In the middle of the night, three vehicles, two cars and a van, were traveling along a wide muddy road. It had been raining before, late into the evening, causing the vehicles to drive cautiously. The group spread out, avoiding the pitfall of advancing one at a time, in case they were attacked from the front and one from the rear. They were in the forest, heading towards a secret passage to U’dreg Rookweh. Inside the van, Wazp, Hyssss, Vezpar, and Kobre were trapped within the detainment cubes. The ruags shivered from the cold, the chilled air fogging the containers. A different team of Keepers were responsible for escorting the ruags.

One of the Keepers accidentally left on the cubes intercom feature, which used sound vibrations off the glass in order to communicate to the outside world. Unfortunately, this allowed Wazp to complain the whole way. Hyssss looked like he wanted to strangle him but he had no hands to do it.

“I-z don’t-z want-z to-z go-z to-z the-z Hub-z!” Wazp whined, his tiny mandibles quivering. “Itz zupposed-z to-z be-z really-z cold-z there-z.”

“Itss already cold here!” snapped Hyssss. “Thiss iss all your fault! You just had to keep inssissting on teaching that mynah a lesssson!”

“Itz your-z fault-z!” Wazp buzzed angrily. “You-z juzt-z had-z to-z diztract-z uz with-z your-z oozpad-z: ‘duh-z, do-z I-z ztill-z have-z to-z hold-z him-z?’”

“Sshut it! You’d do the ssame if you were sstuck with the sstuttering fulu!”

“Would-z not-z!”

“Would too!”

“Quiet-sz!” bellowed Vezpar in annoyance.

“Quiet back there!” demanded the brunette Keeper at the front.

THUMP!

Something had landed on the hood of the car. It felt quite strange as if there were many arms grasping his back. The Gardios sensed a large hairy head with eight eyes glaring down at him.

“Eeeeeeaaaaaaargh!!” screamed the car. He swerved out of control until finally crashing into a tree, which uprooted and toppled over. Blood trickled down the Keeper’s forehead as he sat unconscious in the driver’s seat, resting upon the deployed steering wheel airbag.

The Gardios shouted in agony as the car roof was peeled back by a large pair of long furry spider arms. To him, the sensation was like having the flesh ripped off his back. 

“He’ss here!” declared the smirking Kobre, “No one can win againsst the mighty Raknae!

Raknae tossed the roof aside as a gelatinous mass seeped out from underneath the car and passed out from the pain. It was then that the car collapsed to the ground, unable to bear the giant spider’s weight without a Blood merged with it. The rest of the vehicles screeched to a stop by the crash site. Several Keepers and Gardios shouted as they rushed to apprehend Raknae.

Raknae’s plan was simple enough, stop the lead vehicle and the Creed advance would stop, then the last vehicle to hinder the escape.

“One ruag confirmed!” shouted a blonde man, “There may be others lying in wait!”

Sure enough, as soon as he said that, two more attackers struck disguised as unsuspecting rain puddles from the ground, they laid in wait as ambush predators did. They would have been easy to spot were it not dark and if it had not been raining, but this trap was calculated and its effectiveness was maximized.

The blond Keeper was taken out first by a tongue strike from a Frog-Blood. As his Gardios partner, a Lizard-Blood went to assist him, he was then taken out from behind by a pair of sickle like blades from a Prey-Mantis-Blood.

The last two Keeper’s left standing tried to rush the Spider-Blood in an attempt to subdue him, but to their dismay, Raknae leapt towards them, capturing the pair beneath a heavy, silvery web.

“Oosspad!” hissed Hyssss from the flattened car.

“Yeah-z! Oozpad-z!” Wazp chimed in.

“Can you two jusst sshut it?!” Kobre commanded, finally losing his patience.

Raknae approached the flattened vehicle as his subordinates wrapped up the rest of the Creed forces. After hauling out the Detainment Cubes two at a time, Kobre made sure that they were not within earshot of anyone.

“It took you long enough to busst uss out of here!” Kobre began to berate his rescuer.

“If it weren’t for me, you would be stuck frozen and cramped in the ‘Fridge’ right now,” Raknae gave the prisoner a cold and contemptible stare with all eight of his yellow eyes.

Several miles away, a yellow all-terrain vehicle was driving deep in the forest. Tim sat in the driver's seat, fastened in place by holds made from Terranis’ metallic flesh. Terranis swerved between trees, humming operatic tunes through the mounted radio. His partner was fast asleep, too tired to care about his taste in music.