They stalked through uncertain soil in disquiet. Dry crust occasionally broken by too heavy a foot-fall – where humid wounds in the earth stuck to their feet and left a stain of paste that dried after a thousand steps.

Still, the presence of softness and moisture was a subtle relief. It seemed like it had been an age spent roaming between frosted peaks, desolate silver domains where every astringent breath clawed at the back of your throat. Every cliff side broken by mindless roots and tubules. Every surface adorned in a hoarfrost of lichen. Stalk lined hillocks and crags had long since bloomed their first and last. Gray and lifeless – rot having upheaved the soil to drink from the depths of the earth. And every whooshing gale that tickled through the pass carried with it a birthing plume of spores whose grim passage would seed another disaster.

No, the peril of sticky paws and matted fur was a cordial compromise to the tireless trek through those rotten hills. Where there could be no rest, lest the itchy threat of the mycelium seize them with its thousand-thousand hyphae fingers. How many of them had they found in their shelters turned crypts, laying on beds with bodies swollen with alien growth? The hushed despair of ever lighter food satchels holding attentive the need for swiftness. Gooey trails that slipped underfoot and sauna air was a god send.

Here was reprieve. The herbaceous among them sought out sustenance among the bulbous forests. Fat sled-fulls of uprooted shoots ground upon flat teeth. The hunters claimed edible young of monsters. Unborn seals of eggs broken upon by ravenous teeth and sweet yoke crashing along craven tastebuds. It was a time of bounty and feasting and though their guard waned in much needed reprieve; the danger could not have been greater.

It was on one of these expeditions that one group encircled a great bounty. A trio of juvenile monstrosities, whose tender hides could still be pierced by a spear. They had been clever in their approach and the landscape kindly provisioned them copious cover in the form of stalks and wet moss. Practiced hands spun a colorful set of signals without the use of words across the clearing. You go this way, I’ll take that. Nary a rustle nor a tustle nor a stunted step gave them away until they were aligned in an efficient kill box. At least, until the sudden stiffening of one hunter and a whicker-bray alerted one of the prey. Seething glares all squinted in his direction, when they ought to have been looking at the glinting approach of a chitinous abomination that had set its arachnid gaze upon the same quarry as they…

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Magnitudes distant; ignorant to their plight and uncaring, a collie squinted through the eyepiece of a microscope and hummed a thoughtful hum, before scratching notes upon a landscape of paper that summarized the same scene a world away.

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Trying for a slightly more condensed story this time – since some people have lamented the length of past works. Tell me what you think of it below!

Downsized Shawn and Microbial Holden credit to  HoldenWrite
Wayward Nanonaught Hound belongs to  futurewesty
Probably Larger than Standard Sergal belongs to  fumei
Brave and Mighty Hunter Rottie belongs to  howitzer247

And the entire deliciously depicted scene was lovingly wrought by  ovens
Please be sure to also favorite and comment on the original piece here