattered against the thick twisted flesh.

Fuck. The thing didn’t even notice. She might as well have been throwing pebbles at it for all the damage they did.

Shit, shit. Their entire tactic was dependent on Femira bringing it down.

“Selyn,” Femira shouted, “that thing’s a lot fucking bigger than we thought.”

“There’s no way I can make a whirlpool big enough for that,” the woman replied, her voice edging near panic. “Maybe if we could lead to the water, I could leverage the force of the swell, hold it under a while.”

“That won’t help us kill the fucker though,” Femira said through gritted teeth.

“If it’s as strong a swimmer as the kraglings, I’m not sure any amount of swell would hold that thing back anyway.”

Femira didn’t want to give up. She didn’t want to admit to defeat, but how were they supposed to fight something like this?

“Annali! Selyn!” She heard Landryn’s voice shouting up, “pull back! This foe is beyond us!” There were three remaining kraglings in Selyn’s whirlpool. She had been making circular motions with her arms to maintain it but now she shot her hands forwards and the flow of water straightened, barrelling the kraglings caught in it towards the shoreline.

Drad lanced forward, his pike driving home into the maw of the kragling they’d been facing. They had a clean run back to the horses. Her and Selyn set off, the giant black shape of the kragal still looming in the periphery of her vision.

She heard a thunderous cracking, she turned her head to see the kragal had plucked a boulder the size of a cart from the beach in its pincer. No. it couldn’t be… It flung the boulder towards them as easily as skipping a stone.

“Selyn!” Femira shouted, pointing at it. The woman’s head turned and they both watched as the boulder arced towards them. They tried to gauge where it would land, judging the right moment to dodge out of the way. The kragal’s aim was shockingly accurate, the boulder landing with a deafening crash ahead of them. Had they kept running that boulder would have crushed them. This thing is a lot smarter than its offspring too.

The kragal was already throwing more boulders at them. Femira reached out with her edir and turned one to dust, and then another… and another. She couldn’t keep up, she started flinging her stonespears at the boulders trying to knock them off course.

“Analli!” Selyn pointed and Femira followed her line of direction towards the horses.

No! It was too late but she shot her edir out anyway. It was a panicked, pulsing wave of her edir as she desperately attempted to dissolve the flying boulder before it… she winced. Her chest felt like it was caught in a kragling’s pincer from the pained cries of the horses as the boulder landed. More boulders flew towards them and Femira jumped back into action, firing stonespears to deflect them.

It had felt like only seconds but Landryn was already at her side, Drad following up behind. Both men wore faces of calm determination as if their only means of escape hadn’t just been left in a bloodied heap of broken bones and stone. The kragal had cleared all of the nearby boulders and was now resuming its ominous approach.

“We can’t outrun that, once it’s over the cliffs it’ll be on us,” Landryn determined. It wasn’t entirely true. Landryn could outrun it, the others couldn’t.

“It has to have a weak point,” Drad put in, “I’d make a bet on the maw.”

“You want to get close enough to that thing’s mouth?!” Selyn contested.

“Those cavities in the shell near the mouth,” Landryn pointed out two cavities, “those are the eyes—just like on the kraglings. If we can blind it, it’ll make the job a lot easier.”

“I don’t have the precision to shoot them,” Femira admitted, even if she managed to get her projectile past the front pincers.

“We have to find a way to restrain it,” Landryn said, “if I can climb onto its shell, I can take out the eyes. Those claws will crush us if we get close but if we can somehow hold them down.”

“I’ve an idea,” Femira said, jumping to Landryn’s beat. “But we’re going to need to lead it over towards the arch,” she said, pointing at the arch on the other side of the beach.

“You’re not strong enough to bring down that arch,” Selyn challenged, “nobody is.”

“If we can drive it under the arch though,” Landryn considered, “its movements will be restricted.”

“It’ll be stuck,” Femira grinned, “and we can focus on taking it down.”

“I don’t think it’ll allow itself to get boxed in like that,” Drad said in his dry tone.

“That’s why we’ll have to blind it first,” the rest of the group turned to look at her, she locked eyes with Selyn, “I’m going to need your help with that.”