A powerful wave of killer intent jolted Ashwin awake suddenly and violently.
In the span of a heartbeat Ashwin threw off his simple thatch blanket which he had weaved, and using his hands he kipped up onto both feet in his clans own unique martial battle stance, inspired and modeled after that of the Iron Tortoise, a powerful defensive stance.
The killer intent he had just felt in his sleep was like diving into a freezing lake unprepared, a full body prickly pin’s ‘n’ needles sensation overcame him and with it a numbness.
It made him seize up and forget to breathe, which was a problem since breathing was everything.
Without breath Ashwin wouldn’t be able to focus his animus to defend himself or flee.
Circulating his clan’s breath technique he tried to force himself to breathe.
One breath.
Then another.
The current of power answered and flooded into his limbs.
That’s when the growl came.
It was a throaty low growl, but it was enhanced with Animus, it hit Ashwin dead center in the chest like a sledgehammer and the ground trembled slightly as the creature circled him just out of the light of the campfire.
Ashwin doubled over and coughed up blood, “What the hell!”
Blotchy patches of darkness began to appear on the edges of his peripheral vision.
His chest tightened.
He reached for the familiar thump beneath his ribs.
Nothing.
Once.
Twice.
Still nothing.
Cold spread through every vein in his body.
No…
My heart…
Ashwin’s mind raced, he couldn’t feel his heartbeat in his chest any more it had stopped.
And with it that vital flow of power.
The killer intent along with the infrasound attack threatened to completely overtake him as an extreme cold seemed to envelop his brain.
“It’s over, I’m going to die” was the last thing Ashwin thought as total darkness washed over him.
Deep in Ashwin’s blood something awoke, fiery crackling ropes of orange lightening began to race through his veins!
Ashwin screamed as his blood began to boil!
The feeling of sheer dread and it’s Icey grip on Ashwin lessened and his vision slowly cleared and returned.
The crackling ropes of orange lightening had also thawed his mind and his thought process returned.
The strange feeling in his blood faded away, and so did the crackling ropes of orange lightening that had saved his life.
The killer intent was still present, but now he was able to tolerate it.
Clenching his teeth, he reached out once more to attempt to tap his power, or ”Animus” as his clan called it, and to his vast relief the current of power began to flood into his leg muscles.
A slow smile began to spread on Ashwin’s face; this was the kind of thing he lived for “Just another day in Beast vein”
There was an ear-splitting roar as the creature came in for him!
But Ashwin was ready, his legs were now loaded with energy like coiled steel ready for release, Ashwin gave a mighty leap backwards that sent him sailing through the pre-dawn sky, which wasn’t much room given the size of the creature that came crashing down where he had just been standing.
Four man-sized obsidian claws slammed into the earth where Ashwin had stood, spraying chunks of fossilized stone into the air.
Then the rest of the monster emerged.
It resembled a bull only in the cruelest sense of the word.
Standing nearly twice the height of a warhorse, it possessed six heavily muscled limbs, curved black horns thick as tree trunks, and a tail that burned like a comet dragging fire through the darkness.
Every breath the beast exhaled from its nostrils was a red crimson mist.
Ashwin took a deep dry gulp as he twisted through the air reorienting himself for landing, he had only heard tales of this beast in hushed whispers.
Ashwin heard himself speak aloud in absent shock, “It’s a Death Gigas.”
His eyes widened as he hit the ground running, every step he took was now a vault that carried him over the fossilized remains of long dead creatures.
Ashwin leapt over a massive vertebra of some forgotten creature that was the size of a small house, possibly thousands of years old but still packed with battle essence.
Ashwin felt a pang of regret as it could be ground down into powder or fashioned into a useful tool or weapon, he was in the midst of pondering all of its applications when the vertebra exploded into dust and jagged sharp shrapnel as the death gigas smashed into it with its charged black horns.
A few chunks of jagged bone hurtled past Ashwin, “Shit!
get your head in the game Ash!
Think or your going to die out here!”
He looked over his shoulder as he darted toward a massive, fossilized ribcage, it was hard for Ashwin to see the death gigas through the cloud of debris it was creating as it smashed through the thick fossilized remains of ancient creatures that it didn’t have any right to.
Ashwin winced, “The wealth it’s destroying!”
The death gigas was unstoppable and a ghostly black flame’s erupted from the fossilized ground with each step it took.
He could feel the creature’s tremendous aura of power, and of course the ground itself shaking as all six of the death gigas’s powerful limbs pulverized the fossilized earth in pursuit of him.
Ashwin directed yet more power to his legs and the desolate fossilized landscape blurred around him, “Catch me if you can you bastard.”
There was a roar in response to his challenge behind him as he vaulted over the landscape.
“Think Ashwin!
Think!”
His mind raced as he vaulted over and through fossilized teeth and over deep valleys which were in fact ancient claws marks gouged into the land.
Black flames…
Darkness?
Fire?
No…
both.
If that’s true…
A light went on in Ashwin’s head and he extended his spiritual senses with his pool of mental energy.
He began to inspect all of the fossilized remains around him.
Stonehorn Behemoth…
earth affinity.
Glasswing Serpent…
wind.
Titan Leviathan…water
No…
these are all wrong
Ashwin took a deep breath and extended his spiritual senses again and there off in the distance he could sense it.
“There you are!”
Ashwin chuckled to himself, laughing over his cleverness.
“That’s right!
The bones of a holy beast should ward it off, or at the very least mask my aura, confuse it.”
In the far distance was a pristine white skeleton of a three headed dragon.
A sudden jolting roar came from behind Ashwin!
The death gigas had doubled its efforts.
Ashwin grimaced, “He’s a smart bastard, knows I’m going for holy ground.” Ashwin gritted his teeth, he was already moving at top speed darting in and out of fossilized teeth and claws and leaping over huge claw marks, soon his meager pool of Animus would run dry and when that happened, he would be caught and devoured.
Ashwin smiled and performed an odd twist between every vault, looking back at the rapidly approaching massive purple bull, however by now the sun and cleared the peaks of the Loadstone Mountains and Ashwin was able to get a very good look at this extremely rare beast.
And that’s when Ashwin saw it.
He homed in on the death gigas comet like tail and inspected it with his mental energy.
In his enhanced sight purple undulating waves seemed to emit from the tail.
“That’s where it’s Beast Crystal is!”
There was another deafening roar, Ashwin’s inspection had not gone un-noticed.
Suddenly the tail of the death gigas lit up violently before it discharged a projectile attack!
“Shit!”
A purple volley of plasma like energy sprayed toward Ashwin in burst fire!
The orbs of purple plasma melted through dense fossilized bone as they speeded toward Ashwin.
Ashwin quickly stopped circulating his breath technique and withdrew from tapping into his Animus as he took one more powered step leaping for cover.
“Let’s hope this works”
Ashwin hit the ground in-between two massive teeth on an equally prodigious jawbone, the orbs of purple plasma continued to fly past him into the distance overhead.
Another switch clicked in Ashwin’s head.
It lost me…
Wait…
Animus.
Every time I circulate Animus…
it finds me.
Can it sense active Animus?
As Ashwin lay there quietly gasping for air it occurred to him that the wave of fear he felt while he slept may have only been a tactic of the gigas to route out prey, had he continued to lay there he may not be in this mess.
Ashwin grimaced again, “Damnit man, don’t be blaming yourself in a moment like this.”
His thoughts returned to the present when the massive jawbone began to shudder and creak.
The death gigas was walking along the back molars, sniffing!
“Dear god, I’m breakfast” Ashwin thought to himself.
Ashwin looked closer and beneath each black horn, a bulbous purple gland swelled.
Thin, translucent membranes stretched over them like the throats of croaking frogs.
As they inflated, another wave of Killer Intent rolled across the fossil plain like silent thunder.
But this time Ashwin’s heart rate remained a steady and he didn’t touch his Animus at all.
However the fear was too much for another beast that scrambled from its hiding spot, the thing came slithering out of a nearby skull, it was some kind of insectoid nightmare creature that Ashwin had never seen before.
Its insectoid anatomy was vastly unsettling to Ashwin, it had long spindly spiked legs that ended in bone hooks, but it’s front most facing limbs were offensive curved bladed scythe like weapons clearly designed to slash or ensnare.
The insectoid beast had two huge mantis-like eyes that appeared to track your every move.
Its abdomen was translucent and Ashwin could see its glowing vital organs.
That was all it took for the Death Gigas, it had flushed out new prey with its wave of killer intent, produced by the odd glands at the base of each black horn.
So, I wasn’t imagining it…
Relief washed over him.
The Death Gigas wasn’t hunting him.
It was hunting anything.
With a roar the Death Gigas leaped from its position over Ashwin and down to the ugly insectoid nightmare!
The insectoid beast made a hissing cackling sound, it’s back split open and gossamer wings rapidly unfolded!
The bug was already air born meeting the Death Gigas halfway with a scythe slash!
The Death Gigas dipped beneath the sweeping scythes.
Eight obsidian claws flashed.
Eight crimson lines opened across the insect’s translucent abdomen.
Before the beast could even scream, the comet-like tail snapped forward.
”CRACK!”
In that moment Ashwin was awe struck by the martial technique the Death Gigas had just displayed and in his mind he had pictured the human equivalent!
He saw himself throwing a right hook, following that momentum into a sort of rolling flip, leaving his left leg and heel extend to strike an opponent!
His breathing quickened.
The movement replayed itself again and again in his mind.
“Deceptive!
So deceptive!
I’ll call it rolling thunder.”
Ashwin bowed in the direction of the Death Gigas.
“Thank you.
You’ve taught me so much today.”
Just a half a moment after the strike the wounds on the bug erupted into black flame!
As the Insectoid beast sailed through the air from the tail whip the black flames grew and spread across its body, it screamed a hideous bug scream of pure terror and flailed in vain with its scythe arms to quench the life consuming black flames.
Below the Death Gigas followed waving its purple comet like tail up into the air taking aim, a moment later the Death Gigas opened fire sending out three round bursts of purple homing plasma energy, one of which found its target and blew the Mantis beast apart, separating it from its bulbous translucent abdomen, both halves of the creature falling to the waiting Gigas below.
The Death Gigas approached the translucent abdomen of the mantis beast first and blew on it, extinguishing the black flames.
Ashwin watched on from above as the Gigas inserted a single obsidian claw into the massive translucent body of the mantis beast and slid it all the way across spilling its organs all over the ground.
Meanwhile the upper portion of the mantis beast watched on as the Gigas dissected its smoldering remains until it had found what it searched for, which was not meat.
The Gigas searched through the bug guts until with some force and a wet cracking sound it yanked free the mantis beast crystal., Its tail curved around its body and the tip of the tail opened up and consumed the Ghost Mantis Beast Crystal!
The head of the mantis continued to make odd cackling noises, and this attracted the Gigas to it.
The Gigas picked up the upper half of the mantis and turned it around and quickly scoped its brain out, devouring it whole.
The Death Gigas closed its eyes.
The air around it grew heavier.
Even from atop the jawbone, Ashwin felt the pressure increase.
It got stronger…
It was over.
The Gigas now bored turned off into the vast fossilized wilderness of the Death Valley zone to find its next victim, leaving a trail or burnt tracks in the aftermath.