Book One – Chapter 9

As he halted, Yves gave but a fraction of energy to the Ardimian chain on his neck. The pendant pulsated fiercely, signalling the presence of three nearby beings. Numb and cold, he barely felt the signal, even though the chain rested directly on his skin. The Vicha’s influence distorted the artifact significantly, but Yves had still used it whenever he felt particularly unsafe. In these desolate lands, he preferred to err on the side of excessive caution.

Straining his second sight, Yves discerned the lurking threats. Two paigen skulked around the rock walls to his left, while another lay hidden within hardly discernible remnants of what had once been grand stone structures. The first two remained frozen, exhibiting a stillness that betrayed predatory intent, while the latter had already inflated and coiled into a defensive posture that was all spikes and no mercy.

These grotesque desert-dwellers were twisted manifestations of the land’s malevolence. Their elongated, sinuous bodies were held upright by over a thousand needle-thin appendages. Reaching heights of up to three meters, these aberrations were covered in a chaotic array of spikes, indistinguishable from their limbs, all writhing in unsettling disarray.

Yves needed them gone. Until now, all land creatures had avoided the Vicha’s presence. In the initial days after leaving the crater, Yves had feared potential attacks, but even the grand biscaan had maintained their distance. Some observed from afar, barely lingering beyond the Vicha’s radius, as Yves had discerned during the first rainless periods of today. Some briefly trailed him, though always out of the Vicha’s reach. Yet, none dared attack him or the persistent barthar and marrels.

Underground dwellers had remained equally cautious. At times, disturbances rippled beneath the floating sled. Yves had felt tremors and heard distant rumblings. He had envisioned serpent-like creatures, burrowing arachnids and grand insectoids lurking just beyond the range of his second sight, hidden within sand-filled crevasses that moulded the mud-laden terrain. None had breached the surface.