Fetus's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Fetus drove his fist into the boulder before sunrise, the way he did every morning. He was a grown man, bald, naked, and still called Fetus, because that was what he was. The boss had eaten six of them last week. Fetus had stopped counting fear and started counting reps. He hit the boulder until his knuckles split, then hit it again. He had set himself one job: get strong enough to kill the thing that was eating them, before there was no one left to save. On the two hundredth strike, his fist met something that was not stone. An arrow had punched up through the dirt at the boulder's base. Its shaft was dark metal. Its head was wide and barbed, etched with shapes he did not know. He reached for it, and the head turned in the dirt and drove itself through his palm. Heat ran up his arm. His knees hit the ground. He thought, good. Anything that hurt this much had to be useful. Then the boulder broke. It did not crack from his fist. It split from the inside, as if something had been crouched in the rock waiting. A tall white figure stepped out of the wreckage. It stood two heads above Fetus. A slab of stone was bound across its eyes with golden cord. Gold thread wound down its arms to its fingers. A cracked scale sat flat in the center of its chest. It did not look at him. It could not. But it turned its head toward him and waited. Fetus understood, the way you understand your own hand. This thing was his. He could feel its weight in his shoulders. He pictured it striking, and it struck the air beside him, fast enough to push dust off the broken stone. He laughed. With this, he could reach the boss. With this, he could end it this week. Then the figure raised one hand and pointed, past Fetus, back toward the burrows where the others slept. Fetus turned. The dirt over the burrows was sinking. Something underneath was moving toward the sound the broken boulder had made. The arrow had called more than a stand out of the stone. It had called the boss up early, and the boss was coming through the only ground between Fetus and the fetuses he had sworn to protect.