Chapter 9: Courage: Part 2, death

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The face of a mutated raccoon came into view for a brief moment, turned all four of its eyes down the street, and then the critter was gone. Scurrying to it's next meal, or was it running from something?

Jasper turns the way it was looking and squinted into the shifting desert sun-light at the end of the street. Like the light at the end of a tunnel, except the tunnel was made of wooden huts and houses. There was something odd about the way the light moved though, something more than the heat of mid-day.

A vague form of static came floating down the street emitting a mind altering cloud of poison. It made the ears thrum and the head ache. When directly in sight it made the bones feel like jelly and the eyes like petrified bone.

The radiation pouring out of the creature makes a nearby house sag inward. The floorboards above and below crack apart at its passing. Jasper gazes into the depths of the shifting corridor at the wriggling form of a bug.

Inside the aura is a Queen Myst-Bug with the body of a centipede and the head of a mosquito. It flew like a wasp sagging a stinger as long as its body.

Said stinger stuck Jasper in the leg.

Three sharp centipede appendages pierced his gun arm. Five more stabbed him up the side and held him aloft.

As soon as the mosquito's nose forced entry into his mouth Jasper went limp. For a moment the shock and radiation paralyzed him in place.

The creature pulled him towards the ceiling and began sucking the life from the passing Valorian.

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