Chapter 62: 62 - The Locals

They were being hunted, and there was nowhere to run — nowhere to hide. Rogue was exhausted behind her, the babies growing fussy. No cover. No variation in the terrain. Just an open field, the grass not long or thick enough to provide any cover. And yet the hunters were practically invisible. She could feel them approaching, knew that they’d been caught, and yet, she could not see the threat.

“Stay behind me,” she gasped. But which direction was behind her with the enemy approaching from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

The ping of a bow loosing an arrow. The sudden flash of a silver dagger.

“Rogue!”

She bolted upright, drenched in a cold sweat, every muscle clenched with her preparedness to fight.

Next to her, Rogue was snoring softly. The hard ground did him little favors in that regard. On her other side lay the boys, all peacefully sleeping, though Tiaki had kicked his blanket most of the way off. Callida gently helped to drape it back over his shoulders before standing up to stretch and work the tension out of her cricked neck.

That’s when she became aware of the gentle clickity-clacky sound around her, like someone with long nails drumming their fingers against lacquered wood… or a book… or stone.

She ran to the fire, little more than smoldering embers at this point in the night, and quickly stoked it, adding more fuel, seeking a flame that would help her to see.

The cave walls were moving.

Segmented bodies flexing and curling like thick cables as long or longer than a man is tall rolling in waves across the rock on dozens of legs. Antennae on one end, elongated ultimate legs on the other, exoskeletons like armor, Callida stared in fascinated horror. Her eyes traveled across the walls to the cave entrances at the back of the cavern where more flat but impossibly long centipedes crept out from the blackness beyond, some of them forming a rippling carpet on the floor to where the people were sleeping… to where they were feeding on the unsuspecting humans.

For a moment she was paralyzed, observing the creatures clamping their legs around their disturbingly silent victims as fangs tore through cloth and flesh and… she gagged and then sounded the alarm. “WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! WAKE UP! EVERYONE WAKE UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”

People everywhere started screaming and drunkenly scrambling. Callida made a dive for her weapons belt, buckling it to her hips before helping Rogue to collect their frightened and crying sons. “GET THEM OUT, ROGUE.” She had to shout over the screaming, but Rogue accepted the order with a sharp nod.

“ANYONE WITH A WEAPON, TO ME!” She yelled, drawing her sword and raising it high to help guide the frantic fighting force. She shared a brief moment of eye contact with Arum and then Baca. “GROUP UP WITH YOUR NEAREST COMMANDER AND FORM RANKS! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!” Within seconds, the well trained ex-soldiers had assembled in tight battle formations. Everyone else was doing their best to mimic the soldiers. “CHARGE!”

She led the assault personally, hurtling directly into the mass of fluttering legs and antennae, constructing a tactical analysis of the enemy as she ran. The armored exoskeletons would make slashing strikes ineffective, except perhaps against the leg and antennae. Aiming for the chinks between body segments with stabbing strikes, or perhaps the fangs and mouth, seemed the best strategy for killing them.

They were so much bigger than she'd originally thought. The realization hit as she got close enough to the monsters to swing a sword at them, their heads low to the ground - level with her knee. Her first real moment of panic came when throwing all of her strength into a stabbing strike at the centipede peeling someone’s face off didn’t dislodge it in the slightest. Its body merely twisted and adjusted its grip, and the mindless monster continued its meal. She gagged again and adjusted to go for the legs gripping its prey, severing several in a single swing. The monster dislodged, and a pair of fangs clamped into the corpse beneath it, oozing some sort of poison into its victim.

“BEWARE THE FANGS!” she warned, and continued severing limbs until the creature’s antennae began feeling for something other than its meal as the potential source for its pain. That’s when she realized that the thing was blind, and the antennae served a critical function in its ability to interact with the world. “GO FOR THE ANTENNAE!” She waited for it to turn in her direction.

Slash!

One antenna hit the ground. The creature was stunned, but her slash had alerted the centipede to her position, and despite an attempt to dodge, the thing’s head rammed into her knees. The next moment, Callida was on the ground, and fangs were chomping blindly in the direction of her boot. It was pure luck that the monster missed her leg, and Callida wasted no time finding her feet again, only to realize that she’d been surrounded by a cluster of centipedes seeking their own meals, their antennae feeling for anything that moved… including each other.

Two of them bumped heads and entered a strange wrestling match, the larger of the two flipping the smaller one and quickly clamping its fangs into its… neck? The victor of this squabble latched its legs around its victim and began eating, and behind Callida, a smaller centipede found the one she’d already injured and took advantage. It gave her an idea. Callida made use of their cannibalistic natures and teased yet another centipede towards her by batting at its antennae a few times. It lunged, its movement making it a target. Centipedes on either end latched fangs and legs around it, and an extraordinarily disgusting match of tug-o-war ended when the unlucky centipede was torn asunder. While Callida fought the impulse dry heave, another one of those things began feeling its way towards her.

She dodged the lunge but was tripped up by the follow-up swing of its head, following the direction of her movement. She had to scramble to not be bitten, and threw herself in a roll to the side with her sword clutched tightly to her chest, landing precariously close to a campfire. She found her feet in time to dodge the next lunge, and the centipede made contact with the fire, immediately recoiling and scuttling away.

“They don’t like fire,” she realized out loud, and soon she was rushing to get her hands on the stock of torches they had in one of the carts. She filled her arms with as many torches as she could grab quickly, and ran back to the battle, dropping them into the nearest fire pit and frantically distributing them to the nearest soldiers before collecting one in each hand for herself to help chase back the monsters still attacking her men.

Stolen story; please report.

More torches were found, and soon there was a tight line of fire-wielding humans to herd the creatures back into the caves from whence they’d come. And finally, all went quiet.

Callida looked around at the grisly scene of half eaten corpses and dismembered centipedes before her, and her utter repulsion merged with her falling adrenaline. She dropped her torches on the ground, folded in half, and wretched. Much to her chagrin, Adjutus soon materialized next to her, wearing a smirk.

“You alright, General?”

“Peachy,” she gasped, still spitting bile onto the stone ground. She just knew what was coming next.

“This doesn’t gross you out does it?” Adjutus asked, holding something out to her.

Don’t look, don’t look, don’t…. He shoved the severed antenna in front of her face, and Callida violently wrenched away as her stomach turned.

She could hear the conflicting apology and unexpected entertainment in his laugh. “Sorry, General. I’ve just never known you to be squeamish before.”

“There’s not a lot… that really gets to me… but….” She made the mistake of looking up again, her eyes immediately falling on a half squashed centipede with legs that were still twitching. A lurching in her gut preceded the splatter. “Primordials,” she stood up slowly — feeling clammy and shivery after the violent expulsion — to find that Adjutus had been joined by Baca, Arum and Moro. They were all watching her with mirth in their eyes.

“Don’t like bugs?” Moro asked, an eyebrow raised high above a smirk.

“Not particularly. I can deal with the normal sized ones just fine, but the human-eating variety…” she gagged at the mere thought. “Oh, gosh. I can’t. I just can’t.” Keeping her eyes well above the carnage, Callida walked out to the sound of her friends’ laughter, knowing that she was never going to be able to live this one down.

***

It hadn’t been a particularly lengthy fight but it had seemed to last forever. Callida was the first and only person to emerge from the cave, but Rogue was just happy to see her alive after listening to the screams and shouts of the people fighting back the… whatever they were. “Rogue, you’re up.” She said the moment she got close enough for him to hear her. “It’s your turn. I’m sure there are injured people back there. Check for poison. Those things had fangs, and I’m pretty sure their venom either kills or paralyzes which is why no one screamed.”

“Right. M’lady, are you hurt at all?”

“No. I’m fine,” she said, reaching out to collect Tajam from him.

Before she could take Ddalu as well, Rogue caught her chin between his thumb and index finger. “Be still a moment. Look at me.” Exasperated though she was, Callida did take a calming breath. “Hey.”

“Hey?”

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Are you?”

“Just freaked out.”

“That’s understandable. How are the boys?”

“Playing,” Rogue said, indicating a small circle of adults surrounding an opening where more children than just the triplets were being distracted from the chaos of the evening with games. “Or sleeping.” Rogue nodded at the twins, one in each of their arms.

“There really are hurt people back there, Rogue,” his wife reminded him as she hit the limit of her patience.

“Fine.” He kissed her once, tasted bile on her lips, and frowned. “You’re not ok!” he accused.

“No, I’m fine. But I did throw-up.”

“Why–”

“It grossed me out, alright?! Now hand me Ddalu already, and go play doctor with patients who actually need you!”

“You threw up?”

“Yes.”

He failed to keep the laughter out of his voice with his next thought. “Because you got grossed out?”

“Shut up, Rogue,” she said, pouting and smacking his free arm before snatching Ddalu from his other arm. “Go away.”

“As you wish, M’lady.” Rogue left the way she’d come with another peck aimed at her grudging cheek.

The cavern was a mess. The caravan had left with such haste and lack of concern for what was beneath their feet that blankets, supplies and personal items lay strewn about the cavern floor. It wasn’t until Rogue moved to the back of the cavern that the true carnage became readily apparent. And, yeah. It was gross. Between all the bugs, blood, and bodies, Rogue found his nose curling in disgust more than once as he surveyed the scene. Callida’s men had begun the necessary cleanup efforts, sorting through the human bodies to find those still sporting a pulse to lay on bedrolls in anticipation of medical care while laying out the corpses in a different area in preparation for burial. Towards the back of the cavern, still other soldiers were setting up fires at every cave entrance. Rogue assumed that was to deter more of the bugs from exiting the caves.

He didn’t concern himself too much with what the soldiers were doing beyond his initial observations and instead turned to the patients, many of whom looked dead. He knelt down between two such patients and located pulses — slow and dull. Paralytic? Callida had mentioned venomous fangs, so Rogue searched for pairs of puncture wounds, finding them on all of the patients now laying in a comatose state. Without an antivenom, there were two major risks. First, that the patients would be unable to clear the venom from their bodies without an antivenom and would remain unconscious until they starved to death. Second, the paralytic would compromise their diaphragm or heart before the venom cleared their bodies, and the patients would either suffocate to death or their heart would simply stop beating. Rogue was reduced to milking the clear fluid from the wounds, hoping for the best as he sterilized and bandaged them up.

Anyone who wasn’t unconscious sported battle injuries, a broken bone here, a concussion there, cuts, bruises, sprains…. They were straightforward cases to treat, but it took a while. Before he knew it, Rogue was no longer dependent upon the firelight to see what he was doing. With the last arm tied in a sling, Rogue looked up to take stock of his surroundings. The soldiers had made short work of burying the dead — their first, but likely not last, casualties — and were now clearing the carcasses and odd body parts of the bugs. Rogue rolled up his sleeves to help them pile the bugs up outside the cavern into a shallow, freshly-dug pit for burning.

“Rogue, is the General alright?” Rapax found him amidst the shuffle.

“She’s fine as far as I can tell.”

“I heard she got sick.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said. I’m going to have to ask her about it later, but the priority was to treat the injured.”

“How are the patients doing?”

“Those with basic battle injuries are going to be fine. The ones that got bitten, we’re going to have to wait and see.”

Rapax nodded slowly as he processed the report. “I think it might be wise to collapse the entrances to those caves or at least construct some walls so the spring water will still be able to get through but the bugs won’t. I don’t think any of us want a repeat of last night. Those things are nasty.”

“Agreed. Run it by Callida, but I think that’s a good idea.”