The bell at the centre of the circles of tents rang.

The deep clangs resonated across the ground, carried to the nearest forest. The sun was beginning to set – never before was the morning bell tolled this late.

The first people emerged from the tents. They were haggard, unkempt, frail; yet, their movements reflected none of this. Their arms, legs, feet moved with utmost precision, their poses exuding confidence and efficiency. Walking at a lavish pace, they began making their way to the centre of the tents, congregating around the sound which awoke them.

They were greeted by a bizarre sight.

A woman with short-cropped tar-black hair stood on a platform next to a bell larger than herself, hitting it repeatedly with a weighty hammer. Her clothes appeared identical to theirs only in general shape – they were worn and torn, and covered in series upon series of blue and red stains.

She continued with her task, ignoring the crowd. They watched attentively.

Suddenly, the hammer was thrown to the side. The ringing stopped as soon as the last person left their tent.

“In about ten minutes, that field with the obelisk will cave in. Currently, you do not know anything – where you are, who you are and what you were doing before you left.”

Her voice was loud, clear, precise – and hard.

“You have consumed a part of me, thus you have become a creature much like I am. You are faster than any human alive, you are stronger than any human alive and you think with more clarity than any human alive… for you have lost your humanity. As mindless machines, you can and never will feel emotions as before. You cannot taste this fresh summer air, savor it, enjoy it - for you need not breathe. Lost are the pleasures of the flesh, and gained is the pleasure in the flesh – you have no choice but to drink blood, for from this moment on, this pleasure will become your only meaning of existence.”

She paced across her small stage.

“You can run from this place. You can find a nearby town or village and integrate into there for the remainder of your eternal lives. You can also stay, performing labour trivial for someone with such abilities while using the fresh blood to feed. The choice is yours. However,”

She paused.

“In about seven minutes, that field will cave in. What will come out of the remains will be of a different breed to you or me. What will come can smash a skull into paste with no more than a single swipe of their fist, can slice a body into ribbons before the body can even blink and will not stop this crushing and slicing until every single living creature in the vicinity is dead. You run, and they run faster. You fight, and they fight harder.”

She picked a large blade of the ground; it resembled a longsword, although of a shape quite bizarre.

“However, we can still fight. Together, as one group; together, we can defeat any threat simply by the power of sheer numbers. Of course, there will be losses. However, the numbers will be nothing compared to those of the hunt which will come about as a result of a failed defence. You will find every weapon you will need in the large warehouse to my right – anyone who wishes to risk their eternal life to ultimately keep it, you must join me. If you do, bring one black barrel each alongside your weapon. You have five minutes. That is all.”

She hopped off the podium and walked in the direction of a hill overlooking the field. The crowd parted to make way, then dissipated.

Standing on a boulder and feeling the sun on her back, she looked over the now armed crowd. The skewed obelisk was clearly visible from her perch and a sizeable pile of barrels filled to their brim with explosive powder lay to the side. Full attendance, as before; it was impressive yet expected that this was achieved in four minutes.

“We will let any creature which exits advance to our position, where we have the advantage. Once we have cleared out anything that comes for us, we come for them. We will use the explosions of these barrels to trigger a landslide, permanently burying the crater which will appear in minutes.”

The audience was silent. They were cataloguing and capturing every word she had said in their minds – they were not going to forget any of her words.

Their wait was short.

A single tremor, running through the ground. It began abruptly, then quickly became quiet. The earth seemed to settle.

They stood still.

They could feel it in their chests. A feeling, a terrible feeling of something horrifying taking place beneath the earth. More tremors, of a much different sort, began gathering pace.

Deep and menacing vibrations made themselves felt. They could see the angle of the entrance to the ruins become more acute, until it simply began sinking into the ground.

The grass around it sagged as if a drumskin loosened. The obelisk held its place above the surface for a few seconds longer than it should have, then was abruptly swallowed by the earth.

The rumble became deeper, more intense. The loose earth cracked, tore, fell into the forming abyss, swallowed by the maw of the unknown. They could feel the impacts of the pieces striking the bottom, however deep it lay.

The ground calmed, leaving behind a field covered in dust.

They waited still. The dust was being blown away from the wind, revealing a large crater at least four hundred feet in diameter.

A figure clambered out of the pit.

Facing the afternoon sun, the creature cast a large shadow on the dust behind it. It resembled a humanoid, although …wrong. It looked around.

Then, it saw the crowd.

A deep, hollow bellow made itself heard. The creature began to sprint.

Even at this distance, they could see its limbs seemingly dislocating with every step; its arms flailed behind it, twisting and snapping in every direction as its legs tumbled at breakneck speed. Somehow, it was making incredible ground.

It was already in the shadow of the hill, and they could see its finer details. A rotting human cadaver was its body while its head much closer resembled a goat’s. One of its eyeballs was completely gone, while the other was dangling on a red thread. Its entire body oozed a red fluid.

It hit the front lines. Unfortunately, the slope was not enough to slow it significantly.

The makeshift army, armed with little more than pickaxes, shovels and axes, was clearly unprepared for the barrelling creature twice the size of their largest. Bodies flew in all directions from the initial momentum of its swinging arms. Some agile enough to dodge them did so, then responded with strikes of their own. Their weapons tore the flesh off in chunks with ease and exposed bone and tendon to air.

If the creature was even affected by those injuries, it gave no indication. It continued its onslaught with its constant and consistent vigour, bellowing then simply slapping those who dared stand in its way.

A rogue shovel, not the first, hit its femur.

One of the bone’s many cracks and dents expanded. It fractured, sending pieces flying. The creature toppled to the earth. Its roar increased in pitch. Seizing this opportunity, two dozen people dropped their weapons and grappled the monster’s decaying arms to hold them in place. Its legs were thudding frantically against the ground at a frightening pace.

The survivors gathered around the head. It was swinging around, beating itself in all directions, seemingly panicked. They raised their weapons, then struck. Again. Chunks of flesh and scraps of skull began flying in all directions, clinging to the weapons and then scattering across the grass. Again. The crowd trampled the grey matter oozing out of the head while continuing to pulp the head. Again. The bellow ceased, becoming little more than a soft gurgle. What remained of the head was little more than several fragments of flesh clinging to the neck.

“Target its joints! Sever its arms and feet, then elbows and ankles; once you have done that, destroy the torso.”

The woman’s voice broke the eerie silence in which the battle was now taking place. All which could be heard was the sound of weapons hitting flesh and the occasional thudding of the creature’s legs on the ground – no grunts, shouts, yells.

The crowd began doing as they were told. The group who had just reduced the head to slag began targeting the hands, which disappeared into pieces with little effort. The intact fingers crawled away like worms, while the fragments of skin twitched. The elbow joints came next – after a short struggle, the final pieces of sinew came apart to drop the forearms onto the earth. While the shoulders were in the process of being reduced to fragments of bone and flesh, the crowd began the mostly unsuccessful attempts at grappling the still-swinging legs. The muscles of the severed parts, revealed by the gaps in the rotting skin, were still contracting in spasms.

The sun’s edge approached the horizon.

Most of those who were thrown by the wild swings had already stood up – a little less than half of the total group. Some lay completely motionless, their head or neck having hit an unfortunate rock. Others were making unsuccessful attempts to simply move, for their legs twisted were beyond recognition or simply paralysed. Despite most of the survivors having broken bones or limbs, they continued moving about with a consistent grace.

The creature had at this point been crudely disassembled into still-twitching chunks of gore. The crowd stood before the woman, motionless.

“Nothing else escaped the initial collapse, so we can now bring this fight to them. Take at least one barrel each – we must carry the full pile to the crater, then detonate it. Keep in mind this must be accomplished before more breach the temporary barrier that is currently there.”

She had at most two hours before most of the group began recovering their memories. It would have to be enough.