Grand Saint Alloy

“Watch out, “ was all Tristan could yell before the shutter hit the floor with an explosion.

No one could survive that. All of the team had been around the fire, and that had been the center of the impact site. He actually felt horrible and that shocked him. He had reasons to dislike most of the team, but he had not wanted to kill any of them. Harp just lost a parent. Tristan felt like he was going to be sick.

Tentatively he looked over the edge. There was wreckage everywhere, but no bodies. The only blood he could see belonged to the ghost crab that had crunched on the floor. A spark of hope ignited, maybe they weren’t dead, though a lack of screaming dampened that spark. He quickly climbed down the ladder and looked around.

“Eve, Clive, Ray,” Tristan found Ray. He was dead. A broken sheet of tiles was lying on top of him, it looked like his chest cavity had been smashed.

Something hit Tristan in the back of the head. He quickly turned, drawing both knives. There was a corn cob on the floor, Tristan looked up just in time to dodge another one.

“You mad bastard,” Eve yelled throwing another cob.

Then he saw them. All three of them were covered in dust, but were otherwise unharmed. All of them had different expressions. Eve was angry, Clive was terrified, and Bruce had a complicated look on his face.

Tristan could only stare in surprise, “How did you guys survive?”

Bruce raised an eyebrow, “You stand under someone intent on dropping large crustaceans on your head. It motivates you to move quickly.”

“Oh,” Tristan could not think of what else to say, so he went with, “Glad you guys are still alive.”

“What about Ray!” Tristan caught the cob this time, “Do you not care about him?”

Tristan shrugged at Eve, “I did not really know him, and he also is the reason why all the crabs are trying to break in the first place.”

He pointed at the door that was still shaking as dozens of different ghost crabs each tried to break in. Eve did not seem to accept this reasoning, but Tristan did not really care. Eve ground her teeth, but there was not much she could say in response to his actions. At least not in the current circumstances.

Bruce shook his head, “Callousness aside we need to find a way out of here. Sage what if we cut our way through a wall and circle around the ghost crabs?”

“It could work, but I don’t really know,” Tristan said.

Without seeing, he had no way of knowing whether they were surrounded or not. However, cutting a small hole should be doable. It was about a ten mile run back to the fort, but it was doable for him. Eve and Bruce would probably struggle with it, but Clive would need a miracle to make it back.

Tristan cut a small peep hole in each of the walls at around eye level. Despite being the one who made the holes, Bruce is the one who used them. Clive started packing up his bag with the stingers and some spare rations. Tristan had forgotten about the stingers, he had left quite a few of them on the ground around the warehouse.

“Ok,” Bruce said, “they seem to be gathered around the front door. They are even piling on top of each other to get to the it, the wall might actually give out before the door.”

Eve perked up, “so you think that we could make it?”

“Its possible,” He said, “it will become probable if someone chooses to stay behind.”

“If someone stays behind it should be, Sage,” Eve said.

She was still clearly angry with Tristan, however he was not going to sacrifice himself for these people. They were not his friends and it would be a stretch to call them team mates. Allies of necessity would be a better description.

“No, I don’t care if anyone else wants to stay behind, but I will not be dying today,” Tristan said, “Also, all of you screamed and ran while I actually got stuff done, and you two are both a tier higher than me.”

“That’s not a fair assessment,” Bruce said, “You have those two weapons that actually work on them.”

Tristan raised his eyebrow, “Did the scion of a wealthy family just complain that I have better survival tools, when money is the key factor in acquiring said tools.”

Bruce furrowed his brows, it had not been his intention to start an argument. He sighed, “Let’s get out of here first and bicker about it later. Please cut a hole in the wall.”

Tristan shrugged and complied. The hole was a rectangle around three feet wide and six feet tall. Once it was open, the sound of rain and the smell of the storm washed in. The rain would do wonders for obscuring the vision and hearing of the ghost crabs, but it would slow them down.

Bruce poked his head out and inspected their surroundings. He placed a finger over his lips before leading them out into the rain. He went straight for the corn field, using the body of the warehouse to block the view of the crabs piled against the door. Tristan looked back at the building and almost had a heart attack. There were ghost crabs on the walls, slowly making their way to the roof. Fortunately they were all traveling upwards, this pointed their inset eyes upward as well.

He turned and hurried to the corn field. They placed several rows between them and the warehouse as they circled around to the main path. The rain almost obscured the warehouse, but Tristan could still see clearly enough to tell that he had severely underestimated the number of crabs trying to get into the building.

They made it back to the road, which was still hard. The packed dirt was to tough to become mud in just a few hours of rain. After about two miles, sure enough, Clive needed to stop.

“Hold on,” He gasped, his hands on his knees, “I need to walk for a little while.”

Both Eve and Bruce were breathing heavily and seemed inclined to grant Clive’s request. Tristan contemplated just leaving them behind, but he would have to explain why he was the only one to return. With his luck and kern they would accuse him of killing them, though in hindsight, that was what they would probably say about Ray.

“We can walk, but we have to keep moving,” Bruce said, “The less time we are out here, the better.”

They started walking briskly through the rain, the mud slowed them down and the downfall deafened them. The sun was barely rising in the horizon and it was that odd twilight that blended everything together. It made every rustle of the corn seem to be a ghost crab. Sometimes it was, but they were always small, many were no larger than a fist.

He had calculated over half a million of these things, but if they were the size of rats, then it would not be an issue. Even common people could kill these. The issue was that the little ones were a bigger threat to human settlements than the large tier three ones. They could enter a city and convert its pest population before upgrading to humans and pets.

A boom echoed out. It must have been large to be heard over the rain. A cloud of dust was blown into the air, before being pushed down by the rain. Tristan looked back at the warehouse skeptically, even if they knocked it over it should not have made a noise loud enough to hear through a mile of sound dampening corn fields.

“What was that?” Tristan asked.

“It was the ware house,” Bruce said with a sad expression, “A lot of food went to waste.”

“You sure,” Tristan asked.

Bruce furrowed his brow, “What else could it be.”

“I don’t know, but I work in a mine, collapsing things are what I watch out for, and that was way too loud. However that is not the part that matters,” The team’s expressions seemed confused, “If these things are as starving as we think they are, then they will spread out in every direction to find food.”

Clive started running again, followed by Bruce and Eve. Tristan did not believe that the crabs had any tracking skills or the comprehension skill needed to guess where the fort was. Unfortunately, they had left a trail of tiny ghost crab corpses behind them like a path of crumbs. The pursuers would only need to be hungry, which they most certainly were.

Survival turned out to be a great motivator, Clive managed to keep up a jog for quite a while. After a few miles he started to slow down, only to hear a crunch behind him. He looked back over his shoulder to see a ghost crab the size of a calf staring them down, it had been cannibalizing its younger copy.

Upon seeing the team it skittered after them. The most terrifying thing about the ghost crabs was that they did not screech or roar. Sometimes they hissed, but they would silently chase you and the only way to know how close they were was to slow down and look back.

This tier one was not a threat to Tristan and he quickly dealt with it. Unfortunately he had no clean way to do it. The crabs viscera was exposed to the sky when he cut it in half, sending out a smell with a message, to come and eat it to all of its ghost crab friends.