The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [29]
"The trout farm!" cried Colleen, but Brigit had already seen the damage. The beast stalked among the buildings and sheds, smashing troughs of flowing water, reducing wooden buildings to splinters with a single kick of a tree-sized leg. Panic-stricken Llewyrr fled in all directions. The knights saw several of them seized by the monster's tentacles and dragged screaming to their doom.
"Let's go!" urged Brigit, spurring the frightened Talloth toward the rampaging beast. She wished for her lance, though in her heart, she knew that even that steel-tipped shaft could do little more than prick the monster's skin. Despite the hopelessness of their courageous gesture, Colleen raced at her side. Both of the sister knights drew their swords, raising the blades in a wild attempt to distract the monster from its helpless prey.
The beast must have sensed their approach, for it turned from the wreckage of a shed, where it had been burrowing after survivors with its tentacles, and lumbered toward the froth-flecked horses and their determined riders.
"Break!" shouted Brigit, veering to the right. Colleen, anticipating the command, split to the left. The horses swept around the looming beast, out of range of the awful tendrils, and the monster seemed content to let them pass.
As they came around to the other side, Brigit looked back and, for the first time, saw the distended gap that was the thing's mouth. Blood flowed copiously among a grinding nest of tongue protuberances, hard-edged digits that crunched and scraped against each other or against anything else unfortunate enough to be caught between them. The knight gagged at the thought of the elves-her fellow Llewyrr!-who had perished there, ground to pieces by the churning cartilage.
"Turn back!" she shouted to Colleen, veering sharply toward the creature. A tentacle lashed toward her and she chopped, feeling a grim satisfaction when her steel blade bit into the gruesome flesh. Immediately the limb whipped backward, away from the keen sword.
Colleen darted in on the other side, slashing at a different tentacle, and then the two riders galloped away, pausing across the field to see if the thing would pursue them.
Instead, it stood like a small hillock, as if it would never move anywhere again. "Attack again-but be careful!" Brigit commanded.
Again the two Llewyrr thundered forward, blades at the ready, guiding the sleek horses with the pressure of their knees. Still the three-legged monstrosity remained unmoving, awaiting the charge.
"Break!" cried Brigit again, and once more the two riders swept past the monster. The captain looked for the lashing tentacles again, ready to parry, but no attack came. She darted closer, stabbing with her blade toward the immense body.
But the beast sprang away before she could close. For a fierce, triumphant moment, she thought that it feared her, but then she saw the awful truth.
The monster's leap carried it full into the side of Colleen's gelding. One of the huge legs kicked outward, shockingly nimble, crushing the horse's shoulder with the force of a single blow. With an exclamation of fear, or maybe anger, the scout flew from the saddle, tumbling heavily to the ground. Immediately a lashing tendril whipped over her tumbling body to constrict about her legs. The knight finally stopped rolling, knocked senseless, and the monster tightened its grip.
Slowly the tentacle grew taut, dragging Colleen feetfirst through the grass toward the gigantic beast. The gaping maw narrowed, becoming an extending proboscis with a small, circular opening in its blunt tip. The aperture resembled a giant sucker as it pulsed open and closed, as if tantalized by the approaching morsel.
Brigit had rushed in closer when the monster attacked Colleen, but her blade-of the sharpest, hardest elven steel, and enchanted more than a thousand years earlier by a great Llewyrr wizard-merely bounced from the thing's bony carapace. Talloth fairly flew around the thing, and then Brigit saw the awful doom her comrade faced.
Colleen regained her senses, but the monster