The intrusion of a new party almost doesn't register, so overloaded is Silco with the two tentacled things, one obtruding one jagged, shredding impossibility into the monkey-meat of his thoughts (nononono) and the other sliding around his body like armour, tentacles encircling his arms.

The words jolt him out of it and he, too, stumbles a moment in the sand, a level of clumsiness that he would usually find unacceptable for another human to see. Rights himself, shoulders tense and face a set mask as he follows his would-be rescuer's advice — follows him physically, in fact, across the dune towards the safety of the beachhead and the tumble of rocks there.

The creature of spreading void hadn't yet noticed him, either of them, but while it has barely developed vision more suited to the depths of the sea, when it ululates suddenly it echolocates, and their moving forms read as prey. Its voice splits the ears, a horrible uncanny sound, and begins to move again.

They barely make it in time; once they're on the rocks the change in the environment and the echo confuses its song-call enough that it can't predict their movement, and it doesn't follow when they hustle into a cave, Silco clambering over a wet-black jagged boulder and then, in silent acknowledgement of both his assistance earlier and his cane, offering Viktor a firm hand to help him do the same.