10/21/17 Tunnels of the Golden Guardian Cont.

	The fourth day was quiet. The people of the valley gave a wide birth to the small patch of trees that surrounded the door, half of it now slumped toward the valley floor in a great landslide triggered by the excavation. The landslide left the now open door starkly visible on the hillside, framed in a downward-pointing horseshoe of trees. As the people tried to go about their daily business they shielded their eyes from it as if protecting from the sun on a hot summer day.
	Just before night shifted to morning on the fifth day was when it all changed. A deep, rumbling hum had started in those dark hours; first seeming like a great vibration in the ground but soon reverberating out of every surface in the town. The townspeople woke and flowed into the streets in a wave of frightened whispers. The hum amplified, in a crescendo with the rising sun, working its way into the townsfolk themselves, pulsing through their bones, rising into a great unified chattering of teeth.
	Then silence.
	All eyes were affixed on that door in the hillside, no longer shaded from either that portal or the piercing sun rising behind it. Such care was no longer needed as amoeboid inky shapes crawled and wriggled a great canopy over the valley. The townspeople could barely make out the motion of thousands—perhaps millions—of flapping obsidian wings undulating in the blanket that now covered most of the sky. The morning was darker than any night they had experienced. In the pitch black, eyes drawn towards the new heavens, they were not prepared for the second dark wave. Screaming drew the town’s attention back to earth. Blind in this new night they broke into a great chaos fleeing. The metallic sound of sharpening blades echoed through the streets, punctuated periodically by more screams. People made their way into houses and cellars, hiding under whatever they could grope to in the dark.
	Then silence.
	Light began to come back to the world, working its way first in patches through the inky cover, then bathing the town in its safety. Emory Ross, the town’s mayor, was the first to make his way back into the street. He had several minutes of solitude in his town, walking slowly down its main street, wondering if he now served a ghost town. As others began to emerge from under wagons and doorways he let out a relieved sigh. His first order of business was to find his sheriff, but Richard Boyd was nowhere to be found. He settled for the deputy, Verity Hall. She was competent, but young and still new to the position; not a first choice for disaster relief duties. But, she was here and ready.
	They set about gathering people in the town square. That afternoon their headcount showed that nearly half the population was missing.  With a combined relief and confusion, Emory also noted that although there were plenty of cuts and marks—what looked like claw marks, but some cleaving clear through a support beam on the general store’s awning—there was no blood. No bodies. Someone walking fresh through town might not even know anything had happened that morning.