[h2]The Knights[/h2]

In the hard shadow of Sir Linus Kolbe, the King of Areta had crumpled to the ground. 

The coarse earth pressed into his knees and palms, and his shallow breaths tasted of sand.  Although the Knight had released him, Alonso could still feel gauntlets squeezing his tunic, pinning him painfully against the cliff face. His snarling voice, which combined with the gnashing of his teeth had possessed an almost animalistic quality, lingered in his ears and echoed in his skull. For an instant the King had feared for his life at the hands of his own subject, and even now he was uncertain he was out of danger.

[i]Where is my king?[/i]

[i]GONE![/i]

“They’re dead…?” Alonso gasped. Two of his knights. Two well known names. Faces he couldn’t recall, not at the moment.  “But how…? I only… I never…”

Serona landed on the ground beside his horse, unable to bear seeing his King in such a pathetic state. Though he was smaller than Kolbe, the Captain shoved him aside and knelt down to his ruler. Alonso felt strong hands grasp his arm, and then suddenly pull him upright. The young King stumbled to his feet, leaning on his Captain and feeling the cliff wall to find his balance.

A knot had found itself in his throat. Alonso had had his doubts before, but Kolbe’s lecture had torn open new wounds. Things he had never considered. Even if the King’s suspicions were well founded, it was his duty to inspire and lead his people, not hide from them. Perhaps there had been better ways to go about this. 

“Sire.” Amon put a hand on Alonso’s breast to push him upright. “Your Highness is short of breath, did Kolbe—” 

“I’m fine!” Alonso roughly elbowed the Captain off of him. His blond hair was swept back as he attempted to search for his shattered thoughts on the ground in front of him. He pulled at his tunic, attempting to adjust the fit pulled out of place by his rough handling. The image of Kolbe’s scarred visage and that white eye was all he could see whenever he closed his. 

Two Knights dead? [i]Dead[/i]? Over this?

Drawing on what precarious bravery he could muster, the King lifted his head to acknowledge the embittered soldier.

“If Sir Kolbe has so little faith in me, then it must be deserved. If men have [i]died[/i] because I’ve gone out alone, I must… I must answer for it. I confess that I have… [i]dallied[/i].” Who wouldn’t, when given the opportunity? He had been so constrained at the castle. “But the disturbances, the traitors in my own halls—I’ve not lost focus. Only the elves understand what has been happening out here. My magistrates can barely see beyond their own noses.”

A distant whinny, carried on the dry wind, pulled the King’s attention westward in the direction of the caravan. Alonso had to decide what to do next. He couldn’t simply abandon the Ytharien, but he couldn’t bring the Knights among who they considered the enemy either. 

“I can explain all of this to both of you.” Sniffing, Alonso stepped away from his armored protectors and stopped at the helm that Kolbe had torn from his head. It was picked up by its faceplate, and for half a moment he stopped to consider its dull gleam in the sunlight.  “You deserve at least that much. You need but hear me out, and then you can decide where your king is.” Hopefully not on the end of a sword, at this rate.

The King turned to hand Linus the helm.

“We should find shelter, then—”

The land itself cut him short with a savage roar, and then quake suddenly beneath their feet. Already too familiar with this anomaly, the Knight’s horses reared and brayed. Serona tried to run to his to claim control over the beast, but it jerked out of reach and galloped off before he could grasp the reins.

“Damn it all!” Serona closed his hands around the white mare’s tack instead, pulling it under his command. “Protect the King!”

Just as before, wide cracks began to rip open in the ground beneath them as if it had been made of glass. In the open sunlight, the fragility of the earth was plain to see, until these crevices belched up a spout of dust from unseen depths. Alonso covered his mouth with his arm as he began to choke on the sandy clouds. He demands to know what was happening were swallowed by the deafening thunder beneath their feet. It shattered the sky so intensely that the King cried out in pain and held his ears.

Through the swirling dust clouds, the distant peaks of Vicenna could be seen on the murky horizon. Before the sky became golden and opaque, they almost appeared to be melting away, as if they were made of cream. Alonso didn’t believe his eyes. It couldn’t be happening. Had to be some illusion, a mirage of the desert. The ground shook so that Alonso found himself on one knee again, and Serona fought to calm the mare enough to provide himself and his king with a fast escape.

And then from one of the cracks in the earth, a black scythe rose and stabbed into the ground. A flurry of gleaming, monstrous legs appeared next in a horrific cascade, resembling a set of fingers drumming a table. These were the appendages of spiders and scarabs, clad in an iridescing black carapace, ridged with spines and tipped with dagger-like claws.

A slender, arachnid monstrosity hoisted itself from the underground, made half-silhouette by the sandy clouds. It stood on four stalky legs, taller than any horse, with half of its body upright and the other horizontal to the ground. Round, golden eyes stared unblinking at the assembled humans, seeming to give off a light of their own. Two scythe-like appendages hung on either side of its upright half, now idle, sheltering four smaller arms enclosed within its black shell. In its clawed hands it held a jeweled scepter, apparently crafted of the same infernal material of its holder. 

Two more of the creatures, significantly huskier but much shorter than their apparent leader, crawled from the crevice behind it. Although they looked dangerous, none of them made a move on the King or his Knights. They simply watched and chittered among themselves like a chorus of cicadas. 

The ground continued to quake and howl, bothering these monsters hardly at all. 

“We run!” Serona cried. 

This prompted both of the smaller creatures, roughly the size of cattle, to surge forward at the Captain, scythe-arms outstretched.

[center]***[/center]

[h2]The Ytharien[/h2]

Aust began to answer, but was interrupted as a jutting shard of earth knocked him from his feet. The entire caravan had become the epicentre of one of the land’s new fractures, spreading in the fashion of a spiderweb in all directions. The dust thrown up from all of the violence below the ground choked and filled the air, stinging eyes and lining throats. 

Lothren’s own horse reared in a panic, and then fell to the side as it lost its balance on the shaking earth. The elf cried out in pain as he landed on his side, immediately shattering his arm. The prisoner was given a safer landing on top of his captor, who was momentarily incapacitated.

Another plane of shifting earth shook every being that stood on top of it. Some of Gawain’s equipment fell from Aust’s steed, including a white, shining sword. 

The caravan would not be moving. The earth had split open in half a dozen places, until one of the wagons was half submerged in the sand and the other’s wheels were immovably stuck. No one heard Lothren’s orders anymore. Alan’s whereabouts became completely unimportant as every elf scrambled to save himself, finding a horse calm enough to mount and ride hard to safety. 

Digging its way out from its subterranean tunnel, a beastly insectoid creature emerged from the earth, roughly ten feet from clawed foot to chitinous crown. It looked something like a demonic spider, its fanged mandibles dripping with what appeared to be yellow venom, and bladed appendaged looming on either side. Like the creature that had appeared near the King and his Knights, this one held a scepter. Any mage could sense that it hummed with an unnatural, arcane energy. 

As the earth continued to break apart and shake, three of its fellows emerged on the surface, pulling their gleaming abdomens free and planting their four feet in the rocky ground. An elven pistolier discharged her weapon near one of them, opening a gaping yellow hole in its shell. While it cried out in a screaming hiss, another creature skewered the elf into the ground with one of its limbs. 

Provoked by this initial attack, the spider beasts moved on the scattered Ytharien, their bladed limbs seeking flesh—elven and horse alike—to prevent any further escapes. 

The tallest beast remained still, observing the chaos warily, while its three minions began to tear the elves apart. 

Lothren watched one of the beasts rush toward Juna, its spined limbs opened like jaws of death. Though he was half blinded and paralyzed by pain, he could make one horrifying distinction about these creatures.

They weren’t antlions. He didn’t know [i]what[/i] they were.