My brothers and sisters, there is no need to feel only doom and gloom as we set out into this new adventure! Times will be strange and, at times, trying, but think of all the new and exciting things to come. The winds speak of change, but not ill-omened change. I read the clouds on the horizon and see my namesake. A sign that what is to come could be fair or stormy, and we must simply continue to observe. The tops of the cloud do not yet roil, perhaps we worry for not. – Letter from the Voice Cumulus.

When he saw the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, Li instantly activated his armor to make space between himself and the unknown source. With a bare thought, he flung himself back ten feet before lightly landing. Having spun slightly during the movement in order to bring the location fully into sight, he now faced the massive scorpion that had unexpectedly appeared head on.

He never could have modulated the power quite as well in the spell’s old form of Titan’s Leap, but his new Intermediate spell, Force of the Colossus Armor, allowed him to easily and fluidly control how much power he put into any movement. The combination of his Giant’s Punch, Titan’s Leap, and Reinforcement Armor had resulted in something more powerful, and far more natural to use, than any of its components.

Space made between himself and the attacking monster, Li instantly pulled a half dozen mid-sized knives from the straps adorning his body. Each was a little large, and a little unwieldy, to be a conventional throwing knife, but they flew through the air as if wielded by invisible hands. The knives quickly formed a protective ring around him, moving in patterns he had created with the input of both Djimon and Ananya.

The reason for team tank’s input quickly became apparent as metal orbs flew in to accompany Li’s knives. Each was a solid lump of steel controlled by Ananya, who kept the majority of the metal placed between Li and the gigantic arachnid. The quickly worked in tandem with his weapons to create a near wall of metal between himself and the threat.

Ananya’s abilities with the technique were significantly more impressive than Li’s modest success. The woman easily had two or three dozen orbs in the air, only sparing a bare handful to protect Li while others were sent to guard each member of the party. This had not been the only scorpion to jump Wandering Horizons as they proceeded through this corridor.

Like the last time he had seen one of these monsters, the hallway was filled with a knee-deep layer of sand. Unlike that first time, however, there were far fewer traps. Instead, there were multiple areas where the sand was significantly deeper and, from what Li’s senses could tell, there were tunnels connecting into the deeper sand pits from other locations. Probably these things’ nests.

Running forward, Li hauled himself out of the sand and instead ran on thin force walls placed horizontally on the surface of the sand. The creations were far stronger than they had been in the past, now being an Intermediate Spell. He had ended up combining Force Wall and Force Shield, along with a handful of other beginner spells he had created with similar themes such as Force Dome and Force Barrier, to create the Intermediate Spell Force Construct. His creations could now take any shape they wanted and were significantly more durable. Especially when affecting himself.

As he charged, he flung one of his knives forward and struck the monstrous bug in on of the large eyes on the top of the body. The thing let out a sort of his screaming, similar to kettle boiling, and raised its claws defensively in front of its face. The remaining eye tracked him and he watched the tail sway back and forth, twitching slightly.

“Ananya, block the things tail for me!”

As he called out, he began restricting the creature’s movements by directly opposing them with force manipulation. His practice with that technique had eventually given rise to a debilitation spell called Oppositional Force. That spell had ended up being a component, along with Perfect Force Understanding and a handful of other minor variations he had managed to create, in his newly upgraded Greater Force Manipulation.

The additional understanding and insight, along with the greater power, the newly Intermediate spell provided, meant the monster was noticeably slower. That still wasn’t enough to fully stop the thick, heavily muscled tail from flinging toward him with a whole lot more speed than he could comfortably deal with.

That was where Ananya came in. Two of her orbs slammed together in front of the tail, quickly smoothing out into a large metal disk that stopped the strike cold. The tip of the stinger, just barely piercing through the floating shield, quickly found itself encased in metal and held in place.

Taking his opportunity as Li and Ananya combined their magic to yank the tail forward and down, Li leapt maybe a dozen feet off the ground and game crashing down toward the center of the scorpion’s body. As he fell, he drew his longest knife, really more of a small sword, and thrust it forward in a similar application to his old Giant’s Punch spell. A rune lit up of the weapon, a symbol that looked like one line splitting a second in two as it caved inward.

He smashed into the center of the monster’s thick exoskeleton, which held for barely a moment before shattering as the rune’s glow momentarily intensified. The sound of breaking through was like a wooden beam buckling under two much weight. A sort of cracking, tearing sound as the powerful defense gave way to his inexorable attack. Viscous, mucus-like green goo covered him as he smashed through like a wrecking ball while around him the creature gave a final shudder and went still.

He left the corpse of the monster just in time to see Norah laughing gleefully as a wave of vines overtook three of the monsters, tying them down and leaving them helpless. A smaller growth of vines appeared behind her before she used them to fling herself toward a fourth scorpion and grab it by the tail before the monster or Li knew what was happening. Swinging the unfortunate monster by its tail, she weaponized the creature as a living flail that she used to beat the other three to death.

Ananya, fully decked out in floating plates of interlocking metal that left her locking not unlike an iron maiden, had interposed herself between a half dozen of the creatures and Emiko. The monsters tried their best to sting her, only to find plate after plate of steel blocking them. Any attempt to approach was swiftly driven back by a heft ingot of steel smashing into their guarding claws. More and more steel seemed to pour from the small leather back pack she wore, creating an ever-escalating metallic defense.

Right up until all the metal dropped to the ground. At that moment, Emiko blazed with blue flame for a mere moment before firing a beam of flame directly at the furthest left of the creatures. The thing burnt up like a child burning aunts with a magnifying glass, instantly crisping and curling up on itself. Emiko swept the beam right, catching the rest of the group in the flames and leaving them in the same state.

Towards the front of the party, Kai thrust his sword forward and created a similar, if smaller, beam of flame. The beam extended his thrust be a few feet, driving deep into the flesh of a scorpion large even in comparison to its kin. The thing had two tails, and was perhaps twice again as large as the rest.

Kai was a blur, swinging his large bastard sword two handed as he met the ferocious assault of the thing’s twin tails. The fight left burning lines in Li’s vision as the white-hot edge of the other man’s blade swung through the air. The man’s swordsmanship was poetry in motion, easily finding openings to slash and stab into the creature while each parry left crisped and burned carapace on the monster.

In mere moments, Kai found the final opening he needed. With a small spin of the blade, one of the monster’s stingers was loped off and a deep gouge was slashed through both of the eyes on the things back. Blinded to anything about head level and with a full half of its true offensive potential lost, it was only a few more clashes before Kai’s weapon was driven hilt deep into the scorpion’s throat.

At around the same time, Djimon killed the last of the straggling things. Throughout the entire fight, he had been taking out any that tried to sneak around or attack individually. The ones that continued to hide in the sand and wait for an opportune moment. Thanks to his work, Ananya had not needed to defend anyone from an unexpected strike from the rear.

Wiping down his blade, Kai called out to the group, “Good work everyone! Djimon, think there is any worth in checking out those tunnels?”

“I doubt it Kai. They are probably just lairs, not anything I would want to get mixed up in anyway. Any chance you can make out the defensive enchantments through all that sand Emiko?”

Giving the hooded figure an exasperated look, Emiko sarcastically responded, “Oh sure. I didn’t tell you, but I gained a perception power to see stone recently. Should be perfect for this! No, I damn well can’t make out any magic through four feet of sand.”

Li spoke up at that, “I uh, can’t really tell what it is, but I can definitely feel something down there. Feels, I don’t know, itchy?”

“I can feel quite a lot of life down there too,” Norah added. “I think Djimon is right. Just a number of lairs.”

Turning toward Li, Norah continued to speak, “Don’t mess with Dungeon Lairs Li. The magic the dungeon uses to grow the monsters at accelerated rates can have strange effects on non-Dungeon creatures. You’ll almost certainly experience incredibly complex biological deviations and intense pain. You’ll also probably be swarmed by ravenous baby monsters and have to deal with numerous traps meant to keep the dungeon’s stock of monsters safe.”

“Wait, are you saying I’ll get magical cancer if I go down there?”

“Does cancer mean uncontrollable flesh growths that have to be excised from the body as they starve the surrounding tissue for nutrients in order to create pointless mass?” Norah questioned.

“That sounds about right. We call them tumors where I come from.”

“Then yes, going in there will probably give you magical cancer.”

Li shuddered at the thought. Once was enough when it came to deadly disease. He was quite fine leaving the comparatively innocent, new generation of monsters to grow up and coming looking for victims before he killed them. At least in someplace like this where anyone entering would know the danger beforehand.

#

Li dodged the right hook coming toward his face by ducking under the arm and springing upward behind Norah. He tried to send a punch toward her side as he passed, but was forced to dodge to the side as she attempted to hip check him. Their spars had been getting longer, but that was only because Norah had continued to hold back to about the same point she had been at the beginning.

“Good job. You’ve been picking up the Thousand Eyes technique very well! Have you decided what you would like to add to your fighting style next?”

Both Norah and Ananya practiced fighting styles that employed controlling a large number of smaller spells at once. Because of that, the core technique of their fighting styles was the same. The Thousand Eyes technique was meant to allow one to, over time, split their attention and mana control across multiple thread. Norah had seen what Li had been attempting with his daggers, and had started training him in the technique long before they ever explained fighting styles to him.

Now, though, he needed to decide what other core technique or underlying philosophy would drive his style as he continued to practice it. Norah employed a style, called the Inescapable Swamp Style, that focused on constricting the enemy. The style slowly reduced their number of options as the fight continued until they were helpless. By comparison, Kai and Emiko practiced something called the Raging Bull Style. The style focused on an overwhelming offensive that crashed its way through any opposition.

Apparently, Kai and Norah had each originally practiced the other’s style. The two had swapped when they realized that the other’s style helped balance out their natural inclinations to be either too reactionary, in Kai’s case, or too direct in Norah’s. The switch had helped them balance themselves and made each far more dangerous than before. Because of that, Norah had suggested Li think about doing the same when deciding on a style.

Besides those two, Ananya and Djimon employed their own unique styles. Ananya’s Thousand Scales style focused on two things. Splitting attention and increasing perception. This was eased by her Third Eye mental enhancement, a skill that seemed to slow the world around her by drastically increasing her processing speed. The core of her style, though, was the skills that allowed her to observe and intercept opponents in a moment.

Djimon’s style, Fleeting Shadows, focused on speed and stealth. It employed techniques meant to speed up and quiet his spell casting, making them less noticeable and faster at the cost of some power. His style also employed physical exercises meant to increase his flexibility and reaction speed. He focused on quickly subduing a single target by striking quickly from unexpected angles.

“I’ve been thinking about it. And about what you said. My perception powers are already trained to a pretty decent point. They aren’t anywhere near Ananya’s, obviously, but I am not planning on focusing on an entire battlefield at once. My abilities are short range and my focus should be the targets immediately in front of me. I don’t have the powers to easily affect beyond that range.”

Norah nodded, agreeing with him. “Good. I thought I might have to beat some sense into you because you only saw the surface similarities between your and her abilities. Or you had decided to take the easy way out, and just poorly emulate someone else.”

“Of course not Norah. I’ve also decided against following your style. Maybe in the future I can explore similar options, but right now my spells don’t have the oomph they need to emulate your approach. I’d just be letting enemies siphon away my mana pool.”

“It would be good for you to choose a more offensive style anyway. You already sit back and wait too much in my opinion. Like Kai, you need something to give you that blood thirsty edge.” She grinned as she said it, showing off her rows of vicious teeth.

“Yeah. I was thinking of learning the techniques to chain attacks into a continuous offensive from the Charging Bull style. I think just that would be a waste though. My magic provides me a lot of mobility and unconventional angles of attack. Instead of learning the techniques for concentrating spell power, I was thinking of doing the flexibility training and learning the techniques for identifying weak points from Djimon’s style.

“There’s another reason for my hesitance to commit to Kai’s approach. My magic is a lot more efficient when it is affecting me, which means I can get a lot more out of reinforcing myself instead of trying to directly overpower enemies with it. And Kai’s style seems to focus a lot on pitting his magical power directly against his opponents.”

Norah gave him a look for a moment. “You make a good point. You also pointed out a known weakness of Ancient type magics.”

“Really? I’ve never really looked into the differences between different magic types before.”

“Ah, I suppose it hasn’t come up much. The short explanation is that Ancient Magic sacrifices specificity for a more general realm of power. That lack of specificity often means Ancient Magic will lose out in a direct contest of spells, but will display far greater power when applied more widely. The best example I can think of would be Heat Magic vs Fire Magic. No single spell from a Heat Mage is going to be able to directly clash with a Fireball and come out on top. Unlike a fire mage though, a Heat Mage doesn’t need the intermediary of Fire to cause damage. Instead of using fire to burn something down, a heat mage can simply touch it and cause the object to reach its flash point. They can also more easily apply their magic over a wide area and the magic itself is less noticeable since it feels much closer to Natural Mana.

“But we have gotten off track. I think your plan is a good one. It will push you to take a more active roll in fights, while still playing to your strengths of pattern recognition and exploiting weaknesses. It will also help you avoid your weakness, which is extended, direct confrontation. Have you decided what to call this style?”

“Not yet. I’ll have to think about it.”

#

Li poked his arm, running his finger along the grooves between the muscles. He was still surprised every time he saw himself in a mirror. He wasn’t on the level of a body builder by any means, but it was still strange to look at himself and not see a gaunt, emaciated body that looked six years younger than his actual age.

He looked like the kind of people that ran marathon’s during the summer now. Fit, toned, and just plain healthy. If you forgot about his too pail skin.

It didn’t matter how much time he spent in the sun every day, he remained ghostly white. The kind of white that was maybe one shade away from being able to see the bones beneath his skin. At least he wasn’t getting sunburns anymore. When he had first shown up, he had been a red and pink peeling mess until Norah got to him.

It was something he hadn’t experienced in over a decade. Being able to trust his body to not just fail him at any given moment. Not just to not fail, but to succeed! To let him run and jump and simply live. It was a joy he never got past. And one that came up more and more as his desperate struggle for survival faded further and further from his mind.

And all of that was before he opened his first Ki Channel.

It was amazing, to be able to feel the sheer power in his muscles after so long of barely being able to get from the bed to the bathroom. To wake up and not feel tingling in his hands and feet as his body told him his heart was failing him. To instead feel it pounding away in his chest, propelling him through acrobatic motions he could never have believed himself capable of.

It was perhaps the greatest gift this second life had given him. Even including his magic. Together though, it meant he was finally free of the prison that had been his body. Free to live, grow, and be himself. Free to make his mark! It was a chance he wouldn’t let go of.

With one last look at himself, his real self - the self not ravaged by sickness, he turned away from the mirror and left the bathing tent the group had set up. He had friends that were waiting on him.

#

“That fight today was strange Norah. We both know it. That nest was F+, maybe even E- rank. And they were just a random encounter, not an area boss or anything. At least as far as I could tell. That should not be happening out here.”

“You’re right Kai. It was definitely harder than it should have been. Nothing we can’t handle, at least not right now, but how dangerous do you think the mountain itself will be?”

“You’d have a better idea of that than me. This falls into the group of things where we listen to your feelings.”

The two were sitting next to the campfire, whispering conspiratorially. Norah had taken first watch and they had waited for the others to fall asleep before discussing the situation. The five of them, six now really, were a team. But Norah and Kai would always be the leaders of their little family, both because they were the most powerful and because they had the most experience. That responsibility meant sometimes they made decisions without the rest of the group.

Because Norah knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if something happened to her pups.

“I don’t like it, Kai. We have a job to do though, and it isn’t like we can’t just leave. If we don’t do it, some idiot party of newbie E- rankers will attempt it to prove themselves. And even if the difficulty is exactly the same as it should be, we both know what will happen to them.”

“Mmm.” The man grumbled, clearly torn on the matter, “You are not wrong. But our first priority is the party. Still, like you said. We have not run into anything we cannot handle yet. And it does not feel right to abandon a job halfway through without a better reason.”

“The Society would probably ding us for that. Living comes first, but protecting the party’s reputation is important. Reputation is what keeps the jobs coming in and food on the table.”

They both sat in silence for a little while after that. Neither liked the situation, but they also were unable to think of a way out. Kai debated favors he could call in. Higher rank parties he might be able to convince to come and do the job. Norah brainstormed ways to get out of the contract while still keeping the local adventurers safe. Then they came to a decision.

“Nobody else will get here in anything approaching a reasonable time frame,” Kai said. “We took a job and we do not yet have enough evidence of danger to abandon it. For now, we continue to gather evidence about the exterior section of the dungeon. Fight the lesser monsters and look for other areas that have increased in danger like the scorpion nest today.”

Norah took over when he stopped, “As long as the increase in danger isn’t too great, we fight the Dungeon’s mid-point boss. The Mountain Gatekeeper. If he hasn’t increased in difficulty, we continue into the mountain while being prepared to escape the moment things feel even a little more dangerous than they should be.”

“If it has increased in difficulty, we leave immediately. No arguments, no questions asked.”

“I think it’s the best we can do Kai.”

“Mmph”

#

Li fed a little more of his new Ki pool into his armor, still learning the new energy requirements his Armor of the Collosus Ki Art. The difference was hard to exactly pin down, but it wasn’t dissimilar to changing from a four-speed bike to a ten-speed. It wasn’t that the maximum output was greater, but the range of outputs he could choose from had gone up. That meant he could be a lot more efficient about how he used the power, if requiring more conscious control to get that efficiency.

He wasn’t sure if it was the similarity in his armor to how using Ki naturally worked in in the body or if he was just lucky, but transforming the Spell into an Art had been an almost entirely positive change. His armor was naturally inclined towards long term versus short term use, so the usual Armor Art weakness of faster resource expenditure hadn’t really been an issue. He had definitely noticed the decrease in Ki regeneration, but it wasn’t enough to truly be an issue in most cases.

Especially with the other thing he was currently practicing.

When Kai had seen Li’s basic meditation skill, he had been quick to change things. According to him, an appropriate refined meditation skill was an important cornerstone for any successful adventurer. With the right training, a meditation skill could close the gaps in an adventurer’s skill collection and let them consistently display their maximum potential.

The meditation technique Kai had chosen for Li was one generally considered niche. It was called the Rivers and Rain Meditation Style and most people would have said the effects weren’t worth the effort. Fortunately, the training for his Fighting Style meant he already had a solid foundation for using this particular Meditation Style.

The difference between Rivers and Rain Meditation Style and almost every other style was that it was meant to be used continuously. That meant it was a comparatively simplistic technique, but one that required constant attention. Something that his multi-tasking training helped with significantly.

Meant to prolong his endurance in a fight rather than recuperate afterwards, the style came with significant downsides. While it would noticeably increase his Ki and Mana regeneration, that increase would be nowhere near the levels of most Meditation Styles. The style also wouldn’t actually provide him with Evolution Points. For that he would have to continue to use the basic Meditation Style. At least until he had this one mastered well enough to combine it with some other technique.

Even with the heads start though, using the meditation style was tricky. It was easily more complicated than floating a dagger or other object, and he had been forced back down to only five flying daggers if he wanted to use both at once. Even fewer if he wanted to control his armor at the same time. Using an Art and a Spell at the same time just complicated matters even more. With everything at once he was lucky if he was able to float three daggers and get the most out of both his meditation and armor.

Which was why he had been forced back to the beginning.

Like when he first started training his magic with Norah, she would throw objects at him that he needed to levitate in the air until she told him to stop. Now, though, he also had to touch symbols on the ground with whatever limb she called out while maintaining the levitation and meditation. Since he was only allowed one movement to touch the symbol, he had to perfectly control the armor.

All told, it was something like magical Twister. Especially once Norah started adding in calls for him to touch multiple symbols at once, pushing his flexibility training with Djimon to the limit as he was forced to contort to manage.

#

As time passed, the difficulty continued to increase. He started having to disarm live traps set up by Djimon and Emiko while he practiced. Or instead of playing Twister Norah would have him fighting a monster as she threw things for him to levitate. Sometimes Ananya would be brought along to intercept him with her flying metal, or he would be forced to dodge blasts of fire and grasping vinces.

Soon he had matched his old limits, and then surpassed them. Where when they have first met Norah would have said he on the border between F and F+ rank, she now considered him solidly in the F+ tier. Almost none of the monsters they found as they wandered around the Labyrinth cataloguing well known hunting grounds and locations could still be considered a match for him.

He even got a chance to fight another Golem Warlord, this one a nimble creature that leapt from column to column while firing arrows at Li as he slogged through the lesser golems. The fight was slow, but he never once felt the same desperate pressure the first one had pushed him to. He felt in control and fully capable of defeating his opponent, neither over- nor under- estimating them.

It had been a little disappointing, but understandable, when his rewards from the second warlord were significantly less impressive. He had still gotten something worthwhile for defeating a Field Boss though. A charm called Stonehawk’s Eye.

The charm essentially allowed the wearer to use it as a magical telescope. Instead of seeing physical things though, the charm would pick out traces of Mana, Ki, and other energies. Rather than keep it for himself, he had traded it to Djimon for a small satchel of coins. He would have given it to his teammate for free, but the man had insisted on at least paying him for it.

#

“I think he’s ready Kai. Yesterday he was able to regularly maintain ten flying objects with no loss of control over his armor or meditation style. Even in battle, he should be able to manage five or six with no difficulty.”

Once again Norah and Kai were having one of their late-night strategy meetings. They had started having them more often after that first strange encounter with the scorpion nest. Still, even with the evidence of greater danger in Archimedes’ Labyrinth continuing to grow the two’s mood had been improving.

They had gone in expecting it after all. That was the entire reason they had been given the mission. There had been some worry that after experiencing the danger first hand and realizing just how much of a step up it had been, but lately the two were starting to think things weren’t as bad as they had originally feared. Maybe one in twenty monsters or traps was noticeably more dangerous, and of those the majority were only moderately so. There had only been two or three other things that could match the Two Tailed Gorgon Scorpion for danger.

“Good. It was time we started making a real push for the mountain anyway. There is still one more location I want to check before we head in though.”

Norah gave Kai a curious glance at that, “Oh? We’ve hit most of the locations know for being particularly dangerous. We missed out on seeing the first of the two Warlords on this side, but if Li beat the thing before we met him it must not have increased in difficulty. He’s good, but I wouldn’t have given him better than one in twenty odds if the difficulty had remained unchanged. Let alone if it had gotten harder.”

“I agree. We have observed everywhere known for being difficult. I want to get the opinions of some of our juniors who frequent the less dangerous areas. There are too many of those locations for us to check everything ourselves, and individuals closer to those monster’s levels will be more aware of minor changes in danger.”

“Ahhh, are you thinking of heading to the Great Oasis?”

“That is exactly what I am thinking. I know the Guild Branch said they already interviewed a number of the local adventurers, but you know what my family always says about Guild information.”

“It is better than nothing, but can’t compare to the knowledge you gather yourself. Never completely trust any information you haven’t double checked with multiple sources and, where-ever possibly, verified yourself. Yes, yes, you’ve quite thoroughly driven it into all our heads.”

Kai softly laughed at Norah’s exasperated tone. “We all have our idiosyncrasies. I will not apologize for being so insistent on following my family’s teachings. It’s the only thing that keeps you from becoming completely uncontrollable when you get a feeling.”

Sobering up, the man continued. “Besides, I want to see what your gut tells you about the local crowd…”

Picking up on the faint hint of worry in his voice, Norah asked him, “What’s the matter? Do you have a bad feeling about something?”

“It is probably nothing. Just…”

“Go on. Anything you have knocking around in that thick skull of yours is worth sharing.”

Smiling slightly, he replied, “If my skull is thick, yours must be a brick wall.”

Returning to seriousness he continued, “Do you not think it is a bit strange we have not run in to anyone out here? I know the popularity was waning with the danger warnings and the increase in injuries, but it shouldn’t be this empty should it?”

#

Elsewhere in the dungeon, the soft rustling of palm tree fronds blown by gentle winds filled a large clearing. Light waves from a mid-sized lake lapped against the nearby shore. The soft cracks of a flapping pieces of fabric caught in the wind occasionally startled the nearby water fowl as they picked between the shore’s pebbles for scraps.

Other birds let out raucous cries as they descended upon the camp, fighting for anything that might be food. A few of the songbirds swooped in to steal shiny objects that caught their eyes winging away to decorate their nests with their ill-gotten gains. One particularly large crow-like bird let out a grumbling laugh as it alighted on a table full of minorly enchanted jewelry.

The big black bird flapped its wings, performing something halfway between flight and a jump to land on its new favorite perch. A long stone branch like thing that ended in five little twigs. The branch protruded from a strange tree, sticking out overtop the table where the creature could examine its newfound fortune of stone baubles. The bird had seen when the thing froze like this.

It had been sweeping the branch thing out over its horde when suddenly it stopped. The entire once living, now stone thing had frozen in place and not moved. It had stayed like that for three days before the bird was willing to approach, too entranced by the soft call of energy from the beautiful pebbles to worry about the thing moving again. Trying to smack it away like the once alive thing had done so many times before.

Hidden away in cellars beneath the few permanent residences, rattling breaths filled the underground spaces. Barely contained sobs and pained gasps broke the near silence, quickly silenced with glares from gaunt faces and harsh shushing sounds. The occasional child tried to speak. Tried to call for missing family or ask to go outside, only to be immediately quieted. Appeased with some of the small amount of remaining food.

In the middle of the camp, a great mass of flesh rose and fell. Deep, rumbling snores filled the immediate surroundings. Those noise was so deep, so primal, that anything approaching would almost expect the pebbles on the ground to be bouncing at the sound. In its dreams, the thing chased the two legs that had filled this place. Eating to its hearts content.

Great paws flailed at the air as it dreamed of running, prowling, and leaping. A long, barbed tongue with a fork at the end escaped slathering jowls for a mere moment as it licked the long, pointed canines protruding from its lips. A long tail lightly drug across the ground, moving in anticipation of the hunt filling its dreams.