They followed her through the bushes. Nettle cautiously behind everyone. They paused in awe.

  Many, many layers of quicksand pits in various sizes took over beyond the brush cover. The smallest about the side of an outspread man’s hand and the largest near the middle of the group would be capable of swallowing an average sized house. All of the quicksand monsters made no noise but were slightly wiggling back and forth.

  “Am I having a stroke?” Nettle asked. “I know it can run in the family, but I don’t want one right now.”

  “I think this is an optical illusion,” muttered Day, blinking her own eyes frantically at the ever expanding area.

  As they watched the edge of the quicksands were being pushed towards the trees to the left side and they gently swallowed up the trees.

  It was completely silent. Not a burble not a rustle, just colored circles now all sitting together in various strange sand tones. Whitened sand beaches of the Bahamas, the reddish pink of coral, the black volcano beaches, and on the other side of that every shade one can imagine from eggshell to umber. Brown and neutral abounding although red clays got in there and the main largest color appeared to just be sand colored sand.

  The sand monsters had left a wide open trail behind them. As they watched the shimmering masses, the one near the middle of the concentric swirls suddenly got bumped and jostled. As one the neether swirls got the other sand pits to kicked free one human length pit and sent it spin off at high speed off into the forest opposite from the group. Away from the road.

  “What was that?” Nettle demanded.

  “A shooting star?” Day’s awestruck tone still had wonder in it.

  “Shooting sand pit? That sounds more like military jargon.” Bodi shook his head.

  Lural suddenly gave a gasp. “I know what it is.”

  “And?” Day asked.

  “Quicksand pit orgy. How else do you think they reproduce?”

  Nettle twiddled his thumbs. “I sort of assumed sun and sand and other conditions-“

  “That’s a natural sand pit. Not this. Not these quicksand monsters.” Laural nodded to herself.

  “Wow, this is so rare to see.” Day now glanced around. “It’s incredibly dangerous to be standing here.”

  “Great!” Bodi glared at the rest of them. “It’s time for me to take off all my clothing and get the enhancement to my skin. But I don’t want to be naked around all of you!”

  “A little shy?” Spoon ribbed him. “Don’t worry we’ll only make fun of your feet and your height and your skin and what else is there, Nettle?”

  “His earrings,” Nettle said and then smiled and forcibly wiggled his ears.

  “Didn’t know you could do that.”

  “There is no need to often.”

  “Making Bodi even tankier would do nothing but improve everyone’s life.” Day said carefully.

  “If any of you touch me and get my hair changed, so help me.” Nettle already appeared furious. He put a glowing shield of himself defensively and maintained it. “And what if they eat him?”

  Kriti shrugged. “Fine. Everyone except for Nettle.”

  “We’ll go behind the bushes,” agreed Laural.

  Before the women want back to the road and out of sight with the bushes, Day handed of her locket carefully.

  She put on the locket and a hair into each of his hands. Bodi closed his hands around them. She glared into his eyes. “Do not drop these or lose my locket. I’ve already separated out the hairs you need.”

  She skipped Nettle and focused on Spoon. “Don’t let him jump into the biggest ones. Those can be the most dangerous because it will take them the longest to regurgitate him back out and he can’t hold his breathe forever.”

  Nettle and Spoon nodded. She left with only four rapid glances back to impress her opinion on those two. It probably gave her whiplash, Spoon thought. The realized Nettle had been slowly leaving the opposite way from the women.

  “Too much quicksand! I can’t handle highlights.”

  “Wait, I shouldn’t be stuck…” Spoon realized he was yelling at nothing.

  Momentarily distracted, Bodi got completely naked far too fast with booth fists somehow still closed. Without hesitation, he dived into the nearest hole headfirst. Spoon lunged for his feet and missed. They needed this small interaction, not get him killed.

  Somehow, Bodi popped up headfirst as the sand pit hurled him back out. Unfortunately for them they’d appeared to be agitating the whole group. A mmmm rumble flooded through their feet. The largest circles near the middle bowled over to the other area of sand Bodi had been in. Looking at the giant hole and again before Spoon could keep him out, Nettle, peeking through a bush, flashed out a shield, but too late. Bodi bellyflopped into the largest of the quicksand pits. He’d been aiming for a smaller white sand one, but the big quartz colored sand pit had swirled over. While not being shot out like the others had, the other sandpits had been effectively pushed away. Everything had been pushed out of the big one’s way. This time the sand quickly dragged him down in seconds. No shield, only a single hair to protect him.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  A long time passed nothing but the strange humming continued. Then violently, a huge bubble rose up and naked Bodi exploded out of it. He opened the locket and Nettle used a shield to protect it. Bodi threw the hair in the middle the giant mass and promptly fell down much faster than a single hair. Again, being consumed by the same largest quicksand pit. The pit burbled and spit the hair up, in a self-satisfied burp. Nettle created a pointed green spear to force the hair spell back into the open maw of the critter. To make sure the spell went down exactly where it had to go.

  Still, the biggest sand pit resisted his efforts. In frustration, Nettle even dropped his personal body shield to instead focus on getting the anti-quicksand spell buried into the heart of the monster. His brute force proved ineffective.

  Thinking quickly, Nettle tried to imagine what differences he knew of with the air and the tiny speak point. He recreated a very rough form of a lizard in one of his shields and although misshapen through it onto the sand. With a tiny movement. and the quicksand reluctantly slurped in the empty shield this time. Not realizing the threat of a creature that moved. It’s not like this monster had eyes. Which was great because the shield lizard wouldn’t have fooled anyone.

  Spoon willed it to work as he wished, but he could do little to help. He pulled off his right shoe and threw it into the spot just below the spear. His foot hadn’t shrunk yet he noticed with relief. Instinctively, the pit gasped in the object, and the battle of wills ended with the magical spear slurped down with a vampire’s right shoe.

  Ever so slowly the fizzing began to produce little by little trying to spit out just a shoe, which Bodi’s hand had a grip on, and not give up Bodi’s gasping sand covered head. Then he popped up again to breath but dragged down again. This time he’d brought the shoe to his chest. As Spoon watched the sand creature began to get agitated, shuffling around going every direction left and right erratically.

  A new angry buzzing thrummed. The sound of sand being rolled over itself in fast and faster speed. It spit out the worst of noises. Other sandpits frustation beginning to fill the air. Sputtering muttering, flapping lips. The clatting and buzzing brought everyone else running back and staring.

  “What went wrong?” Day demanded.

  Just as Bodi again scrambled up got a coughing gasp, only to be pulled down again.

  “So much,” muttered Spoon.

  Bodi, finally, got fully spit out, along with Spoon’s sandy shoe, clutched in his hand. His entire body completely unseeable. More like an orc shaped mud golem with Bodi inside. Strangely, the mass smelled of a pleasant jasmine and lily mix. Deep in the mud, it must have absorbed a perfume or oil. Nettle whipped the mud off Bodi’s face using the shields like shoves to dig, drag and carry all at once. Nettle brough Bodi over the tiny edge of mud. His face got uncovered quickly. Bodi inhaled his skin turned from light purpled back into his proper deep puce with every bit of extra air. He grinned at them.

  Between coughing out sand, he got out, “Maybe next time I’ll listen to you guys.”

  “We need to go,” said Laural. “We’ve pissed them all off. Run!”

  Nettle kept the too-mudied-to-move Bodi encased in his new cement body armor, lifting him with the green shields to help them escape. Day noticed that floating up and pointed out the issue.

  “Is he supposed to be floating from the bubble mud?” Day under her breathe asked, “And where is my locket?”

  “No,” Nettle shouted, “but I’m not looking a gift sand trap in the mouth.”

  They kept running with the Bodi sized mud pile floating up with the shields holding him down as well as keeping him near them.

  Laural complained to Kriti. “Why do we always make it so we can’t use a perfectly good resources except for those two?”

  “Questions I’d rather not ask. We won’t like the answers.” She couldn’t keep herself from the real answer. “But it’s because this party sucks,” admitted Kriti.

  “I mean I wish I could say you’re wrong,” sighed Laural, “but really we keep trying the absolutely worst idea or someone gets caught up in a side tangent or we find a breeding ground for quicksand and don’t just run away like normal people. Or gather supplies.”

  “How do you think the three of us got together on this kind of thing?” Day asked. “I’m never suggesting we do these things!”

  “We need someone who has a sense of self-preservation to join next time.” Kriti, Laural, and Day had pointed the horses back the way they’d been traveling. It had seemed safer to go back, but now ahead of them they could see zinging random quicksand running along everywhere leaving behind huge lines of trouble behind them.

  “I think that might make us a little unbalanced, but I see your point.”

  “How are we running and talking?”

  This author has never worked out enough to realize running at full speed and talking is hard, that’s how.

  But they pulled up anyway realizing, they didn’t know if to mount the horses or lead the horses to safety.

  Kriti panting, stood there. “Here.. we can pretend… people running for their lives… are actually like this. Because it’s much… more dramatic. Then just escaping running people and then we have to boringly converse later.”

  Laural grabbed her head, then turned to glare at Day. “You’ve destroyed an entire ecosystem!”

  “Bodi wanted immune skin!”

  Kriti snapped at them. “Can we focus? Where are the animals going to get safe?”

  Laural threw the reins of the nearest horse at Day’s head. “Our only change is following one of the pits slowly. They don’t want to cross paths right now because of infection chances. For now, that’s better than on the road or anywhere else. Get all the horses free first then we’re going.”

  Pair and Par whinnied at seeing the humans return. They were pulling in their traces having not been given enough time since Spoon’s fall in to get out of them unharnessed.

  Laural ran to the other cart. “We’ll have to leave the bigger one!”

  She took her knife and got the horse free.

  “Grab the essentials and put it on top of Day’s caravan.”

  Two twisting quicksand pits zinged by. “Hurry!”

  They were in the middle of a Bayblade quicksand board, and none of them had any idea how that show worked. Nettle lashed the muddy bubble with Bodi’s face to the top of the caravan.

  “Don’t forget my clothes!” demanded the angry, skin reinforced orc.

  Behind them, they could hear angry spitting, zms, and other strange sounds, along with a loud clatter of disturbed rocks.

  Everyone, besides Bodi, together ransacked the larger cart, and until an appropriately large-sized sand pit whizzed by. Other than their own critical items, they took no inventory. Whatever happened to be nearest to hand and carriable went.

  “There,” yelled Laural. “We’re going! After that one.”