The massive centipede flips its head side to side, as if calibrating to its targets. The front of its face is flat, with a mouth of shovelling talons that whir, eager to scoop whatever is in front of it into its mouth. Rune charges like it isn’t three times his height. The rest of the crew follows suit, all trying to avoid thatgyrating mouth.
Elio jabs the pointed end of his sword where its legs are segmented together and the creature curls in towards the pain. On the other side, a man with one tattooed arm slams his axe into the base of one of the legs and the strike rings out like metal. In an instant, the appendage lifts and spears though his abdomen and out his back, then resumes shuffling, dragging him along as he screams.
I run for his weapon.
Rune, who obviously has a death wish, rolls beneath the skittering legs and shoves his blade at its underbelly. The shining chitin deflects the strike. It seems we won’t get anywhere trying to attack the main parts of its body. The centipede drops low, shoving him to the ground, and suddenly he’s on his back, desperately dodging away from the flesh-rending points of endless, blade-like feet.
I make it to the fallen axe and sprint for him, noting Elio and Tavi farther down, working in tandem, shoving their blades into its joints, the metal slick with slimy, clear fluid. They haven’t noticed Rune. I leap as I near him—my height and the short axe handle doesn’t give me much choice, but the jump is good, and the blade severs the surprisingly delicate connection between one part of the leg and the next.
The neighbouring feet jab towards me and then compress as the creature turns in, bending almost in half to drag its shovel-mouth my direction. The maneuver means the legs on the other side spread, allowing Rune to roll out the other way, and he disappears behind the maze of violent insect body.
There’s a tell-tale whizz, and a projectile misses its face and explodes over its legs in a mess of sticky goo. The concoctionhardens almost immediately, binding the bladelike appendages together, but they just lift and tuck in, and the rush of victory in me quickly evaporates as the other legs compensate and it moves as well as before.
I run, the sound of its clacking mouth close behind. Someone screams in terror, but it chokes off, strangled and wet.
I’m nearing the trees now, my only hope at this point is to give the others time to hack away at it. I can’t break through its exoskeleton. And it doesn’t have any eyes to—
It doesn’t have any eyes.
It can’t see. It’s a subterranean insect. It can’t use its eyes to hunt. Somehow it hunts without seeing its prey. It could use warmth, or maybe it uses some sort of echolocation, using the feedback from its rumbling to pinpoint its targets.
The meadow is ahead, and the realisation gives me another burst of speed. The half-fallen tree is easy to climb after years of ropes and masts, so I find a perch and hold my breath, waiting to see if I’ll be wrong and die for it.
It doesn’t slow, dodging trees and crashing through patches of underbrush, and careening right under me. Past me.
Air saws in and out of my lungs as I watch the segments pass below.
“Regroup!” Rune calls, drawing back those that are behind and those that are chasing it deeper into the forest. He spies me in the tree and flashes a grin. “Thanks for the save.”
“Let me keep the axe once we’re back to the ship and I’ll consider it thanks enough!” I call down, flipping the weapon in my palm and lifting a brow, trying to keep the smile on his face a little longer.
His cheeks are flushed from the fight. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
The rumble grows as the centipede turns towards us. It skips, parts of it almost seeming to limp, but drives forwards without emotion or self preservation.
“It can’t see,” I tell them, rising to my feet on the slope of the trunk. It’s almost to us now. Leaves sprinkle down, falling gracefully as the creature turns the understory into mulch. “I think it uses the vibration! Stand as near to a tree as you can. And bestill!”
It bursts through the meadow and stones plink off the chitin scales of its face. I track the source to Bear, who sits in a tree nearby, armed with a slingshot. A series of small explosions at the creature’s feet take me by surprise and Bear returns the silent question on my face with a cheesy grin. Between the slugger pods and the slime earlier, maybe I’m not giving him enough credit.
“Odelia!” Rune shouts. “Toss down the axe!”
Then he’s ordering the others to back away, one eye on the creature’s approach like he’s got a plan. There’s no time to argue, but every muscle in my body resists as I let the weapon fall handle-first to where he’s standing. He snatches it from the air, then issues orders I can’t hear to a group that takes off towards the stones. The centipede follows them. The others stand still, some as near to trees as possible, and it ignores them, its single-minded need to hunt driving it forwards. Rune sprints to the base of the half-fallen tree. For a moment, I think he’s going to join me. Instead, he starts chopping. Moreof the crew join him, and the plan, the brilliant, beautiful plan is suddenly clear.
The wood beneath me jerks with every strike. The last segment of its body is nearly here, so I use the thinning limbs to heft myself as high up as I can go, leveraging my weight against the weakening break in the trunk.
“Odi! It’s coming down!” Elio shouts like he thinks I should get away while I still can.
Rune glances up for a fraction of a second. His cheeks are red, his lips parted. Sweat slides down the sides of his face as his blue eyes meet mine and send a thrill to my racing heart. “I need you to jump!”
I don’t ask for clarification.
I jump against the top of the half-fallen tree, using the limbs to bring me up and then back down, slamming my weight into the wood as hard as I can. Rune drives the axe into the base of the tree trunk, and we fall into a rhythm. Him axing it below while I jar it with counterweight on the top. Again. Again. Again.
When the tree falls, I leap, hoping the nymph in me remembers how. I’m still in the air when the creature screams—an earsplitting, grinding-rock hiss—and the flat of one of its legs catches me as it flails, caught in deaththrows. The swipe sends me twisting. I claw at the air, but land wrong, my weight awkward on my bad ankle, before tumbling over sharp branches. The pain flairs up my leg and something jabs into my ribs, forcing me to bite back a sob before it settles into adeep, aching throb.
A segment of the centipede twitches under the weight of the trunk. The wood had crushed a small portion of its middle, but most importantly, it anchored it to the ground. The rest of its long body lays still beyond the trees, liquid pooling where the segment sloughed away, its own momentum having pulled it apart.
Three dead, four badly wounded.
