Only that fragmented visual: Charging beast, rifle rising in recoil, the creature jerking, stumbling. As the gun dropped back, the thing staggered sideways, roots gone crazy beneath it. Then it whirled. Colors like rainbow lasers of blaze-orange, translucent indigo, nacre-pink, and midnight-black dazzled along its smooth flanks to be followed by blinding crimson, searing yellows, streaks of blacks and deep purples, searing greens and violet.

Another of those mind-numbing shrieks, and the whole long length of it whipped around on the tortured root mat and seemed to squirt up the far tangle of thigh-thick roots, only to vanish over the top.

Dek was already running, trying to keep his footing on the roiling root mat. Managed, somehow, to make it across. The beast’s trail was plain. The reddish fluid that passed for blood in most of Donovan’s more advanced life had left smears across the tops of the roots. They were already reacting to the nutrients.

“Got to hurry.” Dek threw himself up the thick tangle, barely found footing, and vaulted over the highest of the contorting roots.

The roots along the creature’s path were a riot of motion, reacting not only to the weight of the animal’s passing, but to the feast of rich blood.

Dek reloaded his rifle as he went, eyes warily taking in the pillar-like trunks of forest giants rising to either side. Vaguely he wondered if the blade beast could climb. If he needed to worry about being ambushed from above.

“Didn’t look like it,” he told himself. Those paddle-like flipper feet, they could sure move the beast across the flats and up over tall messes of the thick roots, but they’d be hard put to cling to anything.

At the top of the next mass of intertwined roots, Dek carefully peeked over. Saw nothing but more of the disturbed roots marking the creature’s passage. It was all the same, endless masses of thickly entwined giant roots giving way to a hollow matted with smaller ones, all interwoven in the endless wrestling match that was the Donovanian forest floor.

The chime was back along with the usual forest sounds. In the trees he could hear hooting, unearthly chattering, and whooping countercalls.

And somewhere up ahead was a twenty-meter-long technicolor monster with slashing blades that would slice him into three pieces. Worse, the blade beast was wounded. Probably coming to the conclusion that it had nothing left to lose.

Maybe realizing that it could still get even.

What sobered Dek more than anything was the realization that if the monster had made it this far, it sure as hell wasn’t disabled. Had it not been startled by the rifle, had it continued to charge, the blade beast would have already chopped him into butchered chunks, and he’d be ground to burger by those tooth-filled shearing jaws.

“Dek, old buddy, you might have just gotten lucky again.”