Chapter 478: Pasta will never be the same
Kellen was on high alert as he kept following the sounds of the screams. The path he was on did begin to curve in that direction, and Kellen cursed under his breath softly as he kept moving.
He had to stab a few more vines, his second hand just covered in sap, and when the screams stopped, an awful feeling filled his gut.
That wasn’t...that was never good.
Kellen tried to hear if he could pick up on anything else around him, like footsteps, other voices, anything, but he couldn’t. He slowed down carefully, his eyes scanning the area for markers. He was still on the path, but he was now more cautious. Careful.
He felt like now that the forest was quiet, eerily so, that it had to have been a monster. He hoped it was a monster, and when he came into another clearing, he came to a halt just in the tree line.
There was a creature there, the first creature he’d seen. Everything else so far had been plant life. They had been monsters of course, but they hadn’t had limbs in any way similar to an animal or a human.
This wasn’t the case here.
It...It had six limbs. They weren’t quite arms, more like vines wound about each other, creating a mass of moving, twisting, writhing vines pretending to be an arm. It was upright, walking on branches. They didn’t look sturdy, and as Kellen watched, he wanted to throw up. It was walking, but it looked...wrong, disgusting. He would have rather faced undead given how gross this was.
It didn’t have a head. It had six upper limbs, two twig legs, and a torso. No head. It was also wearing leaves, covering up its body like it was wearing clothes.
Kellen felt in his gut that if he had followed the voice of Rhys that he had heard, it would probably have led him to something like this. There was a chance that Kellen would have fallen for this shitty disguise, but here he was.
Having to face an unknown monster of unknown strength because they were in a clearing, and Kellen needed to get through it. He could see the mark he’d been following this whole time on a tree on the other side of the clearing, and fuck it, he was glad he had two guns and a knife hand.
Kellen took his time, waiting, praying that the creature would move on so he didn’t have to actually fight it. That was the thing about being a Field Guide. Don’t fight when you can avoid it.