Nightworld (5)

Janosh watched in horror as the gargantuan hand's pointer finger regenerated. The sharp fingernail sprouted directly out the ragged end of black bone visible where the digit had been cropped at the joint; the grey flesh of the fingertip bulged up and followed. Just as quickly as the smaller arm had formed, the hand was whole again. The ring that was an eye, or perhaps an eye that looked like a ring, glared at Janosh. The hand clenched into a fist, its knuckles popping with a sound like logs cracking in a fire, and then it started up the yoke of the carriage once more. Janosh readied himself, but what good was a sword against a fiend that could reproduce when cut?

There was a whistling sound followed by a squelch. Janosh stared stupidly at the eye of the hand, which seemed to have sprouted an antenna. As the creature began to quiver, he realized that an arrow had landed squarely in the ring's gemstone. A second missile hit within an inch of the first. A thick pulp began to run from the wounds.

The hand scuttled backwards off the carriage and began to convulse on the icy ground. Janosh looked over his shoulder. Standing on the edge of the road was Korvina, another arrow already nocked in her tallbow, almost invisible in her white furs with only stars to light the glacier. "Yeah," said Korvina, "the eye's the only sensitive spot. They don't like it when you hurt their eyes."

Janosh nodded. He climbed down from the carriage and cautiously approached the hand. It tried to crabwalk backwards, its oddly jointed arm withdrawing within its crevasse, but it stumbled over its clumsy thumb. Janosh lunged and sank the Meister's sword deeply into the ring-gem and twisted. A jet of ichor splashed on the ground and hissed. The hand collapsed on the ground, and the sickly flesh of the thing began to deflate, a foamy fluid sluicing across the ground. Janosh stepped back to keep it off his boots.

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