The sun hadn't even cleared the grey ridges of the valley when I kicked the door of the Chief's hut open. Twenty young rabbit-kin were huddled in the mud, shivering in the damp air. They looked like pathetic piles of wet fur. Agnes stood at the front, her ruby eyes sharp and full of a quiet, burning rage.
"Up! Move your asses!" I roared.
I didn't give them time to wake up. I grabbed the nearest kid—a scrawny brat with a notched ear—and hauled him up by his collar. He squealed like a stuck pig.
"You want to survive the Queen's pets?" I shoved him toward the forest treeline. "Then you stop acting like prey. We're going on a hunt."
Mo followed behind me, his rifle slung low. He looked at the group of "soldiers" and just shook his head. We trekked for an hour into the thicket where the trees grew twisted and black. The ground was soft with rot.
We found a Crawler. It was a low-tier Stormbeast, a mass of chitinous legs and dripping mandibles, currently busy tearing into a dead elk. The beast's jagged teeth were snapping through bone with a sound like dry branches breaking.
"Watch," I whispered to the group.
I didn't use the Gear Six. I pulled the heavy combat knife from my belt. I sprinted across the clearing. The Crawler hissed, rearing up to strike, its segmented tail whipping through the air. I slid under its belly, the mud coating my face, and drove the blade upward into its soft underbelly.
Yellow ichor gealed over my arm as I ripped the knife along its length. The beast collapsed, its guts spilling onto the forest floor in a steaming, tangled mess. It wasn't dead yet. It thrashed, its legs scratching grooves into the dirt. I jumped onto its head and drove the knife through its primary eye socket. The blade crunched through the skull, and the beast finally went still.
I stood up, wiping the yellow filth off my forehead. I looked at the village kids. Two of them were vomiting into the bushes. The scrawny one had fainted.
"That's a Crawler," I spat. "It's a bottom-feeder. A scout. If you can't kill that, you're just a snack for the Drakes."
Agnes stepped forward, her white fur stained with a few stray drops of the beast's bile. She looked at the dead monster, then back at me.
"You did that for fun," she said.
"I did it to show you that anything the Queen makes can be unmade," I said. "Now, grab the legs. We're dragging this carcass back to the village. You're going to learn how to skin it, and then you're going to learn how to eat it. If you want to fight monsters, you start by putting them in your stomach."
Mo stepped up beside me, watching them struggle to lift the heavy, armored legs of the beast. "You're going to give them nightmares, James."
We dragged the Crawler's carcass into the center of the village square. The yellow ichor left a thick, greasy trail in the mud. The villagers backed away, their long ears flattened against their skulls.
"Get the hammers," I barked.
Nobody moved. They just stared at the dead beast, its many legs twitching in a post-mortem spasm. I grabbed a rusted sledgehammer leaning against a nearby hut and slammed it into the Crawler's back. The outer shell cracked with a sickening pop, spraying a mixture of grey fluid and jagged shards.
"The Queen made these things to hunt you," I said, pointing at the heap of chitin. "Now you're going to turn them into tools to hunt back. Move!"
Agnes was the first to step forward. She grabbed a heavy cleaver and started hacking at a leg joint. The sound was wet and rhythmic. She ripped a long, serrated plate of shell from the beast's thigh. It was sharp enough to shave with and harder than the cheap iron the village smith used.
"Start peeling," I told the rest of the group.
One by one, the rabbit-kin knelt in the filth. They used rocks, knives, and bare hands to strip the Crawler. It was a bloodbath of yellow slime. One kid got too close to a nerve cluster; the beast's leg snapped shut like a trap, crushing his wrist. He screamed, his bone snapping with a loud crack, but I kicked him back toward the pile.
"Keep working," I growled. "You don't get a bandage until the plates are off."
By noon, the square was a slaughterhouse. We had forty jagged blades made from the beast's carapace. They were ugly, dripping with gunk, but they were lethal. Mo started showing the men how to lash the shards to wooden poles.
"These aren't Gears," Mo told them, his voice rough. "They don't have triggers. You have to drive these through a throat yourself."
I watched the Chief. He looked pale, watching his peaceful people covered in the guts of a monster, turning into killers. He looked like he wanted to cry, but he didn't stop them. He knew the Queen's Drakes would be back for the "bait" soon.
Agnes stood up, holding a curved chitin blade. Her white fur was matted with yellow stains, and a spray of grit was stuck to her cheek. She looked less like a victim and more like a soldier.
"Is this enough?" she asked, her voice cold.
"It's a start," I said. "But a weapon is useless if you're too scared to swing it. Tomorrow, we find something bigger."