Extraordinary Zoology by Howard Tayler

benefit of six years at Corvis University.”
    Lynus knew he’d made a mess of things today, but in that moment he felt taller than any ogrun, and as regal as a Raelthorne.

    They made another pass through the ruined village before packing out. Lynus was walking through the scattered walnuts near the hole when a glint of metal caught his eye. A bit of fine chain. He reached down and pulled on it, drawing a Morrowan sunburst medallion from the mud. The clasp on the chain was broken, but it was obviously intended to be worn as a necklace, probably a woman’s if the weight of chain was any indication.
    He imagined one of the villagers clutching it to her chest in terror, praying for deliverance, and instead getting smashed into Urcaen, the world beyond.
    He considered what that must have been like for these people, a monster rampaging among them, crushing them and their homes, and all the while Tharn arrows dropping among them, pinning them in the village. The helplessness, the desperation, the despair . . . Lynus shuddered. Then he felt a steely resolve, and the kindling of a small fire of anger.
    “Mount up!” called Pendrake. “The trail grows cold, but Morrow willing, we’ll follow it!”
    Lynus climbed onto Oathammer. Was he angry at Morrow, the monster, or the Tharn? The oiled bits salvaged from his rifle clinked together in their bag as he settled into the saddle, and he realized he was angry with himself.
    They sat in their saddles, Horgash on the back of that enormous bison, Kinik standing next to Edrea, and together surveyed the village from the tree line of the Widower’s Wood. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows, but the hollow of Bednar was not yet in the shade. In this light, and from this angle, the contours of the churned ground looked like crisscrossing ripples. They seemed familiar, but Lynus couldn’t quite place the pattern.
    “Remember those sand serpents, the little ones, east of Sul?” Edrea asked.
    “Tiny teeth, wicked poison,” Lynus said. “I was sick for three days.”
    “The wavy pattern of soil and pushed berms calls to my mind the tracks those snakes would make in the sand.”
    “Curse these old eyes!” Pendrake said. “Edrea’s right! Our burrowing monster didn’t leave footprints for others to cover. It’s a serpentine beast, able to travel unseen, untrackable underground. But here above, its tracks are large enough to not be seen as such.”
    “You must move far away to see tracks instead of little dirt-hills,” said Kinik.
    Berms , Lynus thought. Edrea just used the word. It is berms .
    “But still not so large as a gorgandur,” Pendrake said. “Praise Morrow for sparing us that dark future.”
    “On the subject of dark futures,” said Horgash, “the sun is low, and our quarry has a long head start.” He pointed to a spot on the trail that looked, to Lynus’ eye, like any other. “But once they got well away from the village, they did indeed leave some tracks.”
    “Lead on, then,” said Pendrake, and they crossed into the misty woods. Lynus grasped the small medallion between his thumb and knuckle, and an old prayer came to his lips, unbidden.
    “Strengthen our hands and steady our feet,” he said, “that we may master tribulation.”
    “It is a lovely prayer,” Edrea said, “but you might consider granting your god a bit less room to weasel out of the deal.”
    Lynus thought for a moment. “. . . that we may master tribulation, and that we may track this particular tribulation, and put an end to it.”

PART II: EDREA
    E drea Lloryrr cast her eyes up into the twisted, leafy canopy of the Widower’s Wood, thrilled at the momentary sensation of vertigo as she strode amid the ancient, towering trees. This deep in the woods the canopy arched overhead like a vaulted ceiling, nearly a bowshot away, and that ceiling was itself probably a bowshot thick. Yesterday they’d passed a downed tree that had been a full hundred paces from rotting root-ball