The stone bridge continued shaking under our feet, not enough to knock us over but more than enough to elevate my nerves into primal fear. Drifter understood what was happening, somehow, but I was unsure whether I wanted to know our circumstances. After all, what were we supposed to do about it in the middle of a lava lake out of sight of the shore?
"Hurry," he said, moving to the front of the group.
Between the smoke closing in around us and the ground shifting beneath us we were unable to go full speed, but we still hustled as well as we could. Anxiety was writ across Drifter's face, and if he was worried then we all knew we were in serious trouble.
A wind picked up from behind, giving us a light push and clearing some of the smoke. I thought we were lucky until I turned back and realized the source: the bridge was lifting up behind us, slowly curling into the sky as stone and lava shook free from the structure. Beneath that stone exterior the bridge shone was a slick black surface that practically glowed in the light of the lake.
It was not a bridge at all. I was unsure what it belonged to, but it was certainly flesh.
I picked up speed. As I passed Olivia, she looked over her shoulder and did the same. Soon the whole party was going at a flat-out sprint trying to avoid whatever was going on behind us, the dangers of the terrain be damned.
I wanted to ask if anyone knew what it was, if anyone knew what was happening, but my lungs could barely keep up with my legs, never mind with my words.
The tower of flesh behind had little stone left clinging to it, thus revealing its oily hide to the world. The eel-like mass started lowering the tail end of its body with enough force to send a propulsive wave through its body towards us, moving at a constant speed as its muscles loosened to allow the force through.
We were not being targeted, of course. We were too small for a creature of that size to even notice us. But as the wave rippled towards us the stone stuck to the flesh shattered and flung off in all directions, freeing the creature from its rocky shell.
Unfortunately, as fast as we were running, the wave of flesh was faster.
Just as I felt the rock beneath my heel lifting up I saw Damien trip. Time seemed to slow as he tumbled into the air, arms stretched out to try and right himself while his feet flung up behind him. Before gravity caught him Drifter wove between our party members to reach the rear where he stomped hard on the ripple forming just behind us.
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It did not stop the wave, but it did lessen it significantly. As a bump in the stone passed beneath us, cracking the stone but not shattering it as cleanly as it had behind us, most of the party tripped and fell, hitting the ground just after Damien. Only Olivia and Drifter managed to stay upright andboth of them scrambled to return everyone to their feet.
Already I could see the eel readying another whip of its tail to shake off the remaining stone. We still had no view of the shore, but Drifter told us "Almost there" and I chose to believe him.
I was exhausted. The brief stop after I tripped was enough for fatigue to set into my muscles and bones, the strain of the journey through the Wastelands compounded by the immediate strain of our current sprint. My shins felt like knives connecting feet to thighs, my calves threatened to tear apart at every step, my knees and ankles jolted with every impact. But I had to keep moving.
Drifter jumped off the side of the bridge, the smoke parting around him to reveal solid earth below us. One by one everyone followed suit, dropping ten or so feet and trying to absorb the impact as well as our battered bodies could.
My body failed. I attempted to crouch as I landed, intending on a controlled crumple to the ground if needed, but my legs refused to support any part of the impact and I hit the rock hard. My left knee hit the ground at a strange angle, causing the lower half of my leg to jerk out at an even stranger angle. The pain was too much to feel.
As I was dragged away by Borin, as shouts sounded around me and my companions scrambled to react to an incoming second wave, my shocked senses focused on the quiet background the scene: the body of the eel stretching out of sight in either direction, still arcing above the lava as the stone crust held its body in an odd curve. How had the creature ended up like that? Did it fall asleep on some ancient hill that ground away around it and was eventually replaced by this lake of lava? Did it moult like a snake, shedding its skin in a layer of stone-like skin that we just happened across at the wrong time?
The length of eel we had crossed over, the length now exposed to the world in all its leathery splendour, sagged into the lava, seemingly unaffected by the extreme heat of the molten stone. Whatever this creature was, it had adapted to an absurd environment. What was there for it to eat in this desolate hellscape?
A propulsive wave propagated through the eel's body once more in an attempt to shake off the remaining stone holding it in place. The party clustered around me, and Drifter stood before us all stretching the leather of a tent in front of him like a shield. As the wave passed by a torrent of stone ejected from the eel's skin in every direction, and the tent's material did little to stop it; instead, it served to direct debris either away from the party or into Drifter's body.
He was flung back immediately, but thankfully the assault only lasted an instant. Drifter stood up and brushed the dust off his clothes. We could see that the tent was obliterated, littered with holes ranging from tiny pinholes to huge tears from large rocks. We could also see where they had hit Drifter, tearing his clothes and bruising his muscles underneath. Any of us would have been a shredded pile of meat.
The eel-like creature we were using as a bridge started undulating away from us. I would never see another creature like it, nor would I ever learn what it was.
