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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silver Moon" data-source="post: 2245974" data-attributes="member: 8530">Interlude Eight: "The Creature"It had been a long two days after a long two years for Bob Moody and Hank Reynolds. The two boyhood friends had come a long way from their homes in Wausau, Wisconsin with very little to show for their efforts. They had first come to Cochise County two years earlier with dreams of riches, expecting to find mountains with silver flowing from them. The reality was much harsher, with more broken dreams than success stories. The two had taken odd jobs to get by, traveling from town to town. Their one opportunity had come in Galeyville, where they took backbreaking jobs as mine workers that in lieu of an hourly wage accepted a small percentage of the profits. But after six months the silver ran out and the mine closed and not long thereafter any savings were depleted. They took on whatever work they could find no matter how unpalatable it might be. So three nights ago when a man named Claibourne offered them each $ 20 to help stop some miners from reaching Promise City neither man wavered. The job turned out to be a disaster. The stagecoach was supposed to stop once the drivers saw that they were hopelessly outnumbered. Instead, the drivers crazily managed to outrun their pursuers while climbing a mountain. Furthermore, these supposedly lightly-armed mine workers fought back, killing one-third of the men hired to stop them and wounding several more. When Claibourne ordered a retreat Moody and Reynolds were all too willing to comply and they were among six who rode away. But even that turned sour when two of the miners guards chased after them and killed a few more of their companions. But Bob and Hank did manage to get away, retreating further into the mountains in an attempt to stay alive. On Tuesday afternoon they spotted Marshall Wyatt Earp leading a posse into the hills after them, causing the men to pull further back. On Wednesday a group of human and ogre solders nearly caught them. So they spent the night riding north, away from the Chiricahua Mountains and into the Dos Cabezas Mountains. But even there they were being hunted, spending much of the day hiding from a group of six well-armed men coming after them. As the sun began to set they found this cave, running long and deep into the mountains. Markings on the walls showed that native elves once resided here but there was no evidence of recent habitation. The men sighed relief, seeing a chance to stop running and rest. They fed out the last of their corn and grain rations to their mounts, cooked up a rabbit that they had caught earlier, and began to settle down. They were still hungry after the meager quantity of food but were too tired and scared to go look for more. Neither men heard the creature approach. It too was hungry. It had been drawn to this location by the smell of the horses, a type of animal that had run wild in these parts up until most recently. The reason that few wild horses remained was simple, the creature had eaten them all. It silently approached the pair of horses when it then smelled something else. The creature was highly intelligent and upon detecting the scent of humans decided to change its targets, recognizing them as a potential threat to its own existence. Moody never knew the cause of his demise. He didn’t even get to scream before his head was rendered from the remainder of his body. He was the fortunate one. Reynolds lived for twenty-six seconds longer than his companion. He watched his friend die and looked into the glowing eyes of the creature as it then turned towards him. That span of time was less than half a minute long but to him it was an eternity, one filled with utter terror.</blockquote>

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