Chapter Forty Four

The darkness of the cave swallowed them whole, and the only sign was a change from cold, fresh air, to stagnant air which... honestly, was equally as cold. She could hear water trickling down the walls, and the low, pulsing breaths of the creature hauling them along, one under each arm, packs and all. Monstrously strong... Carza's mind was racing, and one thought that passed through the general brainstorm was: 'why haven't we heard of these things before?' Legitimately, why had these creatures remained in the mountains, why had they insisted on staying here instead of invading the rest of the lands surrounding them. Did they build that statue? Why? What was their culture like, what were they? The world was a vast, strange place, and Carza had barely any understanding of its furthest reaches - no-one did, really. Exploration was difficult, getting somewhere was hard enough, getting back was pulling off two miracles in quick succession. How long had they been up here? And above all... what was this one going to do to them? She'd marked the two with some kind of scent, did that mark them out as hers? And if so, what did that mean? Were they going to die?

Idiotic question.

Yes, they were going to die. They were in a dark cave with a creature kin to the one who'd ripped Anthan in half. His blood hadn't even dried on her face yet, it was still mostly liquid, staining her skin, staining her collar, soaking into the fabric of her coat... they were going to die here. Both of them. The question was, how was it going to happen, and how long would it last. Would they be cut apart and eaten? Would they be boiled in a pot? Would they be tortured for fun? Forced to fight something? The tunnels offered no answer - just more damp, stagnant darkness, and the sound of an excited creature bounding through them, loping like an enormous animal. Sometimes, the creature's hair brushed against Carza, and she felt... she felt like her skin was about to break. Like being brushed with a strand of terrifyingly thin wire. Could probably be used as an effective garotte... just another weapon. Brutalise with their fists, ambush with their capacity to see in the dark, mark and track people with their scent, or strangle with their razor-sharp hair. Hull grunted as they leapt over a small incline, and she was reassured to hear him alive.

And then...

Freedom.

For a second.

And they were being thrown through the air, tumbling madly, landing on the hard, soaked ground - the stone felt smooth, uncannily so, like something had bored deliberately through it and smoothed out the sides as it went. The grooves were eerily organic, and she almost imagined she could feel the contours of some vast thing moving through the earth - the folds in its skin, the sculpture of its muscles, the imprint of its blood vessels... just an illusion. Just channels of water, cold as ice, seeping through her clothes... and the rock still had some sharpness to it. Enough to scrape her palms. The creature loomed above them, huge torso rising and falling with eager hunger. Hull was next to her, at least. Both sprawled. Both helpless. Both of them weak, and completely alone. Bowels of the mountain, in a mutant-carved tunnel, with something they didn't think existed standing above them with her four arms flexing excitedly, her teeth bared in a rictus of savage enjoyment, and her tusks gleaming in... in the light. The light? What light? Carza glanced around quickly, feeling that... oh.

How... considerate.

There was a tiny channel in the rock, a crack leading directly to the surface. And through it, the moonlight faintly shone. Barely enough light to see her own hands, but these things... their skin was almost totally reflective, and the light gleamed from it, bright enough to diffuse over the rest of the cave. The Female towered above them, and her tusks seemed to gleam with anticipation. She could see their carvings, and clearly - figures marching, bearing spears and bows, arrayed against monstrously-sized... things that she struggled to describe. Far too many limbs. Far too many eyes. Each one, utterly unique. Mutants, had to be. And... depicted with lifelike accuracy, every detail perfectly engraved into the ivory of the tusk. A biography? Or just... a story, with very, very accurate inspirations? Carza's heart was beating hard enough to almost deafen her, and she clutched for Hull, grabbing his upper arm - he was moving, he was alive, he hadn't knocked himself unconscious. She stared up at the thing...

And the thing stared back.

Then, with a curious sniff, it approached. Reached out... and lifted Carza into the air by the scruff of her neck. Carza felt like her spine was about to pop out of position, being lifted this way was neither natural nor pleasant... and it made her feel utterly, painfully helpless. No way of fighting back, all she could do was stare in horror as the creature brought her closer... and sniffed. Carza flinched backwards... and the four gleaming black eyes of the creature twinkled with interest. A few snapped words... and she was dropped back to the ground. And a moment later, the creature was gone, stalking back down the long stone corridors of the tunnel... but not before heaving an enormous stone over the entrance.

Darkness, save for the light of the moon, flooded in once more.

Carza took in a deep, shuddering breath, slowly starting to feel the sting of her cut cheek, the myriad pricks from flying debris during the explosion... and the grazes she'd acquired from this tunnel alone. Even the bruises from the scarf were starting to throb angrily now. All the adrenaline was fading, replaced instead with cold, bitter reality. And cold was the correct word - the tunnel was damn near frigid, the water which trickled in was melting snow, and it seemed to have barely warmed at all. Seemed a miracle it wasn't freezing all over again. And in the dark, with her eyes deprived of stimuli and her other senses struggling to compensate, the chill sent icy needles through her flesh. She curled up... and kept breathing. Faster, now. Her nerves were spiking. Her panic was rising. Trapped. Alone. Hull was here, yes, but... but the idea of being taken prisoner was almost worse than anything else.

Because she couldn't see a way out of this one.

The Sleepless had been explicit. They wanted a ransom, that was it. The motive was muddled by others - revenge against certain strains of thought, a desire to make her spread their beliefs back home - but they were all framed by the simple desire for money. The mutant wanted to eat. And these things... they wanted to have fun. She could tell. Maybe they wanted to cook and eat them, maybe that was just an idea spawned from too many bad adventure novels, or maybe they did just want to prod them with sticks and laugh as they flinched. Like playing with captive dogs, baiting them into a frenzy and standing back to watch the sparks. Maybe they hoped they'd fight and kill each other. Nightmarish visions kept flashing through her mind - being thrown into a pit with Hull, and instructed to kill or be killed. Being sent to fight some huge beast... or more accurately, to be torn apart for the entertainment of those surrounding them. Or simply used as a dog to kick around, something weak and feeble that yelped pleasingly when it was struck. Or maybe they just wanted to patch their wounds and get into a better mood before they enjoyed their prey.

Hull's arm wrapped around her shoulders, and a core of tension unwound in her stomach... and she wept. Not for long. Too tired. Too... profoundly done with everything.

"Hey, we're still alive, aren't we?"

Hull's voice was reassuring, but... she found it hard to cheer up.

"Not for long."

"Still. We-"

"Could've been ripped in half. Yes. I know."

"...I was going to say that 'we can come up with a great deal in the time we have left'. But yes, that too."

Hull shuddered, and stood up slowly, cracking his back as he went. Carza reluctantly uncurled herself, trying to shake some life back into her frigid limbs. It seemed a cruel miracle that they'd survived this long. Four employees who were significantly more skilled than both of them - three veterans of various armies, and someone who'd cut her teeth wandering the continent in a dozen professions over almost a decade. People with histories to them, whole potential leads that could've been explored... Cam, she knew nothing about. Egg, barely anything more than Cam. Anthan, scraps, but never anything cohesive, a life made up of scattered anecdotes. And Lirana... Lirana was the exception. Her biography bore the weight of the others, the single light amidst the fog of uncertainty that made up her knowledge of the rest. They were people, they had entire lives behind and ahead of them, things they could still do, stories they could still tell. Cam was cooling in a Krodaw morgue. Egg was buried in a grave marked with a single rifle. Lirana was mutated and possibly dead. And Anthan had been torn in half in a Founder-forsaken mountain pass, trying to run away from something that had captured the only two survivors - a pair of soft scholars who...

Why had they lived while the others died?

Why them?

They weren't the most talented, they weren't the most powerful, and while they had certificates of intelligence in the form of their degrees, the others had them beaten in terms of practical knowledge, general common sense, all the things which you actually needed to survive. And here they were, alive. She stumbled to her feet, her pack weighing... oh. Oh. Still had her pack. She still...

No, no, they'd have taken it, surely...

Her gun.

It was still here. She'd holstered it. And the Female hadn't taken it away. Maybe she hadn't seen... no, more likely she didn't know what it was. For all she knew, she'd been marked with a scent because she'd crossed into someone else's territory. Evaded the hunting party for long enough to leave their piece of earth, and cross into... hers. And now here she was, marked, imprisoned, and maybe being sold back to the first group. No wonder the Female had been grinning. No, no, just a theory. But if it was true, then she might not've seen the thing producing the gunshots. And if she did, she might've only seen the rifles. The point was, Carza still had a weapon. With shaking hands, she checked it by the light of the moon. Intact. Wet, yes, but... intact. Starting to suffer from the long journey... but it was working, when she pulled the trigger she heard a satisfying click. Ammunition, ammunition... still had her pack on her back, she could check, and... yes. A few bullets, easy enough to find, even if she was constantly glancing over her shoulder at the cave entrance, where a huge boulder blocked all passage. Hull watched her activities with careful consideration...

"If we're going to go that way, we'll need to be precise."

"I can't see any other way out."

"...fair. Sorry I couldn't shoot her in time."

"Not your fault, she was fast, we were still recovering from the explosion."

She clicked the gun shut.

"...but you're right. I need to be precise with this."

Kill the Female. Escape. Run into the mountain pass. Into the steppe. If she lived, she lived. If she died, she died. But she couldn't just lie down and accept what was coming her way when four people had died getting her here, and there was at least one more person she could save from that same fate. Then, then she could have her mental breakdown, then she could be consumed by guilt and regret and doubt and everything else. Only then. But for now, the cold was focusing her. Stopping her from simply... failing. Needed to keep moving. If she kept moving, she wasn't going to completely implode. Maybe. Hopefully. Founder, she hoped she wouldn't implode before this was over... then she just had... multiple years of expeditionary work, and... no, no, focus on that later. Survive first. Her mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour, faster than any train in the known world, hurtling to conclusion after conclusion. Plan after plan. Carza tried to fill her voice with determination, a sentiment that didn't quite reach her eyes. Every time she thought about fighting, she thought about Anthan ripped in half, Egg snatched away, Cam dead on a morgue table. And when she thought about that... she almost felt paralysed again. Wanted to curl up. They were stronger than her, and they'd died to lesser things than a single target coming through a single entrance.

"We need to... to plan an ambush, then."

Hull nodded, and the hollowness in his eyes showed that he was barely holding together too. Putting on a brave face. For her sake? For his own? Hard to tell. Probably both. Founder, stop thinking, just... focus on the task at hand. Carza stepped forward, intending to examine their prison... and promptly stumbled. Badly. Fell to one knee, and groaned in pain. She was still wobbly. Just.. finding it hard to coordinate herself, like she was drunk in her body and not in her mind. Felt unfair, that. Oh, boo hoo, she felt a bit wobbly, Anthan had been torn in half in front of her face, and she was still soaked in his blood. If she had been eating anything but tiny scraps of trail mix since they entered the mountains, she might've thrown up. As it was, she just... groaned again. Hull staggered over, looking a little wobbly himself. Not fair, they were both alive, they both had limbs. Why was she being so... pathetic? He helped her up to her feet, and the two leant against one another, barely able to operate but... at least they were upright. At least they could move.

"Carza, could you... put the gun away?"

What? Oh. Right. Yes. Her... finger was on the trigger, she'd just loaded it... right, ought to... to put it out of her hands before she blew half her foot off. Hands were still shaking, sadly. All the focus in the world could only stop it for so long. Maybe Hull ought to fire. He wasn't a frail thing, he had some mass on him. The two staggered around drunkenly, trying to get their bearings...

Cave.

It was a cave. And for a second, Carza thought that was where her assessment stopped. Smooth-bored in the ground, so there weren't even any stalactites, stalagmites... just a perfect circle, ridged and smooth, damp to the point of being hazardous. If they went up too far, they'd run into a boulder which sealed off the entrance - and Carza could already tell that they wouldn't be able to haul it out of the way. Not in a hundred years. But down... down, the tunnel simply ceased. At least, that's what she thought. The tunnel extended to a kind of... grotto, again, smoothly carved and ridged with oddly organic patterns. Some more flaws in the rock opened them up to the outside world, which was really the only thing keeping them going. The air, and the light. Without the former, they'd be dead. Without the latter, they might as well be dead. The tunnel didn't stop, exactly. It did go down... and down... and down... but it was sharp. A well, dead in the centre of the grotto. Leading deep into the earth. Anything could be in there. And Carza had no idea how deep it went. If it stopped at all. If whatever made the tunnel was still down there, at the bottom of that pitch-black well. She had a few matches left, enough for some sharper light... fifteen matches. A match could last for a few seconds. Maybe... ten, twelve. She wasn't going to count precisely, too uncertain to rely on her own ability to do so. Fiften matches, twelve seconds at best.. the matchbox cover was still mostly dry, she could burn that too, might give her half a minute or so. One hundred eighty seconds... then another thirty, thirty five.. two hundred and twenty. Almost four minutes. Almost. Not quite.

They had four minutes of proper light, if they were careful. If she was willing to let her fingers blister and char, to extract the last bit of flame from the sticks. Better than the moonlight, which was slowly shifting away, floating apathetically across the sky and away from their narrow holes. Darkness followed in its wake. Astronomers though the stars were other suns, distant and cold. And dim. Too dim for them... just little pinpricks which almost mocked them. Carza lit the first match above the pit, and she let it burn in her fingertips for only a moment, welcoming the heat... and then she cast it into the bottomless dark.

She didn't see it hit the bottom.

Probably blew out along the way.

Landed in water, possibly.

Or it was still going. Twelve seconds of light... and no bottom to the pit found in any of them.

No way out through there... but maybe a weapon. If they could get the body of the Female in there, or maybe they could use the grotto as a kind of... game of keep-away. Stay on the other side of the pit, and the Female wouldn't be able to reach them. Too wide for her to reach. Idiotic, but it might buy them a few more seconds of life if they were so inclined to be that desperate. Or... a way to avoid a worse fate. Jump down. If they were lucky, they'd die on striking the bottom. If they were unlucky, they'd be broken, but they'd live for a few excruciating minutes... hours... days. The idea of living for several days, passing in and out of consciousness, dying from her injuries, from starvation, all the while her broken body screamed at her in rebuke... that held her back from the idea. She hadn't been bold enough to blow her brains out when the Sleepless had caught her, and she wasn't bold enough to jump into the pit to spite her captors. For all she knew, that was the point - down the pit was something worse, or at least, more entertaining for the glass-skinned creatures. The two of them hobbled around the pit, just... trying to find something. An alcove to hide in. Maybe. Another entrance which the Female could come through.

No light.

She ran her hands over the rock, ignoring the sting of her bruised, battered palms brushing against sharp spurs of stone... if there was a gap, this should work. If she found nothing, she'd waste matches to check if anything had been missed. But no point wasting them unless she had to. Hull helped her walk, and ran his own hands over the stone. They were blind rats in a cage, struggling to find any way out. If any of those things were watching, somehow, they'd be having a fantastic time. Laughing their heads off at the sight of them fumbling around, testing their cage... right before they got started with whatever they found funniest. Her eyebrows furrowed abruptly. She felt something on the walls, something which felt... unlike anything else.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Hull, could you feel this?"

His hands shifted, and for a second their hands touched. Carza was too exhausted to mind, or even think about it for longer than a second. Less than an hour of chaos, and she was already prepared to fall asleep for a long, long time. The day of walking had contributed, but really... she didn't have the stomach for this sort of thing. Just lacked the spark which made someone willing to engage in adrenaline-pulsing action day after day after day. Hull checked the wall... and hummed.

"Definitely different."

"Worth wasting a match?"

"How many left?"

"Fourteen."

"...go ahead."

A crack as the glass head of the match broke, and flame flooded her vision, stinging her eyes with the sudden brightness. The wall was... oh, Founder. It was carved. This wasn't just a cage, this felt closer to a den, or a temple, or something important. Each and every segment of the wall in this grotto was carved exquisitely and deeply, everything embedded deep in the rock to resist erosion. And based on the gradients in stone... they were very regularly removed. She thought she might recognise... no. No, this was a new style, no relation to the Yasa's long heads or anything else. Completely new... and unfathomably old. It was hard to describe, but... it was abstract. Felt modern, despite its antiquity. Nothing was ever represented clearly, it had to be dissolved down to component shapes and angles. She saw something that might be a wolf, but... it was just a cloud of teeth, claws, a snapping head with jaws that flexed far too wide, with a tongue curled into a perfect spiral. Geometrically perfect, despite the chaos - perfect symmetry, perfect spatial harmony, even the spiral was done using a golden ratio which was inherently satisfying to look at. She saw... more wolves, something that looked like a laughing-dog, a bear or two... and in the centre of this bizarre scramble of animals and animal features, there was one of the creatures.

One of the things which had taken them hostage. Male, definitely - it was naked, not a scrap of fur or robes. And unlike the rest of the figures, it was done in lifelike detail, not dissolved down to its basic components. Head pointing upwards, and tusks forming a perfect oval. Arms stretched out in four directions, perfectly symmetrical and proportioned. Fingers splayed, fingers picked out with exquisite detail...

And it was trampling on the body of another abstract mass of limbs and teeth. What she could see of the mouth was somewhat wolf-like, but not... quite. Ragged streamers of ambiguous material wafted from the corpse, and Carza wondered if it was meant to represent a mutant. If so... it was huge. Stretching around the entire perimeter of the room, forming the base for the entire mural. A bed of limbs and snapping jaws, a shapeless-yet-deadly mass.

Before she knew it, she'd wasted another two matches. She had to look at this closer, it was... it was beautiful. She had to admit it. Even now, terrified and half-dead, she couldn't help but appreciate the sheer love of symmetry, of proportion and scale, of style. Everything was just...

It was beautiful, and yet it seemed to represent something to her.

The creature was standing atop a mutant. But the mutant was disconnected from the animals above. Everything but the creature was abstract and scattered. Maybe a stylistic choice... but she was an anthropologist, and she wondered if this represented some basic notion. The creatures were perfect, and could be represented perfectly. But animals? Lesser things? Dissolved. Rendered into artistic pieces, the idea was sufficient. They didn't deserve perfect depiction. Anthropologically, she knew she should be more... broad. Maybe they were superstitious about depicting things, some cultures were nervous about that sort of stuff - thought that the images would come to life, or had power to them which was denied by dissolving them down or not depicting them at all. Sometimes they had strict taboos... but she wasn't interested in being charitable.

She knew she should record this.

But instead, she let the match burn down, and dismissively threw it aside to drown in a puddle of crystal-clear water. Gleamed silver in the dim, dim light of the moon, now barely visible.

Focus. Her voice was quiet, but shockingly loud in the confined space, with nothing to break the silence but the constant drip-drip-drip of water into the pit, and the rattle of their feet on the hard stone.

"...no alcoves. Nowhere to hide."

Hull pursed his lips. She could sense him doing it, at least.

"Could hide by the side of the tunnel into the grotto."

She tried this, fitting herself... no, no, there wasn't enough room for it, and the angle was wrong. Too gradual and smooth. No hard edges to hide around, and... she didn't trust herself to stand too far away. Her aim would suffer. She'd be shooting in near-darkness, and...

Ideas.

"Maybe... I could make another explosive. We unscrew some more bullets, empty them into a bottle, throw it with a rag... difficult, but workable."

Hull hummed.

"Could work. Could bring the roof down on us."

"Could also be our only option if there's more than one."

A distinct possibility. Maybe the Female was bringing back her companions, or the hunting party, or... just anyone. One of these things was bad enough, two would be nearly unmanageable, three would be impossible if they didn't use an explosive. No guarantee that it'd even work, honestly. No guarantee at all. She tried to think... right, the explosives from before hadn't even killed any, not that she'd seen. Just... either distracted them or brought down a mass of precarious boulders. In here, the only precarious thing would be the roof, and if that went down... well, they might need to jump down the pit just to avoid the misery of dying by starvation. The drip-drip-drip of water almost consoled her - die of starvation only. No worrying about dehydration, at least. So... maybe. She checked her ammunition, and frowned.

Not many left.

And she was using small bullets. A hesitant unscrewing revealed a depressingly small amount of powder. Last time she'd been using rifle bullets, much larger. Wait.

"Hull-"

She didn't even manage to finish before a small box of gleaming bullets was placed before her.

She grinned.

"Thanks."

"No issue. Want me to help?"

"No, just... watch the door. Use the pistol. Please."

He nodded hesitantly. And she set to work, both hands free. By the light of the moon, she assembled another explosive with black powder, pouring it into... hm. A glass bottle would probably be best, but... maybe use a canteen? Her thinnest canteen, of course. That way, she could maybe use the metal as shrapnel, compared to glass which would just... well, shatter. The work helped soothe her... at least for a little while. The shaking was constant, but the pace was variable. Sometimes she was shaking like a leaf, sometimes she was just twitching every so often, sometimes she had to put her work down and take deep breaths to avoid making a stupid mistake while her hands went through violent spasm after violent spasm.

No idea how long was passing. All she had was the moon, and... it was fading away. But the night was still here, and she doubted the sun would rise before this was over.

The bomb was ready. Paper stuffed into the mouth of the flask. A match, ready to light it and throw. A last-ditch effort, nothing more. Carza huddled up next to Hull for warmth, and he wrapped an arm around her, holding her close. The two of them were wearing their heaviest coats, but Carza missed her scarf - her mouth felt exposed, her neck too. Two dumb scholars, wearing... tweed coats and multiple layers. After a few minutes of this, they even broke out their academic robes, just to use as blankets. Barely aware why they packed them to begin with... no, wait, she knew why. For 'official occasions'. Right. All one of them. But the robes had stuck in their luggage, never deposited in the mission. They'd earned them. And letting them go, it just felt... well, wrong. So now they were serving as blankets, wrapped around their hands, their necks... anything that the coats didn't cover.

She wanted to apologise to Hull for dragging him out here.

And she knew that Hull probably wanted to do the same.

But both were silent. They knew each other too well for this. They knew the sentiments, expressing them would be... well, patronising to their friendship.

"...Hull?"

"Hm?"

"...thank you. For... being my friend."

Hull blinked.

"...quite alright. Thanks for being friends with a failure."

"Likewise."

They nestled closer together. And waited. An end was coming, in one shape or another, the best they could do was make ready for it and hope for the best. Or a swift death. Really, they were hoping against things. They could enumerate all their worst fates, and they could pray against them. Hoping for something better... that was harder. Fear was easier than hope, even if it made her hands shake. Carza looked up and saw Hull's face shining a little in the dimmest shade of moonlight imaginable - the very last of it, before it passed completely out of sight. And quietly, she hugged him closer.

In silence, they endured.

Hull pressed the gun into her hands, and her eyes widened.

"No, you should-"

"No. You."

"...my hands are shaking. I can't aim."

"Aim for the head, for the groin, for anything vulnerable and incapacitating. Legs, even. This close, you should be alright."

"...you can aim better than I can."

"Just take it. Trust me."

He fell silent.

And Carza felt the gnawing in her stomach picking up. Anticipating something. She wasn't sure what, but... she felt caged, and the gnawing was desperate for freedom. Even if freedom meant the snow, meant the mountains, meant uncertainty and possible doom... better than anything else. Presumably.

Hours passed.

And just as she was about to fall asleep...

She heard the boulder being shoved aside.

* * *

No moon. Darkness, total and utter. She held the bomb close to her chest, and staggered to her feet. Hull took the bomb from her unresisting hands, saying she'd need both to fire the gun. No idea why he was doing this, but... no, he'd never used her pistol, maybe he was just unused to the weight. She'd never really seen him hit anything either, maybe his problems were worse than her own. Either way... the time had come. The boulder was being shoved aside, and she heard... humming. The creature was humming a strange tune to itself. That was what unnerved her, the signs of civilisation. The carvings on the walls. The use of language. The wearing of furs. And now... humming. Music. Did they use music to tell stories? Or... no, just... focus. She had no other chance here. And the Female had been just as crude as the others, shoving them in a damp prison, sniffing her like she was a choice piece of meat. The gnawing in her stomach insisted that she do anything to escape, and if the Female was here to kill them, wound them, take them away... she might never get another chance. It was a gamble, but when she remembered the Sleepless, the mutant in the forest...

You just couldn't reason with some people. With some things. A mutant was predictable... until it wasn't. The Sleepless were mostly rational... until they chose not to be, or their mutations worsened to the point of mental degeneration. Then... then they were wild, and no amount of ransom would save her life.

Twice bitten.

Three times shy.

No games.

Hull gripped the bomb tightly... and braced the match. Two matches. One for the bomb. The other for Carza. Shatter the glass against the wall, ignite, get enough light... maybe stun the creature, then blast it in the face. If it was still alive, fire again. Again. Again. She had six bullets, enough to kill the Female beyond a shadow of a doubt if she landed all of them. Even if it didn't kill, it would wound.

She was stumping down the hall now, certain and unwavering. Seeing in the dark. The two of them were hiding as far as they could from the entrance while remaining in range. The plan was simple - the match would stun, and illuminate. Hull had a few matches ready in his pocket as well, he'd throw them like jacks, create as much light as possible. Carza had come up with the idea of coating the glass heads in black powder. Spit as adhesive. Dangerous, yes, but it'd be loud and stunning, and that was the point. Throw them, create a constellation of lights, then run and fire. Hull was larger, so... he could probably take up more space, more attention for a half-blind and panicked creature.

Maybe.

The Female was coming.

She entered the room tusk-first, shining like a pair of monstrously huge cutlasses. Her four black eyes were gleaming eagerly. Hungry. She was hungry, ravenous, and-

She shouldn't have locked them up. Should've killed them on sight.

There was no signal.

Hull hurled the matches over the floor. Light. Sound. Smoke. Everything she wanted. Carza had her eyes screwed shut, but the creature didn't. She screched in pain, a bellow that shook the walls, clutching at all four of her eyes... Carza raised the gun, her hands shaking, and tried to fire.

But the creature was already moving.

Head lowered.

Charging unerringly.

Used to operating in the dark.

Not used to operating blind.

But she was improvising.

Her tusks swept from side to side, scything through the air, while her larger arms clutched at air. Carza caught the edge of her hand, and was flung unceremoniously against a wall, almost dropping the gun. The creature roared in happiness, and immediately jumped in Carza's direction, springing like some enormous wildcat. Her teeth were bared, and flecked with meat from her last meal. Carza whimpered... and tried to raise the gun again. Too slow. And the creature was too fast, it was-

Hull jumped onto its back, and she saw the gleam of his dinner knife. Still flecked with his last meal. He dug around with it, trying to find the thing's eyes... but she could see his hands running red with blood from its hair, wiry and razor-sharp. He was bellowing at the top of his lungs, his face was purple with fury, and the Female was...

Carza's heart dropped.

No, no, no...

The creature reacted calmly. Her two smaller arms rotated unnaturally far, clutching at Hull, digging claws into his side. She saw dark blood welling from the wounds they left. The creature was already partially blind, it could work with this. Carza raised her gun... and fired. For once, she hit something.

Sound and light filled the grotto once more.

The creature howled as its ear was torn free. A spray of livid red blood. A fragment of flesh, glittering like crystal, landed wetly in one of the many rivulets. Blood flowing eagerly into the pit, like the earth itself was dining well tonight.

But the Female wasn't done. It moved quickly, reducing its profile, adapting quickly. It knew the gun now. She hadn't killed it. Only hurt it. And now it was angry. With a heave, Hull was sent flying head over heels, something cracking as he hit the floor. Carza scrambled to help him... but the creature was already moving. Already charging. Tusks ready to gore. Carza tried to aim, while shoving Hull out of the way.

He murmured something.

She couldn't hear. Her heart was racing too much.

And then he turned...

And launched himself onto the creature's face with furious speed.

Her heart froze as she saw a tusk scraping up against his ribs, carving deep...

Her gun kicked in her hands, almost dislocating her wrists. But the bullet flew true. The creature reeled backwards, and the tusk was gone from Hull. A flash of red blood across the Female's head, she'd grazed it. Getting closer. Two bullets done. Four remaining.

She almost imagined that the six bullets were like her and her companions.

One bullet expended early, leaving a superficial and painful wound. Cam.

One bullet leaving a deep score along its skull, wounding it properly... but not quite killing it. Egg.

And two bullets left behind for her and Hull if they were trapped again, or wounded too badly to recover.

The Female was working fast. No time for playing, she knew that in this environment, she could die to a bullet. Outside, there was room to manoeuvre. She was tough, tough enough to resist wounds that would knock a human unconscious... or kill them on the spot. But a bullet in the brain would kill her as sure as it'd kill anyone else. Couldn't play it safe here, couldn't run. Beetle-black eyes shone with furious light... and the only light illuminating the rest of the creature was from the burning stubs of the matches, scattered in little glittering fragments.

Hull heaved himself from the ground. Hands empty. Knife knocked away into the pit during his last clash.

Unarmed.

Crud.

He still had the bomb, at least. The creature didn't bother roaring. Those eyes were intelligent, and they directed the Female to stay low, and to move quickly. It lunged around the grotto, kicking away from the walls in a single furious bound, trying to crush them. Carza scrambled out of the way, knees knocking in terrified motions. Come on, come on...

She fired.

Another spark of light in the gloomy grotto.

And the creature staggered back for a second, hesitating...

A bullet in the neck. One for Lirana. Lirana's death made her speak more than she'd ever done before, speaking nothing but the truth for her biography. And now her bullet had silenced this thing. Carza found her lips curling up into a panicked grin, muscles just trying to do anything, even if they had nothing to contribute. Risus sardonicus, a corpse leer.

She took another shot.

The creature went limp.

She thought she'd done it, but...

It'd learned that flexing made it worse.

So it'd gone loose. Fallen uncontrollably, rolling as it hit the floor.

She'd sliced along its side. For Anthan, it was anticlimactic, but... appropriate. Sudden. Dispiriting. And related to the torso. A wound that would stick with the creature until it died, yes, with a gleaming silver scar... but not a killing blow. Carza stepped backwards shakily... but the creature was already moving again.

Rolled.

Came to its feet.

Swept through the air with a huge arm.

Too close.

Carza felt it raking along her chest, tearing easily through her coat, her shirt... piercing her flesh. Cuts from her breastbone to the base of her neck.

A gasp as her blood was spilled. Numbness already spreading... was she dying, or was that just from the cold?

The creature lunged, tusks gleaming. Ready to finish her off.

Carza was helpless. Too close. And too slow. But the gnawing... the gnawing demanded she do something, no matter what. The same instinct that was making her grin, just the urge to act. Her gun pointed, faster than she thought possible, and fired...

One bullet for Carza.

A complete miss.

Appropriate.

The Female lunged...

And someone moved.

Carza's eyes widened.

And Hull interrupted the tusks with his body. His feet dug into the ground, anchoring himself... the creature stumbled. It'd expected a casual death, but... but Hull was quite alive. Carza couldn't even hear herself screaming. She saw the tusks piercing through his coat, his shirt, his chest... his back. Two pale crescents emerging, blood-slicked, from the flesh of his back. The creature flailed. Immobilised, and unexpectedly. Hadn't seen this coming. Didn't think of one of them sacrificing it all for the other. Tusks were keeping it in one place... its head in one place. It was surprised, it couldn't move, and everything was happening with painful slowness. She saw the first droplets of blood from his back. And she saw the creature trying to remove itself. Saw Hull gripping the creature by the side of its heads, dragging it closer... keeping it in one place.

One bullet.

One for Hull.

Carza fired.

And the creature's growls were silenced.

A bloody furrow through its skull.

She could see its brain, grey and quivering. A shivering, liquid mass... didn't even bleed. Couldn't. Just shook as the host died, twitching. Crystal face spasming frantically, mouth opening and closing dumbly, drool pooling in the corner of its lips...

It slumped... and Carza rushed, smashing at the face with the butt of her pistol. Hadn't stopped screaming yet. Hated it. Hated that enormous face, hated the razor-thin hair, hated the beetle-black eyes, hated the way it... it had lived in the mountains, doing nothing, and it had the gall, it dared to... to...

It slid free wetly, collapsing with a crash. All thoughts ceased. It was still alive, in a way. The heart still beat. The lungs were still struggling. But all higher thoughts were gone. All desire to kill them, lost. She wanted to hurt it more. To beat it bloody, to tear it apart, to bring it back so she could hurt it again, so she could... could tear it limb from limb while it could scream. Then the tusks emerged, and once more all thoughts came to a crashing halt.

She had no mind for revenge. Not now.

The only thoughts in her head were for Hull.

Who fell beside it.

No, no, no, no, no...

Her mind was blank.

Not Hull. Never Hull. Why Hull?

His coat was soaked in blood. His face was deathly pale. Two huge wounds, pierced through his side... one of his lungs pierced, definitely. Ribs cracked. Wounds from earlier piling on top of it, but... she could see the light through the two tusk wounds, she could see directly through... she thought she could see his heart beating, before a rush of blood sealed it away from her. His mouth was moving, his eyes were wide with... with surprise. What was he saying? He was still talking, still alive, but... but the wounds, the wounds, too many, too deep. Idiot, idiot, idiot, should've let her take the tusks, should've taken the gun himself. Forced her to take it. He knew. He'd known. Known what would happen.

That someone might die here. And if they got close to that creature, they were likely to be the unlucky victim.

So he'd elected to be that victim. Sparing her.

She didn't want to be spared. She wanted him to be spared. The gnawing in her stomach was gone. Emptiness remained.

Carza cradled his face, bringing him closer. Clutching him to her chest, while her eyes brimmed with tears. No, no, no, no, no...

Not like this.

Not like this.

She didn't even scream. Just cradled him. Rocked back and forth, murmuring.

"Stay with me. Stay with me."

A pause, and she whispered to the darkness of the pit.

"Please. Please. I can't do this alone. I can't. Stay with me."