A History

by jyuanka

Within the pages of an urgent report she receives from a team of civilian scientists stationed at the Dark Continent, Cheadle finds a cryptic message from Ging asking her to return, and to bring Pariston—now an ex-Hunter under house arrest—with her. AKA three horny people ruin each other's lives while trying to survive the most dangerous place on Earth, and each other.

9. Back and Forth with Light

Wet leaves pressed under their feet, Cheadle felt the chill of dawn creep into her bones.

The world was green and blue and gray, their bodies hazy in the misty, muddy marshes of the mountain forest. Ging walked ahead, and Pariston trailed behind her, their footsteps the clearest sound in the echo chamber among the trees. Strapped to her back a tranquilizer gun, a mist net and its appendages, her leather roll of drugs and tools and vials, Cheadle marched in the middle.

She had woken up from a restless sleep with a blanket over her and her glasses on the nightstand, her neck and back bent in an uncomfortable position in the nook where she'd fallen asleep. She didn't know who slept last to turn the lights off or cover her, but when she opened her eyes Pariston was on the bed and Ging was nowhere to be seen. Her MP3 player, too, wasn't on her.

Pariston opened his eyes when she picked up her glasses, and they just stared at each other for a moment, the room still dark, the waves of mist outside casting a murky white light onto his face. She could tell he hadn't slept very well either. They both drank too much wine, perhaps, and for a moment he seemed reluctant to get up, instead reaching with weltering, numb fingers for her left forearm, his eyelids fluttering, and just held it, saying nothing, seemingly about to fall asleep again just for a second while her arm anchored him to consciousness.

Her arm was cold and his fingers were so warm, wrapped around her skin, holding her in a sleepy grip.

"My head hurts." He murmured into the pillow.

The room was so chilly it was tempting to slip under the blanket beside him, like he'd probably slipped beside Ging during the night.

Gently, perhaps because Cheadle herself was still barely awake, she removed his hand off her, one finger at a time, and left him alone in the room.

"Don't fall back asleep," she said outside, slipping on a big coat she found hanging in the hallway. "We won't wait for you."

Still in the grandeur of a comprehensible landscape, still surrounded by familiar plants and the hiss and chirr and hum of lurking wildlife, they were all nonetheless so small, all silent, each of them in their own little world. Draped from head to toes in rags, Ging threw them a look behind his shoulder every once in a while. He appeared like a pilgrim ghost.

It was strange to exit the room and suddenly remember that most of the ship was askew. It was the worst angle to handle in the early morning after multiple consecutive nights of terrible sleep, and her feet slipped under her, gliding and skipping without much thought down the tilted floors.

The rain outside had stopped, momentarily, letting the scents and sounds of the forest come into focus, sharpening around them, the moist wood, the slippery mud, tapping, pecking, rustling, gulping, the summer in tender bloom, a pond of crystal clear water surrounded by poison.

They ought to set camp soon, and Ging promised a perfect spot ahead from which they could begin operating. They needed a safe place to unload their equipment and preserve samples. Being only three people, one of them nenless, moving slower was an inevitability. Splitting was out of the question. Keeping samples on them as they collected more a risky idea.

In the cold light of dawn, she had found all equipment ready at the staircase to the first deck. Like a dream, the fog lulled over the stairs, obscuring the world outside the ship, and she felt herself inside a crystal ball. So close, one can never see their fortunes.

Wrapping the coat tightly around herself, toes cold in her socks, she walked away from the crooked staircase, knowing she was within the parameters of Ging's En, and if she focused even a little she could sense the quiet pulse of his nen signature, somewhere deep within the ship. She didn't seek him.

Slowly, the sun was beginning to take shape overhead. If the map was correct and Ging's time estimations precise, they will arrive around evening at Lake Harkenburg, so named after the prince who had 'discovered' it, a large body of water in a natural volcanic depression. Not just a lake but abandoned settlements too. Humans had once occupied this region, for a fleeting moment in the age of the universe, for a blink of time.

Cheadle wasted no time in starting to gather data. Far away from the dangerous heartlands of the continent where the biggest creatures lived and thrived, here were smaller but no less vicious animals and insects. Besides the fungi she wanted to have, she particularly cared for birds and bugs, aquatic or prone to live near water, the most likely vectors, she believed, for the settlement disease—small creatures that can travel far without being too conspicuous, can simply carry or be reservoirs for a pathogen that has found its way to premises suspiciously devoid of wildlife. She hasn't forgotten the insect that had landed on her arm the very first day of their arrival. She hasn't seen anything like it again.

Pariston carried the nitrogen freezer tank, a deceptively small rectangle-shaped box that might pass for a wandering painter's kit. Like a magical, bottomless pouch, it could be opened and unfolded, revealing dozens of terraced, isolated, marked compartments, lined with protective nitrile inside out; a nen construct. He followed her with it, opening its cold core to place the samples inside.

If anything at all was to indicate the degree of their auras' entanglement, him carrying a conjured object made of her nen without incurring any damage on himself was it.

Dwarfed by the world around him, Cheadle observed him curiously, stepping into her zone, out of it, moving quicker, lagging behind, gazing at his surroundings with a serene kind of wonder, in a scouting outfit and boots that made him somehow look a little shorter, he appeared strangely human to her, like he did that morning only a couple hours ago, with his fingers around her arm.

His eyes caught her glancing at him and he smiled. She didn't have time to turn around. "Need anything?"

"No." She said. Does your head still hurt? She was about to ask, but she didn't. Instead, she pointed up to something over his head. "Look."

Pariston did, and she watched his initial questioning smile grow wider. "Aren't those yellow-tailed bats?"

Ging had stopped too and was looking up at the roosting site of about five thousand sleeping bats. He took off his hat and for the first time since moving they all huddled close together to listen to this bat tribe snore in unison.

Feeding on the fruits of the maka trees, they inhabited the highest branches and nooks and cavities, farthest away from direct sunlight, and once asleep they all dangled down in a heavy, crisscrossed laundry line, cocooning themselves inside their wings, the span of which could exceed six feet in fully-developed adults.

Cheadle considered taking samples from them too, but not only were they so high, but they also weren't a species she implicated in her research. The settlement vicinity provided neither ample roosting sites nor the sweet fruit they love. Besides, the diseases they carried were some of the first to be studied, and none of them resembled what she was currently dealing with.

Ging regarded her for a moment. "You want samples from them?"

She shook her head. They had to be judicious about using their resources and storage space. She couldn't even hope to capture a bit of every animal they passed. Bats especially were a rowdy bunch that didn't take kindly to being disturbed out of sleep, and the process of their capture was long and required prior groundwork. The mission must remain focused. This surely wasn't going to be their last trip.

"Maybe on the way back."

The three remained standing under the bat brood for a while, the world waking up one animal at a time around them.

"They'll shit in our mouths if we keep staring up like this." Ging said, loosening up a bit since they left the ship. She wondered what was on his mind.

When she found him, Ging was wandering the kitchen with her earphones in his ears, her MP3 player no doubt at the other end, shoved at the bottom of the impossibly deep pockets of his pants. Cheadle dreaded what he might be listening to. The guilty pleasures in that small device far outnumbered what the critics agree to be 'good music'. There were podcasts and audiobooks too, but the distant rhythm and beat she could hear told her he's listening to some song. She hoped it wasn't one of the raunchier songs in her playlists.

Silently they waved at each other, she at the door, he crouched before an open pantry, gathering food items in a bag blobbed with its mouth gaping open beside him.

"Good morning." She said, and he didn't hear her but read her lips.

"Hey,"

"Want coffee?"

He stopped working to gaze up at her. "I thought I smelled it."

Cheadle smiled, showing him a homely tin cylinder she'd taken out of her bag. "I brought a good supply with me," she said, stepping into the kitchen. "I'm not staying here for months just to sustain my brain cells on maka sap or whatever."

"That shit's gross." Ging said, standing up, taking the earbuds off.

She chuckled. "I know. Aren't you cold?"

In a sleeveless tank top, Ging searched around the kitchen for a coffee-appropriate pot to boil water in. "A little. I'm fine."

His bare arms extended over his head, sifting through sparsely stocked cupboards, scarred and scratched and pecked at a dozen different places but still as strong as she remembered them, still tough and toned. It made the state of his left leg a little more bothersome.

Goosebumps on his arms as he stood over the stove where he placed a pot full of water, Cheadle walked to his side and draped the left side of the coat over him, and it was big enough to cover them both and then some.

"It will catch fire like this." Ging said, lighting the stove top.

"You'd deserve it for stealing my MP3 player." She stood beside him, putting down the coffee can on the counter, waiting for the water to be ready, her shoulder brushing his.

He gave her a look. "It's called borrowing."

"Borrowing something requires prior permission."

"Sure," he took out the MP3 player, grabbed her hand and put the device in her open palm, the earphones still around his neck, his hand under hers. "Cheadle, can I borrow your MP3 player?"

"…Yeah, you can."

He snatched it back. "See? I didn't ask because you would've given it to me and I would've woke you up for nothing."

She shook her head, amused. "You have a very long history of 'borrowing' my stuff and then never returning them."

"Just name one thing I borrowed and never returned."

Cheadle laughed. "That's easy. Several books, one of which you borrowed the very first time we met each other, mind you. The Woodlot of Humanity, remember? And there's that other very large medical textbook you wanted to 'read quickly' and then probably never did."

"Hey, I did read it."

"My point stands." She chuckled. "You stole a bag once that promptly disappeared, and you even stole a new pair of boots."

Ging laughed. "It's not my fault you and I have the same shoe size."

She nudged him with her shoulder. "You were like 'these are some neat boots! Can I try them?' and I said 'sure, you can try them', and then, and then," she laughed, grappling with his hands as he tried to cover her mouth and stop her from talking. "and then, you left, still wearing them, only to return six months later wearing another pair of boots," she managed to keep his hands in place, holding them tightly with her own. "and when I asked you where my boots were, you said 'what boots'?"

"Someone I met needed them more than me, so I exchanged them with him for something I wanted."

"Oh, you and your kind, opportunistic heart."

The water came to a boil between them, but neither moved to grab the coffee tin can on the counter, standing face to face, close, under the heavy shroud of the coat, hands entangled between them.

Cheadle let go.

"What are you even listening to?" She asked, turning away from him to pick up the coffee can.

He smirked, grabbing a spoon. "Some really filthy songs."

Cheadle didn't know whether to be comforted or embarrassed by his conspiratorial, shit-eating grin.

"Like some seriously raunchy shit," he snickered, but something told her he too was a little shy about poking at it, so he just busied himself with dropping spoonfuls of coffee into the water. "Do you sleep listening to this?"

He turned the stove fire down, then fished the MP3 player out of his pocket, seemed to rewind a song, then split the earbuds between them.

One techno rap verse about enthusiastically sucking dick behind the convenience store later, interspersed with suspicious moaning noises as a background sample—to which they both listened silently and reverently—Ging retrieved the earbud from her.

Cheadle burst out laughing, felt blood rise to her cheeks. He just had to pick the stupidest song of them all, didn't he. She inched closer to him, gave him a cheeky look. "So what if I fall asleep listening to these kinds of songs?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, playfully pushing her back with his arm against her chest to make space for himself over the stove. "I don't care what you listen to."

His bicep against her breasts, his arm lingered there a little too long before pulling back. A tiny jolt of awkwardness made her want to step back, to reassess this proximity, but she didn't. Instead she moved even closer to him, behind him as he made their coffee, flush against him, chin resting on his shoulder, his bicep nestled between her breasts.

Heartbeat so loud in her ears he was most likely feeling it as well. Ging continued to stir the coffee, didn't push her away. This was more comfortable than it had any right to be.

Cheadle wondered if she should perhaps apologize to Ging for speaking to him that way, the night of their reunion. Her anger at him and him specifically that night was for a couple reasons, mainly that he was being careless while Gregory just died. The other thing didn't weigh much. Cheadle didn't care. She didn't . It didn't matter that she found him with Pariston in a sexual tryst or that it was on her bed or that the image of it infested her brain like a million rabbits. It had no impact on her. They were two grown men who could do whatever they wanted. It wasn't like they haven't done things like these before or that she hadn't expected something of this sort to happen again between them. It was silly of her to get upset and bothered over that. Of course , it was really fucking silly. Maybe she should apologize for acting silly over what's practically nothing. It didn't matter, and she resolved to forget it, and forget that it was arousing, and that she almost constantly fantasized about being involved. Horrifying to her was that last part, exactly. Did she really want to be involved? Involved how? Did she want to have sex with one of them? Both of them?

Worse—both of them, together?

Pariston was hoping to make her jealous and at first Cheadle truly believed she was. But she recognized now it wasn't really jealousy she'd felt. She wasn't jealous of either of them for that night.

What she felt was desire.

A sticky, persistent, old desire that encompassed both of them.

"You really shouldn't take what's not yours." She murmured close to his ear, felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

In a stupid move that she will convince herself a moment later was totally spontaneous, she shoved her hand in his pocket to take back what's hers, and felt his dick a little hard against her fingers.

In the suddenness and awkwardness of the moment, Ging's hand dived into his pocket and clutched hers with force, holding it in place, barring her from any kind of movement.

For what felt like an eternity, the two of them just stood like that, everything holding its breath except the gurgling sound of boiling coffee between them, about to spill out of the pot and all over the stove.

His grip around her fingers was painful, squeezing them hard, uncomfortable with her proximity but giving her no way out. With his free hand he turned the fire off.

"Will you be so kind as to free my hand?" Cheadle said, her head still on his shoulder, her cheek against his neck. She felt bolder, hearing the slow but forceful thumping of her heart, the way it matched his. He was trying to breathe more normally, too. "You're hurting me."

Ging let go.

When they resumed walking they did so beside one another. The thick canopy of entangled branches began to break apart, but as soon as they exited this patch of forest and into an expanse of mossy rock and weeds, it started raining once again, the leftovers from the last downpour already snaking in hasty clear streams between the rutted, knobby rocks, gaining momentum with the new drizzle, tumbling in panicky droplets down the galloping, barren landscape.

Ging skipped ahead, prancing over a couple mossy white rocks and then stood under the drizzle, tilted his head back, raindrops hammering down his face. Eyes closed he opened his mouth, filling it with rain, water spilling down his chin and jaws and neck. He swallowed, uselessly shook the water out of his hair, glanced at them and then back ahead at the gray horizon, his eyes scouting the slippery road ahead.

They stood on a sweeping, rolling avalanche of rocks, seemingly frozen in time; among the cracks and between the gullies small plants grew, swaying with the agile water streams as they zigzagged among the rocks over the slope and down the eventual smooth cliff face. There was a small cavern under their feet, Ging had said, and it could be accessed only from an opening in the cliff face on another side of the mountain, which they were going to slide down with their bare hands without letting the trickling water slip them to their doom in the valley below.

Still, that was a long way from now, he added, his face hard to read, soaked in rain from head to toe but not minding it in the least, his voice carried away from them as quickly as it left him.

Pariston stood beside her and lifted the freezer tank over their heads. They weren't going to be dry for a while.

"Quite the summer, no?" Pariston said, a deprecating half-smile gracing his face.

Cheadle shifted her gaze from Ging up to him. "Must be really hard not living your dream vacation."

"This is exactly my dream vacation." He said under the clobbering sound of rain on nitrile rubber. "Did you two have a fight?" He asked, jabbing his chin in Ging's direction.

"Not really," she answered. "He's just been in a mood since morning."

"I hope it's not the kind of mood that will compel him to ditch us."

Cheadle snorted. "Yeah. I'll go talk to him about where we're headed."

Out from under their makeshift umbrella and under the pouring rain, Cheadle jogged to Ging's side.

"Hey,"

"Hi."

"Are you okay?" She asked, glancing at his face, the raindrops on her glasses making everything a little blurry.

Ging looked at her. "Yeah, I'm good. If we keep at this pace, I estimate it'll take us another three hours of walking to arrive at the west side."

"We don't have to move faster," she said. "I don't want to miss anything."

She had returned her notebook to her pocket a while ago, when the rain threatened to soak it and dilute the ink, but she continued to mentally catalogue everything around her for the time when she could sit somewhere dry and write it down.

Ging shrugged. "You're the boss here."

A glance to the side, a glance back at Pariston, Cheadle cleared her throat. "Hey, look, I'm—"

"Sorry?"

He didn't look at her.

"Well, yeah, kind of," she said, wanting desperately to not look at him but braving it anyway. "About what happened earlier this morning."

He finally returned her gaze, but only for a second. "It's fine."

"Is it?"

"Yeah."

Cheadle fell silent for a moment, continued to skip beside him. He was taking such large steps. "We're not gonna be weird about it?"

"Why be weird about it?"

"I don't know," her shoulder twitched. The rain on her glasses was becoming annoying. She took them off. "It was kind of inappropriate, don't you think?"

Ging continued walking. "You really have to stop taking everything so seriously. It wasn't inappropriate or weird, and it didn't mean anything, so you don't gotta obsess over it in your obsessive little head."

Cheadle frowned. "Oh, sorry for thinking I might've upset you."

"Nope, you didn't upset me."

"Would you please stop walking for a fucking second?"

Rain fell harder, drowning the rise in her voice.

He stopped. "What?"

His glare pinned her in place. He looked truly and genuinely irritated by her. She suddenly lost her words, so he filled the silence with his own.

"You want me to validate your embarrassment about touching my dick?" He said with a mean smile. "Here, I validate it. It was embarrassing, you get to feel embarrassed about it without trying to make me feel the same way."

Cheadle chuckled in frustration, pushing wet hair away from her eyes. "Please excuse me for trying to figure out what kind of boundaries we have here," she said. "You're the one who touched my boobs then had a boner, Ging."

"Okay, this is it." He said with finality, putting his foot down, finally turning to face her proper. He drew a line in the air between them, right across her eyes, his nen a fluttering, dark blue matchstick flame at the tip of his finger. "This is the boundary. Are you satisfied?"

"You can't be serious," Cheadle cried out at the silly invisible nen wall he erected between them. "Is this really how you want to act?"

He rolled his eyes, shoved his hands back in his pockets and resumed walking. She followed him. "You did something dumb and you want to blame me for it and implicate me so you can feel better about yourself. You want me to explain myself so you can feel comforted, but you don't even have the guts to just ask or say whatever you really want."

Cheadle stopped so suddenly it made him stop, too. She fell deathly silent, only staring at him with unabashed hurt. He stared back with that same frown he's been sporting since morning.

A little way back, Pariston was watching.

"Fuck you." She pushed his chest with indignant force, dispelling the childish nen wall between them. Ging was thrown back a good six feet away from her.

"Hey!" He protested, but she turned her head and walked away, taking the lead with squared shoulders.

For a moment, she was the only one walking, putting a good distance between herself and them. Pariston caught up to him, having deliberately stood back to let them have their fight. His gaze followed Cheadle's back, then he looked at Ging. "You really did fight, huh."

"Yeah," Ging muttered, not meeting the other's curious gaze, his chest stinging where she had pushed him. "What a weird person."

Pariston chuckled quietly, finally lowering the freezer, letting the rain run its course on him, the futility of trying to keep himself dry more apparent now that the rain refused to stop hammering down on them.

"Come on, let's follow her," Pariston said. "I'm sure you two will make up in an hour or so. You always do."

Ging and Cheadle fought and argued a lot. Always did. Ging doesn't remember a time where they didn't bicker endlessly over one thing or the other, and yet he never believed there will ever be a fight they won't come back from, including this one. His willingness to let go and forgive coupled with her tendency to quickly reassess the disproportion or validity of her reactions—yet rarely admitting her mistakes—usually meant that no argument lasted long enough to sour their relationship.

As long as they butted heads within the arena of work, that is. The second anything turned even a smidge personal she became unreasonably spiteful and hostile. That was true when she was 18 and still unchanged now more than two decades later.

Why did she have to be like this? Everything was easier with Pariston, smoother, somehow less complicated. Pariston wouldn't apologize; there was no sorry between them, no moments of relapse where they come to realize they might have upset the other or hurt his feelings. He could be the shittiest version of himself with Pariston without having to make excuses for it or feel judged. They could pull each other's teeth out and then laugh about it.

Ging didn't want to hurt her feelings, and knew that what he had said and how he had acted was as much in knee-jerk self-defense as indictment of one of her most aggravating personal flaws.

Because despite acting otherwise, he deeply felt as awkward and shy about what had happened in the kitchen as she did, but he didn't know why she had to make a big deal out of it, or why she felt the need to drag him down in her constant struggle to claim the moral high ground, even to her own detriment.

Always, she forgot, that he's on her side.

He smirked up at Pariston. "Wanna run?"

They were both burdened by heavy loads, Ging having carried their food, camp set-up, and his sleeping bag, Pariston responsible for a precious box of samples.

The cascading rock surface under them was a land of hazards: smooth and wet and mossy, replicating itself as far as the eye can see.

"Yeah, sure," Pariston smiled, strapping the freezer to his back and tightening its straps around his shoulders and waist. "The finish line?"

"The cliff."

Pariston took off. He was fast.

"Bastard." Ging laughed, bounced up and then zipped ahead. Pariston could run fast but he couldn't jump as high as him.

His lungs filled with air, his face whipped by warm, erratic rain, Ging ran fast, shutting the part of his brain that kept reminding him of the pain in his lower left leg, and there was pain, a lot of it, and he felt it every time his foot hit the ground, felt every bone a wrong foothold away from shattering, but he banished everything to do with it, kept only the part of himself about to close the distance with Pariston.

Once he was close enough, Ging took one big leap, flew through the air in a long bow, and landed upside down with hands on Pariston's shoulders. For a second they came face to face, their foreheads touching, before Ging flipped over Pariston and to the ground, taking an uncalculated moment to pivot triumphantly, long enough for Pariston to slide himself down and jam his leg between Ging's feet, who caught himself a second before falling down on his head, balancing his whole body up on his arm, trying to hook his foot in Pariston's neck to bring him down too, but the latter careened to the side and with a strong hand grabbed Ging's leg. The injured one.

In less than a second of agonizing pain, Ging lost his balance.

Pariston didn't loosen his grip, managing with surprising strength to haul Ging up from his leg off the ground, up in the air and slam him on the ground again. But instead of seizing the opportunity to claim the lead, Pariston stood over him while he lay on the ground, tightened his grip in wanton cruelty around Ging's ankle.

"You want to play dirty, huh." Ging smirked, rolled his body to trap Pariston's arm between his legs, twisted it then kicked him with his right leg smack on the side of his face. Pariston budged back, and only let go of Ging's ankle when his own shoulder threatened to dislodge.

Ging took a long breath, trying to quell the pain that now filled his whole body. It was like a stinging heatwave that seared a hole in his left calf and rippled across every bone and muscle and nerve. He gritted his teeth. It will go. The pain will go. It always did. He just needed a moment.

Soaked, his glistening hair tousled in every direction, his cheeks buffed and rosy, Pariston flopped down on the rocks, clutching his shoulder in silent pain. "It was really about to pop right out!"

"You deserve it, asshole."

Pariston laughed. "Maybe so. Sorry about your leg."

"I'm going to break your fucking spine with it."

Pariston offered him a sly, coquettish look. "Yeah?"

In a heartbeat they were both back up again and running, their strength a little diminished but not their competitiveness, their bodies the only obstacles they put for each other. Ging refrained from bouncing around this time, acute pain still gripping his muscles, making him feel almost feverish. Why couldn't he ignore it, why couldn't it go? He hated every second of it.

Pariston didn't just want to slow him down, he wanted to hurt him, maliciously, and knew how to. Ging begrudged this physical weakness that had become visible to them, felt his whole body lesser for it. The despair he felt when he fucked with it was a little distant now, and for a moment he couldn't remember why he chose to hurt himself in that way. Was it some kind of unconscious self-harm? A latent desire to punish himself in some way? A proof that he could still keep going, even by himself? It was all and none of those.

In the disorienting fog of repressed pain, his eyes sought Cheadle.

Her figure was hazy among the descending ropes of rain, but he saw her, a little far away to their right, squatting down beside something, her back to him, her head of bright green hair like an accidental brush stroke in an otherwise drab, gray landscape.

What was she looking at? Should he go? That was always the worst part of their fights, the immediate aftermath, where they stop talking for a good while and he has to think twice before approaching her.

He looked ahead for Pariston, who had come to a stop a good distance away from him, and seemed a little listless that Ging wasn't entirely committed to the race.

Weird. He really thought they were closer than this to the cliff side, but every direction he looked he only saw the mounds of mossy rocks, extending indefinitely into the misty horizon. Pariston, too, appeared a little confused.

Subtle, imperceptible alterations in landscape weren't a new thing to him on the continent. It didn't happen often, but enough times to be noticeable for anyone who lived long enough here. Sometimes a forest expanded, or shrunk, sometimes a tree he'd marked in one region appeared elsewhere, a clearing or another gone, a whole patch of one genus in one place transforming into another. It wasn't just an ecosystem in a natural, constant cycle of death and regeneration, but an eldritch, puzzling topography rearranging and remolding its pieces every so often, a chessboard with gaping sinkholes for squares played on by ten different people with clashing strategies, and every single attempt on his part to coax out a pattern had failed.

Ging was not the animistic type, and his first instinct to any of Don's belletristic ramblings was always going to be skepticism, but at times he was inclined to believe the old man when he assured Ging that every existing thing on the continent, even the smallest pebble, had a mind of its own.

When he gazed her way again, Cheadle was nowhere to be seen. Before he could decide whether to walk towards her or not, Pariston was already moving.

They reached the spot of her disappearance simultaneously, and found themselves peering down a dark, open mouth of rocks and grass, a hole in the surface of the ground the diameter of a wood barrel and about seven foot deep that appeared neither dug nor a natural, recently-occurring depression. It seemed to lead down a narrow cavern.

"Cheadle?" Pariston called for her.

"Yeah! I'm down here." Her voice trickled a distant echo out of the hole.

She didn't sound distressed or hurt.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, just can't see shit. I'm sensing my way through."

A beat, footsteps, then she appeared and looked up, her face illuminated by the light outside while the rest of her remained submerged in total darkness, a disembodied mask. She stared up at their curious faces, her wet bangs falling away from her forehead, forgone her glasses for Gyo, eyes bright and so clear Ging could see the rain falling in them.

"Yeah, hi, seems I found an opening to the cavern on the cliff side. Maybe it's a shortcut." She said, scratching the marks on the sides of her nose left by the glasses pads. "It's pretty shallow for a cavern opening, and there's only one way forward. I think we'll have to crawl down here."

Rain water pooled down at her feet, cascaded around her in the grooves and crannies of rock and stone, and appeared to dribble down into the deeper recesses of the cavern, away from sight.

Then she seemed to realize that her purpose for venturing into the cavern wasn't clear. "Look," she raised her arm to the light, showing them long, white strings Ging recognized as shiol filaments. "I want to see how far spread the fungi are, compare climates. Who knows, maybe we'll find other things down here as well."

Pariston squatted on the edge of the opening to inspect the landing. He could stand in it comfortably at full height but will probably struggle with the narrow spaces ahead. "Would I even fit in there?"

"Yeah, you will, but it won't be comfortable," Cheadle said. "I inspected it deeper and we can all go in, but one at a time and without our bags on us."

"Drag them behind us or push them ahead?"

"They go first," she said. "I'll go first, too. I'm the smallest here."

Pariston nodded and began untying the freezer straps to push them off his shoulder. "What if we encounter a dead-end?" He asked, holding the freezer and lowering it down slowly for her to grab.

Cheadle took it, maneuvering it carefully to prevent it from bumping against the rocks. "The water pathways suggest a wide network of sub-caves and an outlet for the rain water," she said, setting the freezer tank on the ground, then gently pushed it ahead where it slid over shallow water. "I don't think we'll get stuck. Worst case scenario, we'll smash ourselves out."

She straightened up and lifted her arms to Ging. "Your bags, please."

Once all their loads were lowered down, Cheadle pulled out a rope, unfurled it, and started creating knots in two places. "I'll tie the rope to me while you keep the other end, when the knot drops into the chute, Pariston will jump down and follow me, and then Ging will go last, alright? I'll maintain a nen signature, as a precaution."

They nodded, and soon enough Cheadle disappeared inside the cavern. They could still hear the shuffling of her clothes and of their bags against the hard ground and the sound of moving water, but about five minutes later, every sign of her was gone.

The two of them remained crouched around the hole, waiting. The rain slowed down, turned to gentle drizzle, then stopped. Cheadle still hadn't called.

"I feel bad for her," Pariston said, pushing his hair back. "She's pretty claustrophobic."

Ging already knew that. "That's the least of her concerns right now."

He wasn't worried about Cheadle, she could always handle herself; he was more concerned with the appearance of this entrance, a seemingly natural and old feature of the landscape but one he was certain didn't exist the last time he was here, and he crossed this stretch of mossy rocks pretty often.

The rope moved, the first knot slithered down into the chute, Pariston sighed. "Here's my cue. See you down there."

And then he too was gone. Ging sat alone on the surface, gazing up at the parting clouds. It wasn't going to be a sunny day, but he doubted it will rain again soon. He could sense an oncoming rainstorm, his nose picking up on the distant scents of condensed air, but he estimated it won't arrive today. He hoped they'd be out of this cavern by then. He had his fair share of getting stuck in tight and damp places at night. It wasn't pleasant, and he didn't at all like the sinister aura that hung in the air.

Something other than the three of them was wandering the place.

He scouted the long, jagged line where the rock surface stopped and the forest they'd left behind began, and there, far away among the trees, camouflaged against the brown and green, Ging saw a familiar figure. Slightly changed, but he recognized it.

Human faced and four legged, it stared right back at him.

"What do you want this time?" He yelled.

It didn't answer.

The rope moved. Ging hopped down.

III

His eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness inside the narrow tunnel, and even then, sight was the least reliable sense in places like these. Ging could see neither of them, not even a glimpse of the soles of Pariston's boots, but he heard them, and smelled them, and trailed with his fingers the marks their crawling left behind. The only light source was the one they descended from, and he couldn't turn his head even if he wanted to.

A cocoon of wet stone, it was squeezing him forward. Pariston must be really uncomfortable, and Cheadle was most likely the one fairing best. Whenever a cave exploration opportunity presented itself, they always sent their smallest members first, and at times a cave or a tunnel would be so narrow only petit people could enter it. Ging was that, when he was much, much younger, small and sturdy and quick on his feet, 12 year old and ready to plunge himself into the darkest depths just for the thrill of it.

He began his hunting career a tiny, short boy tagging along explorations and expeditions, and most often people older and bigger than him sent him—loaded with cameras and sensors—into the gaping mouths of underwater caves, the inky veins of abandoned mines, the jagged, slippery tunnels of flowstones where they couldn't hope to enter. He knew even then one day he won't be able to squeeze himself into these places, no matter how fit or agile, so he spent the better part of his adolescence visiting and exploring the most difficult, most mysterious caves on the mainland, a race against time before some places rejected him for good and welcomed others.

Ging loved the primordiality of these places, the centuries that shaped them, how they amplified and muffled, the way they called for him, shut him out, scared and thrilled him, the duality of refuge and trap, how it spelled a person's demise just as likely as it protected them from predators.

The Dark Continent had no shortage of these places—wild, massive beasts of geological wonder, some that called louder and clearer than others, some that had almost killed him.

In comparison, this one was tame. So far, anyway. Some pits only reveal their true selves when it's too late.

Only he imagined the possibility that it might disappear, or shift, or change, all while they were still in its depths, that the chess pieces were going to move in time, that they might exit the cavern to find themselves somewhere very far away from here. Or they might not exit it at all.

Although fortunately, if even for a bit, the ceiling pressing down on Ging's back elevated, and the narrow tunnel began slowly unraveling into a wider shaft, and he predicted that they would soon arrive at a cave chamber.

He wiped sweat off his forehead, his arm gaining a larger range of movement, started feeling the heat and humidity, and for a moment was glad for crawling, letting his left leg go numb as he dragged it across the floor. The nen he pooled into it to fortify it against further damage was useless, for now. It only hurt him more.

Those damn expired painkillers. He should stop being too proud about taking them.

Ahead, Ging heard a commotion. He squinted in the dark, Pariston's outline growing more visible now that he could walk on his knees and hands. Farther ahead, Cheadle had come to a stand.

Finally, a chamber.

Last to reach it, Ging pushed himself up and felt his way towards his bag, huddled in the middle of the chamber along with all their other stuff.

Multiple gusts of wind of different temperatures whistled past him. One colder than the other, one that carried a worse smell. There were a couple branching paths here, but he couldn't see any. The floor was wet under his feet. He heard their breathing, smelt the humid, limited oxygen they all shared with measured inhales, but he couldn't see them.

They needed a light.

"So, do you think we might find weird bugs in here?" Pariston, his voice a breathless chuckle.

Ging lit up the torch. Pariston had his answer.

The walls of the chamber were lined from floor to ceiling with black, hairy, sketchy arthropods, crusty creatures between a crab and a spider, each one the size of a small fist, their bald heads glistening in the fire light, their swarm of pointy legs contracting close to their fat, round bodies which shook ever so slightly, like one huge nervous system sending danger signals from one node to the other. Either they gather closer in fear or bolt in every direction. One of these two possibilities was better than the other for the unwitting human side of this encounter.

In the middle of the chamber, the three of them were completely surrounded by jittery, panicky, weird bugs, ready to bounce at the slightest incursion. But Ging wasted no time testing them; they were afraid of fire, huddling together and scurrying in one fortified platoon farther up the ceiling when he swept the torch near them. Good.

Pariston sighed in defeat. "I hate this."

"They bite." Ging warned.

Cheadle walked closer, her steps soundless, and peered at the flighty creatures, the fire light illuminating half of her face. "What do they eat?" She asked in a murmur, and gave the wall a little, gentle tap, under one of the crusty spiders, which caused it to creep away in fear, shaking its hairs, sending the whole colony one extra foot up. She tapped again. Ging followed them with the light of his torch.

The chamber ceiling became alive, twitching over their heads, peering down at them thousands of round, smooth, eyeless heads, faces empty but for four pairs of sharp mandibles.

"Each other, mostly."

The fire revealed little burrows all over the walls where piles of dead spiders lay, torn open, dissected, their bodies oozing a white, creamy gunk, surrounded by their hungry, feasting larvae.

"They aggregate and build nests beside small water bodies."

"And they have temperature sensors, right?" Cheadle said.

Ging nodded. "They can't smell or see. Or hear, for the matter, but they don't need that. Together, they're basically a highly accurate weather forecast, they evolved to instantly recognize the vibration pattern and temperature of their predators. We're pretty large, but we probably don't feel like enemies to them. Our temperatures are different." He said. "Unless we directly cause harm, they'll keep away."

"So they can lead us to the nearest body of water?"

"I believe so," Ging grinned. "Wanna spook them?"

A tiny smile found its way to her face. "Let's spook them."

"Can we have a moment to psychologically prepare ourselves first?" Pariston piped up from behind them, standing right in the middle of the chamber where he was farthest away from any weird bug. He didn't bother hiding his disgust.

"You can have it while we pack our stuff." Cheadle said, already reaching to pick up her bags. "Ready?"

The torch flame swayed, flickered, and then flared up in a massive blaze that lit up the whole chamber and everything in it. The water under their feet turned a vivid orange for a second, and like a sheet of plastic, the spiders shrunk on themselves against the heat, huddling, their legs clicking in panicked alarm, then they skittered in one full cloud of screeching black into the left side tunnel.

"Let's move."

They entered the left tunnel, following the rapid, frenzied clacking of thousands of legs all across the ceiling, closer to each other this time around, the tunnel opening wide and then gradually, as they moved farther inside, narrowing.

Heat and humidity increased, and Ging could feel the oxygen entering his lungs thicker, turbid, as he led the way, the heavy air coating his skin with a thin film of sweat, his fingers around the torch hot and clammy. Close to them, behind a curved wall, he could hear water running.

He stopped and turned around once they arrived at a tight, crescent-shaped opening, lined at one side with drooping, sharp flowstones, where he watched the little critters slip inside in one big arching ribbon. Water poured inside as well from tiny gaps at the base of the wall.

A tight squeeze, even for Cheadle. If they wanted to pass it, they'd have to climb over a couple sharp rocks, cross the distance sideways, and then slip inside this sickle, still sideways, mindful of the protruding rock icicles, one misstep away from impaling them in the eye.

Ging stepped over the ledge rocks and climbed the wall, trying to discern what lay beyond the opening. "There's a narrow landing, but it's pretty far down, and I can make out what seems like a sharp slope." He turned back to them. "Take the torch," he handed it to Pariston, then with his free hand fished a small stone out of his pocket and tossed it to the other side. A thud, two, and then a blob. "It's like a waterslide. We're gonna have to climb down the wall before jumping to the landing. Cheadle?"

She nodded and started shedding her load. "I'll go first, hand me back the bags once I'm on the other side. Again, don't follow until I give you a signal."

Ging offered her a hand to help her up. She accepted it, and for a short moment they stood chest to chest on shaky rocks. He smiled at her. "Suck in your tummy."

Her hand reached for a jutting rock over his head to the left, then grabbed it and pulled herself up, clinging to the wall with careful steps before reaching the sharp edge of the crevice, where she firmly planted her foot, taking hold of the flowstones across from her to slide her body through the opening, legs first. Grabbing onto the wall, she glanced down at the landing and the ensuing slope, and seemed to notice the same ledge across from her that he'd seen earlier.

"I'll jump to that ledge on the opposite wall," she said. "When I'm there, just drop me the bags."

Cheadle let go of the wall and jumped.

"What do you see?" Ging's voice echoed through the cavern.

"Standing water, at the base of the slope." She looked up. "There's a narrow gap, we'll have to dive under it. It's not clear how deep the water is or how much air space we'll have."

Ging dropped her the bags, took back the torch from Pariston and made way for him to climb the wall.

Then they heard a loud water splash.

"Cheadle?"

She didn't answer.

Pariston was balancing on the edge of the opening, leaning his back far against the wall and away from the sharp rocks that almost grazed his eyeballs. He took a look down, his face calm, expectant, both of them silent, waiting for a sign of her.

Then came the sound of water splashing against the walls.

Then Cheadle laughed.

"It is like a waterslide!" Her voice rang through the walls, sincerely joyous for the first time since Ging had seen her again. "It's fun!"

He and Pariston shared a grin.

"Just watch your heads when you slide down, I almost conked mine against the gap's edge."

"That's because your forehead is gigantic." Pariston yelled down at her, having managed to grab onto the wall on the other side.

"Shut up will you." But she didn't sound upset, only chuckled, then laughed some more when Pariston splashed down in the water beside her.

Ging extinguished the torch in a puddle of water then followed them, opting out of jumping down to the ledge and instead climbed the wall down the old fashioned way, reached the head of the slope, and let himself go.

Now he hoped his lungs wouldn't fail him.

The water, as he expected, was freezing cold. His body sunk down in the force of the momentum, and his head turned around in the murky water, trying to make up his surroundings.

Pink and orange cave salamanders swayed in couples under his feet, passing little, translucent stygophiles like water snails and albino shrimps wobbling against walls. Long dark weeds brushed past his legs, and then farther back, wispy and frail, he saw strings of mycelium dancing in the water. He swam up to the surface, his forehead making contact with the low ceiling that pressed down on them.

"Did you see the mycelium?" He asked, removing hair away from his eyes.

"Yeah," Cheadle nodded. "I think they're growing south of here, telling by the direction of the roots."

For a moment they all paddled slowly in place, keeping themselves afloat in this flooded chamber, trying to keep their heads over water, tilting them back for more breathing space, holding their breath, measuring every inhale.

The oxygen was limited. They had to move fast.

This time, Ging took the lead. He was the best swimmer here. His forgotten, ignored ailment aside—which he's succeeded in managing through sheer willpower so far—he could hold his breath the longest and was the most capable of deep diving to trail the mycelium and locate the exits out of this chamber. Head over water, he could absolutely see no way out, no tunnel or chute or even a gap or a hole in the wall.

His lungs were just gonna have to shut up and do the job.

With a big inhale, Ging dived into inky blackness, the two above aiding his sight with flashlights that glowed blearily in the water.

The pool was eight feet deep at the highest point, and the farther down he swam, the more he sensed that the ground under them wasn't solid. The floor of the pool lurched and lulled under him, darker streams of water snaking above it. He tapped a foot on the ground. It didn't budge, his movement only kicking up some debris. He couldn't see much.

Overhead, dead insects of various kinds hung in the water, frozen, their exoskeletons catching some of the meager light in their disintegration, some more decayed than others, and some yet struggled in the clutches of the malnourished fungi roots, the shiols having colonized such a resources-starved pit. Some of the famished roots sensed him and reached for him. He scared them away with a burst of nen, and they shrunk, confused.

He wasn't about to quell their parasitic hunger.

Ging only swam back up when he finally located a viable exit; yet another tunnel, one that seemed to lead up, but it was blocked by a thick, tangled web of lurching fungi roots. He could destroy it, but Cheadle probably wouldn't like that very much.

"Can't you find another exit?" She asked, a little out of breath even though he was the one who just came out of the water. "I want the colony intact as much as possible."

Ging swallowed, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. He had to turn away just to cough and take a breath.

He dived again.

With eyes more adjusted to darkness, Ging found a couple more tunnels, one his instincts told him lead to a dead-end, another one in the ground he ignored because for a moment, he didn't trust his capability of handling any more water pressure, then a last one, marked by a sliver of light, a few gray flakes swaying inside a small rock opening. He sought it.

After further inspection, he came back up.

"Found a chute, it also leads up, to a wider pool I think, and there's a light source up there," he said. "But this path is much narrower than the other exit and we'll have to swim up for a few minutes." He looked at Cheadle, his chest stinging. "So, which?"

"We'll take the chute," she said. "I can hold my breath. Pariston?"

His hair slicked back, Pariston swam a circle around them. "Yeah, easy. You know," he trailed, staring at Cheadle with twinkling eyes. "You should've imprisoned me in a house with a pool. I haven't done any serious swimming in a while."

"You used to surf as a teen, right?" Ging said, recalling a silly old story Pariston had told once.

Pariston smiled wide, delighted that Ging remembered.

"How would your surfer boy days even help us now?" Cheadle asked, not entirely unamused, probably remembered the surfing story too.

Pariston's shoulders rose out of the water in a cheeky shrug. "They won't. I'm just here to follow orders and stand pretty."

"You're succeeding."

"Thank you."

Cheadle turned to Ging, her carefree smile dimming. "Ready to go down again?"

"Yeah."

With flashlights in hand, the three dived into the water, and headed towards the opening in the rocks, swimming towards the plates of floating light.

Once inside the opening, Ging flipped on his back, glided to the base of the chute, planted his foot on a rock and propelled himself upward, grabbing a ledge on his way up to increase momentum. There was barely any room to flap one's arms, only their legs and whatever they could grab onto helped them forward towards the hazy light above.

Then his bag got stuck.

Ging tried to shake it off his shoulders, his fingers working instantly to untie the straps around his waist, and he could feel it, the blood piling up in his lungs again, rising to his throat. He swallowed it and looked down, Cheadle nodded at him. If he dropped it, she'll push it up after him.

Finally loose, Ging weaseled his way out from under the bag, the right side of his face scraping against craggy rocks, then when the bag was at his feet he took a chance at a floating strap and hooked his foot in it, trying to carry it up with him. The fact that it was his left leg he was relying on didn't help. Neither did the web of roots that blocked the surface. Cheadle can be upset about this later. He broke through them, watched them wriggle sideways into the banks and out of their way.

His head broke out of the water with a massive inhale, and then he couldn't force the pile in his throat down again. He crawled out of the water and to the surface, grabbling to get away, near mindless of his surroundings, and fell into a coughing fit that left him a little loopy and a little bloody. The gash on his face stung, oozing hot blood.

Ging took deep, long breaths, wiped his mouth, licked tangy blood off his lips, and smeared the rest of it on his face.

Behind him, his bag popped out of the water with a force that flung it straight to the shore, and then Cheadle crept out and fell on her back, arms stretched out on either side, her chest collapsing and rising rapidly as she sucked in new, fresh air. Pariston followed, the one most out of breath, and flopped down next to her.

Above them, through the opening in the rock dome they found themselves washed in, crept warm sunlight.

Cheadle jolted up to stare at him, as if suddenly remembering his presence. "Your face! You?" She turned to Pariston, giving him a quick but discerning once over.

"I'm okay."

"There's your fungi," Ging said. "Sorry I killed them."

To his right, spread over a shaded wall, stretched a frail, dying colony of shiols, pale blue caps stacked over one another like a building about to collapse under its own weight, its supporting infrastructure dry and withered, slipping off the wall, cascading to the ground.

Cheadle stood up and walked towards the wall, her eyes surveying the irreparable damage endured by this small colony. "You didn't kill them..." she muttered, touching a white, ghostly mushroom. "They were already dying." She stood with her head down, visibly crestfallen. "I'm sorry, for wasting time. I should've predicted this."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ging said. "We found a dead colony, so what? We'll find a living one. This is still day one, have you forgotten?"

"And on the brighter side, we have some time to breathe," Pariston added, pointing to the hole in the ceiling over their heads. "We'll go somewhere airier."

Cheadle nodded, smiling softly. "Yeah, I just don't want our efforts to be for nothing," she frowned, determined. "I really can't afford to waste time."

As she pulled her leather roll out of her bag, Pariston jumped, grabbing the edge of the ceiling hole and pulling himself up to inspect the place above. Cheadle brought her first aid kit and sat on the ground opposite Ging.

"Let me see your wound." She said, taking his chin between her fingers to turn his head.

"You're injured, too."

"I know." She didn't glance down at the trail of blood on her right arm, the long tear on her sleeve. "I'll see to it in a minute. Let me check your face first."

"It's fine." Ging resisted, didn't want her to smell the blood staining the insides of his mouth.

"It doesn't look it," she argued back firmly. "It needs cleaning and stitching; there still might be active spores in the water. You don't want them in your open wounds."

Finally, Ging relented, and sat silently opposite her, straining his eyes to see the way she sutured his wound. She was fast, her hand moving up and down in the periphery of his vision.

"Your skin will absorb the thread so it won't leave a mark."

Ging rolled his eyes. "Thanks, I'm really worried about a scar on my face."

He shouldn't have said that. Now she seemed to notice his face a little too much, a little too closely, her bright eyes seizing him carefully, almost coldly, compiling a visual inventory of every detail of his facial damage.

"I mean it doesn't matter, just use whatever kind of string." He was becoming self-conscious under her scrutinizing gaze. What was she seeing anyway? Her eyes without glasses were a little creepy.

She smiled. "You don't deserve those pretty eyelashes."

Ging averted his gaze. "Look, about what I said earlier,"

"I know, it's okay," she cut him off. "I overreacted, we don't have to talk about it and make it awkward all over again. I just want to focus on the mission."

"I owe you an apology."

"You don't. Or maybe you do. For being needlessly mean, at least." She said, eyes back at her work. "You were right. I'm just so high strung about everything, stuck on the little shit. But then, going down that slope, I felt like a kid, and I thought 'it doesn't have to be like this'. I don't have to be so serious." She scoffed at herself. "So what if you had a random boner in the morning?" She laughed nervously. "I mean, come on, that's not even the most embarrassing thing that happened with us in the same place, right?"

It wasn't random, he wanted to say but didn't. That would open a whole 'nother conversation he really did not want to have, a conversation he wasn't even having with himself yet. Ging sensed, too, from the turn of her face, the way her hands tied the thread of his suture and then fumbled around with the equipment, that she purposefully used the word 'random' for pretty much the same reasons. Was she giving him a way out, a bridge back to where they didn't really have to acknowledge anything? Or was she trying to mainly convince herself of something? If he didn't say anything, that would be the end of it.

"I reacted that way because I got embarrassed, too, both times." He admitted.

"Yeah, I guessed," she said, nodded several times. "That's why I was upset. In defending yourself, you hurt me."

Ging looked away, touching the new texture of the stitches on his cheek. "I didn't mean to."

"I know." His eyes met hers again. She looked disarmingly earnest. "Can I tell you something? You probably already know that I broke multiple laws by coming here with Pariston. I didn't have to, and I could have taken legal routes, but I didn't." She glanced away from him again, the sunlight seeping into the chamber lending a serenity to the green of her eyes. "Seeing everything, I can't help but think sometimes that, maybe, it would be better if I weren't here at all, that I'm here selfishly."

"It wouldn't be better," Ging said. "Look at me. It wouldn't be better. Who's gonna come up with a vaccine? Me? Pariston? You're here because you've survived this place and know your shit. Besides, what if you are here selfishly? I'm here selfishly. I called you here selfishly."

"Hey!" Pariston called for them from above the dome, peeking his head through the opening. "We can rest up here for a bit and get dry, there's enough space and it's warm. I should also mention there are huge birds circling above." Then he disappeared outside again, one leg dangling down the hole.

Her face moved closer to Ging's. "Why is Pariston here?"

He smiled. "A wild card."

"Why do you need a wild card, Ging?"

"Cheadle, why does anybody ever keep a wild card?" He asked, not awaiting an answer. "If I remember correctly, when you play chess, it's your bishops you like to keep for last, right?" She nodded. "Pariston is my bishops."

They gazed long at each other. He could tell the dozens of questions swarming her mind, and was a little surprised when she didn't end up asking any. She only stood up and helped him to his feet, then joined Pariston up on the dome surface, not bothering with anything but nen for her own wound.

The coffee was still hot, surprisingly, preserved along with their food inside what Ging found to be the best natural, water-resistant preserver in the world, and the stickiest: the coagulant saliva of the colossal, carnivorous anemone. He's got a whole barrel of it back on the ship, courtesy of Don. That stuff was precious.

As he glided the food out of the sticky, viscous substance, Pariston kissed him on his wound.

Ging flinched back, bemused. "What the hell?"

Pariston laughed, and lay on his back, eyes closed, smiling. "That'll make it heal faster."

A gust of warm wind passed over him. He loved the sun, he loved the air and the open sky. Yet, in the tight annals and darkness of the cavern, his persistent headache had subsided significantly, and he wasn't sure if it were for the above reasons or because he was focused on immediate tasks that he simply forgot the pain.

That morning, woken up by the sound of Cheadle's shuffling around the room, Pariston had seriously considered just straight up asking her for help. He never liked to say "my headache is killing me", always thought it a cheap underselling of the pain of it, because whatever agony he felt during every episode was surely worse than death, but the recent spurts of pain have been long, incessant, and acute. At times, even, they filled his vision with fantastic colors. He's been feeling it since yesterday during dinner preparation and all throughout the night, then it continued unabated upon waking up, in the forest, racing Ging, and now, he felt it coming back, its onset a hazy spectrum of colors dancing in the corners of his eyes.

If he was right about its timing—and he almost always was these days—the headache will come back in full force around the afternoon, will recede at nightfall but only momentarily, and then will probably keep him in a state of half-sleep all throughout the night. But if he woke up fine tomorrow, it will give him a break for most of the day.

He glanced at Ging's leg. Pariston had only a glimpse of what was under the bandages, yesterday in the infirmary. It didn't look pretty at all, and he didn't get to be privy to the details behind it, but he knew for sure that Ging must be terribly frustrated by its state.

How sad. It seemed not even the best can escape decay.

Pariston's eyes watered at the hot coffee touching his parched throat, and a long yawn escaped his chest. He could fall asleep for a hundred years right in this spot.

A flock of those birds flew overhead. They really were huge. He hoped they didn't look like food from down here.

"I feel like a vulture on the edge of a nest." He said, his gaze wandering the endless expanse of sky above him, the relatively small rock they were currently occupying, the insane height from which they overlooked the world.

Like the first time Pariston got to see it from a massive altitude, he felt mystified at the sheer, incomprehensible size of this land. From up here, he could see Lake Harkenburg, shimmering under the translucent shafts of sunlight that broke through the clouds, descending down to encompass the mammoth trees farther north.

On her map, Cheadle was searching for an area to cross with her pen, but she didn't find it.

"You've never been here before?" She asked Ging, who's been silent, holding the coffee cup in both hands, staring at the distance. "I assume you would've mapped it."

He looked at her. "This cavern has never been here before."

A Cheadle who hadn't experienced something similar would have argued that perhaps he simply didn't see it, but there was a look of recognition in her eyes, an implicit understanding.

They never talked about it, she and him, but Pariston was certain she too experienced the strange architectural shifts in the settlement complex, rooms that appear and disappear, ones you see once and never again, a second turn towards one lab or the next that didn't exist the other day, an extra step in the staircase up to the roof that disappears on the way down. He knew that. He counted. Cheadle counted, too.

So it wasn't just the settlement undergoing subtle, seemingly organic alterations, but the land itself, its geography, and perhaps its very makeup.

"Why do you think that happens?" Cheadle asked. "How can an entire cavern like this, containing live bio organisms and an ecosystem, just come to appear out of nowhere?"

Ging tilted his head. "I think it's some kind of response, maybe to new human presence."

"But humans have always come here."

"They didn't come in such large numbers, and they didn't stay for long," he said. "The past decade and some is the first time human presence has persisted continuously in the continent."

She frowned. "What about your grandfather, then?"

"He's not exempt."

"But this theory implies the continent is sentient in some way, communicating or seeking revenge or defending itself against an invasive species," she argued. "Do you believe that? I know you don't subscribe to such teleological nonsense."

"I don't," Ging agreed. "That's why I don't have a definitive, satisfying, scientifically-sound answer for you. It's a mystery."

"Is nothing of the sort mentioned in the inscriptions you've been studying?" Pariston asked. "It's an interesting phenomenon, isn't it? Wouldn't the ancient, linguistically-gifted inhabitants of the land know about it?"

"What's a mystery to us now might have been just a regular part of life to them," Ging said. "So they wouldn't have had the need to record what amounts to a mundanity."

"Like the kingdom of Sal-Ith," Cheadle added. "It was so grand and well-known that none of its bordering nations bothered recording where it actually was. It was simply assumed that everybody at the time knew where a kingdom that wealthy and influential was located. So many places were also mentioned relative to its location, which only complicated matters."

Ging nodded, a smile creeping to his face. "Besides, nothing proves those ancient inhabitants were humans, anyway."

Pariston smiled too. "Something like the Chimera Ants?"

"Yeah, it's a possibility. The self-portraits they left behind are anatomically vague at best."

Now, Pariston felt greatly interested. He never did get to play around with his Chimera Ants, after all the trouble that went into collecting them, breeding them, caring for them, because Cheadle had taken that from him, too. Pariston believed now that his Chimera Ant army was his 'last' great effort, and after that the world became bleak in a way that did not suit him at all.

Would he get a second chance, to redo his experiment? Probably not. Although, he thought with silent, ponderous relish, he might get something much more interesting. Besides, nothing was ever compelling in its natural habitat; it's only when you take a creature out of its comfort zone that you can see what it's truly made of, that it becomes worthy of note.

"Perhaps the people of those ancient civilizations knew how to harness and use nen?" Cheadle wondered aloud. "Maybe the geographical shifts are a latent or postmortem collective hatsu. Instances like these are rare but documented, and we know for certain that nen can and does at times persist after death."

"But this wouldn't explain why we see those changes in the settlement complex as well," Pariston said. "And it's been built pretty recently, relatively speaking."

"It would," Cheadle retorted. "Dotti Steis's tree."

"Aren't we on this fungi hunting trip because you have a pretty strong hunch about it?" Ging asked, leaning back on his elbows.

She nodded.

Pariston suddenly gasped. "I forgot to give you the jam to try! It's in the bag, I should get it."

"There he goes again," Cheadle rolled her eyes. "You'd think he re-invented the whole culinary arts."

Ging chuckled. "But I did try it."

"You did?"

"Yeah, it's pretty good."

Cheadle leaned towards him. "Did you ever taste anything like it?"

Ging squinted playfully at her. "Asking for science or for a friend?"

Cheadle laughed. "For science, asshole."

"I did, actually." He said.

"Oh no," Pariston lamented. "I'm hurt."

Ging smiled at him. "That doesn't mean it doesn't taste great, but if you want to make something truly special here, you need to learn from those who already make it, and then surpass them."

"Your grandpa?"

Ging smirked. "He cooks all sorts of shit, and makes me try everything. I'm his appointed food taster."

"Do you think if your grandpa tried Pariston's jam, he'd be able to break it down to its base components?" Cheadle asked, excited. "Would he be able to tell where the original grafted trees came from?"

"Yeah, I think he could." Ging said. "His tastes are pretty eclectic. He eats shit that would make the most undiscriminating gourmet Hunter barf."

"And he plants edible crops, right?"

"Right."

Cheadle and Pariston smiled giddily, their eyes twinkling. Ging's gaze wandered between them. "You want to meet him, huh."

They nodded.

"Fine."

"What's he like?"

"A lot like me but nicer."

Cheadle snorted. "So like Gon."

Ging twisted his mouth. "Don't insult my son like this."

"By what, comparing him to you or to Don?"

"By implying he's that flavor of nice."

"How do you mean?"

Ging smirked. "You'll know it when you see it." He gave her a good-hearted accusatory glance. "You two are kinda alike, if I think about it."

"Excuse me?" Cheadle frowned. "Are you saying I'm an annoying flavor of nice?"

Ging sighed. "That's not what I'm saying, but since you love to dig up these conversations, here: you're not an annoying flavor of nice, you perform an annoying flavor of nice."

"And you're annoyed by it?"

Ging shrugged. "No, because I see through it."

"Like you see through your grandfather's niceness." Pariston interjected.

"My point exactly, but someone loves to take things personally."

"I don't actu—" Cheadle started then promptly stopped herself, took a long breath, and sighed. "Okay, I understand now."

"Good. So," Ging roused himself up, taking a big breath. "Shall we go back into the cavern or climb down the cliff face?"

Pariston glanced down at the dizzying landscape below, then they all joined him, searching for possible footholds. Ging pointed to a gentle waterfall cascading down the cliff wall "We can go there, enter the waterfall cave and basically take a shortcut to ground, or we can hitch a quick ride."

"Don't tell me."

"Yeah, this." Ging pointed up to one of the massive, brown mega-birds that have been circling the sky above them. "They're still just building nests, so they aren't as aggressive. We'll just hop on one and let it drop us near the lake." He turned to Cheadle. "It's up to you."

She remained silent for a moment, following the birds with her eyes, downing the rest of her coffee. "No, and we won't climb down the cliff face either." She said. "We haven't followed the arthropods to their nest, and if shiols are growing here it means there's something they feed on. The spread and range of their roots suggest a big colony with sub-branches, too. I don't want to waste this opportunity." She smiled. "Let's just rest some more and eat for now. If we come out of the cavern and the birds are still around, we'll take the ride to the lake."

Back to the damp darkness, then.

This time, they didn't go swimming back down to the flooded chamber, but chose a winding, twisted path that branched from the domed chamber and lead down through a chaotic, tricky staircase of shaky ledges, crumbling stone and deceptive footholds, spiraling in a never ending descent, the dying mycelium roots leaving traces of light along the way, pale and shriveled but still clinging with stubborn filaments to the wet, slippery walls.

"Was it wise to leave some stuff behind?" Pariston asked, this time in the lead, his feet hopping from one stone to the next, his arms keeping him balanced in this dizzyingly long tube, less narrow than the ones they'd crossed but no less suffocating.

"It's better that way," Ging said. "I don't want what happened in the flooded chute to happen again."

Yeah, how his bag was going to block both Pariston and Cheadle from moving forward, how it almost sunk them down for a hot minute.

Now, their most important items were the coffee (of course) and the nitrogen tank, this time strapped to Cheadle instead of him. They kept her bag and the food and discarded everything else, filling their pockets with whatever they could, and Pariston made sure to keep the little jam jar on him, safe in his jacket's pocket, wrapped in an extra layer of cotton for protection. It was part of the mission now, and the whole time, he couldn't stop thinking of Don.

Last time he was around here, Pariston didn't actually get to meet the man, because Ging didn't, either, and meeting Don himself—the legendary Ur-Hunter, the Seirin founder, the infamous author—wasn't Ging's main goal; the man's allegedly unfinished travelogue novel was.

Don was a side dish, to Ging, and back then, in that expedition, in the shit puddles and swamps of new settlers, of militaristic excursions and aristocratic panic, very little had gone the way anyone expected.

It was a deliciously chaotic time, rife with possibilities, and yet the only thing Pariston had managed to wrench out of it was his life, intact, and a promise. He hadn't lost his soul or body to this land, the way numerous others did; it hadn't consumed him and spat him out. He survived it long enough and well enough to still come back to it, and in his first visit he knew he wasn't going to die, but he also didn't know that Cheadle was going to clamp down on him like a cannibalistic plant the second he stopped paying attention, or that he was going to live in her dark entrails for a very long time.

Yet if there was one thing he regretted, it was that he hadn't walked into that landmine willingly, a landmine she so painstakingly set up. No, Cheadle had exploited a small, regrettable misstep, and tripped him into it, held him by the neck, at once dangling him over death and sparing his life, because, more than anything, more than her sense of justice or her righteous drive to protect others from his hubris, she wanted to humiliate him. And she did.

Don Freecs could be any number of things, but if he were the key to payback, even a little piece of it, Pariston wanted him.

He looked up at her, her foot a ledge over his hand, the monitor around her ankle reflecting a speck of light. Did it itch her like it itched him, a burn that never quite heals?

"What is it?" She stared at him, her pretty green eyes searching his face the way they always do. "Is something wrong?"

Pariston smiled. "We've reached a landing."

She urged him forward with a jab of her chin. "Go on then."

He did, his feet finally touching continuous ground. He looked around in the darkness, then reached for his flashlight, shining a spot over their heads where once again the arthropods gathered, jittering and chirring in a unified, blind hoard. Except these ones were bigger, and meaner.

The flashlight glow that barely registered on the other hoard's sensory radar appeared quite irksome to this patch. They moved about, ebbing and flowing in place, a suspended wave of anxious anticipation, waiting for the intruding, bigger organism to make the first move, and there were so many of them they blocked the path ahead.

With a helpless sigh, Pariston turned back to his companions and bug nerds. "What now?"

Cheadle and Ging landed beside him in the domed tunnel, and wasted no time looking around for other routes, but there was only one.

"We just walk among them."

"Pardon?"

Ging shrugged. "Even if I wanted to burn them all, which I don't, the torches are still wet and won't take fire. We could use nen, but that'll just make them hostile. They already don't like us here. You kill one of these a hundred burst from the walls. Is that a scenario you prefer?"

The back of Pariston's shoulders tingled in revulsion. He glanced at Cheadle for a counter, saner opinion, but she just shrugged. "Just keep your mouth closed."

Of course they wouldn't want to kill the damn bugs. Pariston felt a little resentful.

"Ready whenever you are." Ging said. "Hold your breath and walk steadily, don't steer off course and don't try to shake them off if they cling to you. Got it?"

"Want to go ahead together, Pariston?" Cheadle put a hand to his back, and pushed him forward, not awaiting an answer.

What was stronger, disgust or fear? He's only ever felt one of them.

Pariston took one big step, eyes wide open, and waded through the moving curtain of frenzied bugs, Cheadle a complete shadow at his side.

He came out the other end, miraculously fast, out of his skin, one bug or two or ten stuck to his head and hands. When Cheadle shortly followed suit, he bent down to let her extract them from his hair while he shook the rest off his hands.

Once done, she stuck them in a couple of her vials, where they helplessly tried to climb the slippery glass walls of their tight prison.

It's only after a moment that Pariston felt it, the stinging, hot sensation in his hands that he expected. He got bitten.

"Why did none stick to you or bite you?" He asked, knowing the answer.

Cheadle looked up from her unfurled leather roll to his eyes. "Zetsu."

Ging arrived to their silence, pulled a bug out of his collar and chucked it back to its brethren, then their eyes found his, and all three of them just stared at one another in a short moment of mutual understanding.

For a while, the three sat on relatively dry ground while Cheadle tended to his hands. The bites spread over his knuckles and fingers like hot pink, ridged, four-eyed buttons, and the longer he stared at them the grosser they looked. She stuck a long, thin needle in each bite, at the little red center, and drew blood. Inside the syringe, his blood swirled with tiny dark impurities. Cheadle inserted the needle through the cap of a little white bottle, drew a translucent liquid through it which at first mixed seamlessly with his blood then started separating from it until a clear demarcation formed between the two. Cheadle inserted that needle back in his hands, and injected him with the new liquid, little, measured doses in each bite.

Pariston met Ging's eyes. The latter was never going to say anything about it because he considered it none of his business, but he understood the situation well enough to know that sooner or later, Pariston was going to become more of a liability than an asset. Similarly, the sooner Cheadle realizes how his nenlessness slows and hinders them, the better, and Pariston wasn't going to waste any opportunity to show her just that, even if it meant hurting himself, over and over again.

She will realize he's doing it on purpose, and perhaps she already did, but that wouldn't make a difference.

His stinging hands limp in hers, she pressed the pads of her fingers over the bite marks, then she drew them away. Strings of blood began trickling out of each puncture. Pariston stared down at it all as she held both of his wrists in a tight, blood-draining grip, the tips of his fingers brushing her palms, and he watched the veins bulge in his hands, then they went blue and numb. Cheadle didn't let go.

"Is that a general anti-coagulant you used?" Ging asked her, holding her leather roll between his hands like unspooled yarn, inspecting the small bottles that lined the inside, the needles and threads and scalpels. Her tools were enough to perform a small operation.

Cheadle nodded, not moving her eyes away from his hands. "I don't have anything specific for these bugs," she answered, but was addressing Pariston instead of Ging. "But this will stop any venom from reaching your heart. Does it hurt?"

"It's fine," Pariston said, then chuckled. "This feels like some religious blood-letting ritual."

The winding threads of blood that streamed down between his knuckles and burrowed in the grooves of his skin and down his fingers had begun to dribble down Cheadle's hands, too. A drop of blood hung precariously to her inner wrist, and fell.

"Does it?"

"Why aren't they labeled?" Ging asked again, still studying the drug bottles she's decided to bring along. "Don't want anybody else to use them?"

"I don't want the wrong people to use them."

"You tell them apart by smell?" His nose was curiously sniffing one.

"And careful placement—stop opening each one to smell it." She admonished him. "Some lose potency by exposure to air."

Ging closed the bottles tightly and returned them to where they had been, and Cheadle observed him to make sure he returned each bottle to its original place. Once he was done, Ging stood up again to look around.

The chamber they found themselves in was relatively spacious but low ceilinged, and had numerous exits, some that led down, others up, and others yet that extended straight ahead to absolute darkness. Everywhere around them, insects crawled in and out of holes and burrows.

Ging was searching for the lost trail of mycelium, his eyes seizing on the crumbs of dead bugs. He walked with slow, measured steps towards the mouth of one tunnel, and for a moment, disappeared into it. They could still hear his footsteps.

"Do you know that in the warrior culture of the Yurwa mountain tribes of Northern Gutedel, a wedding ceremony is opened with blood-letting by the groom and bride," Pariston said. She didn't answer with anything, letting him continue while she pulled out a roll of gauze from an inside breast pocket. "The soon-to-be spouses cut each other's palms open, and hold hands, their blood, now one, drips into a bowl that's then mixed with fresh goat milk, vanilla beans and brown sugar, then everyone in the wedding drinks it."

Cheadle made a face, but she was entertained by the details of this ritual. "Did you drink it?"

"No," Pariston shook his head. "Colonialist families weren't allowed to participate in indigenous ceremonies, but they used to let children watch. How's your arm now?"

"It's okay, it was just a scratch." She said, and started wrapping his fingers and hands with the light gauze. "Your hands will probably sting for a while. You won't be able to use them for a couple hours, at worst, luckily."

Done, she finally looked up at him, the line of her lips firm, her gaze hard and sharp, staring into the depths of his eyes. Pariston stared back, his hands still held in hers, their faces so close to each other they shared a breath.

"Don't do that again."

"How else am I gonna receive your kindness?"

Her grip around his wrists grew considerably stronger, the gentleness with which she held them only a second ago replaced with punitive force. His shoulders tightened in pain.

Did she see him, when he grabbed Ging's injured leg in pretty much the same way?

Pariston smiled at the shaky, cruel gleam in her eyes. "You're hurting me."

Without breaking her gaze for a second, Cheadle let go.

"I found your flamboyant fungi for you," Ging reappeared out of the dark tunnel, still wholly intact.

Cheadle's eyes sought him instantly, her entire expression changing. "You did? Are you sure they're alive?"

"Yeah," Ging said. "But you're gonna have to go there alone."

III

AN: Thank you to everyone who read this far. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

The rest of this story will come when it comes.