4. Crisis

A large crab the size of a car rose from the sand. It's colour was a brownish yellow and it seemed to look down on Gareth. There was a cackling sound coming from it mouth as if the crab could already see Gareth becoming food for it.

Gareth finally realised the reason for his bad omen. The creature in front of him was a sandstone crab, it was a crab with a hard carapace akin to sandstone. What's worse was this crab has gotten into a mutualistic partnership with two arid snakes.

In this process the crab would trade it's arms for the two snakes. While the snakes will mutate and have a hard shell underneath their scales. However this change would take a year (500 days) to complete. During that time they would be vulnerable as the crab would remove its shell leaving both parties vulnerable to attack.

Once they finally joined both the crab and snakes would be much stronger and harder to kill.

Gareth had to fight this monstrosity, the only consolation was that was still a young crab, the adults can grow to the size of buses and had two layers of carapace. Gareth could not escape as the young sandstone crab was very fast compared to the sluggish and heavy adults. Also the two snakes would not let him who had almost blinded one of them. He also had to be mindful of his body as it was still injured, to many movements would risk rupturing wounds and tearing muscles.

The snakes did not let Gareth have any time to rest, attacking one after another. Although Gareth would hit the snakes time and time again he was only able to leave shallow dents on the protective shell.

As time went by, Gareth's wounds began to open and blood would flow out. An hour later Gareth had turned into a bloody man.

Gareth knew that his life was slipping away but he didn't know how he would deal with this creature. The crab sensed its prey was slowing down and weakening and began to toy with Gareth. It would deliberately slow down as if tired then when Gareth tried to escape it would scuttle towards him snakes lashing out causing Gareth to waste even more energy.

Half an hour passed, the snakes had many scratches on them and some of them had penetrated the shell, damaging the flesh inside.

Gareth was feeling dizzy and light headed, his head was feeling like it was in a vice. He knew that his brain wasn't getting enough blood he had to end it soon. He was now desperately searching for a way out.

Looking at the crab he knew it was the main body and if he could disable it then he would have a chance to escape. As he scoured across its body for weaknesses he eventually ended up at the eyes, there was hints of mocking in it as if it were saying 'soon your life will be mine' but there was mostly anger towards him.

It was then he had an idea, but it was a very risky one. If he were to fail he would be torn apart in half, however if he were to succeed he would have a chance to escape. Knowing the answer to the question, Gareth dashed straight towards the crab.

The crab didn't know what Gareth was thinking or doing and continued attacking using Its snake arms. Gareth dodged the first snake by hopping over it, the second snake wanted to smack him with its body and Gareth slid underneath it feeling the wind generated from the snakes body as it whistled by.

Now Gareth was in front of the crab, the crab showed a look of disdain towards Gareth, thinking how would this puny creature get passed it's hard shell.

Gareth's answer was to jump onto the legs of the crab, hop onto its head and grab its eyestalks. By the time it realised what he planned on doing Gareth had gotten ahold of them. The snakes also realised that its partner was in danger and tried knocking Gareth off of the crabs eye stalks however Gareth pulling the eye stalks caused pain to them deviating their body allowing Gareth to dodge.

Gareth was slowly pulling the eyes out taking one slow step back at a time. The crab obviously wanted to retract its eyes into its shell but couldn't and it was feeling pain from its eyes getting pulled out. It was shrieking and shaking its body trying to make Gareth let go. Then Gareth lost his grip on the eyes, he cursed his bloody hands.

Like a spring retracting the eyes were quickly heading into the shell. Gareth knew that if he lost those eyes it would be over and quickly grabbed the nearest eye stalk. At the same time the snakes saw an opportunity and lunged at him biting Gareth on the lower and upper body.