It was a very ‘unique’ being so to say.

  A hunched-over bipedal body, bones protruding from its pale with a slight blue tint skin. What were supposed to be its arms were bent in and of themselves, not unlike a mantis’s.

  It had big blue azure eyes, a wide mouth filled with molars and a very small nose and ears.

  Its feet were six-toed with tiny suction cups on them, most likely helping it keep balance on the surrounding slick rock.

  It spotted the boarling party first. Blankly looking at them it didn’t seem scared or cautious, just curious. Letting out a weird wheeze it started to get closer.

  *step*

  *step*

  *step*

  The slow steps echoing in the deathly silent cave.

  “Do we kill it?” Brakk asked, eyeing the approaching being. “Wait.” Was all Torin said.

  When it was just an armspan away it stopped, tilted its head and went around them.

  It went a bit further till around the spot they killed dung-eyes and started to defecate.

  *plop*

  Then it looked around as if searching for something while using its mantis-like arm’s elbow to scratch its chin before turning around and coming back the same way it came from.

  It passed them again and continued walking forward. The party deciding to follow it to see where it was going.

  Around ten minutes of following later they spotted three more of the big-eyes friends.

  They looked at their party in curiosity before once again lowering their hunched backs to munch on the luminescent moss.

  Seeing their docile and somewhat lackluster reaction to their presence the party became bolder and stopped being so tense all the time.

  As the stress left their tired and overexerted bodies they started getting drowsy, they haven’t slept for what must have been over twenty-four hours by now, after all.

  They set ‘camp’ around thirty meters away from the big-eyes group and took up periodic nightwatch duty.

  As the ‘night’ passed and ‘morning’ arrived, both groups woke up and got ready for the day.

  The big-eyes answered nature’s call while the boarlings drank from the tiny springs and stretched

  Done with their only morning task, big-eyes got up and moved around an hour distance away towards the abyss and stopped there for the day to feed on the moss once again.

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  The boarlings followed them and set up camp once again a short walking distance away.

  Food was becoming a concern once more because they didn’t spot any dung-eyes following the first two they killed, so they decided to try their luck with the big-eyes.

  That ‘night’ or, however you call a period of sleep in an enclosed space, they all stayed awake, and once one of the animals walked away to take a late afternoon dump they quickly sent it to meet its creator.

  One grabbed its legs, making it fall over, the other quickly sat on its back and hit its big and round head with a somewhat blunt rock while choking it, with Torin finishing it by shoving his spear tip into the big-eyes eye and scrambling its brain.

  Done with the deed they carried the corpse a thirty minute walk away, ate it, washed away the blood and threw the bones into a spring to not tick off the rest of the big-eyes.

  Coming back they went to sleep as usual as if nothing had happened.

  Waking up the next morning Torin might have been imagining things, but the big-eyes group seemed vaguely distressed. This time they walked away from their previous camp spot only later in the day, as if waiting for their lost member.

  Two more days passed. And they killed one more ‘animal’.

  Their number being only whittled down to two seemed to increase the fear they felt and this time the two remaining big-eyes seemed visibly distressed.

  Instead of walking only for an hour abysswards, this time they walked for four hours before growing tired and settling down.

  Another two days passed, and another big-eyes was eaten.

  ***

  ‘First it was my brother, then my sister, then my mother…’

  ‘How did they all stray away so suddenly? I better hurry, the eldest one should know how to help me, he always does.’ The last remaining big-eyes was pondering before locking eyes with one of the weird-looking animals.

  ‘At least I have them as my friends’ he smiled in his heart satisfied.

  ‘Maybe I should try to ask them for help in finding my mother? But they can’t understand me, that’s right, ahh’ His simple thoughts echoing in his head. Unaware that he was watching the murderers of his family.

  ***

  “Isn’t it a little grotesque that we are doing this?” Dashura asked while watching the last poor big-eyes.

  “Why should we care about them?” Brakk quipped.

  “It’s either us or them. A scarcity in resources beckons for sacrifices to be made. Did you already forget how half of us got eaten by the wolves?! This is only the beginning, you must be willing to do what it takes.” Torin answered, his dark and deep eyes giving Dashura the creeps.

  Raskar just calmly watched, nodding in agreement after Torin finished his short speech.

  “They are barely nutritious and we dump half of it out anyway because it upsets our stomach” Dashura switched the subject to their taste, not wanting to admit that she was wrong.

  “Endure. Endure and live.” was all Torin said before getting up and offering to do the nightwatch first tonight.

  ***

  Another night passed before they resumed their journey. This time three hours in they reached what they assumed was the last big-eyes goal.

  It was quite a big area of mossy plain, but what made it special was what was on top of it. It was a group of around fifteen big-eyes and at the very back end of the open space were two blue upright humanoid figures.

  One sitting on what looked like a chair with his eyes half closed and a spear leaning over his shoulder, the other half his height, kept doing some weird movements that constantly stressed his muscles.

  Torin signaled with his eyes for the others to prepare and a few seconds later they ambushed the now very happy last standing big-eyes.

  Luckily the humanoid figures didn’t bother to look up, and the other big-eyes didn’t understand what happened so after the disposal they dragged the body backwards for a discussion on how to proceed next.

  After all there are now more resources to acquire but the difficulty increased as well.