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In the pitch dark shaft, Captain lay pressed hard against the damp, curved side of the tunnel with Seeker and Imp close at his tail. Slugcats, who evolved to maneuver dark, slick labyrinths like this one possess phenomenal hearing for the purpose of detecting predators and prey, and as he hunched there shaking and twitching with adrenaline he heard, distinctly, the rasping, tinny sound of scraping through the wall. There seemed, on the other side, an open space and in it, something light on four feet scrabbled - on their trail, perhaps, and hunting them.
“If it’s a lizard,” Imp said, hushed, “It’s small.”
This wasn’t much consolation. At close quarters, any lizard, no matter its strength or size, could kill an unarmed slugcat. He felt inclined to move forward in the tunnel until they reached the end, but what if it led them straight into this open space and right upon it? Every curve and bow, every burrow and run, was strange to them but perhaps well-known to the creature. In a familiar place just like this the Captain might lead his crew wide around an enemy, but here, in strange territory with strange smells all around and not knowing at all the strengths or weaknesses of their foe-
“We’d better keep going,” Seeker cut in at last. “We’re assuming it’s an enemy, but just as likely it’s not. Let’s go.”
He shoved passed the Captain and squeezed through the shute. It was a second or two before Captain followed after him.
As the run bowed closer and the scrabbling got louder, the slugcats one by one crawled slower and lower to the ground, dragging their bellies on metal. Captain set to sniffing, and the smell- well- it wasn’t a lizard, but for some reason or another, though it calmed him somewhat, his hackles didn’t flatten. It smelled like a mammal, a slugcat, furred and damp as a dawning cycle- much as himself and his companions. With some steeling of courage and indulgence in his curiosity, he thrust bit by bit toward the entrance.
Sunlight, in flickering shafts, lapped at the mouth of the tunnel, and as Captain poked his head out in the open, he ducked, squinting, and blinked rapidly to re-adjust. He turned to check and found Seeker crouched at the lip and Imp, scarcely visible behind him, sniffing continually and rubbing his face with dark forepaws. Captain turned again.
There he was, the creature they’d heard and smelled. Squatted in the open on his haunches in the current of a breeze carrying his scent to them; flesh-and-blood as themselves yet anomalously purple. Pale, shrewd eyes stared unblinking in a narrow face, his snout whiskerless and sleek, and though the three travelers should have felt relieved to meet another of their kind, Captain fell back twitchily, reluctant to draw nearer. I’ll wait till he speaks first , he thought.
The silence continued. The stranger felt, evidently, similarly uninclined.
“We’ve come far,” said Captain at length. “Is there a colony here?”
Still, silence. Imp stamped uneasily.
Captain rose as if to approach, but immediately so did the stranger. He crawled on all fours wordlessly forward, sniffing, dragging behind him a tail twice the size of an average slugcat’s, covered in spiky bumps and hollows like the pod of a plant. They weren’t sure what to make of it. As he drew nearer, Seeker crawled from the mouth and with only Imp hanging back, all three exchanged sniffing, licking, and rubbing their cheek glands on the ground and one another.
In his fur and feet, Captain smelled all the lands the stranger travailed, from spongy, lichenous earth and acidic wastes to healthy, rich sod and fragrant fields of blooming cress and sapspillers. So healthy and strong was he, as lithe as any predator, and in his face was all the cunning of a beast for whom killing were all a day’s work, and yet- not a drop of blood in his fur, and what was most odd, most shocking and disturbing to the gathered slugcats, he had no mouth . It was no wonder he did not speak. How he ate and drank was a puzzle, and Captain wondered with an uneasy shudder whether they were really quite safe or if this was some ghostly messenger, hailing from a higher existence than theirs.
Captain was going to introduce himself when Imp hissed from behind, “Spider.”
The stranger swiveled. A flash of brown across the room, a swoop of scurrying legs, then long fangs unveiled from a shaggy brown body descending on the stranger, who ducked expertly and leapt to a higher point. Captain weaved its next attack and ran full pelt to lead it off, but in a moment slim forelimbs wrapped firm round his waist, and they tumbled in the rubble in a fit of claws and flying setae. The sharp tips of two fangs brushed Captain’s throat at the same moment a spear zipped past his ear, sinking squelch in spider flesh.
Captain scurried free. The slugcats looked on, shaking. A thin, pulsing thread tied the stranger’s tail to the spear implanted in the spider, limbs curling in as gradually consciousness ceased.
“You saved him,” mumbled Imp. “He saved you, Captain.”
“Thank… you?” Captain muttered half-entranced, watching the thread detach and die before he looked back up at the stranger. In his hand was another spear like the first, which wasn’t there before - white, bone-like, grotesquely whetted as if fashioned for the very purpose of killing, not mistakenly handy for it. Captain paused, then sincerely: “Thank you.”
No response. Pale eyes stared past him, unmoved.
“What are you?” Captain said louder. The stranger slowly turned those eyes on him. Blinked. Then hopped gracefully down, skirted around Captain and past the spider’s crumpled corpse, over the rubble heap, and through the pipe from which the slugcats came. On a mission, eastward.
They never met him again.