“Frrr Frrr Frrr Frrr” said Chimpu2 walking along what seemed to the softest soil possible, it was even difficult to find his footing. Kush had sunk almost till his waist with his junk in the hot sand, this and constantly maintaining that the immense amount of mana emission just to keep himself from sinking and possibly never coming back up, he was going to punch his dad when he sees him next time.

He had been on the road the for the past 2 days. Normally this would have not been a problem, but the acid burns from the worm had yet to heal entirely, Kush had set out immediately after getting Chimpu2 for the Barmer. The merchant had warned him of the potential dangers of travelling to Sutlej Oasis. First being, the roaring camel was old so the food and water it could carry was limited. This was because they had stopped training the camels to travel to the large oasis. Secondly; the path, as reported by the people, was treacherous and land was soft, not suitable for walking and third which was the most important one, it was like walking into the den of monsters. After hearing the second reason Kush had half a mind to not go, but…

As per the merchant he should be about another half a day from the oasis, from the description of the town folks the oasis should have been grand sight visible from this distance, but all he saw were, sand dunes, dried and decrepit cacti, tumbleweed, a couple of desert rodents here and there that’s it. The sight didn’t change at all.

After some more time of walking in the sand, Kush noticed something shifting in the sand about 600 m from him. His burns from the worm’s saliva and blood had not yet healed, he needed to be stationary to heal rapidly. But seeing the woman’s condition, he thought its better if he could reach there as soon as possible.

After noticing sand shifting Kush halted his step and strained his burnt biceps to lift up Tanka he was using as a walking aid. Suddenly from all around him plume started forming on sand, like bubbles forming in a bath tub. The surface of the sand started rising as it started taking the shape of a honey comb of sand. Then the surface of sand broke on many place and some large shadows started to jump out from them. With the bronze red color of sand, these beasts were scorpions about three feet in length and breadth and about half a foot high excluding their stinger. Coiled upwards above their heads in a threatening way these tails were ready for hunting. In this case the prey was Kush…

Kush saw the hundreds after hundreds of scorpions lined in front of him, like a sea of insects spread till his sight extended, they were also stacked on top of each other. So densely were they stacked that one would call it a wall if not for the tiny rays of sun shine breaking through time a scorpion stood up its six legs.

Kush was not in mood of fighting, especially these type of monsters. These types of monster were his weakness.

Suddenly “Chitter… Chitter… Chitter… Chitter… Chitter… Chitter…” came hundreds of the chittering sounds from the insects, the deafening noise could drown out grenade explosion nearby.

Seeing the type of foe Kush decided against using Tanka and put it down and brought out his black knife. The twin edged, foot long blunt knife made out of the same black rock as Tanka. Kush knew this was going to be a long fight so he readied himself.

The first scorpion that came at him, straight away went for his eye with its stinger, Kush brought his knife in upwards motion and plunged it in his belly, the blade came out the other way after breaking off from its hard shell and piercing its body. Green blood and goo oozed from over his hands and green gas cloud formed in front of his face, by the time Kush realized something was amiss the potent gas cloud had almost knocked him out but then the sharp pain of the alkaline blood touching his skin made him regain his wits, he quickly brushed off the scorpion from his knife and got ready to face off against the massive wave of scorpion coming his way. His body under his torso was buried in sand and the roaring camel was already dead from the poisonous stings from the scorpions.

Kush obviously didn’t have the time to bring out the defensive garments his parents gave him, so all he could do was fight with all he had. The knife went through one scorpion after another and like a hammer crushed all the shells and pierced all the meat, spilled all the green blood and spewed all the gas. Kush try to protect himself from the scorpion, fending off as many as possible, the fact that he didn’t have to reach down to fend himself was a huge relief at the moment. The scorpions still managed to sting him quite a few times. His high defense meant, first few thousand scorpions which stung him had their stingers broken, unable to poison him. But onslaught of flood of scorpion finally manage to chip away at his sturdy defense and managed to inject poison in him.

He was already bathed in the highly alkaline blood and gore from the worm, he was holding his breath not to inhale the potent gas from the scorpion, the continuous rain of scorpion blood on him chipped away at his skin and muscles one by one and now the scorpions had managed to inject poison in his blood. He had now realized his folly; he should have run away from here the first chance he got. By now he had killed thousands of the scorpion, but it seemed the pressure did not reduce at all, they were not letting up, alkaline blood kept on spilling on his body. The cloak did little to protect as it was burning away too.

After killing a couple thousand more scorpions, gas had filled the entire atmosphere and noise from the critters was becoming unbearable. Kush was battling unconsciousness; the benefit of being stuck in the sand was that due to the natural disposition of his spine and upright legs he was not falling down. Things were grim. Now his entire sight was covered by these poisonous critters, he was unable to open his eyes due to fatigue and swinging his arm was becoming painful. Right then his fight or flight instincts kicked in and Kush threw all caution to air as he started moving in random direction still swinging his knife and Tanka was fixed to his arms by means of the chain. All his actions were now unconscious.

Cut, stab, slash, burn, Cut, stab, slash, burn, Cut, stab, slash, burn…

He continued motions as layer by layer his skin burnt away into carbon di oxide and water vapor, this by now had caused a dent in the number of scorpions, they were confident of their victory but afraid of losing a large portion of their population if this continued. Restlessness in their numbers was visible, the damage now was way past benefit from catching the prey. “Should they continue or should they flee?”

The scorpions had a stratified society where soldier scorpions were tasked with catching the prey, while the worker scorpions would build the nest, guards would protect the eggs and so on. All so they could serve their queen, the one who would birth them all. They never disobeyed the queen, this was a rare event where they would have to let the prey go, else the result might be pyrrhic. Kush didn’t seem to want to go down as easily but they could feel it… he was inching towards death they just need that one big hit, but his massive defense meant none of them were capable of this. Just then there was movement under the sand where Kush was heading, something was lying in wait for him…

As all of this was happening; on an 80 m high dune a few kilometers from Kush sat a person, there was nothing special about his physique. He was a taller than most, but not tall enough to stand out. He too was wearing a black cloak with a hoody which covered his head, but one could still see the shining yellow eyes. The oval eyes deep brown at its periphery, containing an almost spherical yellow iris with another black circle at its center. Just looking into it sent shivers down the spine of a person, animal, insect or any other sentient being. In his hand was a bow fashioned out of the what seemed like black rotten wood standing a whopping 5 ft 10 inches, the dreary figure of the bow was completed by the taut black rope. On the back of the man inside the cloak was a quiver full of arrows. All of them seemed to be exquisitely made by the best craftsmen. Most had spiral helix etched into them and were going upto 150 cm in length, while others seemed to be unique, each crafted with a special purpose in mind.

When the man saw the commotion in the south of him, he wanted to ignore it, he didn’t really have a reason to help another person, nor was he in a mood to do any good today. But then he saw the huge black axe lying on the sand next to where the battle was occurring and saw as it was dragged around by the chain connected to it. The other end of the chain was connected to a now semi cloaked man, with a dagger in hand. The sight surprised the archer, not one of the man was swinging a dagger around to fight off what seemed like an ocean of desert scorpions, but the one where the right arm of the man was missing from just below the shoulder.

The one armed man and the black axe and the recent article in the chronicles about ‘The hero of Bhasmachal’ which described similar person. The man got a wide smile on his face as he brought up his bow to shoulder height, brought out an arrow from his quiver and nocked on the bow.

“Heh, the kid seems to have gone downhill with his training… Well… he’s doesn’t seem so bad” he thought to himself as his smile got wider. He pulled back the string on the bow and let a little bit of mana to slip into the arrow head and let her rip.

Once again the world got to hear the sweet sound of his arrow as it whistled through air. The kinetic energy spreading out from the arrow in waves of concentric circles each bigger than the last, blowing sand away and cutting a path in the sand as it made its way across to Kush and the scorpions.

Kush was not conscious; he was running away from the endless swarm of scorpion hell bent on killing him, but he could instinctually notice the rustling in the sand occurring in front of him. He kept on dragging Tanka by the chain connected to his arm as he moved forward. Things were looking grim for him, his skin and muscles burnt at almost all locations and now the copious quantity of alkaline green blood had started to reach his bones as well, eroding the top most layer of it. Kush’s muscles had started to give in and he was starting to slow down, once the scorpions noticed this, there attacks intensified, though speed of scorpions dying had reduced, they were still dying in oodles. Just then…

It seemed the scorpion queen had decided this couldn’t continue… she suddenly broke the surface of sand right where Kush had noticed some movement below the sand and snapped at him with her long tail. The queen about 3 m high and 4 m by 4 m in dimension had a 10 m long tail. Standing tall on its six legs, the beastly insect looked like a divine being made to punish those she deemed suitable. The overfilled green poison leaking from the tip of its tail vaporize the sand made from silica as well. It seemed she believed herself to be the only one capable of instantly ending Kush’s misery preventing him from clobbering half her clan and she did not plan to let go of him, not after having lost so many of her people. She instantly attacked him with her stinger to his chest.

Kush wanted to attack her but couldn’t, just then a loud whistling sound emerged from infront of him, as it cut through air and pulverized thousands of scorpions along the way, creating a 5 m wide rift in the ocean of scorpions that was infront of Kush. The chittering noise from the scorpions became louder; surprised by the sudden intrusion of a third party which they didn’t even detect. The arrow didn’t halt after obliterating the scorpions to kingdom come, it continued on to its defined path.

The queen scorpion did not pay attention to what was going on around her and ignored the increased chittering of the scorpions. But when she saw the reducing pressure on Kush from the lessening no. of scorpions, she slowed her attack just for a fraction of second in order to see what was happening. But it was not to be… before she could even give any reaction, the wooden arrow slammed into her tail which was right in front of Kush destroying and vaporizing it, leaving a clean surface as if nothing had ever been there.

‘BAZOOM’

The arrow then went on destroying the ocean of scorpions as if nothing had interfered in its path

The queen screamed in a shrill high pitched voice for just a fraction of second. As soon as the pressure on Kush had reduced just a little, Kush tugged on the chains of Tanka and bringing it out in an arc with Kush as the center, Tanka followed the black chains made of the black rock and

‘SLAM’

Immersed itself in the straight into the hard shell of the oversized insect, green blood and guts splattered all over. Kush then bent at his waist and couldn’t move anymore, but he still did not drop his dagger. It looked like he had accepted his end. But as soon as the scorpion queen died, the soldiers had as if lost all their motivation to continue and scattered in all directions, scuttering under the cover of sand. When Kush felt he was safe, his left over resistance gave in and he dropped to the ground, half his body below the torso submerged in the sand.

The archer approached Kush on his roaring camel a very slow pace, picked up his arrow and sat next to him, allowing him to recover while he ate from his back pack…