For some odd reason, Frost found himself looking back again, trying to see how far he was from death.
The sight behind him nearly made his soul leave his body.
His face lost all colour.
"Heavens, no!"
The eldritch fiend was so close now.
Its dark, leathery skin looked oddly beautiful from this distance, almost mesmerizing in its sheer scale, but there was nothing beautiful about the countless tentacles stretching down from its massive body and crashing into the forest below.
Even more unsettling was the hundreds of large eyes that riddled its spherical main body. They twisted and churned in a grotesque manner, all of them seemingly looking in different directions at the same time.
Maybe it only looked so close because of how enormous it was, but Frost quickly realized that something had changed.
More and more of its tentacles began crashing down into the forest, not just behind them, but even farther ahead.
It took Frost only a moment to realize what the damned monstrosity was doing.
His heart sank.
The beast was clearing the path ahead!
It was destroying the trees so there would be nowhere for them to hide, making it easier to spot and grab every single one of them!
"Fuck..."
More and more of the forest fell beneath its terror, massive trees being uprooted or smashed apart before crashing to the ground. The destruction spread farther ahead of them, clearing their path long before they even reached those areas.
Frost felt like weeping.
'This thing is fucking intelligent!'
They weren't escaping it.
They were simply running deeper into a trap that the creature was constructing around them.
And before Frost knew it, the dense forest suddenly disappeared for hundreds of metres around them.
He stumbled into a dusty, open space, his shoes scraping against the barren ground as he nearly lost his footing.
Around him, several trees were still groaning and swaying from where they had only just been torn from the earth, their massive trunks slowly settling into the ground with deafening crashes.
Frost stopped dead.
His eyes widened.
"Shit."
He looked around.
There was nowhere to hide now. Just an enormous clearing surrounded by the wreckage of the forest.
"Shit!"
His breathing became frantic.
"SHIT!"
For some inexplicable reason, the group suddenly found themselves huddling together around Frost.
There were about fifteen of them left, all breathing heavily, most of them weeping as they stared back toward the horror above them, its monstrous eyes swaying through the air around its massive body.
'Idiots!' Frost thought quietly.
Whatever hope he had that he could last a little longer while the others were consumed all but vanished
He spotted the likes of Jennifer and Jason, who had somehow managed to make it this far as well, only to find themselves gathered together at what would no doubt be the final moments of their lives.
The pack of wolves had already made their escape with great speed, going deeper into the forest, and now it was just them.
Frost didn't know whether to be happy about that.
Vrrrrrmmmm... Vrrrrmmmmmm... Vrrrrrrrmmmmm...
A strange vibrating sound echoed from the creature's body. It was difficult to describe.
It almost sounded like a roar that had somehow been twisted into laughter.
Frost glared up at the monstrosity.
'This monster is laughing at us!'
Was this all a game to it?
Either way, they were all dead.
There was no way any of them could escape the encirclement the fiend had created with its countless tentacles.
The creature had systematically destroyed every possible route of escape, leaving them trapped in the clearing like helpless prey.
Frost sighed.
Around him, the others continued to panic, some screaming, others desperately looking for a way out that simply wasn't there.
'So this is it...' He lowered his gaze with bitterness. 'This is what my short, miserable life comes to...'
Someone suddenly bumped into him from behind, pushing him a step forward.
Frost angrily snapped his head around, ready to throw out whatever nasty comment came to mind, only to find a frightened girl trembling behind him, tears and snot streaming down her flushed face.
The sight immediately robbed him of whatever retort he had been about to make. Frost could only sigh and groan in annoyance.
'Her name is Lois, if I'm not mistaken.'
He glanced back toward the monstrosity.
It was odd, though.
What the damned thing was waiting for?
Not that he was suddenly eager to get slaughtered or anything, but it was strange that the octopus had gone through all the trouble of encircling them with its tentacles, only to simply float there and wait.
'Waiting for what though?'
Just as he was thinking that, Frost noticed something high in the sky.
A faint silhouette.
His eyes narrowed as he tried to make out what he was seeing.
It appeared to be a woman, dressed in loose robes that fluttered gently in the wind. That was all he could make out from this distance.
Frost stared in disbelief.
"Is she... flying?" he whispered under his breath.
It wasn't long before a few others noticed her as well.
"Hey, there's a flying woman in the sky..."
"No way!"
The murmurs spread through the group as more and more heads turned upward.
Frost's eyes remained fixed on the mysterious figure.
'Where the hell did she come from?'
One moment, she wasn't there, and now she was just... There. It was almost like she had just appeared from nothing.
More importantly...
'How the hell is she flying?'
The woman seemed to briefly glance their way, and though Frost couldn't make out her expression from this distance, something about that single look unsettled him deeply.
She spared them only that brief glance before turning her attention back to the octopus.
The eldritch fiend immediately roared in fury.
Rooooooooaaaaaaaarrrrrr!
Its twisting tentacles suddenly recoiled with a speed far greater than anything Frost would have expected from a creature of its immense size, and then hundreds of them shot toward the woman at once, blotting out the sky like a living storm.