The ground quivered.
    A gigantic kincher rose above the savannah, its titanic mandibles whipping the air with such force that it killed the flock of birds that tried to escape it with its shock wave. It rushed at its prey, leaving behind it, as if suspended in the sky, three great sagan trunks uprooted under its fury, disregarding the tons of wood that this could represent.
    Xerius screamed, running with all his might straight into the middle of the grass:

—- “Don't look back, don't stop!”

    The trunks crashed less than twenty metres behind him, while four small figures, insignificant homins in the face of the fury of mad nature, ran for cover. Behind them, the rest of the convoy, half a dozen people, were totally surprised by the monster's rampage, which crashed into them in a blinding display of magic and steel, a last-ditch attempt to stop the unstoppable. Psychee stumbled, in front of Xerius, and he caught her hand and pulled her up with all his strength. In front of them ran one of the last survivors, while Leonil closed their frantic race.
    Psychee screamed over the unbearable howls of the monster:

—- “We can't leave them!”

Xerius replied in kind, between gasps:

—- “They’re dead! Run!!!”

    Leonil, the last to flee, turned around. Behind him, those who had been their companions were turning into sprays of blood exploding in the grass, the kincher striking and striking again with its mandibles. The last ones standing, who had not had time to hear Xerius' scream when the beast had caught up with them, were living out their last seconds.

    The journey had been a terrifying ordeal from the start. The “Bounty Beaches” in Aeden Aqueous had shown the terrible traps of its predators, and it had taken hours of watching and waiting to reach the vortex that led to the Prime Roots .

    Psychee had never seen them. A dark and yet bright world, of a strange serenity, where danger seemed to do its best to be forgotten. They had found Zoraï guides, who had come to harvest the precious raw materials of the place, and who had taken the initiative, after discussion with Xerius, to guide them to the other side. To the Zoraï lands, to the Sick Country. To the goal that Psychee had been waiting for.

    But everything had changed on the other side of the wormhole, once they had left the Prime Roots.
    The valiant and powerful Zorais had slaughtered the monsters that sat, like ancestral guardians, in front of the vortex. The march into Zorai land had begun, when suddenly the kitins, as if answering the calls of their dead brothers, became inebriated with vengeance. The march became a mad flight. The five Zorai stood their ground as the rest of the convoy fled, holding back the wave of gigantic insects, and no one saw them disappear under the mass of monsters that pounced on them.
     And until the kinchers caught up with the fugitives, leaving only four survivors running for their lives.

...

    Hours later, Zoraïs met the survivors at the gates of Zora. Xerius told them everything. They looked for a moment at the three other refugees. Two Trykers, and a Matis. Was it worth the death of six of them? They never said, and turned away as Xerius led the survivors into the Guardians' Guild hall, to nurse their many bruises, and hours of exhaustion.

Psychee remained silent for a long time, remembering the agonized screams of those who had perished, slaughtered. But more than that, she remembered the kitins... their calls to each other when they lost three of their own, their monstrous and implacable revenge. And of those they had met, in the Roots. Of those who had watched them go by, without doing anything...

... Perhaps, perhaps, if they had been able to understand them, if they had been able to speak with these monsters...

She forgot her thought, shaking her head.

But the thought would remain...