Page 31 of Heart of the Desert

I creeped forward from my hiding spot, wondering if I had come upon a corpse. When I was just feet away from the mirrored black surface, I gasped.

This was an uninhabited exoskeleton. One of the tricriths had shed its armor, leaving an empty black facsimile of itself behind.

I jumped back at a faint chitter, afraid I had somehow been tricked and that the monster before me was actually about to come to life and strike me. But it stayed still, and the sound came again. I whirled around, but it echoed and bounced off the walls disorientingly, and I couldn’t tell which passage it came from—or which way to run to escape from it.

I cast about, looking for a place to hide when it hit me.

The molted armor.

I dived for a crack between the body segments. The sharp edges scraped me as I squeezed between them, tearing the loose tunic I wore, and I stifled a hiss of pain. After a moment’s struggle, I managed to duck down inside the dark, cavernous body. The impression of being inside a monster made my skin crawl, but I managed not to think about it too hard as I focused on the approaching sound.

To my momentary confusion, dim bobbing light filled the cavern. Then, as the scraping and clattering of beastly legs crescendoed, a familiar voice cut through the din.

“Damn you to the burning sands!”

Dhara.

I sprang to my feet, nearly bumping my head on the armored surface above me. Drawing my sword, I tried to squeeze free of the segmented body and jump to her aid. I wiggled my way out just in time to see Dhara dispatch a small tricrith, about the size of a yearling horse.

Her saber pierced through its pale shell with a splintering crack—different from the impenetrable coating that had deflected my saber so easily when I had fought the full-grown tricriths. She cupped a small ball of light in her left hand, illuminating the chamber enough for me to see more clearly than before.

“Dhara,” I exclaimed in relief, stepping up behind her.

She whirled around, saber out as if ready to attack another enemy. She pulled up just short, blade pointed at my chest as I raised my hands. Her eyes were wild, her smooth, dark hair pulled free of its neat braid in chunks and dust covering every inch of her. Several knives were missing from the long row of weapons in her sash.

Her shoulders relaxed when she saw me.

“Sands, you’re alive.” She sighed, lowering her weapon. “I thought you were another wave of these awful creatures coming to attack me.”

“I feared I would never find you when we got separated in the fall,” I admitted.

“The others?” She asked, before swallowing thickly. “Elion?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think Elion fell. He and the horses got to safety. Aderyn and Erix were with me, but we were attacked, and Aderyn was dragged away.” It was my throat’s turn to stick. “I told him to go after her when we were separated from another cave in.”

Dhara swore. “What is this place, and what are these things?”

I grimaced. “Tricriths. Kin to the bone spiders and the lava wyrms. Unfortunately, this is not my first encounter with them, although I hadn’t seen their young before.”

“Their young?” Dhara asked in confusion before her eyes widened as she caught sight of the glossy black form behind me. She jerked her saber up again, but I raised my hand, palm out.

“It’s just a husk. It must have outgrown its armor.”

“Outgrown it? So, they get even bigger than that…” She sighed as her face spasmed. “Fantastic. I’ve been beset by dozens of these small ones since I fell, and they were bad enough.”

I looked down at the corpse beside us. The baby tricrith lay on its back, legs curled in with the tension of death. Crouching down, I inspected its three tails. They didn’t appear to be tipped with the lethal stingers yet—the ones that bore the venom potent enough to break blood glass and boil your blood in your veins.

“Be careful of the stingers on the adults. I have not seen what the poison would do to a person, but after watching it melt through steel and blood glass, I have no doubt it would be a painful death,” I warned.

Dhara stepped up next to the empty shell at my back, the fire in her hand making it gleam iridescently, as if it were coated in some strange oil. She reached out to touch it, fingers barely brushing over the glossy surface.

A hiss—like a sand cat but more guttural—made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Another dark beast flew out of one of the side tunnels. It crashed into Dhara’s back, toppling her to the ground face-first. She tried to grapple and roll, but with its six legs writhing and her unable to see it, the tricrith managed to keep her pinned to the ground. Its tails curled, ready to strike lightning fast, and my heart leapt into my throat.

This one, while not big enough to be fully grown, had three gleaming stingers, wet with venom. My hand snuck into my sash and grabbed my dirk. I didn’t even take a moment to aim—there wasn’t a second to spare—before my wrist snapped forward. The blade whistled across the short distance and buried itself between the head and body segments of the tricrith.

With another hiss of pain, it whirled on me. It clicked its pincers menacingly, but with its attention on me, Dhara managed to scrabble up off the ground. My sword already in hand, I lifted it just in time for it to lunge at me.

I plunged my saber straight into its open maw, and the tip burst through its head right between its elevated eyes. Black blood bubbled out of it and dripped down my wrist to my elbow. I nearly gagged as I wrenched my blade free and let it topple to the ground.