Thirteen #3
“There’s a sandstorm coming,” Kysa announced, stopping Rhyne to glance back at us. “We’ll have to stop and wait it out. Fatechaser,
grab the tent.”
Quickly, we worked to pitch the tent, while around us, the dunes began to rise and fall like the waves in the Dust Sea.
As the weather got worse, the two rock beetles moved shoulder to shoulder and buried themselves halfway into the sand, the saddlebags and the top parts of their shells poking up like giant black boulders.
“Here it comes,” Halek warned, just as we finished erecting the tent. I looked up to see a wall of sand crest the dunes and
come right for us. We ducked into the tent, and the storm swallowed it, the air outside instantly turning dark.
Halek sighed, the sound nearly inaudible over the shrieking winds beyond the cloth. “Well, that was kind of close. Sometimes
I think it would be so much easier to be a rock beetle. Have you noticed that nothing bothers them?” He peered through gap
in the tent flaps, narrowing his eyes. “I wish I could just stick my head in the sand to avoid a storm.”
“Sometimes I wish you could, as well.” Kysa lowered herself into a cross-legged sit against the cloth wall. “The eternal prattle
would be silent for a few hours, at least.”
Halek grinned. “Ha, you would miss my stories if I wasn’t here, admit it.”
The insect rider did not deign to answer.
Raithe sat down across from Kysa. “This storm is coming from the direction of the World Scar,” he mused as I joined him. “Unusual,
since the winds have been blowing in the opposite direction until now.”
Something thumped against the outside of the tent, like a rock or pebble bouncing off the side. There was another thump, and
another. Frowning, I looked at Raithe, and his eyes narrowed.
“What is that?” Halek wondered, also frowning at the tent walls. “Who’s throwing rocks during a sandstorm?”
“Stay here,” Raithe muttered. Easing to the front of the tent, he hooked two fingers along the edge of the flaps and pulled
one back to peer into the storm.
Something immediately crawled through the crack. A black beetle nearly the size of my fist scuttled up the wall of the tent,
paused a moment, and then flew at my face with a buzz of wings.
I flinched and swatted it from the air. It flew back and landed on Halek’s leg, and he let out a yelp. But before he could
leap to his feet, Kysa’s gauntleted hand snatched up the insect and squeezed, crushing it in her fist with a faint pop.
“Eww!” Halek scooted away.
The rider calmly dropped the squashed beetle in front of her, and Raithe returned to my side. The beetle lay on the floor
between us, clearly dead, though I could see a pair of large, curved mandibles that looked like they would give an extremely
painful bite.
“Maederyss’s mercy, I am really not liking this aggressive insect curse we seemed to have picked up,” Halek breathed, plopping down on the other side of the tent.
He looked at me and Raithe with an exasperated grin. “I blame the pair of you. If my fate is to be eaten by giant carnivorous
insects, I expect you both to sing a tragic ballad at my funeral.”
Raithe didn’t smile. More thumps echoed against the cloth outside, and I caught glimpses of beetle silhouettes against the canvas before they dropped to the sand. The storm was picking up, which was somehow increasing the number of beetles flying through the air.
“Where is this coming from?” Raithe muttered darkly. “We saw the abomination pass overhead a few days ago, and the winds are
coming from the direction of the World Scar. Does this mean the abomination is close?”
“Kysa.” I looked at the insect rider in alarm. “Rhyne and Ratuk are outside. Will they be all right in this?”
She gave a short nod. “Their shells can withstand the biting power of the fire jaws when they swarm,” she said confidently.
“These small creatures will not be able to hurt them.”
“I’m more worried about our stuff,” Halek muttered. “I’m not too keen on picking beetles out of my food for the next few days—ow!”
He jerked up, slapping at his leg, and a beetle landed on its back next to him, jointed legs waving in the air. Before it
could flip upright, Raithe pinned the insect to the ground with a dagger out of nowhere. Halek peered down at his thigh, framing
a spot with two fingers, and a drop of blood oozed from a puncture wound on his leg. “Little abominations bite,” he growled.
More thumps sounded outside, pelting the cloth walls of the tent. I shivered as multiple beetle silhouettes crawled up and
down the outside of our shelter. Then something slithered beneath the cloth floor of the tent, and I scooted away with a grimace.
“They’re burrowing beneath us,” I said, causing Raithe’s eyes to narrow and Halek to pull his knees up to his chest.
“Well, as long as they’re out there and we’re in here—” he began, just as a pair of mandibles broke through the cloth floor, and a large black insect wriggled through the crack. “Oh, never mind, they can get in, they’re inside! I’m officially panicking now.”
“Calm yourself.” Kysa’s gauntlet smashed the beetle into the floor. “They are mindless swarming insects. We are still safer
in here that we would be outside.”
“Easy for you to say—you’ve got armor. The rest of us are rather unfortunately squishy.”
A rumble went through the ground beneath us, and everyone froze. The sands under the tent shifted, and I got an eerie, unsettling
feeling that something was pushing up through the earth.
Raithe straightened, gazing at the moving sands with narrowed eyes. “We’re not safe here. We need to go.”
“Go?” Halek looked at him, wide-eyed. “Go where? Out into the beetle apocalypse?”
“Something is coming.” Raithe held out a hand to me. “Get Rhyne and Ratuk. We have to move now.”
The ground beneath us lurched, and sand began pushing up in the center of the tent, growing larger and larger, like a bubble
about to pop. We leaped upright as, with a tearing sound, the cloth split open, spilling hundreds of writhing beetles into
the tent with us. Halek shrieked.
We fled the tent, the sound of buzzing wings and chittering mandibles echoing all around us.
Sand lashed at me, stinging my hands and exposed flesh.
Insect bodies hit me as well with heavy thumps, and I pulled up my hood, praying they wouldn’t crawl beneath my clothes.
Squinting through the sand and wind, I searched for the rock beetles, but could barely see through the orange haze around us.
“Ratuk!” I called, my voice muffled in the howl of the storm. “To me! Where are you?”
A piercing whistle cut through the shrieking wind, and the answering huffs of the rock beetles followed it. Kysa appeared,
small insects ricocheting off her black armor, and then the rock beetles materialized through the storm, snorting as they
came into view, seeming to know something was wrong.
“Uh, guys?” Halek staggered backward, staring wide-eyed at where we had left the tent. “Something is happening.”
The tent was sinking. No, not just the tent; the very ground was sinking, sand flowing down as if a hole had opened beneath
it. I suddenly felt the pull as the earth under my feet began to suck me toward the center. The tent disappeared beneath the
sand, and a swarm of beetles boiled to the surface as another rumble shook the ground.
“It’s coming. Sparrow, go!” Raithe gestured to Ratuk, and I scrambled atop the rock beetle as Kysa mounted Rhyne, pulling
Halek up behind her. Raithe leaped onto Ratuk’s back, sliding in behind me, as I gasped the order for the beetle to run.
As we fled, the stench of death filled the air, and the sand beneath us heaved.
With an explosion of beetles and dust, a pair of huge jaws rose from the earth, gaping as they loomed into the air.
With a moan that made every hair on the back of my neck stand up, the abomination clawed its way to the surface.
Beetles rained from its giant decaying body, dripping from its yellow bones like water.
The insects swarmed it, scuttling through flesh and bone, the buzz of their wings a terrible drone in my ears.
The monster shook its head, flinging beetles and bits of skin everywhere, and then swept its gaze around, putrid white eyes scanning the desert for us.
My heart lurched in utter terror as that soulless gaze found me and, for a moment, I stared into the rotting face of death.
“Ssssparrrrrow.”
My heart froze. That was Vahn’s voice, raspy but unmistakable, coming from the abomination’s maw. Raithe went rigid behind
me, and I clenched my fists, biting my lip to keep from gasping in horror. The hulking mass of the abomination raised its
head, flared its wings, and roared. The noise tore through me, stabbing at my heart; it was a desperate, agonized wail, the
sound of a creature who had been driven to the brink of madness and was no longer recognizable as the soul it once was.
“Do you see?”
The moan swirled around me, the anguished sound making my skin crawl. “Do you see . . . what I am now?” Vahn whispered. The abomination stalked forward, circling us like a desert shark, leaving a wriggling trail of worms and
insects behind him in the sand. “What I’ve become? Your fault. Your fault!” It raised its head, bellowing a howl into the storm. Beetles flew from its jaws, arcing into the wind, and I closed my eyes.
“My penance,” the abomination went on, almost sounding like it was sobbing. “The beetles. I can feel them crawling inside me. Eating my flesh. My punishment. Do you see what you’ve done, Sparrow!”
It roared this last question, a scream that tore through the wind and brought tears of pain to my eyes. I bit my lip and turned to Raithe, pressing my face into his arm to muffle my sobs. He held me tight, and I could feel him
shaking as well.
The creature stepped toward us, but a spear flew through the air and struck the center of one of those white, bulging eyes.
The abomination roared and convulsed, curling in on itself as it thrashed. Heart in my throat, I looked at Kysa, who pointed