With an unimaginable burst of energy, something huge and black vaulted from the depths. It leapt straight upward, its speed amazing. Teeth flashed as it tried to reach the lone warrior hovering above it.
The warrior reacted, trying to gain altitude. But the thing was too fast for him. It took the Minion’s foot off at the ankle and plunged back into the lake. The warrior flew to the lakeshore as fast as he could, his face a picture of agony, his blood pouring from his torn stump.
Geldon and Joshua ran to the spot where the wounded Minion came to land.
“Can you help him with the craft?” Geldon asked Joshua breathlessly.
The consul closed his eyes, and the familiar, azure aura of the craft began to surround the mangled end of the warrior’s leg. Blessedly, the Minion fainted. Joshua took a deep, sad breath and let it out slowly.
Geldon studied the warrior. Even for a Minion he was large, and he had long, dark hair and a black beard.
“I have sanitized the wound and accelerated the healing process,” Joshua said. “In addition I have used an incantation that will render him unconscious. He will live, but he will never be the same again.”
And then the dwarf realized at least part of what was happening. This lone warrior had been bait! his mind exclaimed. Living bait, intended to lure out whatever was down there in the lake! Geldon turned his eyes back to the Minions, expecting to find them still hovering over the surface of the lake with their swords and their nets. But they were gone.
The dwarf raised his eyes to the sky. At first he saw nothing. But then, very high up, he saw what at first appeared to be a giant flock of geese hovering so high that they were no more than specks in the sky. He had never before seen the Minions fly so high.
Then the pinpricks in the sky began to grow larger, at an alarming rate. On and on they came, approaching the lake. Within only moments Geldon and Joshua could see that the Minions were soaring downward in a giant circle, wings closed behind their backs, their formation perfect, clearly in free fall. The huge, circular net was stretched in front of them. A few held their dreggans pointed before them.
Geldon’s mouth fell open with wonder.
With a great noise and a massive, explosive splash, the perfect circle of several hundred hurtling Minion warriors plunged headfirst into the body of water. A giant gush of water leapt upward in the form of a perfect sphere from the lake, like several hundred connected geysers bursting into the air at once. Then the Minions were gone into the depths, and the water fell back noisily. The surface of the lake became still again, as if nothing had happened.
The moments came and went agonizingly. Geldon wondered how long the warriors could hold their breath under water. He was holding his own breath, as if that would somehow help those below. Both the dwarf and the consul began to wonder whether all of the warriors had by now met their end.
At last the water near the center of the lake began to churn and swirl, this time more violently. Several Minions broke the surface, gasping for breath. Finally the entire circle of warriors that had plunged into the water was again visible, and the net was rising in their midst, a great, dark, humped shape trapped within it.
The hump began to writhe and scream.
Shouting to their fellows in unison, the Minion warriors began to fight the thing in the net. Their screams combined hauntingly with the urgent, insane shrieking and struggling of the creature they had captured as it desperately tried to free itself and return to the depths. But slowly and surely the Minions managed to bring it closer to shore, finally dragging the convulsing, snarling beast to the water’s edge.
The thing was covered with smooth, black, velvety hair, much like a Eutracian otter and stood on four legs. Its back was at least as high as any of the Minion warriors were tall. Its body was easily five meters long, and quite large around. Its four feet were scaly and reptilian, quite unlike the torso, and each ended in five sharp, webbed claws that looked especially suited for tearing.
It seemed to be a strange and grotesque amalgam of creatures. The head ended in a pointed nose, much like a rat. Its large but still somehow beady black eyes looked out from within the net with intense, almost intelligent hatred. An unusually wide, thin mouth sat just below the nose, and large, ratlike ears sat on either side of its head. Its tail—reptilian, like the feet—was barbed all along its length and ended in a point much like the head of an arrow. It switched back and forth violently, occasionally slicing through the net. The creature’s amazing strength was more than obvious.
Then Geldon took a quick breath of surprise as he noticed the beast’s most unusual characteristic: It had both gills and lungs. The double, vertical, pink-colored slits in the skin and hair behind its jaw were clearly gills, but they were not moving, as would those of a fish out of water. Yet the creature’s chest heaved with its labors. Geldon was amazed. Possessing both lungs and gills, the beast could live both beneath the water and upon the land.
The beast was truly remarkable. But where had it come from?
In defiance of its captors, the awful thing opened its mouth farther. Geldon took a step backward, as its jaw hinged open as far as a Parthalonian serpent’s. Two great incisors stood out in each corner of the upper row of teeth, glistening wickedly in the afternoon sun. It hissed in anger at the warriors as they struggled to contain it, snapping its jaw shut with a force that could easily bite a man in half.
The Minion leader was a man of rather short stature for his kind, and looked familiar to Geldon. The dwarf thought for a moment and dredged up the Minion’s name: Baktar. From what Geldon has seen he was particularly capable.
Baktar walked up to the dwarf and the consul. “Ugly bastard, is it not?” He laughed, obviously proud of its capture.
“What in the name of the Afterlife is that thing?” Geldon whispered incredulously.
“It is called a swamp shrew,” Baktar answered. “At least that is the name we have given it. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
Baktar motioned for several of his troops to come to his side. They drew their dreggans and stabbed the swamp shrew, their swords plunging deep into its chest. When its struggles and burbling screams ceased, they slashed through the net. Quickly lifting it from the dead body, they beheaded the creature and scrambled to begin another, even more grisly task.
Lining up alongside the slick, black, beheaded body, with a great heave they turned the shrew over on its back. One of the Minions quickly jumped up on its underbelly, and with his dagger began to open its abdomen from head to tail. Placing his hand within the shrew’s abdominal cavity, he reached in up to his elbow and pulled out several bloody organs. He quickly and expertly cut their connecting tissue away from the creature’s body, letting them slide sloppily over the side and to the ground. Another of the warriors descended on one of the organs—a grayish sack of some size. He sliced it open quickly and cleanly, then pulled out the contents.
The dwarf and consul stared in unbelieving horror. Geldon covered his mouth.
Lying before them was the foot just taken from the Minion warrior. And next to the foot lay the clothed, partially digested body of a human being.
Baktar sighed sadly, then wiped his dreggan in the grass at his feet and slid it back into its scabbard. “We were too late.”
The body that lay before them appeared to be male. But the only way such a determination could be made was from the style of dress. In all other respects the identity was impossible to discern. The face and extremities had been eroded; the skin was sallow and gray; the facial features were virtually gone. A large quantity of the same gray-green, slimy fluid that had covered the bones lining the lake had spilled out along with the foot and the semidigested body. Its stench was overpowering.