Page 11 of Demon Monster's Little Human

He laughs.

The sound is low, guttural, full of something too dark to be amusement.

"Of course it still lives."

Still. Still.

Whatever is out there, whatever just screamed its hunger into the tunnel—it isn’t just some wild beast. It’s his.

“What is it?” My voice is barely above a whisper, but it doesn’t matter.

It has already heard me.

Another sound slithers through the cavern—a wet, sticky pull of something massive dragging itself across the stone. The air thickens with a musk that is not entirely animal, something foul, something ancient and wrong.

Dain exhales, low and sharp. “A gift from the dark elves.”

A new sound claws into existence.

Not a roar this time. A clicking.

A chittering, wet and grinding, as if something with too many teeth is testing them, waiting for the moment to sink them into flesh.

The next sound is worse.

Breathing.

Not normal breathing. Not something natural. This breath comes from everywhere, from nowhere, from deep inside the dark. It surrounds us.

Then, something shifts.

A shape unfurls just beyond the reach of the tunnel’s dim glow, too massive, too alien, its bulk shifting in a grotesque, uncoiling slither.

I step back. I can’t help it.

Dain doesn’t.

He stands his ground, rolling his shoulders like this is just another inconvenience, just another night spent dragging himself back from the precipice of something not quite human.

A dark chuckle. “They sent you to die here, girl.”

The thing beyond the dark sniffs the air—a slow, wet inhale that makes my stomach curdle.

I swallow hard. “And what about you?”

His head tilts, as if considering. “They wanted me to watch.”

The clicking sharpens.

I glimpse movement—a shimmer of flesh, something slick and segmented, long limbs ending in curved talons too long for any normal beast. A mouth that should not exist, a vertical split in the center of its head, full of teeth that aren’t arranged in rows but in spirals.

My stomach turns over.

“That’s not natural,” I whisper.

Dain huffs. “Nothing they create ever is.”

A second, larger sound shifts in the deep.

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