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The machine tumbled as he was engulfed by the rolling wave of flesh.

The same monsters which posed no threat to him individually had suddenly become an overwhelming force through numbers alone. The machine's body was immediately swept away. He tumbled, literally drowning in the abominations.

It was more like some door to the underworld had burst open, causing the abominations to spill over each other in a gruesome cascade. He could tell that many of the abominations had long since been trampled to death and were now just cold bodies being tossed about in the chaos. Some of the dead had been absolutely obliterated, adding brutal texture to the chaos. The soft bits rained in a sloppy torrent while shrapnel from their bones pelted the machine like hail.

The creatures swept over him, occluding all light from his vision. As for sound, he could hear nothing beyond the incessant screeches and the gory sounds of a thousand bodies crumpling under the weight of a thousand more.

He had been swept up in a massive meat grinder.

He became disoriented shortly after he lost contact with the ground. He desperately pushed against the pressure of the bodies, trying to find something solid to hold onto. But he had no luck, as he couldn't even tell which way was up.

He suddenly felt a massive impact as something slammed into his back.

At the same time, he heard a gruesome explosion of carnage. The nearest abominations were reduced to paste and bone fragments.

Before he could do anything, he was swept away again and thrown into something else. This one slammed into his leg, twisting it sharply at a strange angle.

'Oh sssshit!'

Blow after blow landed on his body, damaging him more and more. He was thrown through stone cabins and trees at breakneck speeds. At one point he was even pushed to the bottom of the diluge and could feel his body being ground up and twisted against the stalagmites of the cave. He tried clawing into the ground to gain some sense of control, but quickly discovered he was missing an arm. Beyond that, his one remaining arm was deformed and missing a claw. He tried his best to dig into something and hold on, but he was crippled and found no purchase.

Finally, his head crashed against something with incredible force... and everything went dark.

---

It was a nightmare. The petrified forest was covered with so much carnage. The air was thick with the stench of the dead. Coagulating blood and minced flesh had pooled so deep that the hellish mixture would pull at the men's boots as if they were trecking through swamplands. Though most of the men had lost their lunch, there was one who had no issues with the current situation.

Edmon frowned as he watched the Mortician gleefully inspecting the dead. The Mortician's mask concealed his expressions, but there was something about the necromancer's body language that really bothered Edmon... It reminded him of the excitement a child would display while perusing a candy shop. The masked man happily sloshed through the gore, searching out any barely-surviving noctic abominations. If Edmon were close enough, he would hear the Mortician curiously mumbling to himself as he picked through the dead- almost as if they were merely a pile of spare parts.

Edmon turned his gaze away, as the rest of the men were searching for something different.

Being the Archer of the group, Edmon had the best trained eye. When the Jackdaw party finally resurfaced from the cellar, he was naturally the first to spot a shiny reflection in the distance. After retrieving it, the Boss of the jackdaws immediately identified it as a part of what must have been the Demon they were after and demanded they scour the place to collect more pieces before leaving.

Edmon cursed his circumstances as he dug through the waste.

Today marked the third day they spent combing through it all and the smell was becoming unbearable.

Eventually, he returned to the cellar with the few metallic bits he had found. But for such a large creature, they had only found a small portion of it's body.

As he closed the cellar door behind him, he turned to see the young scout cleaning and organizing the retrived bits of the demon's body. He was the only one who could, since he was the only member of the party to have ever seen the demon when it was alive.

Edmon, like the rest, was just now getting a glimpse of what it really looked like.

There, on the floor at the end of the cellar, the young scout had assembled and positioned a number of parts.

The overall shape of the demon had been described before, but it was only today that they had gathered enough pieces to really understand what the young scout had described.

It was humanoid. One of it's legs was never recovered but the one they found was merely twisted somewhat, then sheared off near the hip. In any case, he could estimate the creature's height to be somewhere around 7 feet tall.

There was a head with one large eye in the center and a few small eyes in a strange pattern a bit lower on it's face. The eyes were reflective and cracked as if they were made of glass. But also, they were completely black. Perhaps it had evolved to see in the dark?

Both arms were mostly missing, but they had recovered some parts including a few mangled claws.

There were pieces that apparently attached to the demon's back. Perhaps... wings of some kind? They didn't appear to be capable of flight though.

Regardless, everything was coming together. However, there was one small issue.

The center of the demon's torso had been punctured, revealing a cavity that should contain the demon's core. However, there was nothing there. The hulking corpse of the demon was... empty.

The place that should have contained the invaluable demon core held nothing but shadows.