Sitting up Magnus gave a slow stretch, his eyes snapping to attention taking in the dim luminous glow of the now rising sun, he stood up with a small shake of his head and looked around joyously, sadly the light smile on his face did nothing to disguise his now narrowed eyes.
Something approached me last night.
He continued scanning the landscape while stretching and letting out small yawns even a person standing right besides him would not notice were forced.
I felt it, minor vibrations in the sand just outside of the lights reach.
He had not slept last night, he was not suicidal after all, sleeping in a foreign environment would be bad enough but with full awareness there was other life? begging to be shot at gun point would be easier.
Looking around at the surrounding sand the forced smile on his face was replaced by a much more genuine one.
Whatever this thing was, it was either not smart enough to cover its tracks or was ingenious enough to create a false trail...
The once undisturbed sand now had a rather strange looking imprint, it was as if a heavy block like object had dragged itself across the ground with weird spindly legs, the markings in the ground were confusing to say the least.
Following the strange trail Magnus made no attempt to disguise himself, the adaptive camouflage he had donned constantly shifting to match the background.
After what Magnus roughly to be seventyish minutes passed he was able to see the strange creature whose trail he had been following and a weird creature it was indeed.
On an initial glance it seemed like a chunk of bloodied flesh had come to life, the viscous red liquid dripping from its curiously shaped body trailed behind it seemingly crawling towards the main body, the misshapen slab of meat also seemed to have various shapes stretching against its outer flesh.
Upon closer inspection the stretched meat seemed to be various recognisable parts of a skeletal structure, fingers and ribcages barely outlined beneath the wet pulsing flesh.
A strong sense of revulsion mixed with horrified fascination filled Magnus's mind, he had been prepared for life but to truly see it before his own eyes...
What a beautiful sight, had he not been so repulsed he might have shed a tear.
It seemed to wriggle forwards using its moving bumpy lumps of flesh explaining why its trail looked like a large object had been dragged across the sand, picking up a fistful of sand Magnus cautiously tossed it at the slow moving bloody lump.
As soon as the sand landed on its body a sharp crack sounded out loud, the countless protrusions on its body erupted spraying blood and gore across the pale sand, the now ripped up flesh gave way to the countless bone-like structures that upon emerging stabbed and grasped at the air with shocking speed and intensity.
Seeing the blood splattered explosion Magnus took a few steps backwards in mild shock, he was not hugely surprised considering during the instructors various examples of strange things these lifeforms had as defensive or offensive methods there had been far stranger than blowing half your body to bits and using your bones as makeshift spears.
Without much more contemplation Magnus slowly drew the blaster from its holster and aimed it at the writing, bleeding monstrosity, one shot then another, the sound of melting flesh and and a low sound that almost seemed like screams coated the normally silent desert with shrill painful noise.
Walking slowly towards the dying writhing flesh Magnus had a small look of disgust covering his features as he prodded the still twitching corpus.
Quickly backing away from the foul smelling body he took in a deep breath only to immediately scrunch up his face in response to the lingering scent of the raw bloody flesh scattered around the once pale sand.
"Since I might be the first one to have met you... I'll name your species, at least that's how I think it works... What about bony flesh dude, No?, Uhh Maybe Meat Crawler? No, that doesn't fit."
Walking away from the dead creature Magnus looked towards the sun while contemplating what to name the foul creature, In the corner of his mind a rather interesting observation had been made, while the night had lasted roughly seven to eight hours since the sun had risen and counting the time he had spent following the fleshy... thingy it should have reached at least a sixty degree angle in the sky, however the sun was still at the horizon refusing to rise at the expected speed, at this point instead of the roughly ten hours he had expected the sun to be up it now looked closer to at least seventy hours until the sun would set once more.
As it was the first lifeform Magnus had met and seemed to be less than intelligent Magnus made the assumption it had simply wandered to close to his campsite, if you could call it that, and had been either drawn to the light or scared away by it, simply put it didn't pose a significant threat, with that in mind and the fact there was not much else for him to do Magnus began to follow the
trail in reverse attempting to find other life.
Whistling a light tune Magnus took out his notebook and began to sketch the fleshy creature he had just encountered while following the trail it had left behind.
"Did the lumps stretch out this far? Uh, I think the bones were a little more sharp around the edges..."
He continued to slowly draw and mutter at the air until finally the trail stopped in front of a large crater in the earth, it had ripped the ground with various chunks of black stone still scattered across the the surrounding area, peering into the crater it revealed a stone cavern with many tunnels leading further underground, inside the cavern small patches of a dim luminescent moss like thing clung to the walls.
Putting away his notebook Magnus descended into the caverns below not a single trace of fear visible on his face.
Why would he be scared? To explore and to experience was exactly what he had come for.
After a quick inspection of the cavern Magnus turned to face one of the countless yawning maws embedded in the walls, leading into one of the of the tunnels was a trail of dried crimson markings, burying another beacon near the entrance he cautiously entered the narrow tunnel, following the blood stains left behind by the flesh creature.