A Basilisk may be confused with a dragon. It might as well be, because it was a large, extremely violent reptile, but it did not fit the description of a dragon.
It didn't have wings, it didn't breathe fire, and it was a ground animal, otherwise called The King of Dragons by folk who had the displeasure of knowing about them, hearing about them, or spotting one, be it by choice or by accident.
They were odd creatures, with four pairs of muscular legs. Their legs were what made them distinct, and even though Clayton barely remembered what he read about them when he was a young boy, he knew enough not to mistake the four pairs of legs of a Basilisk with any other creature.
Well, the features of the beast were very difficult to see in the dead of night, so it took him a moment to recognize the species of the creature. The few, hand-held torches that his slaves held were not even enough to light their path, not to mention shed some light on what tore through them, but on account to the Basilisk's size, towering at three-meters tall, or close to nine feet tall, Clayton became well aware that something large was attacking them, when he was led to believe that the trees were moving.
The speed, paired with the size of the Basilisk, at the dead of night, made it look like the trees had hiked up their skirts, otherwise known as roots, and were running around bashing the undead.
Clayton was still suffering from double-vision, his eyesight was blurry, so he did not have it easy to comprehend what was tearing through his troops.
The growls that the Basilisk unleashed helped make sense of what was going on, and when he managed to see a few of its legs, at random, he immediately knew what he was looking at.
"By the Gods… we're in trouble." He held his breath in.
Clayton did not have the time to stop, and count how many of his troops the beast had torn through, but it had to be at least ten of them by now, maybe fifteen? Plenty of his undead slaves were being killed, so to speak. Well, they were already dead, undead, but they were being killed for the second time within twelve hours.
This large beast moved like a shadow, it was fast, and Clayton was sure that he hadn't even seen it in the eye yet, as it seemed to be raging through his troops without a particular goal, but the latter was part of the bigger problem.
If he didn't stop this monstrosity now, it was going to tear through every undead slave of his, and eventually get to his friends. He didn't care about his undead slaves right now, in fact, he didn't even care about the literal wealth his slaves were holding on to. He had been using them like mules, but at the back of his mind, he knew that they could be easily replaced.
As for Rufus and Lara, the only two people who had chosen to follow him willingly, they could not be replaced as easily. Not unless he revived them as undead creatures, at least, and this was why he spent a few seconds trying to figure out the best way to put the beast down.
Well, he did try to attack the beast the moment he saw it, but it moved too fast, and he couldn't catch up to it.
Within the chaos, he hated the fact that he had lost sight of Princess Esmeralda, the only undead slave he cared to protect. He figured that she had either been slaughtered off, or was somehow behind this attack. He didn't know how to feel about mourning her second death, and he especially had mixed feelings about blaming her. He was just hoping that she wasn't involved.
In desperation, he hid amongst his undead slaves, and waited for the beast to attack again.
Once it did, he rushed forward, and unleashed the Devil's Kiss ability on it. This ability was concentrated, singular, it was no deadly cloud that would engulf anything in its path. It was precise instead.
"Haha!" He celebrated.
Clayton was sure that he forced this horrid, one-sided battle to a swift end, but even though he began absorbing the beast's Life Essence, it did not cower. In fact, for a fraction of a second, he could even see the beast smirk, before it twisted its body like an acrobat, using its four pairs of legs to grab trees, or claw the ground, just so it could make a sharp, frantic U-turn!
When it did so, Clayton saw its butt for a fraction of a second. It was odd, he didn't like it, but he was sure he saw its butt-hole tucker before something hit him.
The beast did not make a U-turn to run away, but to attack instead.
The beast hit Clayton with his tail, which he discovered to be longer, bigger, and definitely more muscular than the few books, or ancient folklore described it.
There were certain pain-scales that would help put physical, human pain behind a number. Being burned alive was considered the worst, being kicked by a horse was smothered somewhere across the mountainside in comparison, but whatever Clayton experienced once he got hit, was far worse in comparison to any possible example!
His body was curled to the letter C once he got hit. He was pretty sure the beast had a bony, big ball of a body part at the end of its tail, which the beast used like a giant, spiky club, and that damn spiky, big ball pushed his pain scale at 100/10. Simply because he could not die, not yet, at least.
While he was floating through the air, taking many tree branches with him, he kept getting knocked out, and woken up by the pain he was experiencing!
It was a vicious cycle, but his body refused to die. Fleshmancy preserved the human body like the human brain preserved itself. It would try anything to keep its host alive, automatically, up until it ran out of Life Essence!
Clayton could regrow his head if he was beheaded, but the process he was going through now was much more complicated.
Parts of his ribcage were planted somewhere across the mountainside. His liver had exploded out of his abdomen upon impact, and his right kidney was to be a fertilizer for a batch of lavender.
With that said, his Life Essence Points drained rapidly as his body tried to renew the body parts he had lost.
[Well, you were almost right. That was a Basher Basilisk, a sub-species of the actual Basilisk.]