The "thing" struggled to get up, its head lowered, water streaming down its broad, bare back, and its blood gushing swiftly into the river. It was then that Dylan noticed about a dozen spikes—no, not spikes, crude spear-like things, resembling pickaxes, piercing the creature's body.
Some gaping wounds looked like they had been hastily torn out, as if the beast had tried to rip them from its own flesh. But seeing it move in slow agony, Dylan understood it was suffering horribly.
He recognized those weapons. After all, he had witnessed the moment when the bony creature—the one from the second row—had been riddled with those deadly projectiles.
The Hystrix.
The one they thought they had escaped, the one whose territory they believed they had left behind.
But faced with this dying creature, impaled like a macabre trophy, one truth became clear: they had been wrong.
This whole place belonged to it.
"Shit!!!"
