Chapter Thirty-Three — Facing the Poisoned Needles
Niral picked up a dry splinter of wood — a cracked branch — and, with measured tension, stepped toward one of the horns half-buried in the sand. The air was unnervingly still, as if the earth itself were holding its breath. Then, with a deliberate motion, he hurled the stick at that exposed horn.
The silence shattered. Sand exploded up around the targeted horn and the first beast burst forth as if the ground had ejected it, roaring in fury while it smashed the stick with its sickle-like teeth. Before the creature could look for anything else, its eyes fell upon the lone man standing before it — Niral — and it rushed him with indescribable force.
Within moments the sand split at other points and the rest of the pack surged out after the first, following without hesitation as if driven by an instinct that brooked no thought. Needles spat from their bodies, so fast and sharp they cut the wind; Niral ran with careful lightness, carrying the large hand-shield strapped to his back. He used it as a battering shield, deflecting the torrent of attacks that rained down upon him.
At first he kept a few measured meters ahead of the beasts, never allowing the distance to become too wide — keeping every eye on him alone. He moved like a dancer on a wire between life and death, stepping between bursts of needles and occasional slashes.
At the precise moment the beasts were lured into formation, the rest of the group sprang from the hiding places in the sand, waiting for the perfect instant to strike. Azrian launched himself first, arrow-true. His attack was pure lightning — a thin filament of crackling power whose destructive force was devastating. It tore through the beast's tough hide with surprising ease and felled it in an instant. Azrian's Nira, a third-level ability, was no ordinary trick: it carried the force to finish a monster with a single blow.
Without giving himself a moment's rest Azrian surged toward the next enemy, while Malik lay in wait for his window.
Malik remained still until the last beast had passed beyond his hiding spot, then he slipped from the sand like something born from the earth and crawled beneath the hulking body, unseen. His right hand curled into a ring of flame that coalesced into a fireball roughly twenty centimeters across, its edges flickering with hungry light.
He drove that flaming sphere straight into the creature's belly — a clear weak point for such beasts. The ball detonated on contact and seared the interior with blistering heat. The beast uttered a cavernous cry of pain and thrashed its massive body on the ground, writhing uselessly. It could not withstand the agony for long and finally collapsed, while Malik slid away from underneath before the final convulsions.
Risha remained prone and still in the sand, part of the desert itself. When the beast on her right drew dangerously near she struck with a precise, practiced motion: she launched her Drowning Orb aimed at its face — a sphere the same size as Malik's fireball. It clung to the creature's muzzle like a seal.
Unable to reach and remove it with his massive hands, the beast inhaled water instead of air with each breath. Slowly it began to choke. Its sounds twisted into an odd wailing; in panic it made wild, unguided attacks forward — its brutish strikes careening into the armored hides of the other beasts with little effect.
Malik's shout and the chaos from the suffocating beast drew the attention of the four remaining beasts, which had been fixated on Niral. Three of them stopped as if stunned by what they saw; then anger flared in them and each recalculated a new target, charging directly at it.
Azrian, fresh from his first kill, was nearest. When one of the beasts lunged at him he sidestepped with a precise lean and slipped to its left, repeating the very tactic that had brought success before. He aimed at the creature's feet where the shell was weaker.
Seizing his chance, Azrian withdrew a step, holding his shield before him; he saw the beast in the center starting to pivot toward him as well.
Malik used the carcass of the beast he had felled as a shield, crouching behind it to block scattershot attacks; Risha adopted the same tactic, using her dead quarry as a barrier against the poisonous needles.
While the other beasts were distracted, and as the creature that had been pursuing Niral crossed a particular patch of sand, the earth split suddenly — and Daniel and Lucas sprang up from it. Lucas moved first, lifting his shield to catch the needles that peppered them, while Daniel waited a heartbeat behind him, ready.
With the light, feline motion of someone at home in conflict, Daniel slid past Lucas and leapt beside the beast, fixing his attention on its hind legs. With a quick, practiced gesture he triggered the Paralysis Nira; the monster's body seized in frozen rigidity for a few seconds. Daniel sensed the effect would be shorter than it had been against the smaller lizards — two or three seconds, not five — because this creature was stronger.
He did not hesitate. Daniel dropped beneath the immobilized flank and stabbed directly into the belly with his sword. The blade plunged through flesh and organ. He intended a follow-through strike but felt his pull slow — so he abandoned the second blow and withdrew his sword, rolling clear from beneath the beast without tempting the fate of a second strike.
He signaled Lucas and Niral with a brief, silent hand sign. Both men read it instantly and moved in perfect tandem.
Lucas planted his shield again and closed in to cover Daniel while the beast — now hurling its last desperate needles in a spasmodic flurry — collapsed and died after Daniel's wound.
Finally, the group turned to the three beasts that had been stalled earlier. The battle resolved more smoothly than anyone had dared hope; the strike had gone better than planned.
Had the beasts not been broken up, Niral would have been forced to occupy two of them alone, Sanjay to tackle the third while Daniel delayed another — a worst-case the group had prepared for. But with the battlefield divided as it was, the fight had become manageable, even profitable, for all of them.