It stumbled out of a narrow passage between the towering blocks, four legs tangling awkwardly as it turned to face them. Four unmoving black eyes on a small metal-clad head glinted a kaleidoscope parody of the already absurd celestial hexagon patterns as it stared the three down the twisting street without doors.
Hunter and Priestess froze, the weight of Guard’s arms linking their shoulders - in the last few days Guard had learned how to hold onto their necks without inflicting pain, which made dragging them slightly easier, but not much more.
A moment of silence seemed to stretch for far too long as the creature’s spiky tail flailed, kicking up angry clouds of dust. Standing slightly higher than their knees, it was nonetheless wide-framed and heavy, a large metal sheet thrown out of its way just before ample evidence.
Priestess tried to say something, very quietly. It, of course, did not work, just as it had not worked since their awakening.
Her metallic chitter seemed to aggravate the animal. With a deafening screech, it charged, still unsure on its feet, almost looking drunken.
Hunter pushed Priestess and Guard to the left and leapt in the opposite direction. The creature did not impact them head-on, but the delay was enough for its heavy tail to make contact. Pain shrieked through their leg as they tumbled to the ground, rolling a few meters, losing grasp of their knife.
The screech ended in a dull impact and a metallic crack. Struggling to get back up, they glanced back to see the beast on its side, thrashing wildly, momentarily disoriented after running into the edge of a building. Priestess was doing her best to drag Guard’s still helpless body away from the beast. Her best was, unfortunately, not a lot - Guard was still almost twice her weight, and still unable to control their limbs meaningfully.
A quick look down gave Hunter an unpleasant image. The tail had grazed their left leg, tearing off a chunk of pale grey skin. Undulating white muscle was visible through the gash, and black, almost metallic liquid was escaping their body.
The screech resumed. The beast had regained control, and was getting back up.
Hunter scanned the littered street in search of anything they could use as a weapon. To their frustration, all the incomprehensible junk in this area seemed to be either delicate and frail, or large, unwieldy and bulbous - thin glass trinkets piled against metal vessels they would barely be able to lift. Their knife was a few steps away to the side, glinting dully against the dust.
Having turned to face them, it began to charge again, aiming for the other two as a larger, less mobile target. Hunter screamed as loud as they could, trying to divert attention to themself while scuttering over to the knife. It seemed to work, as the beast took a sharp turn to face them.
At this distance, they could see its form in detail. As it accelerated towards them, the bottom half of its angled head folded open into four deadly petals lined saw-like with shining teeth. This vaguely insect-like mouth seemed to serve no other purpose than destruction, as Hunter did not glimpse anything resembling a throat. Dust from the previous fall was trickling off the metal plates of its back in panicky swirling streams.
The sharp shard burned a line through their fingers as they rolled to the side. Jaws clanged shut somewhere to the right, too close for comfort. The heavy tail swished through the stale air mere centimeters from their face.
Another thud and crash, a cloud of dust exploding from the pile of trinkets the beast had impacted. A call to retaliate. Hunter sprinted towards it, leapt in, aiming for the neck. The hit connected, their shiv tearing with reluctance through the colorless skin, sinking into the alien flesh. A gut-wrenching scream erupted from the creature’s head, and a wild jerk of its body sent Hunter away through the garbage, unwieldy weapon staying lodged at the base of the beat’s short neck.
This time, it recovered faster. As it bulldozed through the heap, aiming for their legs, Hunter barely had enough time to roll, avoiding impact. It braked early enough to avoid another disorienting impact. It was above them now, and Hunter had no time or room to stand up. Their frantic scatter backwards could only delay the inevitable for a second or two.
With a violent squeal, it dashed in, the death-flower of their jaws closing in on Hunter’s left thigh. An explosion of pain rippled out from the area as its teeth tore into the muscle, Hunter’s panicked thrashing possibly only amplifying the damage. Their hands fruitlessly grasped at the trash around them, hoping to find anything strong enough to defend themselves, but the wireframe spheres and glass figurines crumbled and shattered under their fingers.
A mechanical scream, somewhere above. Flying debris from the side. A blur of motion colliding with the animal. A deafening wail, and a small reduction in pain, the jaws on their limb releasing. Something long was lodged in the beast’s side. Priestess was lying on the ground mere two meters away from it, the second half of her improvised spear rolling away.
As the beast backed up and began to turn, Hunter, though half-blinded with pain, saw an opening. Desperation gave the kick of their undamaged leg unexpected power, impact of the sharp insect-foot parting plates on the beast’s head and sinking into the flesh - right where an eye was a second ago.
Another deafening wail reverbated through their bones as the beast tumbled through the dust and junk, wailing in agony, a droplet arc of thick black blood mixing with theirs and the dust in a growing messy pool.
Its underside was turned to Hunter now, free of armor, tantalizingly soft. Through the grey skin, some major blood vessels were visible, and deep in the chest, Hunter thought they could intuit some frenetic oscillation.
Swarms of sadistic, giggling stars exploded in their eyes as they stood up again, leaning against the wall for support. They felt blood stream down their leg with each step, their vision becoming more and more cloudy. Where they guessed Priestess was, they could only see a vague shape now. They screamed, extending their arm in a grabbing motion, and somehow she guessed the intent, the second half-spear clattering to a stop near their feet. The lean down to pick it up almost knocked them out.
The beast was on the verge of regaining control once more, wild thrashing of the previous few second slowing down, legs now threading the air with purpose. Clutching the stick with waning strength, broken end forward, they practically fell onto the beast, staking its chest, trying to apply as much of their own weight while not breaking the weapon. It did not go in easy. It must have hit a bone. A claw grazed their shoulder, ripping parallel marks through their skin, and further and further away from their mind metallic squealing assaulted their ears.
Resistance was overcome with a crunch, and then they hit something important. A bubbling stream of black ichor burst out from the wound, splattering against their hands, face, chest. Another desperate kick from the creature detached them from the weapon.
Crawling away from it, through the shrinking tunnel of their vision they could see that it was crawling away from them, leaving pools of oily blood in its wake.
Though they wanted Priestess’ alien voice to be the last thing they remember, the pain took that place, engulfing the world as they slipped.
And, unsurprisingly, pain was the first thing they regained awareness of, followed closely by feeling of touch. Their leg felt like it was burning on the inside.
They were lying on something softer than rock.
It was mostly quiet.
They were in an enclosed space.
They must had made a sound, because a pair of trembling arms quickly wrapped around their neck, their slowly returning hearing filled with irregular chitter-sobs. Priestess must have been on her knees, hunched above them, though all they could see yet were blurry swathes of light and shadow barely suggesting a humanoid form.
Turning their head felt like a herculean task, almost more exhausting than the fight that led them there. And, frustratingly, it did not yield much, only more blobs of color. They gave up, and slipped back out.
When they next came to, their vision was better, and their leg seemed to hurt less. They could now tell that something had been wrapped around their wounds, some sort of cloth, now soaked with their black blood.
They were on the ground floor of some building, in a room roughly the size of the dining tent of the cult’s last camp. It was mostly empty, save for a few piles of cloth near them. On two of these improvised cots, Guard and Priestess were lying under a wall, seemingly asleep. Empty food tubes formed a small pile between them.
Through the round doorway, they could see the endless day silently raging outside, indifferent as ever. The street was bright compared to the room, so it took a bit for their eyes to adjust enough to recognize the form in the distance.
The heavy-tailed beast’s body lied, abandoned, beyond the door, something oddly familiar rising from it in a trail. Hunter squinted, their weary mind slowly sifting through fractured memory in search of matches. Some sort of growing thing. Some sort of fungal form. Some sort of pale blue fungal form.
Buildings punched through by some tremendous, wild force. Pale blue fungal growths rising from scattered bones. Body of a woman cradling remains of a child, ground around her littered with dozens of tiny femur bones identical of that of the infant. Thin, ghostly mushroom stalks of the same variety rising from her empty eyesockets.
Familiar terror coiled lazily inside their chest.
Somewhere far behind, but surely creeping ever closer, they knew a mind-shattering bell tolled for them, raising more and more shambling beasts from the dead landscape it rolled through.
They needed to run.
But for the moment, shuffling in place was the best they could do.
They turned their head away from the foul sight.
Even if they would walk again, they would surely no longer be able to carry Guard the same way they did.
They really hoped they would walk again soon.
Ignoring the pain and hunger, they tried to sleep.