by E. C. Myers
Suddenly a Creep rounded the corner and rushed for Velvet. She was so startled she stepped backward, stumbled over a rock, and went down, barely rolling out of the way of its attack. She scrambled up into a crouch as the two-legged Grimm skidded, turned, and faced her. There was no time for her to pull a weapon. She squinted, estimating the best time to jump to clear it on its next charge.
It barreled toward her, faster than she had expected, faster than it should be possible for something like that to move.
“I hate these things!” Yatsuhashi shouted. Then his greatsword smashed into it, with enough concussive force to not only definitively obliterate it but to make the ground shake and fracture the bedrock in an eight-foot radius around it. The blast sent Velvet tumbling back head over heels. A flying piece of stone or skull smacked her in the forehead. She lay on her back, winded and dazed.
“Velvet!” Yatsuhashi dropped his sword with a heavy clang and rushed to her side.
“I’m okay!” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just …” He frowned. “This is starting to get to me.”
She put a hand on his cheek. “It’s all right.” None of them had had much of a chance to rest, let alone sleep. The constant barrage of Grimm was getting to her, too. She knew Yatsu needed time to re-center himself, to take control of his anxiety.
“It’s not all right. You got hurt,” he said.
“I’m more annoyed that you took my kill. Again,” she teased.
“I wanted to help.”
“I know.”
Yatsuhashi stood and reached down to pull her up.
“Seriously? What was that?” Coco asked. “Velvet, pay more attention!”
“What?” Velvet said, shocked.
“Have you noticed we’re in hostile territory?”
“Of course, but—”
“Then how did you let a Creep sneak up on you like that?”
“Hey, go easy,” Yatsuhashi said. “We’re all right.”
“And you,” Coco went on. “You went a little overboard on that kill. Save your strength. There’s no one to show off for out here.”
“He didn’t do that on purpose,” Velvet said.
“Then he needs to control himself better,” Coco said.
“He knows that.” Velvet’s nostrils flared. “He spends every moment of every day trying to control his strength. He doesn’t need you to tell him what to do. None of us do. Look where it’s gotten us!”
A stunned silence fell on the group.
“I’m your leader,” Coco said.
“Leading means more than bossing us around,” Fox sent. “Or getting on our cases when we fail to live up to your absurdly high expectations.”
“It’s not like you guys have come up with any better ideas,” Coco said.
“How can we when you never even offer us the chance?” Yatsuhashi said. “If you want us to trust you, then you need to trust us.”
Velvet nodded. “We’re a team, aren’t we?”
“Yeah, but I’m responsible for keeping you alive,” Coco said.
“We’re supposed to keep each other alive,” Fox sent. “And we share the re—” He held up a hand. “Shhh. Listen.”
“What is it?” Coco sent back.
Fox started walking down the mountain path, so softly his footsteps didn’t make a sound. Velvet’s rabbit ears twitched and rotated, orienting on the sound. “I heard it, too,” she sent. “Follow us.”
As they went deeper into the passage, the others heard it, too—faint voices, calling for help. The voices led Fox to a narrow crevice in the side of the mountain, maybe one and a half feet across.
“Hello?” Velvet called inside.
There was quiet for a moment, then several voices, accompanied by cheering and sobbing.
“One at a time,” Velvet said. “We can’t hear you.”
“Thank the Brothers that you found us,” a man’s voice called. “We’re trapped underground. Part of the tunnel caved in a minute ago.”
Coco glared at Yatsuhashi. He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
“Are you from Lower Cairn?” Coco asked.
“Yes! The Grimm attacked, destroyed the village. It was so fast.”
“How many are with you?” Velvet asked.
There was no answer.
“Hello?” she called again.
“There’s only six of us.” More sobbing drifted up from the cave.
“Only six.” Coco slumped to the ground beside the crack in the mountain.
“Over two hundred people lived in Lower Cairn,” Velvet said.
“My gods,” Fox sent.
“Maybe there are more survivors …” Yatsu looked away down the mountain path. It was enough of a miracle that they had found these. But that made it even more important to come to them.
“Are you hurt?” Velvet asked.
“My wife sprained her ankle, and my son needs his medicine,” the man called. “And we’re very hungry and thirsty.”
“We’re coming to you,” Velvet said. “We’ll get you out.”
She removed her camera and started to lower herself through the opening.
Coco put a hand on her shoulder. “Hold on. What are you doing?”
“We can’t waste any more time,” Velvet said. “This is what we came here for.”
Coco shook her head. “Velvet. You’re hurt,” she said softly.
“I’m fine.” Velvet briefly closed her eyes as a wave of nausea and dizziness washed over her. “No one else can squeeze through this opening.”
“I can make it wider.” Yatsuhashi reached for his sword.
“You’re more likely to finish the job and bring the tunnel down the rest of the way,” Coco said. “I’m just as small as you, Velvet. Shorter if you don’t count the ears. Maybe a little thinner, too.”
“Hey,” Velvet said.
“Besides, the team will need you and Fox’s hearing to find another entrance and locate me and the survivors. I’ll go. This is all my fault anyway, right?”
“I didn’t mean that,” Velvet said.
“You did, and you were right.” She looked around. “Your Semblance led us right, Fox. The survivors were exactly where you thought they were, only they were under us. I’m sorry for doubting you.”
Fox nodded.
“When we get out of here, we should probably all have a long talk,” Coco said. “We have some things to work out.”
Velvet crawled out of the crevice. Coco peered inside. She took off her sunglasses.
“Sure is dark down there, isn’t it?” She hoped no one heard the trembling in her voice. The others pretended they didn’t. She put her glasses on Velvet. “Hold on to these for me. Don’t scratch them.”
Coco scraped, pushed, and pulled her way through the tiny opening, sucking in her stomach and holding her breath. She slid down a steep slope, sending rocks and pebbles falling with her, and dropped down, much farther than she had expected. She looked up at the sliver of light about ten feet above her head. There was no getting back up there.
“The only way out is through,” she said. Her voice echoed eerily around her.
The light disappeared briefly, and a second later Coco caught her bag. She immediately felt better.
“You all right?” Fox sent.
Coco’s hands shook as she fumbled with her Scroll. She’d had a phobia for dark and enclosed spaces ever since she was young. She and her brothers had been playing hide-and-seek, and Coco had hidden in a small cabinet under the sink. After she had waited a long time for one of them to find her, she tried to crawl out to see what had happened to Mate and Toma—but the door wouldn’t budge. It had gotten stuck, and they didn’t hear her calls for help or the pounding of her bare feet against the door as she tried to get it open. Her father eventually found her after she had begun banging on the pipes under the sink and the sound traveled down to his workshop. Later, she found out her younger brother, Mate, had looked for her in that cabinet, but he
’d given up when he couldn’t open it and assumed she had run off in the middle of the game.
Coco’s Scroll lit up. “Weak signal,” the screen read. She turned on the flashlight function and light flooded the cavern. Now it wasn’t quite so dark, but the space was only a few feet across. She couldn’t tell how far along it went. It was cool and wet down there, and dust drifted down from the ceiling with the occasional pebble dropping and clattering against stone.
“Over here!” the man’s voice called. The echo bounced around her and magnified, making it difficult to pinpoint the source.
“That was a one-way trip,” Coco sent, allowing Fox to broadcast her words to Velvet and Yatsuhashi. “I’ll have to find the survivors and another exit.”
“We’ll look from outside, and make a new opening if we have to,” Fox sent.
“Drop my pack before you go.”
It once again got darker and then Coco’s backpack landed on the rock in front of her. There wasn’t much food and water left, since they’d been here longer than planned, but it was more than the survivors would have eaten in days.
Coco moved down the passage, trying not to think about how much closer the walls were getting the deeper she went. She splashed through shallow pools and water dripped on her face. Water must have carved these caves out over centuries, which meant there must be another opening in the other direction, which let water flow in during heavy rains. Maybe it even opened onto the river.
She found the Lower Cairn survivors in a hollowed-out dead end.
“I’m Coco,” she said. “I’m from Beacon Academy.”
“Oh, you’re a student?” the man asked. “We thought you were a Huntress.”
“I’m a Huntress in training,” Coco said. “But we’re the best at Beacon.”
“Thank you for coming.” He introduced himself as Linus Gray, and the other survivors: his wife, Rhea; his son, Leander; and his three daughters, Phoebe, Helen, and Clio.
One family was all that was left of Lower Cairn, Coco realized. She and CFVY had heard of worse outcomes in their history lessons with Dr. Oobleck: Some of her classmates had been the lone survivors of a Grimm attack. A common motivation for people to train as Huntsmen was for revenge, because they had nothing more to lose, or because they wanted to make sure no one else had to suffer the same fate.
Linus and his family eagerly ate the meager supplies Coco had brought and finished the water in her canteen. Then it was time to move on. As she led them past the crack she’d come through, she kicked herself. She shouldn’t have been using the light the whole time—the screen’s glow was dimming. But she hadn’t wanted to go without it, either, worried about what might be waiting in the darkness. Now she didn’t have a choice; she would have to push on, fears or no fears. Knowing the family of six was depending on her and her team helped keep her moving.
“We found a way in and we’re on our way toward you,” Fox said.
“Great,” Coco said. “My friends are coming,” she told the family.
They sped up, until the battery on her Scroll died. Then they preceded more slowly along the passage. Coco was glad it was dark, because the family couldn’t see how scared she was, stumbling and helpless in the cavern.
“How are you doing?” Fox asked.
“Fine.” Coco was glad she didn’t have to speak aloud; he definitely would have heard her voice shaking. “Lost our light, but there seems to be only one way to go. Shouldn’t we be meeting up soon?”
“Can you try making some noise so we know how far you are?” Yatsuhashi sent.
Coco saw a soft orange light ahead. “Oh, never mind, I see your light,” she said. “Come on,” she called over her shoulder.
They hurried toward the light. The path opened up into a larger cavern. Somewhere, water plopped rhythmically into a pool.
“Light? We don’t have a light,” Fox said. “Yatsu’s following Velvet, and I’m using my Semblance.”
Coco froze. “Go back!” she whispered urgently to the family.
But it was too late. The light above their heads, like a golden lantern, was joined by two glowing red slits in the darkness.
“A Death Stalker!” Coco shouted.
Rhea screamed and her children began crying.
“We hear you,” Fox said. “Did you say ‘Death Stalker’?”
“Yes! Hurry!”
The orange light moved farther away, then it zipped toward Coco. She was mesmerized by it, enough that she didn’t move, until someone pushed her aside and she fell into the cavern wall.
Linus grunted and cursed. The Grimm scorpion’s tail had pierced his leg, pinning him to the ground. Rhea grabbed his arm and pulled as the Death Stalker advanced, claws clacking.
“Damn,” Coco said as she opened up her gun and tracked the Death Stalker. Then she fired.
The gunshots were deafening. The tunnels shook, dirt and stone raining down around them.
“Stop!” Rhea shrieked. “You’ll bring it all down on top of us!”
A rock slab fell a foot in front of Coco. She stopped firing and stumbled backward, coughing. If she had boosted the impact of their bullets, they would probably all be dead. She didn’t even think she’d hit the Death Stalker—she had been firing blindly out of panic.
She blinked her eyes clear of sweat and grit. She couldn’t see the Death Stalker. Her finger trembled on the trigger. She closed her weapon up into a handbag; it was going to have to be hand-to-hand combat.
She fought to control her breathing. Then something flickered in her peripheral vision. She jumped and whirled, bringing her bag around. A claw came at her from the darkness and she froze. At the last second she swung her bag up, whacking the claw out of the way. She spun away from it, losing track of the Death Stalker’s location again. She had to calm down and listen.
“Coco, we’re here,” Fox sent. “Don’t shoot us.”
“Are you okay?” Yatsuhashi asked. “We heard the gunfire.”
The rest of the team had arrived. And they had brought light. Coco flinched as a flashlight illuminated the space—
No, not a flashlight, but Velvet and a hard-light weapon, a copy of Yatsuhashi’s sword. That was better.
The cavern was wider than it had seemed, but there wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver. Fox hacked at the Death Stalker’s legs with his weapons, doing little more than distracting it. Yatsuhashi pulled the stinger out of Linus’s leg, and the man crawled away with his wife’s help. Velvet slashed at the Death Stalker’s tail with her glowing sword. It scraped against the Grimm’s hard exoskeleton, again doing little damage, but getting it to turn toward her.
Fox and Velvet traded off blows, keeping the Death Stalker moving back and forth between them.
“When I fire, run!” Coco said.
“Hold on—” Yatsuhashi said.
She fired, drowning out whatever he was going to say. This time she didn’t hold back, and the Death Stalker crumbled under her explosive rounds.
Unfortunately, so did the tunnel.
“Run!” she said again, unable to hear her own voice over the falling stone and the ringing in her ears.
They ran.
“Careful, it’s slippery up ahead,” Fox said.
Coco ran and slipped up a muddy slope, the stone of the cave giving way to soft earth, bathed in moonlight. She came out on the bank of a stream, just above the rushing water. Velvet was just ahead of her, knee-deep in the middle of the stream with Linus and his family. They were surrounded by Ursai.
Velvet was now brandishing a pair of hard-light daggers.
“Why’d you pick those, Velvet?” Coco muttered. She needed to get better at sizing up her enemies and choosing the best weapon and fighting style to take them down.
An Ursai snapped at Velvet and she smacked it in the side of the head with one dagger, knocking it back. It shook its head, lunged for her again, and she threw the second dagger into its open mouth. The glowing blade protruded from the back of its head. The red faded from it
s eyes and it went down.
Velvet turned and tilted her head at Coco, eyebrows raised.
Another Ursa attacked. Velvet parried its blows with her remaining dagger. Fox sped ahead of Yatsuhashi and Coco and took down an Ursa with a series of jabs and slashes from his arm blades. Yatsuhashi skewered the one beside it and tossed it away from its pack.
The refugees ran through the opening in the ring of Grimm toward Coco.
“What are you doing?” she hollered. She laid down covering fire as three Ursai pursued the family. Linus fell, and Rhea and Leander went back for him. She yelled something at the children and they ran on.
Coco picked one of the Grimm off, then another. But then her gun clicked. She needed to reload.
“No!” she shouted as the third Ursa grabbed Linus in its teeth. The man howled, and then he went silent. Rhea collapsed to her knees, screaming.
The Ursa turned on her, but a glowing hard-light dagger caught it in the back. It spun and faced Velvet as the blade vanished. She fiddled with her camera for a moment before summoning another weapon: a re-creation of Sky Lark’s halberd. She lowered the axe-head and fired rounds at the Ursa, giving Rhea time to run away.
The kids passed Coco as she reloaded and joined Velvet in firing on the Ursa. They huddled behind her, silent and wide-eyed, until their mother joined them.
“Get away from here,” Coco shouted. More Grimm were descending into the valley, boxing in CFVY and the family they were trying to protect.
“We can handle them,” Coco said. Because they had to. Then the ground rumbled behind her.
Coco turned. She looked up. And up. And up. For the first time, she thought she was about to die.
On the other side of the stream, Velvet froze.
“That sounds bad,” Fox said.
“It’s very bad. A Goliath,” Yatsuhashi said.
The shadowy Goliath lumbered up the bank of the river, looming over Coco and the family, who looked tiny in comparison. Its bone-white faceplate was streaked with red, and it had one massive, curved tusk—the other had been broken halfway, but the splintered end was just as sharp and deadly looking.