Golden thorns chapter 49

They walked and talked for at least another hour, before the huntress raised a hand and stopped them in their tracks. Immediately, Coran began listening. He picked up a distinct noise coming from off to their left, an unsettling scratching that hung just at the top of his hearing range. He turned towards it and braced himself on his good leg.

"What is it," his question was directed at Azura.

"Nothing like I've heard before. Stay on your guard."

"Ugh, I don't like it," murmured Devlyn. A ripple of discomfort ran over his scales, starting at the back of his neck, spreading out across his shoulders and under his shirt, moving along his tail and terminating just as it reached the tip. Coran's head snapped up as his attention was drawn to the treeline by a large black lump that flew at them at great speed. In an instant he had fired off two shots, nailing it dead centre. As the thing crashed to the ground, he saw that in morphology it resembled a wasp, however it was about a meter long and, instead off front legs, it had two long blades of bone white chitin, razor sharp and finishing in a wicked point. The whole creature was shrouded in a glossy black exo-skeleton, except for its head section, which was covered in the typical bone white masks of the creatures of Grimm. A sudden thought struck him. If there was one thing he knew about wasps, it was that killing one attracts the horde. He looked up at his teammates.

"Run!"

As he said this, the treeline exploded with the creatures, talons extended, ready to rip them to shreds. The five of them bolted, sprinting at full tilt down the broken and weed-riddled road. The monsters easily keeping pace with them. Coran reloaded his weapon as he ran, slamming home the clip of dust rounds that Azura had given him the day before. He span and squeezed the trigger three times. Three explosions of fire blossomed amid the wasp creatures and he saw many of them fall to the ground, legs twitching as smoke rose from their chitinous shells. Valiant though his efforts were however, he barely succeeded in denting the cloud of monsters that pursued them. He turned again and ran on, his leg burning as if one of his shells had misfired into it. Azura shouted at them over the sound of the buzzing wings.

"There's a cave off to the right. Get to it and be quick about it!" she spun round, truncating one of the flying monstrosities with her sword. Coran glanced over his shoulder as he ran towards the cave, seeing the huntress effortlessly slicing through the beasts. He saw his team ahead of him. He saw the dark hole in a small cliff. As he reached the entrance he dropped down and turned back. Azura was fighting off the giant insects with confident swipes of her sword. She dropped to the ground suddenly. Had she been hit? Coran let loose with a few more dust rounds and the blasts cut down a few more of the Grimm.

The huntress stood and raised her sword. As the blade connected with one of the creatures a flash of blue-white lightning leapt between them, jumping from bug to bug across the swarm. After a few seconds the bolts of white hot electricity died out, leaving after images burned onto his retinas. The black lumps fell to the ground left as twitching, streaming husks. The huntress dropped her sword and dropped to the ground, clutching at her arm.

"Dev, help me!" Coran shouted as more of the giant wasps appeared over the trees. The two of them ran forward and grabbed the huntress under her arms and began dragging her towards the cave. Her right hand was burned raw and she was breathing heavily. Almost as an afterthought Coran reached for her sword, but singed his fingers on the hot metal. Devlyn reached over and picked it up without hesitation.

"Let me. Come on, let's go." they draped each of her arms over their shoulders and pulled her into the cave. A loud whirring sound started and a heavy metal door started descending from the top of the entrance. As it closed, a resounding boom echoed and a small bulb flickered on above them, illuminating them in a dim pool of light. Azura spoke up. Her voice was shaky but confident.

"I may have mislead you slightly, this is not a cave. Welcome to the ferrock mine."