It was ten minutes before his father recovered enough from the pain that he could continue muttering in the incoherent way he'd been doing before. Nolruk's gaze had never left the ghastly wounds that had been left on his father's back by the invisible whips. As such, he was quick to pick up on it when what he thought to be just wounds started squirming. At first, it was the main trunk of the wounds that started to twist and turn almost like squirming worms. Eventually, the hairline cracks that spread out from these main trunks began to merge into what Nolruk could easily recognize as centipede-like legs. Nolruk couldn't help the chills that coursed through his body as he watched the wounds on his father's back morph into centipede-like creatures and start to crawl all over his father's torso. At their head, his father's skin split open as they moved forward. Behind their tail, however, the skin came together leaving behind not even a mark that would show that there had been a wound there.
From the way his father's mumbling was coming out through gritted teeth and his body involuntarily jerked from time to time, the moving of the wounds was no less painful than the whipping itself. The crawling wounds were initially the bright color of blood. The more they moved, however, the darker that red color became until it was practically black. This went on for another three minutes, by which time, the four whip marks that his father had suffered had fully morphed into four black centipede-like creatures. On these strange creatures' heads was a pair of pincers that were about twice as long as the things' heads. On its tail end was a curved stinger that left Nolruk with a back soaked in a cold sweat as he imagined what pain the thing could inflict. His father, who'd so far been doing a good job of keeping his pain suppressed, let out a sharp hiss when one of the centipede-like beings crawled onto the base of his spine just above his waist and started to crawl upwards.
All through the few minutes that the things had been crawling around his father's torso, they had been flat and indistinguishable from a drawing on his skin. However, Nolruk now watched this strange creature start to bulge out, the higher it climbed on his father's spine. By the time it reached the base of his father's skull, the creature had gone from a moving mark on his father's skin to a corporeal entity crawling onto the top of his father's head. The man, however, barely noticed as the second centipede crawled onto the base of his spine and started to follow the same trail that the first centipede-like creature had followed. The first centipede-like creature had already crawled down to the ground by the time the second one made it to the top of his father's skull.
Nolruk could feel his heart hammering in his chest as he looked at the creature on the ground. It now occurred to him that, as terrifying as they had looked while they had been on his father's skin, it was nothing compared to the real thing. The thing was about three feet long and as thick as his arm. Its carapace had a metallic sheen to it and was completely black from one end to the other, making it next to impossible to notice in poor lighting or at night. The legs of the thing, which hadn't made much of an impression while it had been on his father's back, were the first thing that Nolruk noticed. The floor of the cave was made of solid stone that wasn't easily broken through. And yet, the sharp pointed claws of the creature casually broke through it with each of its numerous sharp-tipped legs. Nolruk doubted that the creature was even doing it on purpose, the thing was just crawling around as if it was trying to familiarize itself with its current surroundings. And yet, with every step that the creature took, sharp-tipped holes were left in the ground.
The representation of the pincers while they had been on his father's skin didn't do it justice just as was the case with its sting. Every time the pincers snapped shut, the sound of two blades brushing against each other was produced. There was very little doubt in Nolruk that if one of his limbs was caught in between those pincers, he would be one limb short. And if that wasn't bad enough, a black liquid kept dripping off the things that produced a harsh sizzling sound when it came in contact with the ground below. Not only would the pincers take off a limb, but the black liquid left behind would eat away at the stump of the lost limb.
The sting on the rear end of the creature curved into a long and narrow appendage that Nolruk suspected could punch through the leather armor most hunters in the town wore like it was nothing. The sting was long enough that, if it struck the top of his head, he was certain that the tip would come out below his chin. And if that wasn't bad enough, the inside curve of the sting was sharp enough to have the appendage double as a sickle-shaped blade. In other words, if the sting went through the top of his head, it wouldn't stop at just skewering his brain, it would cut his face in two, cracking his skull in two like a walnut. The same black substance that was dripping off the monster's pincers was also dripping off its stinger. But unlike what was the case with its pincers, the substance coming off its stinger wasn't dripping onto the ground but onto the creature's own back. However, while the ground sizzled every time it was touched by the liquid, the creature's carapace barely even reacted. The defense of the carapace was such that, one would have been forgiven for thinking the stuff coming from the stinger to be harmless as they watched it ineffectually roll off the monster's shell.
By the time Nolruk was done assessing all the scary features of the first beast, three more had joined it on the ground, each one moving around his father like a loyal guard dog. If his father had looked bad before, now he looked positively haggard. Forget muscle mass, the man looked even thinner than what an average man would look like. His ribs stuck out prominently against his skin making the man look like he'd been starved for days on end. Clearly, it had taken a lot of vitality from the man to call the four creatures around him into being. Still, the man calmly pushed himself up off the floor and turned in Nolruk's direction. On the face of the man, there was no indication of the torture that he'd just been put through. Instead, there was an almost maniacal glee at the four creatures around him. Nolruk could only make vague guesses but had no real way of knowing just how powerful the summoned creatures were. By the pleased look in his father's eyes, however, Nolruk was certain that he wasn't that far off the mark by assuming that the things were really powerful.
When his father looked his way, there was a bit of disdain in his eyes when he noted that his son was crouched down and hugging himself in fear. Nevertheless, he said nothing about it. Instead he uttered three simple words. "Let's go hunting!"
***
Watching the dark crawlers hunt was a nightmarish experience that Nolruk knew would haunt his dreams for years to come. Dark crawler was the name of the creatures he'd summoned, according to his father. When his father had told him that they were going hunting, Nolruk had assumed he meant that they were going after Roka. As it turns out, he'd been wrong, they really were going hunting for wild animals. According to the man, the four dark crawlers, big as they were in Nolruk's opinion, were still juveniles. They'd need a lot of nourishment before they grew to full size. Once that happens, no one in the town should be able to stand up to him. Nolruk had never been happy to be around his father. That was even more the case with the dark crawlers around. He, however, knew that more than ever before he needed to avoid displeasing his father. And so, despite his misgivings, he calmly walked beside the man, not letting any of the fear he felt show.
Given the fact that the three-tusk boar territory was the area in which Roka usually hunted, they avoided it, going around it and deeper into the forest. His dad didn't want to leave any traces that might alert Roka to what they had in store for him. And no wonder, the toxin that dripped off the creatures' pincers and stings caused everything within a meter of where it dripped to wither within minutes. And that was to say nothing of the destruction they wrought as they moved and the many sharp pits left by their legs. In other words, one didn't have to be an expert hunter to pick up on the trails of the damn things. In fact, someone who only had a very rudimentary knowledge of hunting and tracking would have to be blind to miss the tracks of the dark crawlers.
It took them three hours of moving to get to where they'd been going. They were currently standing on a tall cliff, and below them, almost a kilometer from the cliff, there was a herd of red-horned bisons. Unlike the three-tusk boar which was a common hunting target for the town's hunters, no one in the town was brave or crazy enough to go after red-horned bisons. To begin with, unlike the three-tusk boars which usually formed herds of perhaps ten to twenty boars, red-horned bisons usually moved around in herds that numbered in the hundreds, sometimes even more than a thousand bisons could be found in one herd. And if this wasn't enough of a deterrence, there was the fact that, unlike the three-tusk boars which usually abandoned an injured member of the herd that was too badly injured and bleeding, red-horned bisons never left one of their own behind. Forget a living one, even if one of their own was killed, they will hang around the dead bison for more than a week until it was thoroughly rotted. Whether this was out of solidarity with one of their own, or out of spite for the killer, no one had ever been able to puzzle out.
And if you were the attacker and one of the herd members happens to catch either sight or scent of you, then you should just spare yourself the torture and kill yourself. The stubbornness with which they can guard a corpse is the same stubbornness with which they shall pursue you. And big as the bisons are, they are by no means slow. Add that to the fact that they can run at full speed for a day and a night without tiring, and you've got yourself a stampede of nightmarish proportions. And should you think yourself clever and just climb a tree, then you've doomed both yourself and the tree. First, they will surround the tree, and then the heaviest males, which were usually more than a thousand kilos, will make it their business to bring the tree down and you along with it. In other words, the bisons will transform into battering rams that weigh more than a ton with nothing on their mind other than felling the particular tree you are on.
The reason they had stopped more than a kilometer away, was because of how sensitive the senses of the bison are. Given what his father seemed to be planning, they didn't wish to risk having the herd mark them as aggressors. "Go!" The simple command came from his father's lips. Not needing any further prompting, the four dark crawlers charged forward, crawling down the face of the cliff with the same ease that they exhibited when crawling on flat ground. Unexpectedly, when they got to the bottom of the cliff, all four dark crawlers that had so far been moving above ground, immediately dove into the ground. Barely five seconds after their front claws started to dig at the ground, their whole bodies had gone underground. "Come on," His father calmly called out in a placid tone as he turned and walked off. Unable to visually track the dark crawlers while they were underground, Nolruk turned and walked after his father.
After about ten minutes of walking, they came to a stop beside a gently flowing stream. His father raised the staff in his hand as he muttered something under his breath. With a firm 'thud', the staff was brought down on the ground. Rather than a small round indentation from the staff as Nolruk had been expecting, a large concave depression about a meter wide, formed on the ground before them. The surface of the depression that had formed wasn't flat but rather was marked by several strange symbols. Most others wouldn't recognize what they were looking at. Given that he'd been staring at one for the past four days, Nolruk quickly and easily recognized that these were the same symbols that were in the scrying pool back at the cave. With another movement of the staff towards the stream and more incomprehensible words, the water in the stream rose into the air of its own volition, making an arch and starting to fill the temporary scrying pool that his father had just made. When the scrying pool was sufficiently filled, the stream resumed its normal course while his father closed his eyes and started channeling through the scrying pool looking for a suitable target to link to the pool. It didn't take him long. Soon enough, a bird that had been perched on a tree close to the herd of red-horned bisons was chosen, and the pool began to show everything the bird was seeing.
It only took a few minutes of waiting for chaos to break out within the herd. Nolruk didn't know if it was a coincidence, or if his father held a connection to the dark crawlers that allowed him to know, but the bird that they'd linked the scrying pool to was looking at the spot where the first attack went down. A bison was leisurely grazing on a patch of grass when, suddenly, the four dark crawlers shot up from the ground with their pincers opened wide. Nolruk couldn't help wincing when the four sets of pincers closed around the four legs of the bison. Given how sturdy an animal the red-horned bisons are, and how high up on the limbs the four dark crawlers had attacked, Nolruk had expected them to face some resistance. If not from the tough flesh of the bison, then at least from its bones. The four sets of pincers, however, snapped shut like a trap that had been set off. Both flesh and bones were cut through like they were nothing! Before the bison could even register what had happened, it was on the ground and unable to move, and the dark crawlers back underground.
Naturally, Nolruk knew that animals could feel pain. He, however, had never heard such a desperate cry of pain come out of the mouth of a beast as he did from the bison that was now on the ground and unable to move. Nolruk had assumed that the black liquid coming off the pincers of the dark crawlers would be corrosive, given the fact that it sizzled violently any time it came into contact with the ground. However, when looking at the stumps of the bison on the ground, he couldn't see any signs of corrosion, which left him confused and uncertain. All around the fallen bison, the other bisons had started to crowd around it. From the way they kept huffing and pawing at the ground with their hoofs, it was clear that they were worked up and ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Unfortunately for the bisons, their foe was underground. Red-horned bisons were a menace that no one would want to mess with above ground. When it came to digging, however, they were sadly ill-equipped for the task. As such, even though they were worked up and ready for a fight, all they could do was impotently paw at the ground while they bellow in indignation.
