The Collector waited for an hour by the clearing, lying down in its eight-legged form to minimize its visibility. Its carapace might have been white, but it did not reflect light strongly, meaning that in the dark, especially shrouded by thick undergrowth and bushes, it could still remain hidden.
The soldiers began to return one by one, their torchlights highly visible in the night. The Collector listened to them.
"All of us are here now. Where'd the captain go?"
"Think he got lost? You know, I wouldn't mind if he did."
"Cut that out. If he disappears, we're in deep shit. His father has enough coin to make sure we never see the light of day. Think he'll take his son's disappearance lightly?"
Some quiet.
"Let's head out to find him," decided a soldier, and the others nodded with him. "Stick together in case there's a real threat out there."
"You trying to scare us? You know nothing happens here. What's going to happen? A half-man goblin tries to crawl up our legs? Even we can handle that."
"I wouldn't be so sure. Lately, I've been having these bad dreams, don't make fun of me for it, but…they feel like omens."
"I understand. And the sun, too, the black sun. They say that the world ends when the eye of Ajna closes. Maybe this is it?"
"Stop. We are from Sunda, land of magic. The greatest philosophers and thinkers and astronomers hail from us.
All other realms and kingdoms have squabbled and worried about the end times for the past two hundred years since the Undying, but our kingdom has grown out of it.
All of us might be from the lowly soldier-class, but our great libraries allow all but the lowest labor-class citizens access to knowledge.
You know, some of you should read a tome or two. I've read that a black sun happens quit often. Every five hundred years when the great gods ascend into the Beyond, it is said. This-," The soldier put a gloved finger up to the black sun. "Is normal. Now, instead of panicking for a superstitious future, we should focus on the now. Come on, let's find the captain so we can keep our heads on our necks."
The soldiers began to shuffle out. The Collector made its move.
It blitzed out of the undergrowth, its eight legs skittering at rapid speeds as it shot towards the soldiers as an enormous dome of carapace and legs.
Most humans possessed an innate fear of the insectoid, of many legs and shells, and when these soldiers saw a beetle larger than three of them put together speeding towards them, they screamed.
The Collector used its beetle horn to slam into one soldier, breaking his kneecaps, then swiveled around, knocking all the others flat to the ground in a sweeping impact. One by one, the Collector used its arachnid legs to sever tendons in their heels before they could get up.
"All of you are now fully immobilized," said the Collector as it stood up, sheathing its arakka legs back into its sides.
The five soldiers screamed in fright and pain.
The Collector crushed one of their heads underfoot. "Continue screaming, and that is your fate."
"M-monster?" remarked a soldier as he gazed upon the Collector's form.
The Collector strode over to the soldier and crushed his head also. "And if you designate me with that disgraceful term, then that too will be your fate."
The soldiers began to hush up, though even now, they trembled in terror.
The Collector knew this from before when it interrogated their leader, but even the military might of this world did not possess much of the special properties and 'magic' that made certain specimen dangerous.
The human leader did possess 'magic', yes, but not in any capacity that was useful. In even less a capacity than the female human sorcerer, the 'adventurer' as she was called.
The logical conclusion followed that the vast majority of specimen in this world did not possess this special property in any appreciable amount. It was only rare specimen among the already special ones that could pose a threat to the Collector.
Thus, the Collector moved with more confidence, assessing that the total risk of confronting these soldiers was low. It stared at the soldiers, at their eyes glazed in terror and their bodies releasing adrenaline that reeked of fear and desperation.
The Collector knew that if it hounded these primitives for hours, it could extract information from them even through their panic-stricken and inefficient mental states. But it did not desire to sit through their jumbled thought processes.
It already knew what it wanted from these primitives.
"One of you possesses a map. A cartographic outline of this area. Give it to me," said the Collector.
"In his satchel!" shouted a soldier as he pointed to a bag tied to the hip of one of the crushed ones.
The Collector tore the satchel from the corpse and inspected how it worked. The clasps holding it shut were too small for its fingers, so it ripped the leather holding apparatus open.
Its contents spilled out. A gourd holding water. Dried flesh for food. An amber colored stone emitting a dull light. A scroll of dried and processed plant matter marked with scribbles: the map.
The Collector consumed the dried flesh and found it the same as that of the deer present in the forest. In other words: completely unremarkable. It inspected the amber stone between its thumb and index finger.
"What is this?" asked the Collector.
"A sparkstone," said one of the remaining three soldiers through pained breaths, for all of the humans had had their tendons severed.
The Collector sensed through the hairs lining the seams of its carapace armor that they were shuffling back, aiming to escape. "Do not move. Even if I do not train my sight upon you, I can sense your each and every movement. Now tell me, what is this 'sparkstone' utilized for?"
"For starting fires," said a soldier. "We-we strike them on metal such as our swords. The sparks will light dry tinder."
"Hrm." The Collector scraped the stone against its carapace, and indeed, a small shower of sparks alighted from the point of contact. This rock, like the other light generating stone the goblins utilized, had a special property to it.
The Collector took the map in one hand strode towards one of the soldiers, and the human shrieked. "I will tell you anything! Let me go, I have a family waiting for me!"
"Ah yes, if you are indeed evolutionarily similar to humans, then you would arrange yourselves into social units dependent on blood relation. But that information provides nothing for me, so I question why you mention it. I doubt members of your family unit possess knowledge you do not." The Collector knelt by the soldier, utterly dwarfing him, and ripped off a sheathed sword attached to a belt on his hip.
The Collector inspected the sword, analyzing its design.
Different in design from the sword the human male adventurer utilized. Longer. The point was broader, less sharp. A strengthening plate of metal ran along one side of the blade, giving it weight on its swings. Handle comprised of metal wrapped in boiled leathers. Curved guard of dull golden metal.
Nothing aberrant about this weapon. It was simply a primitive tool of limited metalworking capability.
The Collector snapped the blade in half in its hand with minimal effort.
"Unimpressive." The Collector dropped the broken halves of the blade down in front of the soldier's terrified eyes.
The soldier scrambled backwards, his hands gouging out desperate paths in the dirt while his legs refused to move properly.
"Stay still," commanded the Collector, and the soldier did not move. The Collector stared at the comparatively tiny map in its hand, scrutinizing its details.
"Tell me, human," said the Collector as it knelt down to show the soldier the map. "Where are we upon this?"
The soldier raised a trembling finger to a spot to a forest spot of the map.
"And the human settlement? I do not intend to make my presence known there now, if you hold concern over this."
The soldier lowered its finger down to the lowest part of the map where small drawings of living structures indicated settlement. The Collector clicked its mandibles in understanding. It knew the distance from the den to the settlement, and knowing this, it could extrapolate the scale of the map.
"I have been made aware by your leader that there is a certain 'sorcerer' in this area you are familiar with. Lead me to the direction of this individual, for it is this specimen that I wish to engage with," said the Collector.
The soldier tapped to the center of the map, to the left of a wide river. The Collector clicked its mandibles, calculating the distance needed to reach the area.
"Tell me, is this 'sorcerer' familiar with 'magic'?"
The soldiers nodded – all they were capable of in their fright and pain at this point. The Collector again wondered if there was perhaps a more efficient way to interrogate these individuals, but all it knew was to appeal to their primal instinct that feared death and pain.
"What is this sorcerer's 'magic' capable of? Combat wise?"
The soldiers looked at each other blankly. They did not know.
"None of you know. Your usefulness has ended to me. Perhaps, had I much more time, I would have asked of this world you live in, this 'empire' you are part of and believe 'enlightened', but more humans will come soon, and I must move and find answers.
You have served your purpose. May you find true enlightenment in the Collective."
The Collector took the soldier in front of him by the head and dashed the skull against the forest floor, shattering it and smearing pink brain mass across the dirt. It stood up and walked towards the remaining two soldiers.
"We-we told you what we knew! Spare us, please!" The two remaining soldiers shrieked and tried to crawl away, dragging their useless legs with their hands through the dirt.
"I am sparing you," said the Collector as it neared them. "Sparing you from this pitiful, miserable existence trapped on this little rock when you could be so much more within the glorious expanse of the Collective."
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