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His arms didn’t fare much better.
One dragged uselessly behind him while the other brandished a bloodied knife.
“Give me that,” I said.
I dropped to my knees and placed one hand on the vine.
I set to sawing at with the knife.
The vine bucked, knocking me aside.
I got up, planted my feet in a stronger stance, and continued hacking.
Thick green-tinted water spilled from it, dousing the sand like blood from a gaping wound.
It quivered and retracted into the night.
“Can you stand?” I said.
The guard leaned back, relieved at having been rescued.
“Yes,” he said. “I think so. If you help me.”
He never reached his feet.
Quick as a flash, another tendril snapped around his shattered leg and continued dragging him up the incline.
“No!” he screamed. “No!”
He reached for me and accidentally knocked me off my feet.
He pummeled at the arm with a fist and it squeezed so tight I heard the guards’ bones snap.
An enormous creature emerged from the gaping hole at the top of the mountain.
At least four times larger than the one that’d snagged me.
With four times the number of tendrils, swirling into the night sky.
A second moon drifted from behind the cover of clouds and joined its sister to peer upon the field of war.
Four other victims were clutched in thick tendrils, each dragged up the incline toward the gaping maw.
One of the bodies barely struggled while another didn’t move at all.
Before, I had run.
I’d run but didn’t realize I’d been heading directly toward the mouth of the beast.
I was as doomed now as I had been back at the camp.
The tendrils slithered like angry snakes from an overturned nest and headed directly for me.
My breaths rasped in my throat.
I had no more fight left in me.
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