The bluish-purple corona surrounding the monolith radiated brighter as the sound within increased in volume and ferocity. Within the monolith's black emptiness, a single pinprick of twinkling white light appeared, like the first star in an evening sky. Around the monolith, the symbols on the back of the stone columns surrounding it began to glow with a pulsing red light as a haze of ozone rose from each stone's base. A low thrum rose and fell in rhythm with the symbols. Suddenly, tendrils of white and blue arcs shot from the monolith to the stones, followed by a loud clap of thunder with each strike. The base and brass sounds caused the air, stones, and the very vale itself to shake, hit by a calumniated crescendo of power.

  Within the crevasse, arcs of energy from the stones reflected in the narrowed eyes of the shadowed creature that stood sentinel over the ring of stones, chronicling what was happening or watching expectantly for an event to occur. As the creature watched, the arcs of energy intensified in power and frequency. Thunder, preceded by pops and crackles of energy buildup, grew louder with each discharge to the monolith. The process became more frequent, louder, and brighter, until the creature's narrowed eyes became mere slits, trying to fend off the brightness. The sound was deafening, the atmosphere tense. The energy within the ring of stones made the very air feel palpable, almost as if it would overflow. Arcs of energy began to rebound off the monolith back to alternate stones, with occasional more powerful arcs striking outside the ring.

  As if by instinct, the creature in the shadows closed its eyes just as an arc of energy struck near the opening of the crevasse. A blinding flash turned the darkness within into day for but a brief instance, partially revealing the horror within; an elongated skull with jagged, long, sharpened teeth in a grimaced, rictus smile, bowed on two enormous hooked front appendages. Its eyes shut tight against the light as it emitted a hiss. Darkness returned to the crevasse, but the lamplit-like eyes never returned.

  Twenty-five hundred meters from the vale, with their eyes no longer covered by nictitating membranes yet tearing profusely with the lingering dust and dry air, the large lumbering behemoths continued their trek to the vale with their heads swaying side to side as if trying to sense something. The head of the pack consisted of four beasts with six bringing up the rear roughly one hundred meters behind and loosely fanned out. Two hundred meters further back from the middle of the pack, five of the beasts were staggered in distance from each other and the pack, slowly their heads would sway back and forth as they followed, watching for threats. They all stopped for a brief moment when they felt a low tremor in the ground that seemed to grow, followed by a low-frequency hum, so low that it was more felt than heard. Like a ripple from the front to the back, each section of the group started for the vale again, the heads no longer swaying. The pack moved as one as if guided by a beacon. The group in the back had no sooner started when the furthermost rearguard of the creatures stopped still. Other than its breath that came out visible in the cold air, the creature made little sound, its head tilted as if hearing something. Hearing nothing and seeing the pack getting further out, the creature turned towards the vale to rejoin the pack, only to again stop suddenly. This time it did hear from behind a rapid movement, soft yet quick pads on the ground. The creature’s instincts screamed that it was being hunted. It was only a heartbeat within the time of sensing the danger that the creature turned suddenly in the direction of the sensed threat; five smaller beasts in the air, their sharp teeth and large claws bearing down onto its head. Before the creature could take a defensive position or even make a sound to the rest of the pack, the beasts collided into its head and its legs, viciously clawing and biting every centimeter they could.

  Pain, while the creature could endure much as it had needed to survive in the desolate, unforgiving harshness of its home world, was still a warning, a flag when something was wrong. The pain in its head and flank as the small but vicious beasts tore into its body caused the behemoth to do the only sensible thing to stop the pain: flail around and dislodge the creatures. Stomping, shaking, and bucking, the ground trembled violently under the weight of the eighteen-hundred-kilogram behemoth until one of the attackers was dislodged from its head. As the front feet hit the ground hard, the attacker was sent spitting and hissing, with chunks of flesh still in its claws and bloodied maw, landing with a thud onto the hard-packed clay ground, kicking up reddish-brown dust. Flailing in the dust cloud on the hard, cracked brown and red clay ground, ribs partially poking from its chest, blood from its mouth mixed with that of the creature, the beast still managed to raise its head, bloody maw wide, hissing in defiance, only to see the foot of its prey filling its vision. Its defiance and life ended with a sickening crunch. One by one, the attackers were dislodged from the huge creature, two landing on their hind feet while the other two, like the first beast, hit the hard clay pack below. The two on the ground suffered the same crushing fate as the first beast dislodged, now no more than unrecognizable blood stains soaking into the clay ground. The two landing on their feet were charged by the creature as their companions were crushed underfoot. One beast was run through by the creature's horn while the remaining beast rolled and ran away. Swinging its head like a samurai cleaning the blood off their sword, the now limp body of the beast was flung from its horn, landing with a squelching thud onto the ground as the creature squared off with the last attacker.

  Backing up on powerfully muscled hind legs with reverse joints, ending in five, thirty-five-centimeter claws, the beast snarled with ferocity, its mouth open, hissing, revealing twenty-centimeter razor-sharp teeth. With a blunt snout, thick muscled jaw, and wide yellowish phosphorescent sclera with no visible pupils, combined with its hissing and menacing posture, the beast had a mad, unhinged look. While small, it had clearly evolved to be a knife amongst many of its pack. Horns for piercing, teeth within a heavily muscled jaw and neck designed for biting and rending chunks of flesh, and black hardened claws for digging and piercing into its prey.

  Hissing and spitting as it backed away, the posturing of the beast was all bluff. This was proven when the creature postured to charge the beast; the beast quickly backed away while turning to run into the dust cloud. While the creature’s eyesight was not good at visual tracking through the cloud, it could sense heat. Staring into the dust cloud where the attacker had fled, a tremor went through its body like a warning. Then, as another pack of beasts ten strong emerged from the dust cloud, the creature let out a huge bellow to the pack ahead, then squared off against the approaching threat as the returning bellow from the pack was heard.

  The creature charged the oncoming pack, its ability to move at short sprints anathema to its size. The pack of beasts moved out of the way of the charge, yet two did not move fast enough; one was impaled through the back of the head and out of its mouth by the creature's two-meter horn, and another was trampled and crushed. The rest of the pack seemed to keep out of the creature’s way by fanning so as to not be an easy target. The creature would charge, and the pack would fan out and back away, not realizing the trap that the pack was setting as it baited the creature further and further towards the dust cloud. Suddenly, the creature was aware of the pack of beasts from its right and left flank, rushing from the cover of the dust cloud, some already jumping in the air, claws and fangs bared with the promise of a gruesome death.

  The creature did not feel fear, despair, or anxiety over the prospect of its demise. Its instinct within the hierarchy of the pack was to serve the Alpha creature, to defend at all costs for the pack’s preservation. As a juggernaut capable of withstanding hordes of beasts, an apex predator, its power and defense were immense, but not infinite. Instinctively, it knew this. Thus, with mounting numbers and more it could sense coming, a slight tremor ran through the creature. It hesitated for but a fraction of a second at the prospect that it could be taken down, that it could fail the pack. The creature reared up and spun, kicking up dust just as its attackers were about to land, trying to gain purchase into the joints between the thick plates covering its side. The attackers in the air, unable to turn or change their trajectory, hit and scraped along the plates without penetrating the thick armor, falling to the ground amidst the creature’s stomping legs. With a squelching wet crunch and little more than a short screech, they were crushed before they could recover. Hissing and posturing, the remaining beasts surrounded the creature after the initial attack failed. The creature spun and bellowed as it was boxed in by the growing horde. In brutal desperation, the creature rushed in to attack, to break the line. While agile, there were too many of the beasts packed together to evade the juggernaut’s wrath. Charging, spinning, bellowing, beasts getting crushed, trampled underfoot with a sickening crunch, gored with the creature's horn and eventually sliding off when the creature would charge again, snapped in half for the unlucky beasts caught in the juggernaut’s maw, exploding in a rain of crimson blood. Yet they kept coming. Even with the instant and gruesome kills against the beasts, more and more came. The creature bellowed in defiance as more piled on, ripping, gnawing, and biting, leaving rents in its plated armor, gouges and slashes now seeping blood as well as its strength. Again, it shook and stomped to shake off its attackers, killing more and more, yet they were replaced by more numbers. The rents in parts of its armor that were breached, the beasts latched on, locking their jaws and bleeding the behemoth. Again and again, it shook them off, killing and killing. The floor beneath its feet littered with mangled and bloody corpses of the fallen, yet they still came, until finally, overwhelmed and overrun by the magnitude of the blood loss and the tiredness of battle, the creature finally stumbled. Sensing that their prey was about to fall, the frenzy of attacks increased, more and more pouring on until finally, unable to hold on, the creature fell like a huge tree crashing to the ground. The beasts piled on in a frenzy, then abruptly stopped when they heard the bellow, the charge, and the crash of their bodies as the arriving creatures from the rearguard finally arrived to rescue their fallen brethren.

  Within the ring of stones, the arcs of energy increased in speed, ferocity, and power. The vale shook with the onslaught of energy. The monolith, wreathed in ozone as the arcs of energy struck it, neither moved nor shook, an implacable object. The pinprick of light in the black emptiness of the monolith's void was growing, fire radiating from its white-hot center as though it were a sun. It grew larger and larger, filling the inside of the monolith's void. The earth within the ring of stones rumbled, the arcs of energy more numerous, the energy palpable, unending, unyielding, and seemingly inexhaustible. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, the arcs of energy, sound, and vibrations all stopped as if they had never been.

  No sound, other than a light wind. The ozone-wreathed monolith with the mini sun burning within its center, floating in the void, slowly turning. The glyphs on the stones around the half circle pulsed a bluish purple, the period between pulses decreasing as the color began to grow brighter, then shifting from bluish purple to red, then orange. The period between the pulses shrank rapidly until every glyph burned a hot white. The sun within the void of the monolith moved upward rapidly as if the view within the monolith had shifted focus. When the light disappeared within the monolith, a thick beam of white energy shot from the top of the monolith towards the sky. Shortly after, a crackle was heard as tiny energy arcs jumped from the monolith to the surrounding stones, followed by a huge boom, an implosion as all the loose debris and clumps of ground were pulverized by the sudden change in pressure and sucked towards the monolith, swallowed by the glowing singularity now visible at its center. Far above in the heavens, as if a portal had been opened, a bright bluish beam of light streaked down towards the beam from the vale below, both on course to meet each other high in the sky.

  From outside the vale, the beam emanating from the monolith in the sky gave an illumination slightly brighter than the two moons, the effect of the two different sources of light casting weird double shadows near the stones around the monolith. Fifteen hundred meters from the vale, the pack of creatures, inexorably pulled toward the vale, did not even slow their gait when the Alpha creature lifted its head towards the sky briefly to see what amounted to a signal flare for their destination. With no more than a slight alteration to their direction to the vale in line with the beam’s origin, there was a tension to move faster when their focus was interrupted by the bellowing cry of one of their own. There was a tremulation in the pack of creatures, yet they did not slow. The lead creature emitted a sonorous sound followed by successive staccato high-pitched clicks while still traveling uninterrupted to the vale. Four creatures from the rear emitted a grumbling roar, then peeled off from the pack with a speed that belied their size, in the direction of the bellow, while the rest of the pack accelerated towards the vale as if pursued.

  The never-ending hunger, the beasts knew nothing else. In the barren wastes that spawned them, their only drive was to slake their appetite, if only for a little. Any moment not feeding was a moment of misery and slow starvation. They were not intelligent creatures singularly, but collectively they made up a single dangerous entity, able to hunt and eventually wear down any prey, then consume it to replenish their numbers, to grow the horde. While not hunting, they spawned and fought within the pack. This culled the weak and old, which were eaten to maintain their numbers. Only the strong were allowed to hunt, and only the strongest were able to lead the horde, to direct the ravenous pack.

  There was a symbiosis with their prey, a cycle they knew well. Their population was tied to getting the food needed to swell their numbers. No prey meant the extinction of their pack. They did not understand self-preservation when they hunted. The fact that the prey was so much larger and more deadly as a single entity than they were as a horde meant nothing—only the drive to rend, to kill, to feed. The bodies on the ground near the rampaging creature meant nothing to the beasts. Once dead, they were food, nothing more. To die meant you were food; to live meant pain or to eat—that was the extent of their existence.

  The creature finally fell, and the horde advanced for the kill. Food to slake the pain of hunger made the beasts more frenzied. Even with the creature flailing and still killing as it could while falling, the beasts' instinct of the finality of their prey on the ground was all but certain.

  The wounded creature was still fighting violently as it fell. The many rents in the plates in its side, even with many dead at its feet, did not matter—the beasts kept coming. Mangled and bloody as the beasts were, the pile that painted the landscape in red gore was a testament to the creature’s power. But for every beast it defended against, more would come to take their place. As it went down, it was covered in beasts, drowning in them, no longer able to see the sky as the beasts scraped, clawed, and bit through chunks of its flesh and armor. It would fight to the last; only death would stop the creature from fighting back. But the horde on top of it was suffocating it even before the blood loss and wounds incurred could end its life.

  Galloping fast, the four juggernaut creatures heavily muscled limbs pounded the ground, sending up plumes of red-brown dust in their wake. Nostrils flared; viscous fluids leaked down the sides of their face as the air was sucked in then breathed out rapidly with the exertion of their rapid gate. Steam from their exhalation, billowed from their nostrils and streamed from their mouth in the cold air as they went. The stream from their mouth was a small exhaled portion running across their vomeronasal organs near the back of their throats to find the scent of their lost brethren. A bellow and sonorous hum, followed by a chirp, indicated that the creature on the right of the lead had caught the scent. It took the lead, slightly changing direction, with the other three now following behind. The speed combined with their weight of close to thirty-two thousand kilograms caused the earth to be ripped up as they went, sending tremors through the hard-packed clay ahead of them. The scent trail strengthened as they closed in on the source. When the lead creature bellowed, they saw the faint heat signature of their brethren under the writhing mass of smaller heat signatures in the distance. All four let out a growl as they recognized the smaller signatures. Bellowing as one, they lowered their horns and increased their speed, bloodlust raging through them as they approached the mass.

  The mound of beasts undulated as they fed on the live prey beneath, though it still fought and occasionally shook some of its attackers off, only for them to pile on again, suffocating, biting, and consuming their prey. One of the beasts stopped, blood dripping from its maw as it felt tremors beneath it. As the tremors grew in strength more of the beasts lifted their heads, flesh and blood dripping from their maws, to see the creatures with their horns lowered heading their way. All hissed defiance, unwilling to let their kill go in the face of the coming threat. With less than one hundred meters between the rampaging creatures and the mound of beasts atop the fallen creature, a handful of beasts leapt from the mound to sprint off towards the attackers. Seconds later, they were dead, impaled or crushed. Shortly after, the creatures were at the mound, their deadly horns leveled at the hissing beasts atop.

  From below the writhing mass of beasts, the fallen creature was suffocating, waiting for death. Though it had fought even when being eaten alive and had managed to kill those that got too close to its jaws, the blood loss and lack of oxygen were too great. Its eyes were about to close for the last time until the sounds of hissing from above, followed by loud familiar bellows, then beasts were ripped away. Eyes again focused on the sight of the two moons. With the beast no longer suffocating it, it felt alive with the now full lungs of oxygen. Then, carnage, blood, entrails, followed by large chunks or pieces of the beasts filled its vision. Turning its head slightly in the direction of the loudest sounds of fighting, it could see four of its brethren plowing, ripping, biting, and stomping every beast near them. Behind them, towards the vale, a beam of bright white light was shooting towards the heavens. Getting weakly to its feet after being freed from the gnawing, biting attackers, it could see beasts being torn to shreds or run off to the dust cloud. Its brethren were victorious but not without damage. Blood streamed from the many bite wounds, ragged flesh with chunks of meat hung from many wounds between the joints of their armor. As the four creatures drove the rest of the beasts howling into the dust cloud, the howling became distant. The wind from the vale changed direction towards the vale, the thickening dust cloud and the faint howls of the creatures now drifting closer, threatening to envelop them.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Standing some hundred meters from the encroaching dust cloud, the five creatures scanned the periphery and were about to leave when one hundred twenty meters south of their position, three beasts slowly emerged from the dust cloud. One beast, much larger than the others, locked eyes with the creatures. The two sides stared at each other, assessing. In the background, the beam of light from the vale and from the heavens connected, and there was a sound that seemed to break the atmosphere. The creatures moved to attack just as the Alpha beast raised its head and gave a cry, which was shortly answered by a huge echoing of cries, then silence, except for the sounds of hundreds, thousands of beasts moving from the dust cloud, emerging, radiating mad hunger. The creatures bellowed a battle cry, as much a warning and farewell to the pack ahead as they charged the ranks of the oncoming horde. With the small intelligence they had and mostly actions of instinct, they knew that this was where they would die in hopes of giving the pack ahead time.

  The Alpha creature did not know why the pack had to go to the vale; instinct and compulsion were the impetus for its actions. There was no knowledge of what the black monolith was, but imprinted in its conscience, it knew it had to go through it, even though it had never seen it before. Red and brown clay broke apart around the pack as they charged towards the vale, making it look like they were traveling on a fast, dirty cloud, gliding them to their destination. At intervals, the Alpha creature would look at the beam in the sky, only to bellow again as if its voice was a whip to compel the pack to move faster. As the pack approached the foot of the vale, the Alpha creature sensed something; in the distance, as if it could see far away, a trigger, danger. It gave a high-pitched thrum. Immediately, the pack at full speed forward dropped as low as possible onto the hard-packed clay earth and skidded, making a furrow some thirty meters long before halting; seconds later, the world exploded towards the vale. Huge clouds of broken-up earth, rocks, and small boulders were instantly sucked towards the vale. The ground around the creatures was pulled away, as if etched. The creatures were pelted and bludgeoned by the debris sucked towards the vale yet were unmoved. Eyes closed and bodies curled as compact as possible, each of the creatures looked like craggy, horned islands within the maelstrom of dust and debris blowing around them. The implosive force of the suction towards the vale did not diminish. To the creatures trying not to get sucked into the maw of the wind, every second seemed like an eternity. Just as the suction reached a peak and several of the creatures were being dragged forward centimeter by centimeter, the force of the suction diminished rapidly to a near gentle hurricane in comparison. The pack's mass was now more than sufficient to weather the storm. As the winds whipped around the creatures, a perceptible bellow, a last desperate wail of warning, breached the wind. All the creatures seemed to shudder as they heard it. As if the cry were a signal, as soon as the bellow faded away, the hurricane of wind dropped to a light breeze. Preparing to move toward the vale again, each of the creatures rose slowly, shaking off the dust. Staring in the direction of the bellow, the Alpha creature stared into the distance, its eyes making out the encroaching dust cloud pulled by momentum closer to them. With its ability to see heat, the Alpha creature could make out thousands of heat signatures rolling with the dust cloud. Immediately, it barked out a bellow, its instincts screaming that the dust cloud should not reach them. The Alpha creature and the pack turned towards the vale and accelerated as fast as possible. Instinctively, they knew that making it to the vale before the dust cloud reached them was the only way to survive.

  The sound of a wounded, desperate creature reverberated through the waste, its last bellowed warning to its brethren ahead. The sound faded along with its strength as it fell like a huge tree. Rents and holes in its bloody armor were lapped and chewed by hundreds of hungry, ravenous beasts crawling over its body, eating it alive. Soon after, as though called by the creature's last bellow, the wind picked up in the direction of the vale, increasing in intensity every second, causing loose sand to be pulled like tendrils following the wind. Close by, four other mounds were in different states of gore and chaos as the beasts tore into the bodies of the fallen creatures, oblivious to the growing strength of the wind. Even with strengthening sound of the wind, the sound of powerful jaws crunching through bones, the exertion of pulling and ripping the innards out, and the infighting as they all vied for the meat filled the air as the bloodied maws of the thousands of beasts fed.

  On the last mound of the newly fallen creature, the Alpha beast raised its bloodied maw, a huge chunk of the creature’s flesh dangling from its mouth. It seemed to notice the increase in the wind, then looked towards the vale to see the intersecting beams. Lifting its head in a jerk and flinging the flesh from the creature up in the air to catch it in its mouth and swallow it whole, the Alpha beast sat there with blood dripping from its face as it stood still, staring in the direction of the vale. It knew other creatures were ahead; instinctively, it knew the time to catch more food was now. As the dust cloud pulled from the winds heading towards the vale enveloped the creatures on their bloody mounds, the Alpha beast raised its head, giving a long, bursting high-pitched note, several clicks, and then a bellowed howl. Jumping off the mound, it was joined by pack after pack of thousands of beasts heading to the vale. All howled as one, a challenge and a threat to the creatures ahead, with a promise that none would escape their hunger.

  Steam billowed from their mouths as the creatures thundered across the waste to the foot of the vale. The Alpha creature looked up, gauging its direction to see the convergence of the beam from the sky with the beam of the vale. From the point of the beams' convergence, a glowing purple beam began overlapping the beams of origin. The Alpha creature bellowed, a high pitch overlayed on the sonorous base reverb from the back of its throat. The rest of the creatures bellowed in unison as if in confirmation. Blood began to leak from their eyes and mouths as they sped up even faster, their breathing ragged as they made the last dash to the destination of the glowing purple beam within the vale. Behind the retreating creatures, the edge of the encroaching dust cloud drew ever closer. The ground under and around the creatures shuddered and quaked with the massive weight of the ten juggernauts striking the ground almost as one. Even with the deafening sound of their passage, they could still hear the louder sound of the thunderous roars and howls, and the quaking around them was joined by the quake of thousands upon thousands of beasts rolling with the dust cloud coming from behind in pursuit. The Alpha creature focused intently on evading the horde about to envelop them, speeding ever faster. Yet, with all their life force focused on retreating to the vale, they were still losing ground to the pursuing horde.

  The ground shook, followed by sounds of the thunder within the advancing dust cloud as thousands upon thousands of beasts charged after the prey they could not yet see ahead. Hunger, insatiable hunger and blood lust, they thought of nothing else, only to feed mattered and they would feed well on the flesh of the prey that was trying to get away. Jaws snapping, eyes glowing with mad intent, the dust cloud rolled and billowed in front an around the horde of thousands. The Alpha beast, its mouth slightly open sampling the air, as were all beasts’ their vomeronasal organs the most sensitive of the creatures of the vale, able to sense the lingering scent even in a wind storm, had already picked up the preys sent and it was getting stronger; so close, the Alpha beast could already taste the blood in its maw and the warmth in its stomach, only to be replaced by the insatiable instinctive hunger driving it forward while leading the thousands of ravenous beasts within cloud of dust. The shriek of the Alpha beast is echoed by the horde, the prey sighted, the promise to feast drives the chase to a fever pitch. From waste up to the vale, the ground began to shimmer; the Alpha beast lifts its head seeing the glowing purple light descending towards the vale, instinctively, it knows it must capture their prey before the beam falls. Giving out short barks and a long howl, the Alpha beast drives the pack faster, just as their prey does the same, now aware of the horde’s close proximity.

  While the beam fell, the two groups raced to the vale—one seeking salvation and purpose, the other driven by insatiable hunger. The creatures raced, pursued by a cloud of dust and the thousands charging beasts within, closing in fast. They had just crossed into the foot of the vale. In the distance, the ring around the monolith with the beam to the sky could be seen. They were so close, yet the beast horde would catch them before they entered the ring.

  The Alpha beast, leading the horde, at first could only smell the creatures ahead, but now could see them. Putting on more speed, while watching the beam fall, the Alpha beast howled and barked, urging the pack to greater speed. And speed they did achieve. The distance was only 500 meters between the groups, then 400, 300, 200. The beasts could see their prey and would not let them get away. The horror in the crevasse watched. The distance shrunk to 75 meters, and the beam fell. The creatures howled as one, pouring out all their reserves of energy to go even a fraction faster, to delay the inevitable. But the horde was now only fifty meters away. The horror watched, and the beam fell. The Alpha beast and the horde, jaws agape to rend their prey, closed the gap to ten meters, then jumped. The creatures and the horror within the crevasse waited for the blow to fall. Then the beam connected to the monolith, and a blast of compressed air exploded from the center of the ring out to the edge of the vale in hurricane force. Just as the horde was about to land on their prey, they were blasted back. The heavy creatures crouched from the force of the gale, then righted themselves and moved forward centimeters at a time while the force of the air beat on them. Behind them, the horde was blown back out of the foot of the vale, dust cloud and all.

  Crawling forward, with their massive bodies all packed together to form a wedge against the torrent of wind, the creatures moved together centimeter by centimeter towards the ring within the vale. Amidst the gale, all the creatures’ heads were down, their eyes shut tight. Only by feeling their other brethren moving were they guided. Only the Alpha creature, who was in the front, had its eyes nearly shut, tearing profusely even with the nictitating membrane in place, guiding the pack forward. The tight pack of slow-moving creatures were pelted and bludgeoned by sand, rock, and debris as they approached the ring with the monolith at the center.

  The purple beam now fully connected from the heavens to the monolith. Small tendrils of arcing energy began shooting from the stones to the monolith again, the symbols on their backside pulsing a greenish yellow. A much wider beam of gold descended down the glowing purple beam, and as it continued to descend, the monolith went through another transformative shift. The surface shimmered, then seemed to separate from the body of the monolith, hinging on one side and opening up like a door until the monolith now looked to be double in size. As the beam from the heavens continued, the arcing energy between the ring of stones and the monolith increased, the tendrils growing thicker. Again, the surface of the monolith's now wider aperture rippled, then separated, hinging on the opposite side and opening up to again increase the size of the growing aperture, now wide enough for six creatures to enter side by side. As the beam continued to fall, the process was set to repeat. Each time, the darkness within the void of the monolith began to get lighter, growing whiter. Radiant heat began to emit from an unknown source within. The outer edges of the monolith now radiated a purple-like corona that wavered asynchronously with the wind.

  Centimeter by centimeter, the pack guided by the Alpha creature was moving closer to the aperture unfolding from the monolith. Entering within the radius of the half ring of stones, they now felt the heat radiating from the enlarging aperture. Unwavering in determination to reach their destination, the impediment from the source of the heat and wind increased almost exponentially as they drew closer. With the wind beating against its face and the increasing heat, the Alpha creature’s eyes were now completely shut, its movement onward now based entirely on instinct and feel to guide it forward. With the added strength of the pack behind it, the Alpha creature weathered the onslaught of forces, continuing, albeit slower with each step, towards the enlarging aperture.

  Within the crevasse, the lamplit eyes of the horror had returned. A deep guttural purr emanated from the horror as it stared at the tightly packed group of creatures struggling to get to the enlarging aperture. It had waited, it had hungered, it was patient, and it was almost time. The purring within the crevasse grew louder and discordant as another set of lamplit eyes opened next to the first set, also locked onto the pack of creatures. There was a chittering followed by the lamplit eyes slowly opening and closing, as though the dual horrors were having a conversation. The chittering ceased as they watched the creatures get ever nearer to the expanding aperture. Both sets of eyes withdrew within the crevasse while still watching the creatures until they were no longer seen.

  The Alpha creature could not see, yet from the turbulence of the air, the feeling of static energy increasing over its body, the increasing sound of discharging energy followed by the growing smell of ozone it knew it was close. With its eyes closed it could not see the beam of golden light growing closer to the monolith, it could not see the enlarging aperture, yet it could feel the growing heat from it. Its senses were overloaded, its movements were instinctual, the packs movements were unwavering allegiance to the Alpha creature who led them.

  As the golden beam fell and the monolith expanded, the darkness within the void grew brighter, continuing to grow in luminous intensity and heat. The purple corona around the aperture grew larger. What was originally a twenty-meter-wide and thirty-meter-high dark monolith transformed into a sixty-meter-wide by sixty-meter-high aperture of intense light. The creatures stood within meters of the aperture, unable to move a millimeter forward from the pressure of the winds, the arcs of energy, and the overpowering intensity of light and heat. Time stretched on, neither the force from the aperture nor the pack's resilience to cede any ground continued and continued. A vast force from the aperture against the strength of the pack's instinct and the determination that compelled them to continue. It was the aperture that gave first. As the golden light contacted the top of the aperture, the wind abruptly stopped, and the fiery purple corona simmered around its edges. The light within the aperture seemed to be sucked in as if flying deep within a black void, leaving behind semi-translucent copies of the aperture, like windowpanes behind one another, looking slightly smaller with each one, stretching on to infinity.

  The wind and heat now gone; the huddled creatures slowly opened their eyes. Coming into focus as their eyes adjusted, before them was a huge sixty-meter by sixty-meter aperture, tendrils of energy from the ring of stones still crackling around the edge sporadically. The purple corona was now no more than a purple neon-like light outlining the aperture. Within the aperture, an infinite series of translucent glass-like apertures edged in neon purple light around their edges stretched out one after another within a void of darkness.

  Rising slowly, the Alpha creature prepared to signal the pack to move forward, only to be interrupted by a loud pained bellow, followed by the sound of thrashing from behind. The rising pack whirled around to see a horror of immense size thirty meters away, pulling away one of their brethren as it thrashed in its final death throes. The horror's massive muscular legs, each ending in three clawed toes, dug into the red and brown cracked clay as it dragged the thrashing carcass further away. It then stopped pulling, now aware of the pack’s attention. Its head slowly rose from its task to meet their gaze. It was huge, seventeen meters from head to tail. Its head was a skull, a grinning death mask, with sharp rows of fangs within a rictus smile. The spine from its neck to its tail had huge bony ridges from its vertebrae piercing through its reptilian flesh. Each of its front appendages ended in six-meter black bony spikes, one of which was fully impaled in the dead creature. This was an apex predator of all predators, built to kill with power and stealth. It had killed and was dragging their brethren away with its massive spikes at the end of back-bladed forearms, while the wind, blinding light, and stifling heat from the aperture had the pack pinned to the ground and blinded. Though the horror did not anticipate the ending of the elements that kept it hidden from the pack till now. Aware that its presence and retreat with its prey was detected, the skull-like head lifted slowly, dull glowing red eyes inset into the cavernous eye sockets met with the pack's mad-eyed wrath. The horror's instincts screamed the danger from the pack in front of it, faltering as it tried to prepare for the impending onslaught, its piercing spike stuck to the prey it had killed. Three of the creatures from the pack were already on their feet, horns down, and rushing the horror, who now was trying to free its impaling appendage while hissing and baring its fangs at the oncoming creatures. Just before the creatures had gotten halfway, the three heard bellows from behind, a warning. The pack had seen a second horror running to intercept the oncoming attack group. Before the second horror could reach them, they were upon their target just as it pulled its piercing appendage from the creature’s corpse. It could not assume any posture fast enough, and while it was able to bring its piercing appendage down to strike and wound one of its attackers, it was still gored with three two-meter serrated horns and flung from the impact, mortally wounded some two meters away, its body spasming as blood spurted from ragged holes where the creatures’ horns struck.

  The three creatures did not go unscathed. One was wounded from a hole in its right flank from the now dead horror, even piercing through the armor plating, now hobbling. Another was dead, sliding off from the piercing appendages of the second horror. The last creature had gripped the neck of the horror as it struck and killed its brethren. With the biting force of several hundred metric tons, it bit a good-sized chunk of bloody flesh from the horror's neck, blood spurting from the wound left behind. The wounded horror hissed and howled at the creature with its ragged neck flesh in its mouth, then turned and started to flee as it saw more of the pack coming.

  Watching the fleeing horror and another three of its brethren attempt to engage the wounded horror, the Alpha creature felt a tingle in its spine—a warning, premonition? It turned and gazed at the column of golden light, staring at it, barely breathing. From the highest point in the sky where it could see the beam originate, the creature could see dark streak-like lines. Only a couple at first, then more followed—a lot more—all heading down the beam to the aperture. A feeling of panic ballooned within the Alpha creature’s chest, exploding in the form of a hoarse guttural roar, arresting the attention of the pack. The command was clear: get to the aperture, now. The fleeing horror forgotten, the creature and its wounded brethren returned with the rest of the pack to the Alpha. Seeing the streaks of black within the beam almost upon the aperture, the Alpha creature bellowed, urging the pack through.

  As each creature entered within the aperture, their body began to lose color and depth, shading over as if each creature was becoming a shadow of itself. The shadow seemed to elongate and stretch from head to tail as if pulled through a strainer towards, then through, each of the glass-like apertures. After it seemed to stretch on through the entire visible series of the apertures, it disappeared altogether. From each of the creatures that entered then disappeared within the aperture, a black streak within the golden beam rose up the golden beam as the multitudinous black streaks from above descended. Shortly, the black streaks descending met with the ascending streaks of the creatures, colliding thirty meters above the aperture. For seconds, the streaks from above were blocked from continuing, as were the streaks from below. From the intersection of the streaks, a ball of glowing light appeared in the stream. It then flashed bright white, and the ball zipped down to the aperture, the rest of the black streaks from the heavens following suit. The glyphs on the stones started flickering as bolts of energy flew back and forth between them and the aperture. There was a growing hum and a screech, like nails on a chalkboard, echoing around the ring of stones. The aperture grew bright, and shortly there was a deafening explosion as all the creatures were blasted out in a ball of fire from the aperture, landing twenty-some meters away. Half were burned, their flesh charcoaled or burnt down to the bone, their bodies not even moving from where they landed. The other creatures struggled to get to their feet as shadows began to pour out of the aperture—hundreds of them.