Chapter 29: Tyrradic Hearing
Orion's breathing steadied, but his heartbeat didn't slow. The sensation crawling down his spine was more than just adrenaline—it was an instinctual warning.
His awareness stretched outward, threading through the cavern like an invisible web. He could feel it—just outside his line of sight. A presence.
He could faintly sense its form, its size was larger than the Varkren, bulkier. The creature seemed perfectly at ease in its environment. Unlike the Varkren's territorial tendencies that forced it into defending it's territory against intruders, this one exuded patience. It wasn't the territorial type either. It was the stalker type.
Orion could feel it was assessing him just as he was assessing it.
His muscles twitched as an unbidden thought flickered through his mind—this is how its prey must feel.
But he wasn't prey.
Orion moved towards the entrance to meet the creature.
The creature surged forward nearing the cavern entrance.
Orion barely had time to register its form before it was upon him.
A blur of slate-gray muscle and bone, its bipedal frame a mass of condensed power. Thick, fibrous sinew rippled beneath its armored hide, its form a living war-machine built for unrelenting endurance.
But it was the skull that struck Orion first.