My apologies for the lateness in delivering this next chapter. I got wrapped up in other things. ^_^() Enjoy anyway!
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The caves were deserted. Well, not entirely. There were puddles of green goo all over the place, but no signs of life. Just signs of ended life. I couldn't help but shudder at the sight of it all, but my friend just marched right on through. He's used to blood by now; I am not. It's something I'll have to learn to live with, at least if I ever want to be a good hunter.
I wondered: what was the point of all this killing? No matter how many of the beasts we slew, their numbers never seemed to decrease. Time after time, hunt after hunt, they never seemed to come in any less numbers. Where did they all come from? It didn't matter. They had to be eliminated somehow, or Pioneer 2 would never land. It was our job to kill, and we had to stick to it until it was finished.
A slithering, squishing noise like some giant, unseen mouth sucking saliva through its teeth filled my ears and wrent my thoughts from their previous position. Before us approached some odd sort of insect. A large insect. It had a green, scaled, serpentine body that hugged the ground for half of its length, then rose abruptly to levitate its head. And how many eyes there were on that head! Midway between the head and the lower body, two long, menacing, scythelike arms extended, ready to tear into its prey... us.
The beast, whatever it was, was slow but steady in its charge towards us with its four jointed legs. My friend took the lead, as he always did, in meeting the foe. The beast was certainly used to its own anatomy, as it swung a bladed arm from above at my friend as soon as the blow could possibly have struck. Unfortunately for the overgrown scuttler, my friend was quicker than its arm. With a single deft motion, my friend was under the attack and up again, swinging his photonic blade at the joint between the scythed arm and the bug's body, removing the chance of any further attacks through it. I say this because the arm, after having the blade swung THROUGH it, fell off and was immediately covered in a cascade of green blood that fell from the hole where the connection used to be made.
I shuddered on behalf of the monster, which seemed to be ignoring whatever pain it must have been experiencing. Indeed, the bug seemed more intent on killing my friend than nursing its wounds. In a move that took both my friend and I by surprise, it spat forth a web of semi-fluid that instantly covered my friend's ankles, sticking him to the spot. His back was facing the monster's front, a fact that the monster made great use of by recoiling its remaining arm back, ready to slash my friend through the back.
Time slowed down. It all happened in a matter of moments, but my perceptions were altered somehow. In desperation, I reached out my arm for a Foie attack. It felt like it was taking too long to get it to full charge... hurry! Hurry! At last, the fireball flew and landed... one second before it would be one second too late. The scythe stopped one inch from my friend's ribcage and flung itself into the air as the beast that swung it screamed in throes of agony.
I have mentioned that Foie is among my favorite spells. There is but one property of it that I don't like, and that is the fact that as magic fire, it cannot burn. As soon as it strikes it's target, it dissipates. It hurts like all torments one can imagine, but it doesn't cause sustained damage.
The beast stopped in mid-scream. My friend, having somehow freed himself from the goo (I hadn't noticed how that had happened, and an explanation was thoroughly out of the question), had taken one last solid swipe at the monster's midsection, cutting it precisely in two. The top half, pulled by gravity, slid to the ground. Viridian blood still spurted out of the two half-of-a-corpses for several moments before ceasing.
Then, a most odd thing happened: we heard tiny squeals eminating from the lower half of the slain beast. Casting shocked eyes upon the source of the noise, my friend and I couldn't help but choke on air at the sight of hundreds of miniature versions of the bug we had just killed crawling through its dead skin, attempting to escape from us. Instinctively, my friend and I went about killing as many as possible. My friend lunged with his photonic blade, causing the babies to disappear into the sword with tiny hisses. I couldn't enjoy this spectacle, as I was frantically burning as many of the little abominations as I could. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't eliminate any more than half of them.
How odd! A creature that reproduces in its own death! Perhaps that explains why Ragol had such an unending supply of monsters!
With a nod, my friend told me that we were continuing. However, I couldn't help but give the carcass one last look as we departed... such oddities this planet had within it.
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There you go. As always, feedback is appreciated, preferably in the form of a post.
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