Grand Saint Alloy

While events were moving in the mine other events were unfolding in the plains. The first signs of winter started, the temperature started dropping and the first dusting of snow arrived. All of the produce in the plains was being harvested with great haste. The ghost crabs had been silent and the Caldera’s used this opportunity to plunder the resources of the plains.

If they had known why, they would have run. A week prior to the panicked harvesting, a small red bag burst. Both the growing creature and the non-compressible jell stretched the container to bursting. What crawled out was a very ordinary looking ghost crab. It sensed a nearby life form and immediately attacked it.

The tiny crab met a much larger tier one crab, and while the larger crab did not see the small one as food, the little one did not feel the same. It stung the tier one at the flesh spot where its legs met the body and tried to cut it with its dull claws. The tier one simply ignored the feisty creature, after all, what could it do?

Several minutes of fruitless flailing later, the baby crab moved on. It headed to the largest grouping of life that it could sense. While the first crab moved towards the Plains Caldera, the tier one crab started to show signs of the parasitic seed. The increased metabolism causing it to mature much faster than ordinary. Within days the crab was dead and consumed by a new and ravenous tier one that moved to consume or infect its brethren.

The original ghost crab reached the walls of the Plains Caldera and utilized its innate access to the force of orientation to scuttle straight up the wall. There were several more tier three crabs in its path and it tried to consume them, however, its mouth was too large to get at the softer parts through the joints. It settled for infecting them.

Finally, it came across a similarly sized crab. It came across many of them. Prying open their jaws, it consumed them to sate its hunger. The same metabolism that made it develop in a fraction of the time allowed it to grow fast. By the end of the first day, it had reached tier one, two days later it reached tier two. At that point, food was difficult to find, as the tier threes were too strong, and the tier twos were too scarce.

Where quality was absent, quantity could suffice. It stumbled closer to the center of the city. Its instincts told it to stay away from the center of the city, it knew only death waited there. But it was hungry, so very hungry. It could smell vast quantities of food, if only it could reach it. Hunger won out over instinct, and it scuttled in.

The aura of fear that tingled its instincts seemed to be just that. Fear could not stop it. Quickly it found something inside a wooden cave. A tree made of food. The augmented ghost crab climbed it and looked down into the maw of the mother crab, the last stage in a ghost crabs development. It did not care, it started eating. It had a lot to eat.

A week later the crab shuddered as it finished off its second tree. Something was changing, its shell started cracking and blood seemed to heat. It was a molting unlike any other. The old shell peeled away revealing the metallic crimson of a guard crab. Its serrated claws became more than claws, they were now seven foot long swords made to slice and rend.

A war inside the Plains Caldera’s crumbling walls began. The new guard crabs led the charge as the rulers of the district became food. Several hundred guard crabs were ill suited to stop a hundred thousand normal crabs. Ones that only needed a single sting to infect them. The plains quieted down while the crabs seemingly disappeared over night.

It confused the leaders of the Caldera, they had not planted any of Hadrid’s seeds, so that could not be what was happening. The war between humans started earlier than expected as the produce became available earlier than intended. It was not a true war yet. The battles were simple skirmishes to control the defensible locations in the plains. The farming communities became both forward bases and a gauge by which the Elders determined progress.

The crabs went through a continual refinement. Seeds were laid, hatching inside their hosts and developing into a ravenous copy of them. They would consume others and grow, only to become a source of sustenance themselves. It was not long before no tier zeros existed anymore, all of them consumed or crushed. Tier two and three followed soon after as they were forced to grow or die.

A war between two equal factions of guard crabs ensued, the victor would claim the loser. While the original crabs had something to fight for, they were ultimately less motivated than the starving ghost crabs. Eventually, they were overwhelmed and consumed, then the breeders were consumed.

Finally, the last guard crab fell and the first experiment stood before the root of all the caldera’s problems. The final mother crab stood in the warehouse district. Its base wrapped around a cart and the open maw at the top lacked the vestigial legs, as they had been severed by Vin. It had grown and been the real reason the Plain Caldera fell. So long as this being was allowed to mass produce small crabs, there was no way the city could survive.

Despite looking at the common ancestor of all crabs in these plains, this ravenous breed of Ghost crab could not feel anything. Climbing the trunk it consumed its ancestor just like any other common creature. This seemingly passed some threshold, and the guard crab was able to transform again, though it was more like it completed its evolution into a guard crab. It had the body, but now its mind developed.

It realized that it was hungry. It wanted food, it needed food. There was still fighting in the streets of the Plains Caldera, though there were few enough left that it was sporadic at best. The instigator of this disaster for the ghost crabs realized something. There was more food elsewhere, and it had an army.

Scuttling to the tallest point in the town, the temple’s bell tower. The guard crab screeched. It was an unnatural sound coming from a crab, especially as it lacked lungs. Grinding its teeth and carapace together produced something like nails on a chalkboard, but exponentially louder and predatory.

The fighting in the streets stopped. Despite the slaughter, the total number of guard crabs had not fallen by too much. Though the crabs in the caldera had fallen from the high six digits all the way down to around three hundred. It cost over half a million of this guard crabs kin to build this force, and it was pleased.

The new leader of the crabs screeched again. They had no set language or communication skills, however there was one thing this breed of ghost crabs understood. Food. A lot of food surrounded them. They just had to leave the city to go pick it up. The alchemist had engineered their tendencies to be comfortable with cannibalism, but now they had hard metallic shells. It was hard to get to the sustenance inside.

Their hunger pushed them to try and succeed with great effort. However, there was an easy source of food not even thirty miles away. For the first time, a guard crab left the premises of the Plains Caldera, followed by several hundred more. The ghost crab population outside was quickly wiped out, then they came across their first harvesters.

Technically, when Tristan planted the crab seed, he did reduce the crab threat. After all, there were far fewer and these were focused primarily on consumption rather than reproduction. Additionally, the remaining guard crabs were mainly of the unintelligent variety. In a way, Tristan was the biggest contributor to solving the crab issue.

He was also the largest contributor to human casualties. The first farming community was only approached by a pair of crabs, but two twenty foot tall, metal plated, monsters with swords were more than enough to instantly overwhelm the tier one and zero farmers. Their cattle were killed and eaten. The harvesters followed shortly after.

Several warriors exited the building in the middle of the odd clearing. They wore the grey clothing of the Stone Caldera. The three of them put up a good fight, but they were not elite. Their hammers dented the shells of the crabs, and multiple limbs were cut off. In the end, the two crabs were victorious, injured, but still standing. Pain was irrelevant, hunger was everything.

The door that had put a stop to the tier three crabs was cut apart by the guard crabs. It was still too small of an entrance, but a full speed charge, broke enough wood to let them get to the food inside. One got distracted by a tier one water elemental punching it. The crab could not understand that it came from the farmer it had just cut in half. However, the elemental did not smell like food so it was ignored.

After a few moments, the elemental turned and looked to the horizon. It was sentient but lacked sapience. Its instinct was to fulfill the vestige will of its original body. However, something called it, something past the plains that it only hazily remembered. It started staggering towards the distance with only one thought going through its empty skull.

“I hear and obey, lord.”