by Jeffrey Hall
I should have jumped when I had the chance, he told himself, but didn’t know if he meant it. There were too many questions now. Too many things to figure out first.
He had wandered the world of Moonsland for many moons, faced all its monstrosities, been to most its civilizations, and yet never had he seen anything like what had unfolded in the last few days…
He kept trying to wrap his mind around what he had seen. Benglar. Proth’s Prodigy. The Elder himself. It was all connected somehow, he was sure of it, but he cursed his age and his miner’s mind for not being able to come up with an answer.
It didn’t help his thought process to know a monster of a different sort lurked somewhere within the cavern. They inched forward, only speaking in whispers, wondering when they would turn the corner and face off with the beast.
A davlish.
Requiem had only ever encountered a handful in the wild. They were abominations. All nostrils and teeth and flesh. A collection of exhausts as they bit down on stone and spouted their predatory gasses to help them hunt and mate and defend themselves.
Somewhere there was an exit at the end of this burrow, but he was sure the creature who called the place it’s home was there too.
He just hoped they found it before it found them. Which might not be the case if Garp didn’t quiet down.
“You see that?” whispered Garp to Grey. “Climbed that bridge with one hand and saved your old arse like a belly-grup.”
“I was there,” said Grey. “You done well, but you ain’t done yet.”
“Bring on this thing, I’ll have something waiting for it.”
Requiem met Grey’s eyes. Grey shook his head and leaned towards him. “Why’d you go and give him something so dangerous?”
“What’s that?” whispered Requiem.
“More confidence.”
“Did I give him confidence or just a chance?” said Requiem, holding his ground. He had already given up on the man before and saw what it had done to him. And when he had put his own confidence into him he had come through. Despite how much he talked about it now, he could at least back up what he said.
“You smell that?” Glassius sniffed just behind them.
Requiem stopped. The air smelled suddenly like burned meat. A pungent stench. One that told of the davlish’s recent emission, a gas that would attract belly-grups. A meal only sought out by the largest of beasts.
“Great.” Requiem took a step forward and tripped over a divot in the burrow, unable to hold himself up in his weakened state. He fell to his knees, one of the edges of the stones cutting the unarmored part of his thighs.
“You alright?” Grey and Garp looked down at him, too entangled with each other to bother to help him up.
“I’m fine,” he whispered, gritting his teeth, using the tip of his blade to try to put himself upright. But it was a lie. His entire body hurt. His energy, sapped. The spells. The stone. It had taken too much of him. All he wanted to do was rest. All he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep away the pain.
“Sit back.”
He looked up and saw Sasha kneeling down beside him, looking at him with concern.
“No time,” said Requiem.
“If we’re going to find a way out of this place then there’s time. Won’t face a davlish without a whole you.”
“Don’t trust your man?” With his eyes, Requiem indicated Glassius, who hovered impatiently overhead.
She went to her pouch and pulled free a golden ointment, one he recognized as terihoney, an extract of a flower that once grew near Silver Hole. Used topically, it numbed pain. “I trust him more than you’ll know. But slaying beasts isn’t his specialty. It’s yours.”
She dabbed the ointment onto his cut and the pain instantly subsided, reinvigorating him. “You shouldn’t,” said Requiem.
“Shouldn’t what?”
“Trust him.”
“Are we going to play healer all day?” said Glassius. “We’re in a davlish den with an army on the lookout for us.”
“Just making sure he’s ready to use that blade,” said Sasha, and she pulled away from Requiem.
Requiem came to his feet. “I am.”
“Good. By the smell of it you’ll be using it soon.” He took a step closer to Requiem and whispered beneath his breath. “When we’re out of this mess you will explain to me how you put us into it in the first place before you dangle over the Abyss.”
Requiem smiled back at him and ambled forward.
The tunnel narrowed. The ceiling lowered. Some of the claw marks in the stone looked like open wounds with a red moss growing from them, ragged and blood-like. The humidity grew along with the stench.
They were getting closer.
Requiem kept trying to prepare himself for a fight, urging the pain of his scars to stop and his strength to be found again, but the pain kept staying and the strength kept slipping through him.
Maybe this will be the end, he found himself thinking. Maybe one of the beasts I’ve hunted will be the retributor for all those I’ve killed and I won’t get to go out on my own terms.
He led the group further, waiting for them to turn the corner and see the beast they feared lumbering down the tunnel. The foul scent that permeated the corridor grew stronger, and when they rounded the bend Requiem stopped.
He heard it before he saw it. The popping, slurping noises as it ate, the sounds oddly rhythmic, like the beast was playing an instrument rather than devouring its most recent catch. Then he saw it. A great lump of flesh filling the majority of the tunnel, with long, hollow appendages dangling from it like dreadlocks. Its skin was violet and blue, a walking testament to the Abysmal gasses it utilized while hunting. A pool of blood stretched out over the uneven floor of its burrow. The tail and limbs of a belly-grup were folded around the davlish like a scaly nest for it to rest in.
Requiem held up his hand. The group stopped.
“Is it there?” whispered Garp.
Requiem nodded.
The man shrugged Grey off of him and brought up his sword.
Requiem shook his head and pointed to himself.
“You? You can barely stand,” said Garp, frowning.
“And you can barely hold a hilt,” said Glassius. “Let the professional do it.”
Garp cursed to himself, and Requiem had to refrain from smiling. Professional? Is that what he was still considered? Then why did he feel like the furthest thing from it? Why did he feel like an actor pretending to be a younger version of himself, a man that once reveled in the opportunity to slay such a grand beast.
He gritted his teeth, brought up Ruse, and crept forward. He put his feet down as softly as he could, trying to time his steps to the crunching noises of the davlish as its teeth touched its catch’s bones. The closest tube upon the creature’s back exhaled a potent miasma of sulfur. Requiem scrunched his nose, trying to dull the nauseating effect.
He came closer and closer, nearing the beast so that he could see his own maligned shape reflected in its oily skin. He could see parts of its face now. Its yellow eyes were bulging, its teeth sharp and blood-stained like spikes that once held the heads of traitors. It was so large, maybe the largest of the beasts he had ever faced. He needed to be careful not to strike its eldium-infused bones. He needed to strike true.
He raised Ruse. His arms were tired and worn, and it felt as though he were trying to pick up Bothane Rock itself. He plunged the blade into the creature’s back, right into the part where its two hearts dwelled.
The blade slipped through, unabated. Ropes of purple blood sputtered into the air and struck the ceiling. The davlish deflated as if it were full of air and had just been struck by a pin. It groaned and rolled away from Requiem’s strike, just as he withdrew his weapon. The thing flopped onto its side, on top of the belly-grup it was devouring, exposing its underbelly.
Requiem’s eyes widened. A dark purple wound from where the tip of his blade had exited blossomed beneath what should have been the white
flesh of its stomach, but instead its belly was swollen and dark.
Suddenly he realized why the creature was so large. Suddenly he realized the foolish mistake he had made…
Its stomach quivered. It started to expand and twitch, like a mouse was beneath a blanket and was desperately scurrying for a way free.
“What is that?” said Sasha.
Requiem raised his blade. “Its children.”
Suddenly the wound at its stomach burst open and out scurried four tendril-ridden blobs of white flesh onto the ground. They met the floor in a plop and let out minute growls that sounded like shrunken great cats, their bright yellow eyes swimming and blinking as they adjusted to the semi-light, their small, dagger-like teeth already opening and snapping as if the air they had just met were food to be devoured.
Their eyes fell on Requiem and the others.
“Back away!” shouted Requiem, but it was already too late. The creatures sucked in the air around them, pulling in vapors of the Abyss that no doubt wafted into their burrow, and exhaled a green mist, a power that must have been earned from their mother’s previous ingestion of some type of stone.
Requiem turned his face and put his nose into his sleeve, but the gas filled the corridor, reeking of bile and a bitterness that made Requiem’s eyes water and his stomach lurch.
He buried his nose beneath his collar, creating a temporary mask to dilute the smell, but his stomach still roiled. Beside him, the others were already on their knees, heaving, clutching their stomachs as if they had just been hit there.
The davlish children lunged through the fog of green that filled the corridor, shooting from the cloud like a meteorological event. The first of them latched onto Requiem’s boot, chewing at the worked leather. His eyes watered so heavily that he could barely see the creature.
He swiped out with his blade and cut one of the fledgling tubes that grew from the creature. It only infuriated the thing more and caused it to sink its teeth deeper, their tips scraping the flesh of his leg. He hacked down, but the thing skittered out of the way. Requiem felt his innards lurch as a new wave of the miasma came over him. He tossed aside Ruse, and with both hands, he grabbed hold of the thing’s squirmy flesh. He pulled it free, tearing his boot as he did.
The creature came up roaring and furious, a piece of leather layered across his teeth, chomping madly.
Requiem slammed it to the ground over and over. He felt something snap within the squishy thing and on the sixth slam he lost his handle on it. The thing bounced away, flashing a grin of broken teeth and frayed tubes as it came upright. It scurried back into the mist.
It was then he heard the screams at his back.
One of the creatures was dancing about the feet of Garp, trying to make it past the sharp end of his sword as he worked to keep it away from him and Grey.
Beside them, one of creatures was atop the face of a Glimmerian soldier, its jaws working to produce the droplets of blood that flung into the air, while the poor soldier’s comrades tried to catch the slippery thing and bash it with stones the size of their fists.
The last one was engaged with Glassius and Sasha. Glassius had keeled over and was vomiting onto the floor. Sasha stood in front of him, a pair of petals plugged into her nose like yellow tusks growing from her face.
She held a pointed rock at the creature, attempting to keep it at bay, but the creature wriggled its body like the way Requiem had seen cats do before pouncing.
“Sasha!” he called out, but it was too late. The davlish sprung.
It came so fast that she barely had time to lift up her stone. The creature landed upon her face and they fell over in a heap, knocking Glassius to his knees.
Requiem grabbed his sword and scrambled to Sasha’s side.
The davlish squirmed atop of her face and he saw dark blood sputtering out. He reached down to tear it away and see what mangled mess it had caused, only to see it the sharp end of the stone burrowing into the beast’s belly, finding its hearts, killing it before its teeth could touch her.
Almost. A deep cut ran from her left ear down to her lip.
She blinked, her face blood ridden and mud-caked. Their eyes met momentarily before hers widened.
“Watch out!”
The davlish struck him like a stone between his shoulders, sending him stumbling to the ground. He landed in a pool of vomit and blood and only the Abyss knew what other sorts of grime and muck. He tried to rise, but the creature was enraged, burrowing into his back, desperately trying to find his flesh beneath his armor. His face slammed into the muck. He sputtered. Heard more shouting over the roars of the davlish.
Requiem felt his sword in his hand and thought about swiping out some quick spell to save himself, but knew if he did then he would be depleted and useless. A liability to the group for who knew how long if they were to survive this at all. Instead he jammed his knuckles into the rocky earth, and with an emphatic yell, rolled over to his stomach, temporarily dislodging the creature and letting it fall to his side.
The davlish was on its back, its small wormish legs scurrying in the air to get it upright, which it did before Requiem could come to his knees.
It turned to face him, its broken teeth clacking together like tambourines in a band. It was just about to lunge when Garp’s own blade sliced down, severing one of its tubes, causing a new gust of green mist to push into the air, right into Garp’s face.
The man immediately vomited, but it didn’t prevent him from continuing to swing down, trying to end the davlish for good.
“Die, you son of a bitch!” he shouted, but the young davlish kept moving, avoiding the blade as it limped away.
Requiem grabbed his own sword and swung it at the thing, but missed, his own gut dancing as the unbearable stench continued to fill the corridor.
“It won’t die!” shouted one of the soldiers nearby. One of the davlish children clung to his arm and he was stabbing it with a dagger repeatedly.
“Go for its heart!” Requiem shouted. “Its heart! In the middle of its tubes!”
The soldier aimed, and plunged his dagger true. The thing’s appendages flailed and then fell as it slipped off his arm and onto the ground, right to where one of the other davlishes still scuttered about. The creature nabbed its dead brethren and pulled it into the mist like it was some predatory spider who had just captured its kill.
“What’s it doing?” shouted Grey, his hand to his face.
Requiem could barely think between the smell and his own weakness, but somewhere in the depths of his head he remembered Dorja’s lessons on the monsters that stalked Moonsland.
Davlishes are insidious beasts. They’ll fill you full of sweet thoughts if they’re fed and calm, but as soon as something comes along they don’t like they’ll turn you insane. Catch a young one, and they’ll feast on the bones of their own family for survival. Turn you mad from those vapors.
Her words bubbled forth in him like a prophecy he would soon fulfill.
“Stop it!” shouted Requiem from his spot on the ground, but it was too late.
The bile stench that filled the burrow fled. He heard chomping, and there, coming from the direction the davlish kit had pulled its sibling to, was a grey cloud that smelled old and musty, as if it were a scent of the beginning of time itself.
“Run!” shouted Requiem.
Grey grabbed Garp. Sasha grabbed Glassius. Requiem came to his feet. The remaining soldiers, all four of them, started running. One fell. The grey cloud engulfed him. Requiem looked back to see his eyes bulging. The soldier clawed at his face, digging his nails so deeply into his skin he drew blood.
The cloud came faster.
Move, you fool! Requiem shouted at himself, trying to push past his own fatigue. He ran, his legs churning over the hard ground to keep pace with the others as they vaulted the carcass of the mother davlish and passed through the still present green mist.
Requiem slid over the corpse, the new, eldium-rich gas reaching for him like a hun
gry hand. He tripped over the body and fell to his knees. A hand was waiting there to help him up.
It was Grey, who looked half broken still himself.
Requiem took it and came to his feet once more. Together they hobbled forward, rounded a small bend in the tunnel, and found the exit.
A hole with a metallic grate fitted over it that looked out from Bothane Rock into open air, it was a contrivance made by the davlish’s keeper to allow it to hunt and keep it happy.
The grate itself was large, with segments big enough for a body to wriggle through. The curious face of a belly-grup peeked through the hole.
“What the—” started Garp.
“The mother’s scent… It was trying to attract them to hunt,” said Requiem. “Grab hold of its neck and get on.”
Garp moved aside and waved for Glassius and Sasha to move forward.
“This ain’t the time to be chivalrous!” growled Grey.
“I’ll see to it everyone gets out.”
“Are there others?” said Requiem.
“Other what?”
“Lizards!”
Garp poked his head out through one of the segments. “Two others.”
The belly-grup peeking in looked down at Garp and then back in the hole, its long purple tongue flicking out of its head like a dopey grin.
Behind them the grey cloud edged closer.
Glassius approached the beast. “How do we mount it?”
“You’ve never rode a belly-grup before?” said Garp.
“I’m no miner,” snarled Glassius.
“Pull its skin.” Garp grabbed the lizard’s beard and pulled. The creature’s eyes narrowed and its face relaxed. “Slip out and hold on.”
Glassius looked at the lizard with confusion.
Sasha stepped forward. “Give it here.”
She grabbed the lizard’s beard from Garp, and slipped out the grate. She was gone. And then, a moment later, she reappeared on the other side of the lizard, holding out her hand for Glassius to join her.
