I picked my way along a pile of stony rubble at the base of the canyon wall, the only dry land between the cliffs. The plains at least would be dry once I got beyond the fan of outwash that spilled from the mouth of the canyon. Those pits and tunnels were good for drainage, if nothing else.
Stones clattered down from the opposite bluff. Something bulky moved across a cleft in the boulders topping the promontory. Someone was up there watching me.
Duster spies, perhaps? Urszula? I beamed a smile up into the rain and waited for her to show herself on her mantis.
But nothing budged. The rain continued to pour down. A puff of cloud drifted down and veiled the rocks, but otherwise all was still. Maybe the stones had been loosened by the rain.
Suddenly self-conscious of my nakedness. I plucked some leaves from a shrub and expanded them into a cottony fabric that I shaped into my typical black hoodie and blue jeans. If I was about to have company, I had to make myself look presentable. No one wanted to look at my skinny behind.
I continued on my way. A pair of leathery triangles rose out of the mists at the crest of the butte. Wings. But they belonged to no dragonfly or mantid. They were dark and jointed and angular like a pterodactyl’s.
The beast that owned them looked like a winged maggot. A horn-like proboscis projected forward from its narrow snout. The damned thing was a Reaper—one of the mutant variants the Frelsians had gotten so good at breeding—spiker with wings.
The beast that owned them launched itself off the precipice. It dove straight at me.
I looked for a place to flee, but didn’t have much choice. I was trapped between the flooded creek and the canyon wall. I gripped the sword in both hands and braced myself. The thing was neither nimble nor strong as a flier. It was more a glider. When a blast of wind knocked it off course, it struggled to curve back around.
I tried to stay calm. I held out the sword and tried to summon a spell. But the two goals worked at counter purposes. Staying calm was not compatible with powerful spell craft. So I let the fear take me. I let myself be annoyed.
I was running out of time. The spiker crashed and skidded on the bank of the creek, wing joints and rear claws scraping a deep groove in the damp sand. It was an ugly thing, with a semi-translucent hide through which the outline of its organs was faintly visible. It jabbed its elbows in the ground and clambered after me.
I had no choice but to use my sword as simply a blade. The spiker lunged, trying to impale me with its proboscis. I dodged aside and took a swipe, slashing a furrow in its hide. With a groan, it wheeled around and came back at me. I danced away, taking advantage of its clumsiness on the ground. But it made up for its unwieldy wings with vicious determination.
I backed away down the narrow strip of dry land along the canyon wall. It was all I could manage not to trip on the loose rubble. I scanned the sky over the plains for a friendly mantid or two, but all I saw were low-hanging clouds, rumpled and quilted beneath.
Across the canyon, another shower of gravel came spilling down a chute. A second winged spiker surmounted the butte and stretched its wings. Things were about to get twice as hairy.
A strange cloud appeared over the ridge-top and a swarm of smaller things came zipping through the cleft harboring the waterfall.
The first spiker took advantage of my distraction to hurl itself at me. Only my reflexes saved me. I leaped back and batted its lance-like snout aside with the flat of my blade. It crashed headlong into a cliff. I scurried away, crab-like while it regathered its ungainly self.
The second spiker came gliding down, aiming for an outcropping of bedrock between me and the outlet to the canyon. The damned thing was aiming to trap me. I got up and ran, tripping and sliding over the loose stone underfoot.
The gliding spiker adjusted its flight path, squealing with anticipation as it homed in on me. I fell, dropped the sword, retrieved it, frantically.
Panic thrummed my nerves. The first spiker flailed at me with a pair of hooked claws projecting from its wing tips, just missing. I dove into a pocket in the rubble as it slashed its other wing where my head had just been.
The first beast was so close now I could smell it and it reeked like spoiled meat. This was a Reaper through and through, an enemy of the soul. Its mere presence inspired a primeval hatred to ignite in me, for all the humanity this breed of demon had dragged to destruction.
Something switched on inside my heart. The sword became more than a sword. I took a deep breath as something loosened inside me and a buzzing energy filled my nervous system.
The first monster reared up over me, aligning its proboscis with my chest, ready to plunge.
Without any conscious effort on my part, the energy building inside me released. It broke loose like a dam with too much river piled up behind it. A beam of diffuse light came pouring out of the sword tip, bending at random like a lazy lightning bolt.
It struck the spiker full on in the snout and blew its head to bits. Its body instantly slumped.
The second spiker crash-landed behind me, sending up a shower of wet grit. I rolled to face it, to do battle with it next but it was already writhing in the rubble pile with a half dozen giant bees attached and a dozen more swarming about in tight, angry circles, itching for a sting.
One bee flew over and landed right next to me. Oblivious to its battling sisters, it regurgitated a drop of nectar and offered it to me. I wasn’t in the mood for refreshment. I shooed it away.
The headless spiker slashed its claws about blindly before collapsing in a pool of its yellowish blood. The other beast lay crumpled on its side, as the bees continued to pump it with venom.
I got up and staggered off towards the outlet of the canyon, anxious to put some distance between me and the now spiker-infested hollow. A few stray bees did some loops around my head before buzzing off.
That little sneak attack had totally wrecked my composure. This had to have been a planned hit. The damned Frelsians were out to get me. I expected mutated Reapers to come bounding from every crevice and overhang.
I made my way up the shoulder of the nearest of the two bluffs that flanked the outlet of the canyon. The tilted slabs of bedrock made for easier footing, even though the stone was slick from rain.
I paused at the brink of the pitted plans to get my bearings. The creek here fanned out into a lacework of channels. Beyond this wash, the plains looked fairly homogeneous. There weren’t many landmarks once you got away from the hills.
My eyes homed in on a heap of what looked like wreckage on the rim of one of the nearer pits. I shook the grit from my clothes and clambered down to the flats, keeping my sword at the ready.
