Chapter 145: Tingling

We left the shore as soon as we woke up.

The palace was the only lead we had, and a palace meant walls, and walls meant people. Nobody had ever been saved by a shore.

So we packed the tents, hid the boats under the big rock, and started walking toward the mountain.

The ground rose slowly.

Gravel gave way to dry grass, and the grass gave way to hard, cracked earth the color of old bone.

Every few steps I checked the slope above us, and every few steps it showed me nothing. That was what bothered me.

The sour pressure I had felt from the mountain the day before was stronger now, and still there was not one creature in sight.

Behind me, Khan and Eva were walking side by side.

It was small. Nobody would have noticed unless they knew what to look for.

Khan had slowed his pace to match hers without being asked. Eva had stopped chewing her cheek.

Once, when the path narrowed, their hands brushed, and neither of them pulled away, and neither of them looked down. They had come to some kind of understanding in the night, and they had done it without a single speech.

I liked that. It suited them.

I glanced at Petra.

She walked a step behind my shoulder, as she always did, one hand resting on the handle of her morning star. When she caught me looking, she raised one eyebrow. That was all.

Nothing had changed between us. The same walk, the same eyebrow, the same quiet.

Not one thing was different from yesterday, and after the night in the tent, I found I was glad of it. Some things should stay exactly where you left them.

We had been walking for about an hour when my left ear tingled.

It was faint, like a hair brushing the inside of it. I stopped walking.

I have had this since I was a boy. I never told anyone how it started, because I don’t know.

The left ear tingles when something dangerous is coming from the left. Always the left, never the right, never from above. It had saved my life many times in the Realm.

I turned my head slowly and looked to the left.

A field of broken boulders, some of them taller than a man. Dry brush. A dip in the ground beyond them where the light didn’t reach. Nothing moved.

The tingle grew stronger.

I raised one hand, and the group stopped. I didn’t need to say a word. I pointed to my ear, then to the boulders, and I watched it travel down the line in the space of a breath. Khan’s face went flat.

Eva’s hand dropped to her hip. Petra didn’t react at all, which was how I knew she had understood.

They drew their weapons.

Eva drew a sword, long and clean, the steel faintly blue in the grey light.

Khan pulled two small axes from his belt, one for each hand, and let them hang loose at his sides.

Petra unhooked her morning star, and the spiked head swung once and settled, heavy and patient.

I drew my own sword. The hilt was warm against my palm, as if it had been waiting for this.

None of them were ordinary weapons. Every one was a Gift of Awakened rank, and were... well, awesome.

We stood in a loose arc, facing the boulders. The wind stopped. I could hear my own pulse. Behind me, someone drew a slow breath and held it.

Then the ground started to shake.

It came in a heavy, uneven rhythm.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

Each step landed harder than the last, and I felt it in my knees.

There were Two sets of feet, maybe more, or so I thought. Dust jumped off the stones. Something clicked, sharp and dry, again and again, like a pair of shears cutting the air.

Two shapes came out of the dip at full speed. Their legs looked like wheels.

I knew what they were before I could see them properly.

Beast level. The weight of them hit my chest first, a pressure that said these were creatures that had killed, and killed often.

Then they cleared the boulders, and I got my first look.

They were crabs.

Or they looked something like crabs. Now they stood on eight thick legs, upright, taller than Khan by a full head.

They had arms.

They had something close to shoulders.

A shell of mottled red-brown covered their backs, ridged and pitted, and their faces were flat and eyeless, with small black beads set far apart. The pincers were the worst part. Each one was as big as a door, curved like a scythe, and the inner edges were serrated, bright and wet.

Humongous crabs. Two of them, charging straight at us.

My hand tightened on my sword. I started to step forward.

Khan was already moving.

He spun both axes in his hands, fast, until they were a blur of steel, and then he jumped.

He cleared the front of our line in a single bound and rose into the air, directly in the path of the two creatures. At the top of his arc, he crossed the axes in front of his chest.

A cross.

Something dark bloomed in the air in front of the blades. It began as a spot, then a ring, then a black circle spinning slowly in the space where the axes met. It drank the light around it. I felt a cold draft on my face, from forty feet away.

The crabs didn’t slow down. They didn’t have the sense to. Whatever was left of their minds only knew one direction.

Khan swept both axes outward in one clean arc.

The black circle broke.

It didn’t burst. It scattered, thousands of black particles, fine as soot, all of them flying at once toward the two creatures like a swarm of angry insects.

They hit the air with a sound like silk tearing.

Slash!

I watched the particles pass through the crabs’ shells.

’Show off.’