I do not know why two of this story's chapters disappeared for a few days. Seemed like a sitewide problem.

Chapter Ten: No Sanctuary

Blush clicked empty. Reflex had Adam rolling back under the ursa's wild swipe to get more distance while his brain caught up to the fact that he was now completely out of ammunition. Short of firing Wilt and leaving himself all but defenseless, he had no long-range weaponry left.

Weaponry he really could've used to pick off the weaker Grimm still circling him as the ursa demanded his focus.

Halfway up the final mountain separating them from Vale's valley and the Grimm were pressing them like never before. Near the top of the pass, he knew, was a gap too narrow for most Grimm to get through. While there were other ways around, they were too far away to matter. Once they made it through that gap, the swarms they had to fend off now were not nearly as common in the valley itself, and huntsman patrols kept it that way.

They just had to make it there.

When the ursa overcommitted on its next tree-smashing attempt to bat him into submission, Adam dodged past it, kicked off an intact tree, and buried Wilt in the back of the beast's neck. Wrenching the blade, he rode the ursa down and rolled off its disintegrating corpse in time to see Besh struggling to hold off the parts of the horde that had ignored Adam. His only advantages were that the level path narrowed considerably where he was, forcing the landlocked Grimm to come at him nearly in single file or risk sliding down the mountain, and that the trees were enough of an obstacle that the nevermores of any consequence were stuck observing and taking inaccurate potshots.

Using some of Wilt's stored energy to eliminate two rolling boarbatusks, armor and all, Adam forced his exhausted body into a sprint back to his temporary allies, cutting down the fodder Grimm as he went.

His knife caked in Grimm matter too thick to disappear before it was coated anew, Besh was being forced to retreat backwards. Behind him, the heiress stumbled over the uneven path, unable to tear her eyes away from the Grimm trying to kill her. Besh body-checked a creep over the edge and threw his knife into the throat of another before it could reach Annea. Weaponless now, he grappled with the next creep to challenge him.

None of the Grimm realized Adam was coming up behind them. He cut them all down, reaching Besh right as the guard threw the last creep over the side with a cry. The Grimm tumbled helplessly before a low branch impaled it.

Gasping, Besh fell to one knee. Adam kicked his knife over to him and glanced down the path. The tide of Grimm had retreated for now, but they would be back.

He glanced at Besh, then reached down and hauled him to his feet. "We don't have time to rest."

Besh just shook his head, looking vaguely ill from overexertion. They didn't have time to rest, but if this kept up, they were going to collapse. Just picking Besh up had nearly been too much for Adam. His eyelids dragged with every blink, and he hadn't been able to pull in enough oxygen per breath since they started climbing this mountain. Even just five minutes would have made a difference, but they didn't have five minutes. He could already see more dark shapes moving below them as creeps figured out that it would be faster to risk falling on a climb up the side of the mountain than press them up the trail.

With Besh and the heiress hanging on each other for what little stability could be gained from that arrangement and Adam bringing up the rear and deflecting any nevermores who grew too bold with their attacks, they began the first of many consecutive switchbacks. It was an agonizingly slow progress. What took them ten minutes to ascend would take the Grimm two or less.

The Grimm—this time headed by a young deathstalker—were already coming up the trail leading to the first switchback. They'd be on their little group in twenty seconds.

Adam's eyes cut to the trail itself. Not far behind where he stood, it narrowed to a couple feet wide against a sheer rock face before widening again, the bare rock giving way to dirt and trees once more. It was a quintessential bottleneck.

"Adam?" Besh called.

"Keep going."

Wilt clicked free. He still had power stored from earlier, but was it enough? Did he even have the strength left to unleash his semblance on this scale?

He ground his teeth, incensed by his own hesitation. The world plunged into shadow under a red sky. He ripped Wilt from its sheath and cast out all the power he had in reserve to the ground just past his feet. The crimson crescent dug deep. He sheathed his blade in the same instant as his semblance's light-altering effects lifted. As the world returned to normal, a veritable storm of decaying petals flew up from what had once been solid ground.

Where there had been a straightforward path was now an all but vertical drop for twenty feet, too wide for the Grimm to jump.

His move hadn't removed the path. It wouldn't stop them. But it would slow them down.

With the time Adam had bought, they were able to make it to the end of the switchbacks. Ahead of them stretched another winding trail through the forest that covered the mountain. These trees, some already growing new leaves thanks to Vale's more temperate climate, combined with the underbrush blocked both the sky and Adam's view of their surroundings. Compared to that, the relatively sparse ground the switchbacks traversed was almost appealing.

Compared to that…Adam looked higher up the mountain. The switchbacks had stopped to avoid going over a pile of boulders that looked as though they had tumbled down from the top of the mountain centuries ago. Despite all their years of staying in place, they looked unsteady. If their connection to the ground was thin enough…

Adam didn't have any explosive rounds left. He also didn't have a convenient semblance that could give his punch the force of a truck. What he did have was a semblance capable of cutting away the rock—if he could find fuel for it that wouldn't be a suicide run into the approaching Grimm horde. Aura was out of the question; his reserves were barely hanging on as it was. Even if he did siphon it, he would likely come up short and leave himself vulnerable in the process.

He glanced back at Besh. There were other ways. Noticing his look, Besh frowned. "Are you staying behind?"

"No." Adam gestured for him to come over. "I need you to strike this." He partially unsheathed Wilt and held it and Blush laterally in front of him.

Besh stared.

"Preferably before the Grimm eat us alive," Adam said, an edge creeping into his voice as he heard the Grimm getting louder. He needed time to build power, time to get close to the rocks, and time to cut them loose. The time they all had before they were overwhelmed was dwindling by the second.

After another beat of confusion, Besh punched Wilt. The force behind it was not encouraging.

"Again."

Besh hit the blade again, harder this time. It still wasn't enough.

"That was pathetic."

A kick.

"Is that all you can manage?" sneered Adam. "Without her semblance, your precious Autumn could've done better."

Besh snapped. Instead of aiming for the sword, he aimed his next punch at Adam's jaw—but Adam was faster, and the aura-enhanced blow still landed squarely on Wilt's metal. Besh cursed, drawing his hand back and shaking it out while Adam sheathed Wilt.

"Go," Adam said, jerking his chin towards the path. "I'll slow them down."

"Why—"

"Go."

Suspicion written plainly across his face, Besh nonetheless grabbed Annea by the hand and tugged her into the trees. Adam turned to the switchbacks and forced his aching body to move. He could've used another several hits for his semblance to be sure he had the power, but they were out of time. The most ambitious Grimm were already halfway up; the deathstalker was eagerly clicking its mandibles loudly enough to be heard over everything else.

Jumping between patches of somewhat level ground and using the stubborn trees clinging to the mountainside to slingshot himself up just a little higher, Adam made it to the boulders with every limb weak from exhaustion. Fighting through it, focusing through it, he dropped his duffel, dug his feet into the loose rock above the tumbled behemoths, wrapped his fingers around Wilt's grip, and gathered every bit of power he could into Wilt itself. Red lightning flickered around Blush as shadows stole over the landscape.

He hit the end of the energy he'd gathered, and his concentration faltered. Pain from his wounds, doubt about whether he could actually manage this, and creeping realization of the position he'd put himself in ate away at his hold on his semblance. Before his focus could break, he tore Wilt from its sheath and directed its power into the earth. More lightning, a sign of how much power he was letting escape, arced through the air as red cracks raced along the ground.

Weak, dizzy, and suddenly seeing double—all signs of imminent aura exhaustion, he realized faintly—Adam fell back, barely managing to keep his hold on Wilt. His back hit the rocky earth, driving what little breath he had from his lungs.

Gaze focused on the sky and the circling nevermores, he only knew his plan had worked by the groans of shifting rock. The earth trembled and then shook as the ancient boulders broke free, their own weight sending them tumbling down into the mass of Grimm below. Shrieks and growls were silenced abruptly under the landslide that just kept growing in volume. As the boulders fell, they shook loose even more earth in a vicious cycle that utterly erased the path below and all the creatures on it.

With every breath he dragged in, he could feel his pulse speed up and slow down. His heart practically shook his chest with each beat. He ached to close his eyes, to rest—but he had to get up.

Groaning, he sat up, blinking until he could see straight.

Reflex took over. Wilt impaled the first of the creeps that had been far enough up to avoid the landslide before it grew, but Adam couldn't move fast enough to deal with the second. Its leap knocked him onto his back, and he abandoned Wilt to hold the Grimm's gnashing maw away from his face. Its two clawed feet dug into his shoulders and arms as it hunted for a grip that would give it the power to break through.

One bite, and Adam's life would be over. The creep's teeth sliced through the air ever closer to his throat, its burning red eyes practically glowing in expectation of its meal.

His shoulders were burning, the muscles giving way. His arms, too.

His strength failed. The creep lunged—

And was knocked to one side with a knife in its throat. Eyes wide, Adam stared at the blade, which briefly glimmered with light too orange to be from the sun. He knew that knife. He craned his neck up to see Besh hanging off a tree high above where the path must've doubled back across the mountain face. The guard's expression was impossible to make out at this distance with the thin forest in the way, but there was no mistaking that he had been the one to make the throw.

Adam slowly rolled over onto his stomach and pushed himself up onto his knees, drawing in breath until his vertigo vanished. Blood leaked from the wounds where the creep's claws had raked over his arms. Concentrated on his hands to stop his fingers from getting bitten off, his dregs of remaining aura had been too weak to protect him anywhere else. For the moment, adrenaline was dulling the pain.

He reached for Wilt and sheathed it first, then leaned forward to collect Besh's knife. Making a throw like that itself was incredible; the fact that he had sacrificed his only viable weapon to do it more so.

Traces of Besh's aura still lingered on the knife. Most likely, the guard had used his semblance. Adam hadn't seen any sign of a semblance until now…though their circumstances to this point hadn't been ideal for an ability that was only useful for throwing away your weapon.

As he got to his feet and dragged his duffel back over his shoulder, he noticed the wounds on his calf had stained the bandages red again. Either as he had leaped to get to the boulders or in his thrashing against the creep, he had reopened them. With his aura so low and having been that way for so long, they were going to scar, and scar badly, never mind that it was yet another open wound.

He closed his eyes, took a breath, and resolved to worry about it later. He wasn't losing blood quickly, and the existing bandages would help stem the bleeding on his leg. He would take time to deal with his wounds when they were through the gap.

As he began his trek back down to where the path picked up again, he took in the extent of the landslide's damage. Trees had been crushed and most of the greenery buried under rock and dirt. The switchbacks' surface had been far more unstable than Adam expected, possibly because there were so few trees and grasses with roots that could have held everything in place. The Grimm had been all but wiped out, and the new terrain made temporarily impassible as the fallen rock threatened to slide again at the slightest provocation.

It was the first stroke of luck they'd had since the drowned forest. It wasn't due to his own skill; that had been a last-ditch play made—in hindsight—with the full expectation that it would fail.

Luck. That wasn't something he'd had in a long time.

He welcomed its return.

To his surprise, Besh waited for him. And, of course, where Besh stayed, Annea stayed. He limped up to them, having had to use Wilt and Blush as a cane to take some of the weight off his injured leg, which had begun throbbing with every step. Whatever conversation they'd been having—one that had clearly troubled Besh—died at his approach.

He held out Besh's knife with a single question accompanying it: "Why?"

Besh took the knife and sheathed it. "You really were slowing them down."

Regarding him for a moment, Adam just shook his head and stood straight, clipping Blush back to his belt. His leg still hurt, but he could ignore it for now if it meant moving faster. Some of the drying blood on his torn sweatshirt cracked and flaked off with the motion. Seeing concern in Besh's eyes, Adam scowled.

"Worry about your heiress, not me."

They climbed even higher. Thankfully, though the trail narrowed and became more difficult to traverse as the trees thickened, those same trees provided them some cover from the nevermores, which had become bolder after the landslide.

On the final cross of the mountain face before the narrow gap that would take them to the other side, they all, on some silent signal, paused to look back down over the drop to where the Grimm had nearly overwhelmed them. From this high, Adam could see just how big of a swath of destruction he had wrought. All those Grimm dying at once and their bodies being subsequently buried had left a haze over the disturbed earth that would take hours to fully dissipate.

But there were already more Grimm, inexorably drawn by Annea's ceaseless grief, Besh's exhaustion, and Adam's pain, trying to crawl over their dead brethren. Some slipped, fell, and were buried by unstable ground. They were merely lessons to the next to come. Little by little, they were figuring out a way through.

Besh swallowed and stepped back from the edge. "We're almost to that gap you mentioned, right?"

"We should see it around the next bend."

Gently tugging Annea back from the edge, Besh tried to give her some words of encouragement. "We're almost there, miss Annea. Just a little longer, and we'll be safe in Vale."

Saying nothing yet seeming worse off at the mention of Vale, Annea let herself be pulled. Shoulders high, Besh led the way forward. Adam, eyeing the heiress who had been left unmoving once Besh let her go, slowly followed. Annea's attention remained on the Grimm.

Adam shook his head and focused on himself. He refused to make his limp or heavy breathing obvious, but there was only so much he could do. The blood caked in his clothes turned them stiff, making them rub against his skin every time he moved.

Besh was the first to notice that Annea had made no move to keep pace. As he turned, Adam realized it too. The heiress's gaze remained angled back towards the steep slope to her right and the Grimm attempting to scale it in pursuit.

"Miss Annea," Besh said, a little nervous, "it's dangerous there. Please, let's keep moving."

She skipped right over Besh, and her empty eyes landed on Adam.

So this was her choice.

She closed her eyes. Her expression smoothed out. Besh cried her name, but before he could take more than a single step, she tipped over the edge.

Convinced the guard was about to throw himself after her like Annea had tried to do with Autumn, Adam waited for him to try it, but Besh merely stopped where she'd fallen and dropped to his knees. Tears streaked through the dirt and dust on his face as Annea's broken body tumbled to rest among the Grimm. Her bag had split open and spilled her meager possessions over the mountainside.

Besh balled his hands into fists on his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut, hunched his shoulders, and slowly bent over.

His scream echoed long after he was out of breath.