Sleep was peaceful up until Brutus howled out in warning, which instantly woke me up. He never sounded like that unless there was an immediate threat in the vicinity, so I was immediately on alert. Who needs coffee when you've got adrenaline from potential threats to wake you up in the middle of the night.

The only thing I needed to equip was my khopesh since I had slept in my armor, and readied myself while surveying the area for any signs of danger. The night vision I gained from Brutus came in handy for searching farther than the campfire light reached, but I couldn't see anything yet. But all I could see was the brush and trees around the oasis pond, with the rest of the landscape being sand and rocks until they went out of my line of sight. There was still no sign of any monster or any movement for that matter aside from the occasional swaying of leaves under small gusts of wind that passed by.

Alexis was on guard duty when Brutus sounded the alarm, so she was already awake and ready for combat along with her summons Holly and Hemlock who she had traded out Musashi for. Brutus and Emett were beside me and ready for anything coming to threaten us, but we remained still and quiet in order to search for any signs of our unwelcome guest. We had all of our backs turned to Alexis so we could cover each other's backs, which minimized our chance of being caught by an ambush.

"What do you think is out there? Normally we could handle anything in the area, but the night is putting some of us at a disadvantage, with only the minimum amount of light from the campfire to guide us." - Alexis

"No clue, but it's definitely something with night vision or the like if it's attacking at this time with this many summons out. Maybe a coyote or some type of nocturnal insect, those seem to be the most likely predators around here. I doubt any of the quill cactuses move much when the sun isn't out." - Thomas

"Are you seeing anything out there? I can't see past the glow of the campfire." - Alexis

"Nothing, but Brutus definitely smelled something, we'll just have to be patient and wait for the monster to strike. It's just a battle of patience at this point, either it charges out after becoming impatient or we let our guard down after a while which allows them to strike. Speaking of, I've got an idea." - Thomas

"Alright, let's hear your brilliant plan" - Alexis

"I'll pretend to lower my guard to draw out the monster, I bet it thinks I can't see much farther than you so it'll be more likely to strike when I'm 'vulnerable'." - Thomas

"What about Brutus and Emett, won't they scare off any ambush while you drop your guard?" -Alexis

"I didn't really think of that, I guess I'll have them spread out to draw the monster in. We would have heard or seen something by now if there was a pack of something, so it should be relatively safe for me to be apart from them." - Thomas

And so I sent my summons out towards the edges of the light on either side of me, a few yards away. It was enough distance to draw in the monster while still allowing them to respond quickly. This would be potentially dangerous for me, so I made sure that my khopesh was ready while pretending to relax after not seeing anything.

A few minutes passed and nothing had fallen for the bait, and I was about ready to give in and go back to waiting near Alexis and my summons. This wouldn't be great for us in the long term since we were bound to make mistakes or become exhausted from being vigilant for hours. Luckily, I didn't need to test my patience further as I make out the faint silhouette of a black creature fairly low to the ground quickly scuttling towards me.

No noise was made, and if I blinked I doubt I would be able to immediately spot the monster, but the displaced sand and the rapid movement in the dark helped me keep track of where it was. I drew it in while Having Emett ready to charge forward and shield me while Brutus attacks.

While still retaining my relaxed image. I cycled through the best way I could avoid being killed by the monster. From what I could see on the camouflaged monster was that it appeared to be a rather large insect of some type, and had fairly large claws on it. Deducting the possibility of anything other than an insect and considering the claws, there was no other viable option other than the mystery stalker being a scorpion.

I couldn't make out its' tail, but I'm sure it's somewhere on the carapaced monster. It got within a few meters of me and sprinted forward with a leap towards me, but I managed to narrowly escape it using my teleportation skill to emerge from behind it while yelling out, "Now!" to let Alexis and the summons know to attack. This had the dual advantage of getting me out of it's immediate attack range and also getting the scorpion into the firelight so we could properly see it.

Upon closer inspection, as our team steadily came closer to the monster, I was able to see its' distinct features and even identify what creature it was. The golden crown above its' eyes easily identified it as an emperor scorpion, which only became visible after the ambush had begun. Other distinct features of the scorpion were it's pitch black coloring that spanned around the size of a large dog. The tail was folded and tucked alongside its' back ready to whip out at a moments notice while keeping the range of it a mystery, his other combat tools were the one claw built like long scissors that looked like it could cut through anything, and the other claw was bigger and bulkier in the shape of a pentagon with jagged edges around it.

This monster from what I could see and remember reading about was an ambush/combat type monster that mainly relied on its' claws to fight, but the tail was also useful although not deadly, it was a strong paralytic that could turn the tide of battle if an opponent was stung. There was something else that was mentioned about this specific variety of scorpion, but I couldn't quite remember what it was. It's on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what exactly was mentioned, I didn't spend much time on that though since I had more pressing matters to take care of.

Emett and Brutus rushed towards the scorpion while I closed back in to analyze the insect and help if needed, not that I thought my sword would be able to do much against that tough shell. Alexis was on the other side of the fire and was watching to see if any intervention was necessary, her summons were on the lookout for any other monsters trying to ambush us since it seemed my summons could handle this one just fine. It was a strong tier 3 monster, but against two of my more experienced and unique summons, it would be taken down just fine since its' element of surprise was ruined.

I'd have to make sure and give Brutus an extra treat or two for catching the intruder with his nose. The battle had quickly started soon after the emperor scorpion's leap, with Brutus leading the charge. He had dove through one of the shadows trailing from the campfire and emerged directly behind the large insect. His first move without any prompting was to grab the tail with his jaws to prevent it from lashing out since it had still been folded up there wasn't much danger of getting stung.

He was holding the tail just fine, but the shell was so hard to damage, only minute cracks were forming from Brutus's bite. With the monster held in place, the slower of my two summons caught up to the fight and used his earth shaping powers quite creatively as he made to smash on the head of the insect. Sand burst up from under the ground and coated both of its' claws and then drug them to the ground. To cement the advantage, the ground hardened around the weaponized claws and the monster was having a rather hard time removing them from the earth's hold. But that wouldn't last long as bigger and bigger chips were breaking off as the scorpion gained more room to move its appendages.

Despite the control my pair of summons had over the scorpion, not much was being done to damage the thing, it was after all a high tier 3 monster with a shell that was pseudo tier 4. Seeing as the stalemate might end not so favorably for my team if things continued as they were I brought out Jareth to beat the monster into submission. He was the perfect counter for the monster as long as he could avoid the stinger, his skin was extremely durable, and his tier 4 strength would crack through the shell with a few good blows from his mace.

Jareth having caught up on what was going on through our link charged the pitch-black monster right as it had managed to free its claws and blow Emett away. Poor Emett was only a tier 2 monster, so there wasn't much chance of him being able to face off against the monster, luckily all I needed him to do was stall for a moment or two. Seeing that his job had been done wonderfully, I retrieved my golem summon and watch as Jareth started to wail on the enraged monster.

The first few blows landed on the shield claw of the monster which began forming bigger and bigger cracks after every strike. Eventually, the force became too much and the shield was shattered. The scorpion continued to put up a fight, but with its tail restricted and only a sharp claw left to fend off my titanium ogre, there didn't seem to be much hope.

Seeing that this was well in hand I relaxed slightly and waited for the fight to finish with a few more well-placed blows. Unfortunately for me, this seemed to be my downfall this night as I felt a sharp pain in my ankle and then the sensation of fire spreading from that point.

"OW!!!!!" - Thomas

"What is it?" - Alexis

I didn't know what had happened aside from being stung, and when I looked towards the injured area I could make out the faint silhouette of a small scorpion skittering away. Feeling the poison progressing, I knew I had to act fast before it spread to the rest of my body.

"Another scorpion stung me, I think there's more of them," I say while using my belt as a makeshift tourniquet just below my knee to help slow the spread. That only held it off for a moment, as I was too slow to prevent this especially virulent poison spread past the belt.

Deciding that I would be incapacitated soon at this rate, I made my way as quickly to Alexis as I could without disturbing my stung leg. By the time I made it there, my nerves were on fire and my blood vessels had turned fluorescent green. I had no energy and dropped right in front of her, with the last of my strength I stopped myself from hitting my face into the ground, but lay helpless after that.

All I could sense was unending pain as the poison aggressively spread, my consciousness started going out at that point. The last thing I could recall was the taste of something on my lips before drifting off into darkness not knowing if I would still be alive come morning.