160 - They Weren't Dying Fast Enough

Frobert clung to the rock in front of him, shaking. How could they?  How could they just DO that? The rock cut below was filled with dust and sand and figures and screams and if it weren’t for his bugs he’d have no eyes down there at all.

How can they move so fast?  How can they keep moving so fast?

The sandsheet with fangs had been sliced into ineffectual bits.  Even the ribbons of dead skin could have been used to trip his targets or their birds but that wasn’t possible anymore.

Sweat stood on his brow and his fingers clenched white on the rock in front of him.  More dead things.  I need more dead things. They weren’t dying fast enough down there.  Endarkened they weren’t dying at all. If they died he could use them. Cliner the water out of them... Hmmm.

He had not energy or breath to follow that thought.  His grip was the only thing keeping him upright.  But he couldn’t see anyway.  He lay down and closed his eyes to better follow his control lines to his creatures.

**

Ilax cursed under his breath steadily as he chopped at the endless scrambling bones and leather that were still trying to kill him.  They could be cut apart but that didn’t stop them.   

The bushie above, had finally run out of larval bushies dropping out of the holes in its hide.  It couldn’t land because the defile was too narrow for it to take off again especially if they chopped at its wing-scales before it could crawl clear.

“It can drop down, lash with its tail and bounce up again, is all!” Kyrus’ voice was hoarse.  “Elemfias!”

“Not yet!”

“There’s a controller.  We have to find him!”

“Send the youngsters,”

As little as he wanted to, they were mostly clear of the melee.   

*Son!*

*Yes, da.*

*Find the man controlling this mess, shut him down.*

“Yes, da!*

The sun beat down on them in the rock, baking everything into twitching jerky.  He was so busy fighting the bigger bits, the random fangs and bone fragments were able to work their way up his boots, even as he stamped and fought. They were already tired.  There seemed no end of opponents even if broken into bits.  The dead fragments, leather and shreds of dry flesh and dust, crawled up and started trying to bury you.

**

 “You heard him!”  Kyrus and Hara and Werfas pulled up their terrified birds though they bucked and hissed, they couldn’t see to run.

“I...need more focus,” Hara panted, her attention only half there as she tried to follow the control lines back to the puppet master.  “Its... too...”  Her string of pack birds bumped her bird as she tried, throwing her off.

“Don’t get down!”  Werfas did something... clinered the sand under their claws and the birds froze as the earth under their feet moved.  “Ky!”

“Got it!”  He would much rather be chopping up dead things than doing this stuff.  He leaned over and caught Hara’s blindly reaching hand and synced with her to boost her search.

“That’s cleared it a lot.  That’s... oh shit.  Kyrus! Hara! Break break break!” Werfas’s shout yanked them out of their search.

Stumbling blindly toward them were a dozen human skeletons, so newly cleaned of flesh that they were still reddish brown and strips of flapping skin hung down from the arms and torsos and thighs.  They held shovels and their jaws hung, flapping, half attached. A pack bird rose up and blundered into one and knocked it down but the others closed around it as though drawn by the touch, hammering edges of shovels into the bird.

The other birds went mad, blindfolded or not. “Ride... shit... ow...no!”