Sean E. Britten

All There in the (Monster) Manual are stories based on creatures from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Over 2022 I released a different story fitting the theme every single week and I’ve now expanded to Dungeons & Dragons’ Monsters of the Multiverse and even the Pathfinder Bestiary. Could be fantasy, science fiction, horror, or something else entirely! Check them out on the main page of the website.

This Week’s Inspiration: (SPOILER CHARACTER)

Ammar flees across the burning wastes ahead of the group of merciless killers. But with his family dead, his tribe dead, and no hope for a future, he begins to wonder just what it is he’s running for.

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Merciless hunters and killers, they stalked Ammar for days across the burning wastes. He knew the desert well and moved without rest through the nights, during the early hours of morning and evening, the twilight, and only sheltered during the heat of the day. Their ability to track him was almost preternatural. They only moved during the day but they were faster, on camels that galloped with long, loping strides.

Ammar scuttled to the top of another of the desert’s endless rises, thick with broken rock and low scrub. Casting a gaze back over his shoulder, he scanned the horizon. Waves of heat hazed the great nothingness. He couldn’t be sure if those dark figures, little more than specks, were real or not. He imagined them staring right back at him and hurried on.

An ancient waterway wound along the bottom of the rise, as dry as bone. Ammar’s footprints left scars in the sand. Stopping to erase them would take too long and accomplish too little. A roughly hewn cloak covered his head and shoulders. He pulled it tighter against the sinking sun. Every day he’d forced himself to set out earlier and earlier, while it was still hotter and hotter, but every day the hunters came closer.

Ammar ran without stopping as the sun slowly, too slowly, died out of the sky. He glanced back at the top of every rise. He hadn’t been imagining those specks on the horizon. The sun was at their backs and even as he moved as fast as he could they were growing larger, closer, until he could discern features. The long limbs and necks of the camels, the vague humps of hunters sitting on top of them. If he looked further south, he could see another pack moving in parallel. They must have been communicating somehow, coordinating so they could close around him like a pincer. He did his best to quicken his pace.

Ammar fled ahead of the hunters and into the night. When the sun disappeared, the temperature rapidly plunged. He kept moving almost without sight. The twin moons were only slivers, casting their weak light across the broken plain. He knew the desert, however. His feet came down with total sureness, picking their way over rises and plains of shattered rock. From time to time, he looked back but his eyes couldn’t discern a single campfire in the yawning blackness. No campfires, no lights of any kind. Perhaps this time the hunters hadn’t stopped. He couldn’t stop either.

Not for the first time, Ammar wondered why he was running and where was running to. His people were nomads. They’d travelled the same paths for generations, vast, complex patterns that wove between food and water and trading places. They carried their whole lives on their backs. The routes took years to complete. They were raiders as well, attacking or receiving tribute from settlements along the way. But those lesser peoples had evolved in their ways while his people stayed the same. They’d banded together, they’d strategised, and they began to hunt his people instead. He and the others began to see empty spots at the meeting places. They heard rumours of other tribes attacked and wiped out. With the way the hunters coordinated, maybe all the tribes were gone now. Maybe he was the last one left. Truly the last one. Maybe that was why the several packs of hunters tracked him with such fervour.

On the day his tribe’s line ended, their murderers came out of the hills without warning. They fought without honour. They killed without honour. Wave after wave of arrows rained on the camp, cutting through tents, biting through flesh, killing dozens before they had any chance to retaliate. When the hunters descended on the camp to exterminate those who survived, they still didn’t meet them on equal terms. They charged in on their camels swinging swords and clubs, hitting and running, over and over again.

Ammar’s wives were dead, his children were dead. He’d slaughtered several of the attackers’ number in return. Individually they were weak, but there were so many of them and they just kept coming. He ran. Between charges, he abandoned the remaining members of his tribe, his extended family, and left them to die. By some miracle he slipped into a narrow gorge unnoticed. He ran, and he kept running. He’d lived several moon couplings now without seeing another member of his own people. In his travels, he’d come across the sites of other massacres but found no one living and no evidence of survivors. They’d killed them all, men, women, and children, and elders. Root and stem. In all of his years raiding, he’d never contemplated anything so brutal no matter how they were defied. He dreamt of revenge but kept running instead. He survived off the desert, the same as he’d done all his life. He lived day by day and he’d run but he didn’t really know why. And now they’d found him anyway. Now they came for him at last.

Sunlight pierced the eastern horizon. Ammar staggered on without stopping all through the night. It had been days since he’d had water. Twice as long since he’d had food.

In the dawning light, Ammar saw several black scorpions crawling over the rocks at his feet. Each was about as long as his longest finger. Something twinged in his shrunken stomach and for a few moments he considered picking up one of them and putting them in his mouth. Feeling the crunch of the hard, black shell. The sour goo on his tongue.

“Peace be upon you, brothers and sisters,” Ammar dismissed the thought.

Ammar didn’t dare look back until the sun had risen well and truly above the horizon, and he was beginning to consider where and when to take cover for the day. Climbing to the top of another hill, he finally looked backward, scanned the desert, and recoiled. Directly behind him, his pursuers were closer than ever before. He could only see one group of them, suggesting they alone had kept moving through the night, perhaps sleeping in their saddles and letting their dogs and camels take the lead. The other two groups of hunters that had been moving in parallel were not yet in sight. Those immediately behind him though were close enough that he could begin to make out colours and details in their tall, narrow silhouettes. If they kept going, even moving as quickly as he could, they would overtake him by the time that day’s sun reached its apex. Unthinking, Ammar turned back in the direction he’d been travelling and broke into a fresh run.

The landscape was as unforgiving as ever. All the animals that could be seen during the twilight and dawn, such as scorpions and lizards, retreated underground to escape the fury of the daytime sun. Ammar scaled a series of gully and gulches folded into the desert. He could scurry up and down their steep sides far easier than his pursuers with their camels but the obstacles would not slow them down enough to save him. Every time he came to another rise, he looked back and saw the hunters were closer.

Ammar touched the sword strapped to his side. Its blade long and heavy and curved, inscribed down its length with ancient wisdom, tassels dangling from its bound hilt. It was the only possession he still carried. The sword had been his father’s, and his grandfather’s, and his great-grandfather’s, stretching back more generations than in memory. He had abandoned his tribe and the bodies of his wives and children. And he had abandoned hope and civilisation, and he’d abandoned any thought of a future, but he could no more leave his sword behind than he could leave behind one of his arms.

The gullies and broken stretches of ground provided plenty of places that Ammar would have used for shelter if his pursuers hadn’t been so close. His breathing rasped and tasted of blood. His body weighed him down. The killers drew closer for every minute the sun climbed higher in the sky. He couldn’t outrun them, he would have to chance ambushing them instead. With the element of surprise, their number was small enough that he could perhaps overcome them if he was fast enough and struck without error. They’d made a mistake in surging ahead of the other packs of hunters to try and take him on their own. Perhaps the different groups, even working in concert, were in competition with one another. Regardless, it was the only opportunity he was likely to get to rid himself of at least some of his pursuers.

Continuing onward, Ammar came to another small canyon that would suit his purposes. He descended into it and scrambled to find an appropriate place to set the ambush. Thinking of his pursuers, he identified a shallow section of slope where they would have to bring the camels. Nearby, a ledge of rock would hide him from sight until they’d descended to the canyon floor.

Ammar climbed back out of the canyon, making sure he was seen by his pursuers and gauging just how far they were from him. They’d grown near enough that he could see the half-wild dogs racing ahead of their camels. He could see the scarves tied off around the hunter’s necks, the swords at their sides, and the dirt on their faces. He wouldn’t be running for much longer no matter what he did so it was better that he fight them on terms he dictated rather than allowing them to catch up. Four of them travelled out in front while two more lingered behind.

Ammar scuttled on, cloak pulled tight over his head, until he reached another dry riverbed. From there, he doubled back, staying low and crawling, sticking to the interconnected veins of gullies until he made his way back to the canyon he’d settled on as an ambush site. He kept his upper body down and was fairly sure he stayed out of sight. The hunters would believe he’d gone on ahead, even if they thought he might be stopped somewhere further along, and they wouldn’t be on their guard. Curling in on himself, Ammar tucked into the space beneath the ledge he’d identified, and waited. In the shade of the hole, it was at least cooler. He drew his sword but allowed his muscles to relax. If he was about to die, at least he would die a little less hot and tired.

The curved sword hung heavy. His eyelids struggled to stay open. Ammar couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly slept, instead of merely snatching rest on the run with one eye always open. Even before the hunters found his trail, it had been a long time since he’d known any real sense of comfort or security.

Dogs barked and snuffled, and Ammar’s eyes snapped open. The men on camelback approached. He could hear the crunch of their mounts’ hooves in the loose sand. Pulse quickening, Ammar tucked himself deeper and readied his sword. And his tail.

The dogs whined as they scampered down the slope ahead of the hunters. Their quarry’s scent was stronger here, agitating them, but they hadn’t worked out why just yet. The men followed, clueless. Ammar felt a thrill as he saw the backs of the first couple of men. They had made more than one error before stumbling into his ambush, and given him a real chance. By travelling relentlessly through the night, they’d managed to catch up but they’d also exhausted themselves in the effort as well as separating from the other packs of hunters. The four men slumped in their saddles, listless and half-asleep, failing to look around or to take notice of their dogs’ agitation. All four moved across the gulch, their backs to him, and looked for another slope to lead their camels out of the canyon.

Throwing the cloak off his shoulders, Ammar exploded from beneath the ledge of rock. Fresh strength filled his limbs. With his enormous sword fanning around, he threw himself at the rearmost of the four camels. Before any of the men could react, before they were even really aware of what was happening in their weakened, sleep deprived states, he hacked into one of the animal’s hind legs. Bone snapped and the limb was almost torn in two. The camel bleated and stumbled sideways. A chunk of hairy flesh and muscle flapped, spraying bright red blood on the sand, the lower half of leg wriggling uselessly beneath it.

Someone yelled a warning. Braying, the camel failed to find purchase with its other three legs and began to fall. In a surprising burst of agility, its rider sprang from his saddle and landed on his feet. That was where his impressive performance ended, however. The man stumbled as if in a daze and was slow to turn.

Weak, small and weak, that was how the man looked before Ammar. The way things should be. His legs, he only had two of them, wobbled under him. Ammar towered over him on eight spiny limbs, spidery but strong. His upper body, torso, head and shoulders, looked no different from the humans but even as wasted as he was his chest was broad and his arms corded with muscle. Without his cloak, he wore only a loincloth over the front half of his body’s lower half as well as the scabbard of his sword. The hunter only had two legs, rubbery and weak, while as an arach Ammar’s lower body resembled nothing so much as a scorpion the size of a small horse. Plated with dark tan armour, it gave him the perfect platform from which to lunge and strike.

The man reached for his sword. Ammar’s blade twisted and doubled back, swinging crossways past his body. The swing cleaved deep into the man’s chest and split it open, ribs breaking like kindling. He spun off the end of the blade and crashed into his own camel as the animal struggled to rise back onto its hooves. Bright arterial blood spurted out of the rent in his chest as he tumbled to the ground.

The other three men shouted in their human tongue as they wheeled their camels around. The dogs sprinted about and flung themselves at Ammar. He stumbled backward, drawing up the vulnerable upper half of his body. Fortunately, the dogs went for his legs which were sheathed in chitin too tough for their teeth to penetrate. Filthy creatures, the dogs were half-wild, little more civilised than jackals, covered in short, sandy hair, muscle and scars. Ammar reared up and lashed out with the spearlike feet of his front legs, drawing blood from one. Another attacked his side. His tail whipped forward in a blur of speed. Identical to a scorpion’s tail, it was long enough to reach and strike past his shoulder, separated into a flexing chain of segments, and ended in a curved bard and a bulb brimming with venom. His stinger skewered the dog. With a flick, he cast the whimpering animal aside then swung on the remaining two with his sword.

The three remaining hunters circled, scrambling for their weapons. In addition to swords, shaped much like Ammar’s own but smaller, they carried blades on the ends of long staffs designed to strike from a distance. On their animals, with their tall, bony legs, they towered over Ammar the way he towered over any man on the ground. He needed to take out the camels first. His ancestral sword was long and heavy enough that the humans would have struggled even to lift it. The arach raised it over his head and brought it down on the back of a second camel’s neck. The blow severed the animal’s spine and carved through the major muscles of its neck. The animal’s head flopped immediately forward, much like the first camel’s leg only attached by a hunk of loose flesh. Split arteries hissed in twin geysers as the camel’s legs folded under it. Its rider tried to bring his bladed staff around as he fell. Ammar stayed inside his range. Letting go of his sword’s hilt with his stronger hand, he snatched out. For arachs, one arm, their weaker one, much resembled that of a human, soft skinned, ending in a hand and five fingers. Their stronger arm, in Ammar’s case his left, was sheathed from the shoulder down in more thick armour. Instead of a human hand, it ended in a scorpion pincer roughly as long as a man’s forearm and lined with serrated teeth. Ammar’s pincer closed around his attacker’s throat. Teeth gouged the flesh, drawing blood. The man dropped his weapon and snatched, helplessly, at Ammar’s grip.

One of the dogs lunged, barking, at the base of Ammar’s tail. Kicking backward like a horse, he caught the dog in the face with one of his bladed feet and gashed it open. At the same moment, however, one of the hunters lined up a charge and lanced forward with his bladed staff. Pain burned across Ammar’s shoulder as the blade sliced through his back. Luckily, the blow was a glancing one and didn’t cut too deeply. The man drew back, his camel wheeling under him, but managed to score another painful gash across the arach’s tail. His chitin was tough to penetrate but slow to heal, and the cut stung.

Ammar heaved the man he’d grabbed out of his saddle as his half-decapitated camel collapsed. The element of surprise had served him well but the hunters recovered quickly, shouting in their own tongue, and the battle turned to chaos. He backed away, swinging his bloodied sword in his off hand. With his pincer, he bore down on the human’s throat. Skin and muscle tore and blood squirted through his claws. The man’s face turned purple. He squeezed harder and felt the man’s spinal cord buckling. Finally, the bone ground together and crunched. With a few final spasms, the man went limp. Ammar loosened his grip and let the body drop to the ground.

“Come then,” Ammar said to the remaining two. “Come and join your fellow murderers.”

The last two hunters came around, side by side, and conferred for a moment. The last uninjured dog launched itself at Ammar. He backed away, taking his sword in both hand and pincer again, biding his moment and then bringing it down like an executioner. The heavy blade drove the animal into the dirt and split it in half almost right down the middle. The divided sections fell away, broken, trailing entrails and staining the sand.

The two humans spurred their camels forward. Contrary to their ornery reputations, the animals responded like extensions of the men’s own bodies. One of them lanced ahead of the other. Ammar brought his sword up and used it to parry the man’s bladed weapon aside, pushing him back and sideways. He realised too late that was exactly how the men wanted him to react and the first strike was more of a distraction than anything. The second hunter’s blade came at him from the side. He tried to block with his armoured left arm but the bladed staff slid under it and gashed his abdomen just beneath the ribs.

Howling, Ammar spun to throw the two men off. They flung themselves clear but he could feel the tear in his side widening with the effort, blood spewing to his hip. He lashed out with his tail at the man who had stabbed him. Fast as Ammar’s tail was, the man threw himself backward in his saddle and the strike missed. Venom misted from the stinger. Ammar drew back and struck again, this time aimed at the larger target of the big, hairy animal under the man, his mount. The stinger slammed into the camel’s side and pumped it with a draught of venom before withdrawing.

Ammar backed away, cleaving his sword, to get some distance. Holding the weapon in his pincer, he pressed his right hand against the wound in his side. It came away wet. Pain made him weak but he sucked air through his teeth and forced himself to straighten. Lank, black hair fell across his face.

Blood and venom bubbled out of the camel’s wound. Ammar had gotten it in the lungs, judging by the way the blood foamed. The animal wheezed and more red liquid dripped out of its mouth in long strings. Its rider tried to exert some control but the animal’s legs weakened and its cooperation broke down.

Before the men could press him with another attack, Ammar sprung forward. He aimed himself at the man with the healthy camel. The arach’s massive sword slashed as the hunter reared back. The tip of the blade sliced across the camel’s breast, a shallow wound. It circled away from him, braying. The man jabbed with his bladed staff. Ammar retreated several steps but then lunged. His sword again nicked the camel’s tawny rump.

The man shouted something to his companion but the other hunter’s camel was sinking under him as it died. He spurred his mount to try and get away. Its legs were long and unwieldy. While the camels were faster over great distances, arachs were generally quicker from a complete stop. Ammar gave chase, drawing alongside, and hurled his weight into the camel. The man came around with his staff but Ammar caught it in his pincer. He squeezed until the wood creaked and splintered. With a snap, the pincer’s teeth came together and broke the staff in two. The blade spiralled to the ground. Ammar shoved and knocked the man out of his saddle. Raising the sword in his other hand, he brought it down on the camel’s back. Its spine bent and broke under the blade, rear legs kicking out in a spasm then going limp. The sword’s hilt was pulled out of Ammar’s off-hand and he left the weapon buried in the animal’s hide as it staggered away from him.

The hunter half-stumbled, half-crawled to get away. The second man abandoned his dying camel and leapt to the dirt. Both men groped for their swords. Ammar jumped on the man he’d just unseated. Striking with his tail, he skewered the man just beneath the right shoulder. The man cried out, his spine bowing backward. Ammar’s venom bulb was almost dry so he withdrew and struck again, and again, inflicting fatal wounds with the barb rather than counting on venom to finish the job. The barb plunged through his back, insufficiently protected by layers of cloth, like a dagger. On the last blow it caught the man in the neck and tore open the side of his throat. Bright blood splashed as he collapsed, writhing, to the dirt.

The last man faced Ammar, sword quaking in his grasp. Behind him, his envenomated camel tumbled to the ground. He was visibly afraid but spat something defiant in his own tongue. The arach recognised the word for ‘monster’ in the human tongue, he’d been called it enough times during raids on their settlements and other bitter exchanges.

Ammar swarmed toward the hunter. The man’s sword hissed around, once, twice, from different angles, but Ammar used his left arm to block it. His right arm snaked forward and seized the man by the wrist. Twisting, he forced the man’s arm backward. His pincer snatched the man by the throat and lifted him into the air. His sword fell in the dirt. Much as he’d done to the second man, Ammar kept squeezing and cutting as the hunter’s face flushed the colour of a plum. He ignored the pain in his side and kept tightening his grip. He saw the faces of his dead wives and dead children. The scattered bodies of his dead tribe and others he’d seen in his travels. His pincer gouged and tore through muscle and sinew and flesh. The spinal column flexed and crackled. With one final burst of effort, he ripped the man’s head clear from his shoulders. Blood gouted from the stump of his neck. He tossed the body in one direction and sent the head spiralling off in another.

Ammar’s strength immediately drained from his body. Precious blood sheeted down his back and side. All he wanted to do was rifle through the men’s supplies to find something to drink and eat. He remembered, however, that two more hunters had been travelling behind these four, part of the same group but maintaining their distance probably for exactly this kind of scenario. From beginning to end, the ambush had taken less than two minutes but the men would be drawing closer. Gathering what ability he had left, he crossed to the camel with his sword buried in its back and yanked the blade free. The dying animal moaned and keeled over on its side. He turned and hurried to the gentle slope where the men had led their camels down into the gully, climbing to the top.

Two more hunters on camelback led four more animals across the desert, either as pack animals or fresh mounts. Half-asleep in their saddles, they’d failed to even realise an ambush had taken place. They were close enough that Ammar could see the surprise cross their faces. He stood poised at the lip of the canyon, his sword dripping in his fist. He’d fight if he had to but at that moment he could raise the weapon no higher. Blood shone wetly on his side but his face, framed by dark hair, was stoic.

Realising what had happened to their fellow hunters, the remaining pair shouted and wheeled around, dragging their string of camels with them. Their obvious priority was to get away and inform the other hunters what had happened rather than facing him themselves. He stayed where he was, struggling to stay upright and to not show how weak he actually felt until they were retreating into the distance. The camels kicked up streamers of pale dust. Ammar looked away and scanned the landscape beyond them. His eyesight wavered but then there, in the distance, on the horizon, the dark specks of more hunters moved through the heat haze. While he had killed one group, there were at least two more of equal size on his trail.

Ammar returned to the canyon. He knew he couldn’t linger for long but he had to treat his wounds and find something to restore his strength. The camel with the mangled leg, the first one he had injured, was the only thing still moving. Braying and snorting, it tried to get back to its feet but would collapse again every time it tried to balance on its partially severed limb. Ammar crossed to it, wielding his tail. The barb punched into the side of the camel’s throat, right under its jawline. Blood welled and began to pour out of the puncture. He grabbed the camel’s head between his right hand and his pincer to force it backward before pressing his lips to the wound. Hot, salty fluid filled his mouth and he chugged it down, drinking and choking and gagging until his stomach felt stretched and he could take no more. The camel collapsed and he left it bleeding on the canyon floor.

Blood covering the lower half of his face, Ammar hurried to check on the rest of his works. Ripping clothing off the dead bodies, he tore them into strips and used them to bind his wounds. The injury on his side bled heavily and the gap in the flesh went deep. He bound it as tightly as he could. The gash across his back was shallower, painful, and difficult to access, but less concerning. He wrapped the makeshift bandages around his torso as best he could before replacing his cloak. He ribboned some scraps around the cut on his tail as well and tied it off.

The men carried waterskins and small pouches of food, dried meat, dates and nuts, and stale bread. Ammar took all that he could, using another dead man’s clothing as a kind of satchel. He ignored their weapons. His own sword he cleaned and returned to the scabbard which ran from his hip and down the side of his lower body.

With the heat of the day still rising, Ammar took off across the desert again. He had no idea where he was headed now, just making sure he was moving away from the remaining hunters as fast as he could. Antlike specks grew distantly on the horizon. He forced his legs to pick up speed.

The camel’s blood curdled in Ammar’s stomach as he ran. He settled it with some nuts and dried dates, and pulls from one of the men’s waterskins. It was a study in contrasts, the food and water and blood gave him fresh strength for the first time in days but his injuries and sleeplessness took it away. Nerves grated in his side and things that shouldn’t move shifted and cried out. Pain he could adapt to but the weakness grew and grew until he felt he was climbing mountains instead of crossing the flat desert plain. As the afternoon wore on, his head swam. At times, he felt himself rousing as if he’d fallen asleep while moving. Upon waking, he found he’d forgotten where he was and what he was running from in a kind of fugue. He had to live through the revelation that his family and his tribe were dead and gone all over again. At least, distantly, he could take some small and savage joy remembering the four hunters he’d killed earlier that day.

Two more packs of hunters tailed Ammar as night fell. He could make out the numbers of camels and men if he squinted and concentrated through the haze but they lagged behind. He hoped with the onslaught of night and the successful ambush fresh in their minds they would stop and rest, and he would be able to claw back some distance.

Twin slivers of moonlight coloured the desert after dark. A vast sweep of stars dusted the night sky. Vast, vast, dwarfing even the endless span of the desert. Pale with blood loss and effort, Ammar’s face turned to the heavens. His eyes rolled. He knew all the stories contained in the stars, The Spear Thrower, The Sisters, The Water of Life, The Hawk, The Scorpion, The Devourer. Stories that would die with his people after being handed down through generations. Constellations that would fall apart and become only stars.

Looking back across the desert, Ammar could see no campfires nor distant shadows. He had to take the chance and rest, he couldn’t go on without sleep. Coming across a mound of rocks laying out in the middle of the nothingness, he found a gap and curled up inside it. Some warmth was still fading from the sun bleached stone. Exhausted as he was, he didn’t sleep well. His ears strained to hear the sound of dogs or camels, or men’s voices speaking in a hush.

Stars streamed across the void. Ammar forced himself upright several hours before dawn. He chewed on some dried meat and emptied one of the waterskins before he started moving again.

Daylight found Ammar crossing a great expanse of shale. Dark grey, sections of it clattered underfoot like broken pottery. Embedded in the undersides of some rocks were etchings of strange creatures and sometimes plants. Many of the animals looked like sealife or insects, or combinations of both. Had he not been in flight, he might have liked to collect and study a few of them, and wonder. One of the elders had once told him that these etchings were the ghosts of creatures and types of plant long dead. In some ancient time, they’d become encased in sand or mud that turned over years into rock. The softness of their bodies, even bones, had rotted away but these impressions were left behind long after all memory of them moved on.

What would be left behind of him once those men caught up? With his children and his tribe gone, all memories of him had already passed. In some ways he was already dead, his name never to be spoken again. Once his mortal shell was gone, what remained?

The sun grew cruel and long shadows gained on Ammar once more, slowly and steadily. They would be on him before evening came to pass, barring some sort of miracle. His feet carried him to the shores of the Sea of Salt, a vast and featureless salt pan. Nothing but crystalline white in every direction, seemingly eternal, no other landmarks to draw the eye. Certainly nothing that lived. He and his people knew of this place of course but they had no use for so much salt so they avoided it. To attempt to cross it was death, and utterly pointless. Functionally, it may as well have gone on forever. Ammar considered turning back but the packs of hunters closed on him from two different directions. There was no way of slipping past them, they would draw together like a noose, so he had no choice but to carry on.

Sun baked the salt. With no other features, Ammar was utterly exposed. No highs or lows, no shade, no colour. Just the arach and an eternal field of white beneath the bleached blue dome of the empty sky. The air was desiccated in its dryness. Salt sapped his sweat before it could leave his pores. It scraped the lining of his throat and the inside of his nostrils.

Under the filthy bandages, the wound under Ammar’s ribs broke open from time to time. Blood leeched to the surface and trickled down his side, drying and cracking and flaking in the heat before the process started again. He left a trail of miniscule red flakes across the white salt. A few snatched hours of sleep, food, and stolen waterskins couldn’t compensate for the blood loss and exhaustion forever. Without even realising it he slowed and slowed and staggered until his pace was no better than the kind of casual stroll he might have taken around the borders of a camp after a heavy meal.

Shadows galloped behind Ammar kicking up white clouds of salt. Both groups of hunters gained on him, eight men in one group and six in the other, all with camels under them, swords, staffs, and other weapons. Battlecries rattled across the salt pan. Ammar didn’t appear to notice until an arrow, fired from the back of one of the camels, hissed through the air and feathered the ground beside him. He turned and tried to pick up speed again but his spidery legs wouldn’t work in concert. A couple dragged, leaving trenches. More arrows hissed out of the uncaring sky and studded the salt behind his tail.

With a slap, one of the arrows pinioned Ammar’s right shoulder. Shock smothered pain for a few long moments, he was only aware of a feeling of being invaded. As the injury started to burn, he reached for it with his pincer but was too clumsy and snapped the shaft in two, leaving the arrowhead buried in his flesh.

The camels galloped closer. More arrows cut through the air and a couple struck him on the topside of his lower body, burrowing into unfeeling shell. Another hit him by the spine of his humanesque upper half and tunnelled toward his lung. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch, the arrow extended from a part of his back that he couldn’t quite reach.

Seeing no option, Ammar pulled his sword from its scabbard and wheeled to face his attackers. Burnished iron etched with ancient wisdom glowed in the sun and the reflected light of the salt. His tail flared up behind him like a cobra. Eyes burned red behind strings of black hair. Dried blood patterned his chest.

“Fight me, then!” Ammar hissed. “Fight me!”

Fourteen men on camelback, and almost as many riderless camels, fanned out before him. Forming a staggered half-circle, they remained at a distance beyond what he could have lunged and crossed quickly even if he’d been in good health. Arrows were notched to bows and let fly. A couple vanished past him. One punched him in the chest before he could avoid it, followed by a second. Pain pierced deep to the core of him. Neither arrow got him in the heart but when he next took a breath he could feel a wet rattle in his chest. One of the men, their leader, held up a hand to bring the arrows to a halt. The hunters readied their bladed staffs. Camels, tired from the long journey, nevertheless fidgeted with anticipation.

“Come and match your blades with mine,” Ammar said. “You have no honour!”

“Honour? What do you know of honour, monster?” their leader said.

Humans who spoke the arach language were not rare. Their tongues were not even particularly dissimilar, having evolved from common roots. Ammar’s addled mind, however, took its time processing that the man had spoken to him. He was a large man, burly atop the tallest of the camels, with threads of steel through his black beard.

“What did you say?”

“I said, what do you know of honour, monster?” the man replied, his accent thick and difficult. “Your kind who kill goat herders and travellers on their pilgrimage, and style yourself as great warriors?”

“You, who kill women and children in their beds!”

“Fruit of a poisoned tree. We have burned it down to the roots so its type will never sprout again.”

Ammar could feel one of his lungs filling with blood, the heft of it like a full waterskin. He desperately sucked air into the working half, praying blood wouldn’t block the passage. His sword’s heavy blade sank toward the ground.

“You, come here and fight me!” Ammar said. “One to one, cross your sword with mine!”

“No,” the man replied.

“Coward, why not?”

“Why should I?”

“For honour, honour!”

“There is no honour in placing one’s self in unnecessary danger in order to exterminate a wounded animal.”

“Coward, coward! You’re afraid to fight me!”

“I know not which tribe you come from, monster, but I will assume they now lie dead and rotting beneath the sands? And yet you live. On that day, you faced a fight you couldn’t win and you ran from it. Where was your honour then? Where has it been since? Your kind were happy to define honour however you pleased as long as you were the greater threat, but now that we have bound together and worked out how to deal with you it is our actions that are somehow dishonourable?”

Ammar had no answer for that. His ancestors’ sword met the salt with a soft crunch. His arms flexed but he couldn’t raise it. Arrows bristled from his chest and back. A fit of coughing suddenly wracked his chest and when it was over fresh blood stained his lips.

“Finish it,” Ammar rasped.

Digging in his feels, the lead hunter spurred his camel forward. A curved blade glinted on the end of the shaft extending from his fists. The others charged, hollering, swinging their weapons. Weak as he was, it was all Ammar could do to stay on his feet and meet their eyes.

Blades flashed in the sun. Blood splashed the white salt. The arach took a long time to die.

The hunters climbed down off their mounts and made sure the job was finished. One of them hacked off the arach’s tail as proof of their success. His sword lay on the sand near his outstretched hand.

“It led us on a fine chase,” one of the hunters said. “You must give him that.”

“That he did,” their leader agreed.

While their victory after days of pursuit deserved celebration, they had no desire to do so in such an inhospitable place. Climbing back on their camels, they returned the way they had come. Silence and a fine layer of salt settled over the body as their shadows shrank in the distance.

Not even flies disturbed the corpse this deep in the Sea of Salt. Moisture was drawn from the blood on the ground. Salt drank in fluids from the body. The sun set and moons rose and stars sprayed across the night sky, forgotten constellations. And the sun rose and the sun set and the stars came out and the sun rose and again and again and again. And the arach’s body disappeared beneath drifts of hungry white powder. Until it was as if there’d never been anything there at all. Except perhaps a fossil. A forgotten thing, out of time, out of place.

======

Sean: Who saw the twist coming around the midpoint? You did? I thought you might. Yes, yes, you’re very clever! The inspiration was the character of Muiral, but I thought if you clicked on that ahead of time it would make things a little obvious so that’s the first time I’ve put them down as a spoiler instead although there’s some other stories where I’ve considered it.

Thanks again to my DMing and GMing mate Tim, who as I’ve mentioned before left me with an enormous stack of Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks before he moved. Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft provided the key to unlocking inspiration for An Audience with the Rat King but it was Dungeon of the Mad Mage that really inspired this piece. Bit of a ramble incoming if you’re truly intrigued by my creative process.

One of the things I did a lot in 2022 and have done sometimes since is when seeking inspiration I will say to myself, “Okay, you’re going to write a story about… this!” and I’ll open the Monster Manual or one of my books to a random page. This very rarely works, I can’t remember a single specific example of this working as intended although there were probably a couple times that it did. I feel like the very first story I did in 2022 actually might have come from doing it? Anyway, I tried it with Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which only has a very small section of dungeon inhabitants, and it landed straight on Muiral. Now, amidst all of my ideas and worlds I already had a race called ‘Arachs’ which have only featured very, very briefly in one story before and I happen to be pecking away at a much longer work that features one in a more prominent role (don’t get too excited, I doubt it’ll ever be finished honestly) so I took it as a sign to do some work on that but the idea of featuring one in a short story stuck with me. I had an older idea of a centaur who was the last of his kind being hunted, essentially the exact same story you’ve just read, but I never had an “in” for it and I never felt the affection for centaurs that I do for these scorpion dudes so I think that’s why this one stuck in my head and then, after a couple days working at it, burst on out of me.

By the way, this is the ninety-seventh short story I’ve posted on this website! There’s been a few random articles, podcasts and the like, but ninety-seven short stories in total. I’ve found I work better with a specific goal in mind, so my aim right now is to post a nice even one hundred stories before the end of the year. And then maybe look at redesigning the website because the ability to actually go back and read all those stories is terrible right now. Watch this space!