She gave a short nod. “Their shells can withstand the biting power of the fire jaws when they swarm,” she said confidently. “These small creatures will not be able to hurt them.”
“I’m more worried about our stuff,” Halek muttered. “I’m not too keen on picking beetles out of my food for the next few days—ow!”
He jerked up, slapping at his leg, and a beetle landed on its back next to him, jointed legs waving in the air. Before it could flip upright, Raithe pinned the insect to the ground with a dagger out of nowhere. Halek peered down at his thigh, framing a spot with two fingers, and a drop of blood oozed from a puncture wound on his leg. “Little abominations bite,” he growled.
More thumps sounded outside, pelting the cloth walls of the tent. I shivered as multiple beetle silhouettes crawled up and down the outside of our shelter. Then something slithered beneath the cloth floor of the tent, and I scooted away with a grimace. “They’re burrowing beneath us,” I said, causing Raithe’s eyes to narrow and Halek to pull his knees up to his chest.
“Well, as long as they’re out there and we’re in here—” he began, just as a pair of mandibles broke through the cloth floor,and a large black insect wriggled through the crack. “Oh, never mind, they can get in, they’re inside! I’m officially panicking now.”
“Calm yourself.” Kysa’s gauntlet smashed the beetle into the floor. “They are mindless swarming insects. We are still safer in here that we would be outside.”
“Easy for you to say—you’ve got armor. The rest of us are rather unfortunately squishy.”
A rumble went through the ground beneath us, and everyone froze. The sands under the tent shifted, and I got an eerie, unsettling feeling that something was pushing up through the earth.
Raithe straightened, gazing at the moving sands with narrowed eyes. “We’re not safe here. We need to go.”
“Go?” Halek looked at him, wide-eyed. “Go where? Out into the beetle apocalypse?”
“Something is coming.” Raithe held out a hand to me. “Get Rhyne and Ratuk. We have to movenow.”
The ground beneath us lurched, and sand began pushing up in the center of the tent, growing larger and larger, like a bubble about to pop. We leaped upright as, with a tearing sound, the cloth split open, spilling hundreds of writhing beetles into the tent with us. Halek shrieked.
We fled the tent, the sound of buzzing wings and chittering mandibles echoing all around us. Sand lashed at me, stinging my hands and exposed flesh. Insect bodies hit me as well with heavy thumps, and I pulled up my hood, praying they wouldn’t crawl beneath my clothes. Squinting through the sand and wind,I searched for the rock beetles, but could barely see through the orange haze around us.
“Ratuk!” I called, my voice muffled in the howl of the storm. “To me! Where are you?”
A piercing whistle cut through the shrieking wind, and the answering huffs of the rock beetles followed it. Kysa appeared, small insects ricocheting off her black armor, and then the rock beetles materialized through the storm, snorting as they came into view, seeming to know something was wrong.
“Uh, guys?” Halek staggered backward, staring wide-eyed at where we had left the tent. “Something is happening.”
The tent was sinking. No, not just the tent; the very ground was sinking, sand flowing down as if a hole had opened beneath it. I suddenly felt the pull as the earth under my feet began to suck me toward the center. The tent disappeared beneath the sand, and a swarm of beetles boiled to the surface as another rumble shook the ground.
“It’s coming. Sparrow, go!” Raithe gestured to Ratuk, and I scrambled atop the rock beetle as Kysa mounted Rhyne, pulling Halek up behind her. Raithe leaped onto Ratuk’s back, sliding in behind me, as I gasped the order for the beetle to run.
As we fled, the stench of death filled the air, and the sand beneath us heaved. With an explosion of beetles and dust, a pair of huge jaws rose from the earth, gaping as they loomed into the air. With a moan that made every hair on the back of my neck stand up, the abomination clawed its way to the surface. Beetles rained from its giant decaying body, dripping from its yellow bones like water. The insects swarmed it, scuttling through fleshand bone, the buzz of their wings a terrible drone in my ears. The monster shook its head, flinging beetles and bits of skin everywhere, and then swept its gaze around, putrid white eyes scanning the desert for us. My heart lurched in utter terror as that soulless gaze found me and, for a moment, I stared into the rotting face of death.
“Ssssparrrrrow.”
My heart froze. That was Vahn’s voice, raspy but unmistakable, coming from the abomination’s maw. Raithe went rigid behind me, and I clenched my fists, biting my lip to keep from gasping in horror. The hulking mass of the abomination raised its head, flared its wings, and roared. The noise tore through me, stabbing at my heart; it was a desperate, agonized wail, the sound of a creature who had been driven to the brink of madness and was no longer recognizable as the soul it once was.
“Do you see?”
The moan swirled around me, the anguished sound making my skin crawl.“Do you see... what I am now?” Vahn whispered. The abomination stalked forward, circling us like a desert shark, leaving a wriggling trail of worms and insects behind him in the sand.“What I’ve become? Your fault. Your fault!”It raised its head, bellowing a howl into the storm. Beetles flew from its jaws, arcing into the wind, and I closed my eyes. “My penance,” the abomination went on, almost sounding like it was sobbing.“The beetles. I can feel them crawling inside me. Eating my flesh. My punishment. Do you see what you’ve done, Sparrow!”
It roared this last question, a scream that tore through thewind and brought tears of pain to my eyes.I bit my lip and turned to Raithe, pressing my face into his arm to muffle my sobs. He held me tight, and I could feel him shaking as well.
The creature stepped toward us, but a spear flew through the air and struck the center of one of those white, bulging eyes. The abomination roared and convulsed, curling in on itself as it thrashed. Heart in my throat, I looked at Kysa, who pointed a finger at me, then at the storm, and mouthed one word.
Run!
The abomination rose up, clawing the side of its skull with a bony talon, gouging through flesh and rupturing the eye. Rhyne’s wings opened, and the rock beetle buzzed into the air and flew straight at the monster’s head. The abomination jerked up, seeming to sense the vibrations in the air, for its jaws opened and it lunged at Rhyne. At the last second, the rock beetle swerved, and the huge teeth crunched together with the sound of grinding stone.
“Go, Sparrow,” Raithe whispered behind me. “While Kysa has it distracted.”
“What about Kysa and Halek?” I gasped as Ratuk fled across the dunes, the wails of the abomination echoing behind us. “We have to help them.”
“She’s not fighting it,” Raithe said. “That attack was purely to give us a chance to escape. But Rhyne can fly. Ratuk can’t. We have to lose it in the storm.”
