The Messenger, part 6
‘Fear is is a natural process, always irrational. Overcoming fear means overcoming irrationality. Fear is is a natural process, always irrational. Overcoming fear means overcoming irrationality. Fear is is a natural process, always irrational. Overcoming fear means overcoming irrationality….’
The litany seemingly does nothing to alleviate my anxiety of losing my strength and perishing before finishing my mission. I turn around, and seeing absolutely no one that could help me, no living thing even except the butterflies and the cicadas, I force my mind to continue revisiting the days of the siege.
We thought that the cockroaches were our only problem while the enemy was busy dousing the fires before them. For a day, we were right, and then something started coming out of the ground itself.
They were giant crabs, but not crabs exactly, as one of the pincers was much larger than the other. It was built for digging, we realized in horror. We immediately organized a defense around the emerging holes, and although the shells of the creatures were hard, they weren't much adept at defending themselves, and we seemed to have the problem under control. We even managed to capture few of the creatures, much to the joy of the veshter, who immediately got around to study them
The holes proved a problem though, as they were large enough for some of the atrocities from the outside to pass through. We were busy burying them back and carefully setting fire inside, when the giant centipedes emerged.
If I thought the spiders abominable, the centipedes were downright sickening. Their black-brownish cuticles glistened in some foul-odored oil, their antennas prodding for prey, their jaws yawned, ready to swallow it whole. And they were fast. What I noticed in the nauseating fight against them, was that their hairy legs were flat-footed, which had to attribute for their speed. You don’t look at a small centipede, you just squash it in disgust. But when fighting one this size, you had to look, and you had to swallow your unease. And you certainly cannot squash it, the damn thing could be ridden on. If you try your sword at their cuticles, it would most likely slide off the oily surface, barely scratching it. If you somehow manage to hit it, then you would start cutting away the segments, only to learn that the damn thing can still move even with half of it’s body severed.
Some of us went for the legs, but the monster had so many, that it simply didn’t care about losing some. If it felt pain, It certainly didn’t show it. If you cut out an antennae, the creature would be disoriented, and would start thrashing around madly, most often shattering the bones of the one caught in its convulsions. The only thing that would kill the thing was a cut directly in the head or setting fire on its mouth. Which meant getting terribly close to the mandibles, that would grab you and bring you closer so the creature could enjoy you more easily.
If there was anything that was merciful about it’s being, if that could be called mercy, was that it was meticulous in its feeding, taking about quarter hour for it to feed on a person. The person, of course, was alive during that time, and the screams could probably be heard all the way to the plain of ascension. But this meant that at least it couldn’t kill in great numbers, and for the duration of the man's agony the creature was mostly vulnerable.
In the end, it took us all day and most of the night to get rid of the slimy bastards. How many the beasts devoured, we couldn’t know, for there was no time to take numbers. Many lay dead with broken bones, others were injured and in no condition to fight. We just collected bodies, and put them away in a hole we already dug for the wasp casualties. It was getting pretty crowded over there.
For the centipede carcasses, we had no plan. They were simply too heavy to move, and we had no energy to go around, the food being scarce as it was. The veshter had found that the crab-like beings that dug the holes were rich in nutrients, and the few brave folks that volunteered to try the meat seemed to live through the ordeal. They even reported it was quite tasty.
The litany seemingly does nothing to alleviate my anxiety of losing my strength and perishing before finishing my mission. I turn around, and seeing absolutely no one that could help me, no living thing even except the butterflies and the cicadas, I force my mind to continue revisiting the days of the siege.
We thought that the cockroaches were our only problem while the enemy was busy dousing the fires before them. For a day, we were right, and then something started coming out of the ground itself.
They were giant crabs, but not crabs exactly, as one of the pincers was much larger than the other. It was built for digging, we realized in horror. We immediately organized a defense around the emerging holes, and although the shells of the creatures were hard, they weren't much adept at defending themselves, and we seemed to have the problem under control. We even managed to capture few of the creatures, much to the joy of the veshter, who immediately got around to study them
The holes proved a problem though, as they were large enough for some of the atrocities from the outside to pass through. We were busy burying them back and carefully setting fire inside, when the giant centipedes emerged.
If I thought the spiders abominable, the centipedes were downright sickening. Their black-brownish cuticles glistened in some foul-odored oil, their antennas prodding for prey, their jaws yawned, ready to swallow it whole. And they were fast. What I noticed in the nauseating fight against them, was that their hairy legs were flat-footed, which had to attribute for their speed. You don’t look at a small centipede, you just squash it in disgust. But when fighting one this size, you had to look, and you had to swallow your unease. And you certainly cannot squash it, the damn thing could be ridden on. If you try your sword at their cuticles, it would most likely slide off the oily surface, barely scratching it. If you somehow manage to hit it, then you would start cutting away the segments, only to learn that the damn thing can still move even with half of it’s body severed.
Some of us went for the legs, but the monster had so many, that it simply didn’t care about losing some. If it felt pain, It certainly didn’t show it. If you cut out an antennae, the creature would be disoriented, and would start thrashing around madly, most often shattering the bones of the one caught in its convulsions. The only thing that would kill the thing was a cut directly in the head or setting fire on its mouth. Which meant getting terribly close to the mandibles, that would grab you and bring you closer so the creature could enjoy you more easily.
If there was anything that was merciful about it’s being, if that could be called mercy, was that it was meticulous in its feeding, taking about quarter hour for it to feed on a person. The person, of course, was alive during that time, and the screams could probably be heard all the way to the plain of ascension. But this meant that at least it couldn’t kill in great numbers, and for the duration of the man's agony the creature was mostly vulnerable.
In the end, it took us all day and most of the night to get rid of the slimy bastards. How many the beasts devoured, we couldn’t know, for there was no time to take numbers. Many lay dead with broken bones, others were injured and in no condition to fight. We just collected bodies, and put them away in a hole we already dug for the wasp casualties. It was getting pretty crowded over there.
For the centipede carcasses, we had no plan. They were simply too heavy to move, and we had no energy to go around, the food being scarce as it was. The veshter had found that the crab-like beings that dug the holes were rich in nutrients, and the few brave folks that volunteered to try the meat seemed to live through the ordeal. They even reported it was quite tasty.
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