Chapter 17: What Is that
Taria opened her mouth to speak, but Kaedros quickly turned, clamped a hand over her lips, and dragged her behind a thick tree, all without making a sound.
"Shhh," he whispered, low and urgent.
Taria’s heart pounded. She hadn’t seen him this serious before.
"There’s a monster ahead," Kaedros said quietly.
"I saw it!" Taria hissed when he released her. "What kind of monster is that?"
Kaedros peeked past the tree, his brows furrowing. He didn’t recognize it, and that alone unsettled him. "I don’t know," he muttered In admission.
The creature in question was enormous, the size of two horses. It had the unmistakable skeletal frame of a Scabber, but with drastic mutations.
Its snout was longer, ending into fangs like sabers. Its eyes were glowing blood-red, and its claws looked like they could shred metal. What made Kaedros weary was the aura he was feeling from it, an oppressive kind of energy.
"That’s a Scabber?" Taria whispered as she peered around him. "I didn’t know they got this big."
"They don’t," Kaedros replied flatly. "And this one doesn’t even smell like a Scabber. It stinks of chemicals... and dry heat."
He tried to place the scent, it tickled the back of his mind like a memory he couldn’t catch, making his nose itch.
"Well, at least we found their nest," Taria murmured. The creature was feasting on the remains of smaller Scabbers, tearing through flesh like paper. Behind it, a wide hole gaped in the earth. The nest.