Stone Guardian Read Online Free PDF

bubbled up through the depths of Arach’s coils and fanned the red-hot coals simmering in his gullet. He rolled the word off the tip of his forked tongue as though savoring the flavor of a fine robust wine. Such a delightful word: destruction . It even tasted good when he spoke it.
    Arach filled his lungs with the stale dank air of the blood-soaked cave and waved away annoying carnage flies buzzing about his face. This world had turned out quite nice indeed. A bit on the dull side of late, but all in all not a bad place to spend a few millennia. Arach dipped his head with a single nod of certainty. Yes. He definitely considered his time here well spent. He’d most assuredly rate the prey of this world as one of his favorite races to hunt. Arach chuckled. The confused lot was even more enjoyable and entertaining than warming his scales beneath the scorching sun once a feeding frenzy was over.
    Arach unsheathed one razor sharp claw and hooked it into the meatiest part of a smoldering carcass spread across the sticky stone floor. Impaling the body on the extended tip of one talon, he lifted the dripping corpse into the air, threw back his head and dropped the charred body into his mouth. Ah yes. Delicious. And the lovely screams the humans released as they realized they were about to die could not be matched anywhere else in this universe. What could be more musical than shrieking cries of a begging victim blubbering for something as ridiculous as mercy? Silly fools, these simpering mortals. What in the world could ever make them believe he would succumb to their pitiful begging? It must have something to do with that strange thing he’d heard one of their women wailing about while she clutched her mate’s dying body against her chest. What was the word the female had used? Arach slowed his chewing and thoughtfully tapped a greasy claw against his blood-spattered chin. Hope. Yes. That was it. Arach snorted. Their highly-prized hope was as useless a ploy for saving their lives as was their incessant pleading.
    Snugging his barbed tail around his scale-covered body, Arach crunched down on the last bits of dismembered body piled between his stubby front legs. Such sweetness. Human bones made such a delectable pop when properly toasted before enjoying.
    He cocked his head and brought his grinding jaws to an abrupt halt. A disgruntled gurgle bubbled at the back of his throat as he unsheathed a foreclaw and slid it in the side of his steaming mouth. Curling his leathery lips back in a sideways sneer, Arach probed along the third ridge of molars and pried a particularly worrisome bit of rib-bone out from between two stumps of hardest to reach back teeth. Apparently, he’d not scorched this one quite long enough. It still had a bit of fight left to it. The bone shard popped free and ricocheted off the glistening black walls lining the rear of the cave.
    There. Much better. Smacking his slime-covered lips together, Arach pulled them back in a revealing grimace and examined his reflection in the pool of blood surrounding a pile of swollen torsos. Good. It looked as though he’d finally scraped all the bits of man from between his yellowed tushes. After all, one never could be too careful. A left behind piece of rotted meat or sliver of gristle could make for a miserable soreness in one’s mouth.
    Arach scratched his delightfully full belly with a bloodied claw and slithered the cumbersome length of his body to the opening of the cave. Life was indeed quite decent since coming to this reality. He only wished there was a bit more challenge when it came to the hunt for fresh blood. Boredom did tend to grate on his nerves in the most tedious way.
    Arach smacked his lips and sucked at his teeth as he groaned in a gut-stretching breath. He adored the plentiful food of this place and the humans had been quite good at rebuilding even more lovely structures for him to destroy. As a matter of fact, the buildings of this era exploded and