The sand was hot beneath my feet, hot enough to disturb even me. Blazing down from that vast blue sky, the sun baked the life from everything here. The heat slowed everything down, everything but me. I darted from cover to cover, evading the harshest rays of the sun, ducking behind outcroppings of rock and into the blessed cool shade as much as possible as I made my way across the valley floor. The air cavorted in heat shimmer above me, not a zephyr disturbed the stillness, the silence was profound.
The baked orange valley walls blended seamlessly into the sandy floor, eroded debris from the walls forming striations of yellow and orange intermixed with the wind-blown dunes. Dust and small particles of sand rained slowly down, the ages-long process of decay continued uncaring in the furnace of the mid-day heat. The grit collected in the corners of my armour, shaken loose every time I moved. The shade was little cooler than the full sun in the oven like confines of the gorge. I scurried further behind the rocky outcrop as the ground shook with their coming.
Impossibly tall, with large, hard-soled feet, they towered far above me. The gorge barely deep enough to contain their ridiculously long legs, like giant tottering towers of sticks they seemed to be ALL leg, two single hinged pillars descending from heaven to support their distant bodies. These Cyclopean entities that crushed my world beneath their unseeing and uncaring tread. I needn't have been so furtive, I could see their heads held high, I was far beneath their notice. As I watched, one solid, hefty foot brushed the edge of the gorge in which I sheltered, causing a massive rock-fall, boulders crashed down about me and bouncing off my armor as I huddled to protect myself from the worst of it. Then, before they could escape me once more, I sprinted forward and clung to a trailing edge of the raiment that dangled from each leg, hoisting myself up unfelt and unnoticed, carried to wherever the invaders went. The strange carapaces of these giant creatures provided ample footholds for me to cling too. The ground receded beneath me as the creature took another ground-shaking step.
I have no true recollection of how far the creatures travelled, only that it was far; further than I could run in a day, further than I had ever travelled. They talked to each other as they walked, at least I assumed it was some form of speech, massive almost subsonic rumbles that echoed from one to the other, cracking the stillness of the day with their cacophony. Luckily the deep tones they used were on the very lower register of my hearing, one of the reasons I had been selected for this mission - my colleagues were incapacitated or driven to soul destroying fear by these creatures' bellowed speech. I wonder if they knew I lived or thought my mission a failure, having lost all conception of how long I had clung to the vast creature as it and its partner walked heavy-footed through my world.
Nothing could have prepared me for their destination. A great false cave rose up before us, vast and alien. Its unnatural colors clashed violently with the sombre ochres and golds of the desert about us. Startling greens like the new growth after a rain and terrifying purples of the thunder-laden skies spread in colossal sheets on white frames of bone, stinking of death and rot. Rot was not a common thing in the heat of the desert, dead things here desiccated and mummified in the baking incalescence, preserved from decay until the worms and scavengers found them and ate them. The smell almost un-manned me and I clung fervently to the thing's leg as it opened a portal in the false cave it used as a domicile. With a sound like thunder a great sheet of the toxic purple fabric came undone and fell aside to provide us entry, and enter we did.
Some time later, after I managed to drag myself slipping and scrabbling out from underneath the gargantuan creature's discarded carapace, I was able to piece together what had happened.
On entering the false burrow the creature had bizarrely removed the carapace about its feet and then the legs on which I rode. I scurried quickly around to avoid being noticed before the whole carapace to which I clung split in two, the lower half falling away from the upper before being cast to the ground. I hastened to get out from underneath the fallen shell to see what these creatures turned into when they moulted, the knowledge would be invaluable in our continued war against their presence. I was to slow. The creature discarded the upper half of its shell as well and buried me beneath the discarded folds.
My first view was of the two creatures side by side, encased in vast cocoons of brilliant orange, their vast fleshy faces close to mine as they lay on the ground beside me. I hurried as quickly and quietly as I could towards shelter, but not before a fetid gale came from the creature before me, blowing against me as the desert wind blows against the rock. I clung briefly for purchase and darted away once the gale abated. As I ran I could hear the gale start again behind me, but strangely an inward gale that was drawn inside the creature. It never moved. Gods these creatures were strange, strange and dangerous.
I huddled, fearing, in the sheltering dark for an untold time, but the creatures never moved. Immobile in their cocoons they lay like two low fleshy mountain ranges. Over time, and with careful observation, I was able to determine that the cocoon was not fully sealed. Each creatures head was exposed, and a dark cleft existed between the edge of the cocoon and the creature's vast body. I shuddered with revulsion, but my purpose was clear. These creatures were my enemy. I knew this was probably a suicide mission when I accepted it. They must die.
I hurried forward, my feet scrabbling and slipping on the unnatural and smooth surface beneath me, the sound a cacophony in my ears. The creatures never moved, un-hearing they hibernated. I clambered over the edge of the cocoon and vanished inside.
It was dark, and moist, hot and humid. The fleshy face of the creature was their least ugly feature; the vast fleshy body inside the cocoon lay like some gross bag of fat and liquid, like a giant pre-digested food cache ready to be fed to a hatchling, only on a scale that staggered the mind. Somehow this immense thing, this giant food sack, was alive. Alive for the moment anyway. I crept forward and struck, my stinger sinking easily into the thing's body before I pushed my venom deep into its repulsive body.
It screamed, a sound I will hear in my nightmares until I die, and its body lurched and twisted. In a panic I ran towards the mouth of the cocoon and flung myself headlong from the opening, running with blind instinct towards cover beneath the discarded carapace under which I had previously been buried. The thing lunged and twisted, writhing in its cocoon like some great fleshy food-grub above me. The second mammoth creature lurched up as well, seeming brought out of its changing-sleep by the first's cries. The second's cocoon split with a sound like the world tearing in half and its naked pink body was exposed. Great fluid filled trunk supported on four fleshy limbs that further subdivided at their extremities into multi-hinged members each only slightly smaller than my body. The naked creature reached one of those gargantuan limbs across the first and tore its cocoon open, exposing a second pink fleshy body on which was clearly visible a large red wound resulting from my sting.
While the two bodies writhed together and thunderous sounds echoed from one to the other, screaming sounds from the first slowly quieting as it stiffened and lay still, I ran through the chaotic shadows of this false burrow to place myself out of harm. The stung creature ceased its noises and lay immobile, I think I had disabled it or perhaps even killed it. I quietly congratulated myself as the second threw its whole body over the first and began a new round of screaming and wailing, its limbs thrashed and hammered against the ground. I knew I had no time to lose, I had to act fast before the second creature realised I was here. When next the fleshy limb struck the ground in front of me I sprinted forward and stung again...
I have no idea how long I have been here now, my efforts to obtain an exit from this burrow have been totally unsuccessful. At least I have not starved; the creatures that died in here with me have proved to be eminently edible.
It has been a lonely wait, but no longer. Today the first of the eggs hatched, a new child crawling complete from the putrefying flesh of the creature before me, greeting me briefly before it turned and began to eat. The young ones are always hungry. I had not even known I was carrying eggs when I accepted this mission, otherwise I would never have volunteered, but now I am glad for the fact. Our young are born fully formed and sentient, able to communicate from birth by scent and posture.
Above me fluttered a scrap of burrow material, decayed in the sun. By the time these young ones have matured it should have decayed further and perhaps with the young ones help we will be able to reach it, and escape from here. Like triumphant prodigal sons we shall return to the nest-burrow, stingers held high, pincers proud before us, segmented bodies blessed with the kiss of the sun as we march victorious back to our desert home.