Since Dig's best hopes at getting answers lay in the Village, he obediently followed behind the bearded man who was just a hand taller than him. His neck and hands were tanned and leathery, and Dig could see the muscles of his shoulders hiding beneath his clothes.
He even felt them when the man suddenly stopped and Dig bumped into him.
"What—" The man turned around and clamped his hand over Dig's mouth before he could ask him what was going on.
Dig's heart, which had just calmed down after the Shuttle's kidnapping, started racing again.
The man listened intently while scanning the Fields around them.
After a little while, Dig heard it as well. The plants rustled and swayed in the wind.
The problem was simple. There was no wind.
It could be a trait of the Underbelly or just a lull in the weather. Dig didn't know. But he did know that there was something in the Fields with them.
Eventually, though, the sound disappeared, and the man heaved a sigh of relief.
"It's still Day, so I let my guard down, but I guess the Shuttle lured it out."
"Lured what out?" Dig asked worriedly, still unable to calm down.
"Well, we call them snakes because they slither through the fields almost undetected, but—"
The bearded man's explanation was interrupted by a sharp howl like the barking of a fox coming from right beside them. At the same time, a jaw flew out from the plants and straight at the bearded man with a partly furry body following right behind it.
Beardie raised an arm and defended himself. The beast latched onto it and knocked the man to the ground, biting down hard and ripping back and forth like a dog with a rat in its mouth.
But while the beast acted like a dog, it looked nothing like any Dig had ever seen.
It had a long snout with thick noodle-like whiskers hanging from the sides. Its eyes were on the sides of its smooth head and appeared to be looking at nothing in particular, almost like a chameleon's eyes.
Blotches of dark, spiky fur started sprouting from the base of its neck, covering most of its body and six limbs. Four regular legs and a pair of arm-like growths sprouting from the upper half of its ribcage.
The arms flailed wildly, making it hard for Dig to approach once he finally snapped out of his daze. He could tell, even without touching them, that getting hit would be painful.
However, Beardie was clearly losing the fight. Dig had to do something.
He looked around in a frenzy, searching for something to use as a weapon. But let alone a weapon, the ground was completely free of even sticks and stones. It was dirt and wheat.
Left without a choice, he took off his shoe and threw it at the beast's head. The beast's eye focused on him, but it did not let go of Beardie.
"Shit."
"Run to the Village and cry your lungs out! I'll hold it here!" Beardie shouted to the sound of teeth sloppily digging into bloody flesh and cracking bone.
Dig saw the roofs of the Village. He could run there and back, but by the time he made it, Beardie would already be on the verge of bleeding out or dead.
Dig didn't want to let that happen.
Suddenly, it hit Dig, and he put his hand on his hip.
It was his first time, but he did it like it was his thousandth.
He grabbed the handle of something that wasn't there and unsheathed a dagger. It was the resident weapon of the Artifact he had picked up from the Vault an hour ago.
Naturally, that meant it was the same size as the sheathe. The dagger as a whole was almost the size of his hand, but only because the handle was big enough for him to wield comfortably.
The blade was smaller than his pinky.
Beardie saw the weapon past the blood mist from the wound and beast on his arm and sighed hopelessly.
Dig was also disappointed, but he didn't despair. He could feel the sharpness of the dagger just by looking at it. He raised his gaze and looked at the beast.
The furless head made it apparent that the skull wasn't very thick.
"Hiyaaaah!"
Dig charged at the beast with his dagger pointed straight at the beast's head.
Beardie realized what Dig was going for and, instead of trying to get the beast to let go of his arm, he used his other hand to clamp down hard on the whiskers hanging down. He held the beast's head in place and pulled it firmly against his injured arm. He also managed to kick up his legs and wrap them around the base of the beast's neck, securing it firmly.
The beast finally seemed to understand that it was trapped, but it was too late.
In the seconds Beardie had locked it in place, Dig had crossed the distance and plunged the dagger into the beast's head, but not before one of its arms struck him in the ribs like a battering ram, sending him flying.
"Kid!" Beardie shouted, but there was nothing he could do when the beast was still kicking.
He grabbed the handle of the dagger and repeatedly stabbed the beast in the head until its jaw went limp. He extricated himself and sliced the beast's neck and back open, finally paralyzing and killing it right in time for the knife to disappear.
"Kid…?" Beardie held his injured arm and limped over to where Dig crash-landed, wheat plants spread out to form a halo around him.
Dig lay crumpled on the ground with the left side of his face pressed against the soil and the rest of his torso hiding where he was struck.
With his foot, Beardie flopped Dig over to his back, exposing the place hit by the cannonball-like swiveling arm of the beast.
Beardie sighed regretfully as he sank to his knees and closed Dig's eyelids, the blood from his arm helping Dig's dye the ground around them crimson.