A tiny shard of obsidian snapped free with a sharp pop.
Ashwin froze.
He lifted the blade into the late morning light.
The first serration caught the sun.
A slow grin spread across his face.
“It worked.”
He couldn’t help but laugh.
Continuing to work his way down the curved obsidian clever, pressure flaking each side in quick succession, he found his rhythm.
After further fine point knapping the blade resembled a wickedly oversized talon from some large bird of prey.
Pausing, he faced north and used a simple finger shadow clock trick to tell the time, it couldn’t tell the minute just the hour.
“Ten am”
Turning back to the blade he put the finishing touches on the handle, which was still semi-rough.
With the coarse blue rock, he began to gently rub the interior of the handle and section of obsidian blade that curved over the knuckles for the hand guard.
Working diligently, sweat beaded on his brow as he gradually applied more pressure.
Then he switched back to the round smooth granite stone, gently rubbing the curve of the handle and blade.
There was enough material on the end of the handle for a ball pommel, which he quickly fashioned.
Ashwin wiped the sweat from his face as he held the blade up from his sitting position.
It was beautiful, but he didn’t have time to appreciate his craftsmanship, he had a lot of work to do and little time to do it in.
“Now let’s see how damn sharp you are.”
Before anyone knew it Ashwin was already ascending the head of the Mantis Beast held his new weapon in a reverse grip as he climbed.
The translucent antennae was incredibly long, and proportional to the magnitude of the rest of the Mantis Beasts body.
Ashwin placed his foot to the base of the stalk and pressed, to his surprise there was quite a bit of give, it was very flexible.
A smile broke out across his face for the second time today.
Before just chopping away un-ceremonially Ashwin looked down one more time at the Mantis Beast, to pay his final respect.
“Thank you as well.”
Focusing a small trickle of Animus he gave a mighty chop!
The wickedly curved obsidian clever severed the antennae stalk in one blow.
Even Ashwin was shocked, holding the blade aloft he exclaimed, “You are wickedly sharp!”
looking down, he caught something that struck him as passing strange.
The huge antennae of the bug didn’t fall right away, the antenna twisted lazily through the air, swaying back and forth like a strand of silk caught on an invisible current, after a long moment of falling it finally touched the ground…
Without so much as raising a puff of dust.
Ashwin’s mouth fell open.
“That was weird.”
Makin his way back down to the fossilized earth he inspected the antennae and reaching down he touched it experimentally.
The whole thing moved.
“Well, I’ll be damned, it weighs virtually nothing.”
Despite its size the antennae of the mantis beast was incredibly light, Ashwin could literally lift the whole antennae off the ground with a single hand, which looked quite odd.
lying it back down Ashwin quickly darted up the length of the antennae in his crouched run until he came to the last forty-five feet of it,, which suited his purposes.
With another quick check he focused a trickle of Animus and chopped it off.
The portion he chose was thick enough at the end where he had chopped to serve has a handle, it was flexible yet ridged for about seven feet of the total length.
While the tip ended in an ultra-fine filament.
Ashwin waved it around experimentally from left to right, not really thinking much about it.
There was a devastating crack overhead!
Ashwin looked around quickly,
“Damn, this thing is a natural whip.”
The filament of the translucent rod whip curled around him like anchored smoke, as if it were lighter than the air itself.
Ashwins eyes widened as he took this in.
He gave a slow wave of the rod whip and watched as the filament trailed over head in a ghostly manner.
But he didn’t have time to think about all of this.
Quickly rolling up the excess yardage of the filament around the seven feet of antennae that was firm like a rod he ran over to the spindly legs of the Mantis Beast next.
The long prodigious legs of the Mantis lower half were long and covered in spikes and ultra fine, yet course hairs.
It was these chitin hairs he went to collect next.
Getting up close to one of the spikey hairy legs gave Ashwin the creeps but he made himself do it anyway.
Some of the chitin hairs were straight and stiff like needles and others were curved like translucent hooks.
“No need to be delicate here.”
Ashwin ran his curved obsidian clever up and down a section of chitin hairs rapidly.
Dozens of them popped off like loaded springs.
Bending down he began picking them up.
Ashwin now had hooks’N’needles.
Behind him…
The abdomen moved.
Ashwin froze.
Slowly…
He turned.
“What…”
“…was that?”
Then the abdomen of the Mantis Beast shook more violently.
But he felt nothing in the air.
No threat no danger.
Working up a bit of courage and feeling a bit more confident with his new blade Ashwin navigated his way around the carcass.
To where the Death Gigas had sliced open its belly.
It was then that Ashwin saw them, hundreds of mantis beast eggs.
There were hundreds of opaque eggs hanging from a lining inside the abdominal wall.
Inside the opaque eggs were mini mantis beast larvae.
They were yellowish white with large black slit eyes.
And they weren’t small.
Some eggs had already hatched or burst, and the baby mantis beasts were already busy eating away at their mothers’ insides.
The blood drained from Ashwin’s face, and the second voice spoke;
“Move Ashwin.”