"Fine. I hate it, but yes sir." The belligerent human's shoulders drooped as his tension left and he grunted in agreement. He paused to sigh and pulled up his rifle, brushing off dirt that had clung to it when escaping the harrowing bombardment. As he did so he knocked his foot against his fellow human, still on his knees and in front of a pile of nausea-induced vomit. "Hey, buddy, get up. Sun ain't gonna shine until we make it to the rays."
Wiping away the last from his mouth, the trooper stood and opened his hand to show Rho-Hux. A metal chain dangled and a silver tag swayed on the bottom. He stuffed it away before its identifying features could be made out and secured his helmet to his armour.
"Glad we're on the same page of not blasting each other into meat stew." The voidhanger gave Karnix one last look with narrowed eyes before falling into position; spread out across the vanguard, visors and eyes scanning the curving terrain. Plasma caster off to the left side, two rifle men taking up the positions to his right with an even spread.
They were about to suggest everyone else fall into formation when without any discussion or planning, Stein, Dalia and Sarnai ran off towards the unseen whistler.
The forest thickened as they sped through the brush. More stone paths rose and fell in their agile run while fragments of scratched out wood and plucked mushrooms dotted their path. Sarnai's mech in particular ploughed through most of it with its plasma-assisted velocity. In the wake of the large mecha's movement, small animals skittered from her path with crackles and hisses. Wings fluttered and lengthy serpentine forms shot off of branches, whirling in the air as they darted. The sudden burst of heat and light from the thrusters had caught the eyes of the unseen watchers.
It wasn't long before their companions had vanished behind a wall of stone and gnarled trees sitting upon them that they neared the site of the unidentified noise. At first glance, it was another little cluster of naturalistic architecture. A few arching stone paths that had begun far behind them and tapered down diagonally into the ground. These ones had been well used and worn judging by withered, scratch-laden roots that blanketed the greying rock. All stopped before a few large tree roots splattered with dirt and going up to around Sarnai's chest level.
The trees themselves were in a rough shape. One had fallen ages ago, almost uprooted if not for the enormous coils of its lower body still gripping into the ground. Its own body, partially rotted by detritivores and disease, had been overrun with lichen and fungus, forming a bridge that lay upon partially crushed stone counterparts teetering away from the area. The other source of the roots was some dense near comedically stubby tree that sat on a hill of stone and soil, slanting off to the side and partially seated on the mouth of a stone bridge. Its own burly roots had twisted over and overgrown seemingly into the air; looking closer, there had been a hill or something they had once dug into.
All that remained of that now was a large pile of packed dirt upon which were the marring signs of powerful claws. Similar markings revealed hemselves; on the bark of the trees, across bridge stone and root, and the fact the soil and foliage seemed to be flattened into trails, some of which went between and under some of the enormous gnarls and crooked finger appendages of the trees grasping at soil or stone. It seemed that the ground at some portions had been partially burrowed into or dug up, revealing more roots sticking out like twisted fingers before additional large dirt piles.
That is when some of the dirt began to shift and what appeared to be small glowing stones... no, small eyes opened and gazed upon what they had lured to their abode. From under the soil, the shrubbery crowding the edges, from over the tops of the bridges. Spine-like formations rose behind them as a bird's plumage might in a show of territory. These however crackled and curved, nearly closing into a fist if not for the muscular contractions causing them to remain risen as a hump in their back. Quadripedal at first but one of the larger specimens, rising under an arching tree root, had a second pair of limbs emerging from the spine-bump, ending in the same three clawed hands. Its tail ended with a single long spike surrounded by a series of smaller bristle-like ones.
Across all their long lizard-like bodies, black dimples easily mistaken for holes could be seen. One would almost think the whistle was from there, not from their lockjaw semi-grins and their glistening caverns of teeth. One of them, unseen, kept up the whistling as the others crept closer, bodies pressed to dirt, bark, or stone as they watched the three bipeds with some unknown, alien motion. Their claws lightly dragged against the surfaces they crept across and a few opened and closed their mouths, yawning perhaps, as their teeth undulated and reflected a few beams of dim light passing through the tree tops. The largest one kept its distance, tapping its hump-claws in staccato motions against the root.
Known colloquially as rootcreepers or in the local tarhaidim language as
alghazaf ("sprawl ghoul"), these creatures grew to be around two and a half to four metres long and sit near the top of the Green Sprawl's food chain. They were large and powerful enough to make power armoured soldiers wary of the myths and tales passed about in villages and settlements bordering Caracosa's great woodlands. As the war raged throughout Caracosa, they grew more reclusive as stories of them ambushing patrols and clearing out bases followed in the wake of tarhaidim corpses found as if in some last stand in the wild.
Sources conflicted; some claim they werre not foolish enough to risk fights with armed soldiers and others that they could even kill vrexul or unztadtlige if sufficiently agitated. Were they really partaking in the violence to feed on the fungoids or were they simply boogeymen for the suspicious.
Most of these ones seemed fairly large; a pack of around 10. Two more appeared to have the additional set of arms but their tails were sickle-like and slimmer by comparison to the one tapping on the root. These two were maybe just a few feet shorter than the clear dominant rootcreeper. They were positioned at the sides forming a rough triangle around the intruding bipeds; one sitting atop a bridge and another still partially buried, dirt sloughing off it as it gradually rose and flared its spines.
The other seven were around two to two and a half metres, smaller than either and warier of getting nearer. Lacking the additional pair of limbs and with no spine-hump, these ones were surely younger. Their colours were similarly drab but if the group looked closely, one of them had a strange black and blue scab across its back. In fact, the largest one appeared ot have some cracks near its hump as well, radiating outwards from a few particular points.
The other two larger six-limbed ones also appeared to have some deep wounds across their bodies; healed but clearly the signs of some sort of conflict. They continued whistling, slowly raising and opening their clawed hands, mouthing some unseen language at the group. In spite of their current advantage in numbers and their primed legs ready to pounce, they seemed more paranoid than they did hungry.
