>>5293791It comes with speed which belies its sheer magnitude. Rusty-red carapace, pitted and rough with age and constant damage and regrowth, form a titanic shield-wall before you as a creature the size of a dragon of legend and the shape of some great armadillo hauls itself out of the deep chasm behind the prisoner. The Pit-Guard and Apprentice narrowly avoid the path of its rampage, the monstrous prisoner hurling itself imply to one side and lying there, keening… But the terror which has crawled out of the deep earth ignores the barbed devil, setting its two great, segmented eyes on you and yours.
“This is what it scavenges after,” the Novice says, staring at the incoming wall of chitin and malice. “A giant rust-monster.”
>10You mystic instinct explodes into action, mana flooding your body and moving your muscles and tendons faster than conscious thought as you narrowly dodge the burst of dust and debris which announces the arrival of the great mass of exoskeletal armour. You grab hold of the Novice, clutching her tight to you as you roll out of the way. She cries out, but does not resist, in afct clinging to you.
>5The cartographer is not as lucky. Your words to him a moment ago, about reporting back to his fellows, seem a grim irony now. This new being—the Devourer, you assume, which is INDEED some enormous species of rust-monster, twentyfold the size of the scavenging creatures your people sometimes hunt and kill for sustenance closer to home—is upon him, seizing him in its strangely-tetrapod jaws and beginning to crush the screaming Silkscale even as its huge, frond-like feelers search his body for metal.
What do you do?
>Leap to the Cartographer’s aid—there is still time to save him!>Run! The Cartographer is probably doomed, but you can rally your forces and escape this place before it is too late for the rest of you>Take advantage of the distraction to ready yourself for battle, sacrificing the Cartographer to attack the Devourer [specify if you have a tactic in mind]>Write-in 