The lizard continued to writhe around as David moved the knife around in its brain. He saw it starting to open its mouth, so he made a spilt second decision, choosing to jump onto its mouth hoping his body weight would be enough to keep it closed. His body weight held but now it was moving it head around trying to knock him off. His knife must have severed something because the rest of the lizard's body wasn't moving. He couldn't pull his knife from the skull, it was completely stuck, but as the same time with how much the lizard was moving its head he couldn't let go of his only hand hold either. David had no choice but to try and ride out the thing until it finally died.
5 minutes passed before the lizard like beast's eyes started to close and open slower and slower, its head slowed and stopped moving. David heard the chime of another notification, giving him confirmation he had killed the creature.
'I need to kill all the others before they wake up and realize what is happening. I'll save the parents for last, if it's as big as the nest looks, there is no way I'll be able to kill it or them quietly.'
With the lizard dead, David lifted himself off of its head and quickly looked over his body to see what damage had been done. A minute later, David maneuvered his way around the corpse to where he could get the most leverage on his knife. Placing his foot against the lizard's head he pulled with all his might, and slowly the blade began to free itself from the corpse's skull. There was a hiss as the blade finally came free from the flesh. David quickly ducked worried the noise would wake the other lizards.
After what felt like an hour David was certain that the others hadn't woken up. He began to climb out of the bone nest, when he remembered the notifications. He was uncertain if he had the time to view them now or not, but if he gained enough XP, he might be able to summon a useful tool or if he was lucky, he might be able to increase another stat.
Taking all of his experience, he had so far since awaking here he decided to wait till he was safe before checking the notifications, right now he needed to focus on eliminating as many of these lizards as he could before they awoke. With this in mind he moved to the nest directly opposite to him.
'If I kill the ones closest to the exit first then work my way inwards towards the biggest nest that means I'll have a higher chance of escape if something goes wrong and it will make it harder for them to cut me off.'
He made his way over to the new nest; there were no human bones built into this one at least from what he could tell. Looking over the side he was another identical lizard creature asleep inside. Not even bothering with the lizard's neck, David cautiously made his way towards the location he had stabbed into before. Same as last time he performed multiple practice swings. Once he was sure of his strike, David put as much power and force as he could behind his swing. The blade pierced flesh and bone but this time he had missed the most crucial thing. The blade hadn't separated the spinal cord, meaning the lizard could still move. The lizard's eyes shot open as David started to prep to leap onto the lizard's mouth to keep it from making noise. But as soon as he saw it start to raise itself from the floor of the nest, he knew he was screwed. Letting go of his knife and using his legs to act almost as a seat he reached down into his makeshift tool belt and pulled out the curved centipede mandible. The lizard started to move around, it was in a complete panic, it had been awoken by pain and some creature was preventing it from opening its mouth. It started to trample around inside the nest as David, finally managed to grab the mandible. He stabbed down into the lizard's right eye hoping that it would have some sort of effect. All it did was cause the lizard extreme pain and it started to frantically try to shake David off itself.
David felt he was one of those bull riders at a rodeo, the only thing keeping him from being thrown off the lizard's head was the death grip he had around its mouth with his legs and the curved mandible now lodged into the beats eye socket. In the background he could here the other lizards starting to stir, they were waking up due to the commotion.
'Fuck, fuck, what do I do, what do I do, I need to think, I can't panic. Theres no point in trying to use stealth anymore, all the others are already awake.'
David let go off the curved mandible, to reach for his pistol, but he messed up the timing. The lizard bucked its head at the same moment he let go, causing his upper body to be wrenched to the left. His legs were barely able to keep him on the things face but he now was in a diagonal position to where he originally was. If the lizard tried to use the nest or the cavern wall he would be crushed.
The constant movement made it extremely hard for David to grab his pistol. After what to him felt like 10 minutes he was able to get a firm grasp on the pistol grip. The now extremely violent thrashing made it easy for the pistol to come loose from the makeshift holster David had made for himself. Before he could act on putting down the suffering lizard creature he was on, there was movement in his peripheral vision. Turning his head, he could see a lizard about the same size as the one he was on charging towards him, its mouth opened like a flower petal, exposing its hundreds of sharp serrated teeth.
With no chance of having steady aim, David willed his arm as best as he could to point his pistol in the beast's general direction. He pulled the trigger, hoping that his unsteady aim and constant movement would help him even in the slightest. It didn't the recoil and unstable position caused his sots to completely miss but hit had startled the charging lizard causing it to trip up on itself slowing it down.
Quickly using this opportune moment, David let go of his vice like grip he had on the lizard's mouth and let himself be launch a few feet into the side of the nest. The wind was knocked from his lungs, and he took quick deep inhales as he tried to steady himself. The tumbling lizard slammed into the head of the wounded lizard causing the blade to be forced into its skull followed by the knife ripping into the brain. Both lizards hit the cavern wall, killing the wounded one and dazing the second. In that moment two of the now extremely pissed off lizards descended upon him. He used his chitin covered cast as a sort of shield to try and protect himself. The first lizard went directly for his shielding arm, digging its teeth into the cast as it started shaking its head wildly, hoping to cut and rip David's arm to shreds.
'Ah!!!! fuck it feels like my arm is being ripped from its socket.' David was being tossed around like a ragdoll, with is arm still caught in the lizard's jaws. As he was swinging wildly, he pulled the trigger once more hoping to either wound or scare the lizard so he could get some reprieve. His bullets missed the lizard attacking him but bit into the flesh of the one behind it still charging hoping to rip David apart.
The charging lizard's leg caved in as one of the bullets ripped into its tendon. The lizard let out a howl of pain as it crashed into the ground. Seeing its sibling be wounded by David, the attacking lizard began scampering around the cave while thrashing David around.
David felt his leg crash into the ground followed by his back striking the side of one of the chitin bone nests. The pain made him want to give up and die. His shoulder had long been dislocated, and his arm had completely gone numb since being trapped in the jaws. He couldn't get his pistol into a position to shoot the thrashing lizard, but it gave him an excellent idea.
'If I can direct it by shooting, when it tries to slam me in a certain direction, that could cause it to halt in the trashing, allowing me time to either hit its neck or underbelly. Or if the shots scare it it might cause it to collide with something, stunning it.'
David waited till his flailing arm and pistol were near the head of the lizard. He then tried to time when his pistol would be closest to the head a second time before firing. The shots missed but were close enough to the beast to scare it into flinching away from David. The momentum of the trashing and the flinching caused the lizard's upper body to become off balanced. By the time it was able to correct itself and wind up its head to thrash David once more, it was already too late. David let the recoil of the pistol help him move to pistol up under the neck and throat of the monster before he quickly pulled the trigger again.
Three rounds quickly tore into the skin then muscle and bone as they continued their devastating paths through the lizard. The lizard began to slow as blood poured out from the gap in its jaws where David's arm was trapped. Raspy breathing and what sounded like choking could be heard from the beast as it began to halt and collapse. From David's new position on the ground under the lizard he could see its sibling painfully limping away. Its front left leg seemed to be useless and bleeding.
'I guess I must have hit it, but I need to find some way out of here, I'm getting worried, I've seen the children, but where is their mother? She is going to be pissed when she finds out what I did.'
As if a summoning, the sound of heavy breathing could be heard directly to the right of David's head. The soft blue light emanating from David began to shimmer as the white skin of a lizard began to materialize. It was easily four to five times the size of the lizards David had been fighting and killing. Its piercing orange eyes stared into David as if judging his soul.
The beast looked at David for a long moment, this puny creature which it had hunted and killed a few before, had managed to sneak into its home while it was asleep and attack its young. If not for its children being fighters and not dying without a fight it would have only woken up to find its children dead. The mother was both proud and immensely saddened by the deaths of three of its children and the wounding of the fourth. She wished to make this prey suffer for its brazen attack but also wanted to watch her mate tear the creature apart as it used its still living body as an incubator for their new offspring.
'Ah shit, would have been really nice to know they could camouflage themselves' David thought to himself as he tried to move his legs. David's lower half was trapped under the corpse of the lizard and his pistol was currently being stepped on by a very angry parent. The parent moved its long tail in front of David; she wanted the thing that had killed her offspring to see her stinger before she paralyzed him.
A long stinger the size of a dagger swung in an almost joyful ark in front of David's eyes as he stared in horror. In David's peripheral vision he could see the parent's eyes staring, boring holes into his soul. 'It wants me to see what is about to happen to me. It wants to make me suffer. I should have known that my luck wasn't good enough to get out of here with only a dislocated shoulder, bruises and cuts.'
The stinger moved like lightning, a sharp pain from his back hit David like a truck. He rapidly began to lose feeling in his body and he could no longer move his limbs. He frantically moved his eyes around looking for a way to save himself before he became completely paralyzed. There was only the ruined remains of nests, bones, chitin and lizard corpses. No one was coming to save him, no one even knew he was here. He would suffer, be ripped apart and end up like the skeletons he had seen before.
His eyes began to dry, stuck wide open and vulnerable to the outside. He could still see but couldn't move his eyes or body. The parent removed its stinger from David's back and began to carefully move her now dead child from on top of him. She could see how much of a fight her children had put up and was proud of them. As she moved her son, she could see the holes in his body created by the weird object that the prey had been wielding. She could only equate the thing to the quills that the bats she hunted would shoot from their bodies. Staring down at the weird metallic object she decided that she must sever it from the rest of the limb. without its defensive quill thing the prey would be easy to turn into an incubator.
The lizard parent wrapped he clawed foot around the pistol before ripping it from David's hand, sending it clattering into the far wall. David in his paralyzed state watched as his only hope, his only salvation was hurled away. He felt the helplessness, despair and pity creep in. He wanted to give up, he wanted the nightmare to end. He wanted to wake up in his bed as if the month he had spent in this horrific cave system was all just a dream.
The parent wrapped her tail around David's arm as she dragged him from the rubble and corpses towards the largest nest. Once David's vison had made it past the border of the nest, he was witness to a truly frightening sight. The remains of bats, centipedes and some weird molelike creature were all strung up like on drying racks. A grayish blue substance formed into pillars, and the equivalent of chains held the bodies in place. Each of the corpses was hollow with several large holes bored into them.
The lizard parent stopped dragging David once it had reached the racks of bodies. It lowered its weight onto its back two lags as it wrapped its front two around either of David's arms. Lifting David's paralyzed body off the ground effortlessly, it proceeded to open its mouth like a flower. Steaming grayish blue jelly poured from the mouth of the parent over David's right forearm and wrist. The jelly substance began to pool on the ground and harden before slowly rising as more jelly poured down. After 5 minutes a pillar of hardened jelly encased David's forearm. There was no way he would be able to free himself or break the pillar without some sort of help. The parent then moved its head over to were David's left arm hung in its now ruined cast, before proceeding to build a second pillar.
Still paralyzed David hung limply from the two pillars as the parent let go of him and began to leave. Before she left Davids field of view, she looked back into his eyes one last time. Her eyes met his and all he could see was pain and rage. She moved head and began to attend to the corpses of her offspring and the one wounded surviving child she had left now.