MARKED BY THE HUNTER

16: THE CERANTOLA: MONSTER

The ground beneath us suddenly felt unstable, like it too was reacting to what we were witnessing. In seconds, their transformation was complete. Where the cloaked figures had stood were now enormous creatures.

Cerantola.

Its body is enormous, spider-like, towering size or unnatural. Thick, segmented limbs extend from its frame, each one sharp and jointed in ways that feel wrong for any living things. When it moves, the ground trembles under its weight, and every step leaves deep cracks in the earth as if the land itself is being wounded.

But the most disturbing part is not its body. It is its head.

Where a creature have a face, it is a twisted upper form of a witch-like woman. Her head is pale and stretched with faint traces of human features still visible, yet corrupted beyond recognition. Her eyes glow faintly, hollow and unblinking, filled with an intelligence that feels ancient and cruel. Their mouth shifts between something human and monstrous, because of their sharp teeth like a shark in the sea, if they try to speak, their voices were broken, distorted sounds ever come out.

From just beneath their head, unnaturally small human-like arms protrude. They look out of place, almost fragile compared to the massive body they are attached to. Yet they move with disturbing purpose, curling, reaching, twitching near her face as if it was to protect them, or perhaps hold onto what remains of their humanity. These small hands have a claw near its head, while the massive spider-body carries her forward like a living prison. It is not just a monster. It feels like a person trapped inside something far worse.

The road beneath them cracked and groaned under their weight. Their bodies shifted with unsettling intelligence, each movement is being controlled and predatory.

I couldn’t breathe properly.

The peaceful road, the soft wind, the morning sun it all felt suddenly distant, like it belonged to another world entirely. But this world belonged to them now. One of the creatures shifted forward, just slightly. But the sound of its movement scraped against the silence like metal dragged across stone.

Bryle stepped ahead of me immediately. With no hesitation nor fear. The grounded presence that made the air around him feel different, as if even danger had to acknowledge him before it struck.

His hand moved to his blade.

The second the creature lunged, everything shattered into motion. And the road, once quiet and sunlit, became bloody-horror entirely.

Bryle moved again.

The moment the creature fully revealed itself, he was already in motion, stepping forward, blade drawn in a single fluid motion that cut through the morning light like a sharp line of silver. There was no pause, no doubt, only the cold certainty of someone who had already decided how this would end.

The first cerantola lunged. Bryle met it head-on.

Steel collided with chitin in a violent burst of sound, ringing out across the empty road. The impact sent a shock through the ground beneath them, dust and fragments scattering into the air. Bryle pivoted immediately, his movements controlled and efficient, each strike landing with purpose, time was never wasted, never careless.

The creature shrieked. A sound that didn’t belong in the natural world. It thrashed violently, its long limbs carving deep grooves into the earth, trying to crush, to impale, to overwhelm. But Bryle stayed inside its reach, too close for its full strength to matter, too precise to be caught cleanly. He moved like he understood it, like he had already studied its end before it had even begun.

One strike. Then another.

The sound of steel became relentless. Until Bryle inititated his final move to attack. He drove his blade deep, angling it with brutal precision. The creature froze. For a split second, everything went silent. Then its massive body collapsed, shaking the road as it fell lifeless into the dirt, limbs twitching once… before going still.

But there was no time to breathe. No time to think. Because the second one moved fast going to my direction. It didn’t even acknowledge the death of the first one who died in Bryle hand's. It simply struck, launching itself and past Bryle in a blur of violent motion.

I barely had time to turn. Until the short-human hands of the cerantola slammed into me.

The world shattered into pain and weight and darkness as long, jagged limbs wrapped tightly around my body. The grip was suffocating, as if the coldness poisoned my entire body, through crushing the air from my lungs. I struggled immediately, instinctively, but it was useless. Every movement only made the hold tighter.

Then I was lifted.

The ground vanished beneath me in an instant. The road, Bryle, the fallen creature.. all of it shrinking away as the cerantola climbed with terrifying speed, dragging me up the steep side of the mountain. Rocks broke loose beneath us, tumbling into the abyss below, swallowed by shadow before I could even hear them land.

Wind tore at my face. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. The higher we went, the colder everything became. And all I could see below, was Bryle. Small now. Distant. Still on the road.

Then my voice broke through everything, I am being desperate to call him once again.

Bryle… help!”

It echoed into the open air, carried away by the wind as the mountain swallowed me as a whole.