Michael and Liza grabbed at Jimmy when he reached the end of the rope. Once Michael had helped his friend upright, Liza unclipped his straps to free him.

​

“Well done,” Michael told his friend, clapping him on the shoulder. He looked back towards his sister and yelled: “Julie: you can get ready now. We’re just taking him off...”

​

Jimmy added with a back-glance: “And don’t forget to double-check the knots one last time.”

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“All right,” she shouted in return. “See you in a minute.”

​

They smiled in relief at seeing her wave a hand over her head – this dimly visible due to the lamp shining on her helmet...

​

Then their smiles vanished...

​

The tunnel opening behind Julie’s distant figure should have been a vague black void...

​

It wasn’t.

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The passageway was lit by a strange, almost flowing aura of incandescent light – an aura which grew brighter with every passing second...

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“Julie!” Michael screamed in panic. “It’s back! It’s right behind you!”

 

*     *     *

 

Julie had just fastened her pilum onto her backpack when Michael’s desperate call reached her. She spun around towards the tunnel—

​

The thing was only ten metres distant. A spectre of hideous menace and imposing violence, lit by a seemingly magical glow like some imagined angel from heaven.

​

Logic suggested that this was a second monster. Instinct assured it was the same one they had encountered earlier, now somehow whole after crushing its body to a pulp...

​

For the first time, Julie was able to glimpse more than the monster’s immense side-jawed head, thick neck and lethal, bird-like foreclaws. The neck, which twisted and stretched unnaturally, met the centre of the foremost, two-metre wide end of the thing’s torso. Flesh across the nearest area of the main body was a surreal concoction of nodular growths, thorn-like spikes, dangling lengths of either patchy hair-masses or rotted flesh, and taut skin over corded muscles and misshapen bones. There was only a basic outline-symmetry to the creature – beyond this, the torso could have been the collected works of a group of insane, tormented sculptors. Some sections of grotesque flesh even twisted and squirmed of their own accord, as if imbued with an awful kind of life that was separate from the massive form itself.

​

The sinewy sections of arm which rose up from the thing’s foreclaws met bulbous joints about a metre above the floor. There were two lengths of upper arm from each of the joints: these were slightly longer, thicker and arched like drawn bows until their ends reached pairs of shoulder-sockets. Julie saw that the sockets were oozing a viscous natural lubricant of some kind, into which lengths of the upper-arm bones pumped like pistons.

​

Behind the twinned shoulder blades, the central mass of the creature’s torso was a cylinder of bony shell, set in a design similar to a human ribcage. Overlapping ‘ribs’ were connected somehow in a way that allowed supple, though limited movement of the monster’s middle. A series of four-inch spines jutted from along the ‘ribs’. Slender tendrils whiplashed and writhed between the spines – whether these were a cleansing mechanism or some other form of protection, Julie could not guess. Six metres behind the junction of the monster’s neck, the rear half of the torso developed into a pair of massive tails, one beside the other. The bulging, sponge-fleshed nature of the tails was a sharp contrast to the near-skeletal forelimbs; their purpose was to provide the creature great speed by being folded under the torso and slithering violently. Both tails ended in a half-dozen metre-long sub-tails, all encased in hard shells and bristling with wicked finger-length hooks.

​

To Julie, this was death incarnate. This was all the world’s most terrible evils and most lethal dangers given a revolting, living form. This was a thing birthed from the darkest nightmares of the damned...

​

For a split-second, the jet-black eyes of the creature met Julie’s fearful gaze. A single look from the thing was enough to instil pure dread directly into her soul—

​

She forced herself to tear her attention from the behemoth and act. Her left hand was made to grasp the rope; her right hand withdrew the knife from her coat pocket in order to slice at the thick cord...

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“Julie! Do something...” The voices of her friends were merged into a frantic outburst of helplessness. “It’s coming... Oh God, Julie—”

​

The creature sensed that her motion meant a possible attempt at escape – and so it launched itself into a lunge, its twinned tails grasping at the floor and catapulting the immense body forwards. A nerve-ripping rasp erupted as the thing’s massive jaws were wrenched open in anticipation...

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Julie’s desperate sawing severed the rope cleanly and the sudden slackness of the heavy cord pulled at her left arm. She dropped the knife, clenched upon the rope with her right hand—

​

It landed barely two metres away, its heavy impact jarring the woman. Immediately, the side-jaws were sent rushing closed. The six tusks shrieked through the air—

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...As she threw herself backwards off the ledge. Speeding fangs missed her body by a hairsbreadth – close enough for her to feel the terrible motion of those ivory spears and gag on the vile stench from the monster’s throat.

​