II
Rekindling
If the forest was dark then this chasm was the gateway to the God of Darkness' domain.
Suspended in the air, Yang felt the rival pressures of the King Taijitu's jaws seized about her right ankle and Blake's ribbon round her waist. Her aura held firm against the tearing fangs of the giant snake, and though it saved her from adding a leg to the tally of limbs lost, the effort was sapping her strength.
As she dangled and spun around at the end of Blake's line, Yang pumped her arm and launched shot after shot at the white face of the snake until her gauntlet clicked and wheezed, spent as she was becoming. She felt her semblance burning, but the question was of landing a clean hit. There was no chance of that while she was flailing in the air.
Yang seized on the wall and made a handhold in the rocky face, and she thrust her free foot against the grimm's snout. It did not relent and whipped its sinews instead. Yang's frustration began to boil over; she threw another series of kicks. "Get—the—Hell—off!"
As if responding to her words, the ground above broke apart and came tumbling down, Blake among the debris.
The line slackened, and the tumbling ground pulled her free from her hold on the rock face.
The light of the moon vanished above. Yang could only sense Blake as she dove past her, the tethered blade unwinding from her waist and returning to its owner's hands in the murk. Here, Blake Belladonna was in her demesne, and metallic crescents sparked as her blades crossed over the Taijitu's scales over and over; a precise stroke cut out one eye, and razor sharp blades left scars the rest of the way over its back. A few gunshots lit up the black, aimed at the newly opened breaches in the creature's tough scales. It had enough of the cuts, which did not stop so long as Blake leapt from one shadow copy to another.
In the freefall it was impossible for Yang to tell which direction was up. She shut her eyes, felt it out, and she fired a shot from her arm cannon that halted most of the tumbling.
Soon she felt another force. This one was the opposite of the grimm; strong, yet gentle, nimble, and she knew Blake had found her.
"Hang on" she yelled against the whistling in Yang's ears. "Brake when I give you the signal!"
Yang grunted in response, throwing in a nod in case Blake see. Without the rush of air, Yang could not tell if they were in empty space or not. There was a loud bang that came up from beneath them—the snake, hitting solid bedrock, and Blake tensed and shouted.
"Now!"
Yang aimed her right arm against the wind and fired her cannon. She fired as fast as she could until the air slowed, then stopped. They hung in the air, then they hit an incline. It was too steep to keep from sliding, and on they went until a few bends took them to an opening that coughed them up into a large, airy chamber.
"Brace!" Blake said again, and with that they hit the ground on their feet, hard, but alive. Each one of them tumbled and regained their footing in her own style. Yang quickly drew her scroll and toggled the the torchlight on it.
Before her laid the wounded grimm. The snake, harrowed and unable to save itself from the impact of the fall, writhed in an uncoordinated daze. Disbelief wrote itself on Yang's face, and Blake expressed a similar sentiment.
"It's still up?"
"This one's stubborn!"
Yang cast her lit scroll to the ground and went to correct this mistake of nature. Blake had already more than had her say on it. Dozens of cuts marred its pale face with wounds bleeding black mist. A grotesque hollow stared back where once there was a garnet eye. Yet it seemed to pick up on Yang. Her anger, perhaps? She tried to temper it. Fighting Grimm again, after almost a year, felt nostalgic to her, but the days where she could be cavalier about it were over.
"Punching this thing doesn't seem to do much good—"
It lunged suddenly, mouth distended, hideously hissing.
Yang jerked towards its blinded side and whirled out of the way. She fired from her wrist once, accelerating her spin, and in the same motion, her heel extended and sunk into the serpent's face. Her body shed a flash of golden light on impact, and the crack of scale and bone echoed with her wheeling kick. The King Taijitu tumbled several meters in an instant, its skull flattening against the stone wall. It fell to the cave floor like a tenderized piece of meat, 100% dead.
"—but I never skip leg day, either."
She tossed her hair to look nonchalant and hide the ache in her ankle, all while reminding herself not to lead with a sprained ankle next time she decides to roundhouse a Grimm the size of a delivery truck.
Blake's eyes rolled towards the ceiling. A sound of shifting rocks and soil perked her ears in the echoing hall and she tensed, ready to dive. Earthen debris came down from the high ceiling, but no boulders. It stopped and if a cave in had occurred, it was in a separate chamber.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Blake narrowed her eyes at the more imminent danger and gripped her weapon's hilt..
The black head of the snake yet remained, and though it would soon die off with its colorless twin deceased, Blake wasn't leaving it to chance. She had been all about tying up loose ends in the last several weeks; why stop now? She bounded past Yang, airborne, her momentum carrying her to and along the winding serpent's back, pulling her blade free from its blade-like hilt. Blake was not here to show off, but she wasn't about to be upstaged, either.
It knew it was all but finished, and the priorly injured end of the deposed Taijitu faced its fate. It spitefully attempted to swallow Blake whole as she crested the slope of its back.
Its jaws shut like a trap, the sound of it booming. The fangs found only a substitute.
It spun and lunged towards its flank, a predictive attack, and for its effort it was rewarded with Gambol Shroud's matched blades driven up into the underside of its jaw.
Blake twisted the blades and pulled open a grisly wound. The monster's hissing turned to a gargle, and then nothing. A sound of sand running through a thousand hourglasses followed, and the weight the Grimm put on the air dissolved with it.
Yang allowed herself a long held breath. Short-lived relief. Their fight was over but they were still deep in some cave where even more Grimm may lurk. She followed the light of her scroll and picked it up.
She didn't even think twice about dialing Ruby.
Calling…
Calling…
Ended.
"We're pretty far from the city," Blake said as she rejoined Yang. "And underground. Even with local comms up the signal's too weak down here."
"Yeah," she sighed, closing her scroll, "I knew that." Craning her head back, Yang attempted to find where exactly they had entered the cavern from. The ceiling was not visible with what little light she had. "How far did we fall, anyway? I can't see a damn thing." She waved her scroll's light about.
"Some hundred meters, maybe." Blake turned in place as she scanned the proximity. She stops and takes a step forward. "Over there. It looks like…" Her voice dropped. "It looks like a mine shaft."
Yang puzzled at the change in Blake's voice. "Yeah, so? That means there's a way out, right?"
She glanced at Yang, her eyes reflecting the scroll's light like electrum. "If we can find an access tunnel, we could walk out of here." She cast her eyes down. "If the entrance isn't sealed off."
"You leave that to me." Yang flexed the fingers on her right hand, hinting at her idea of a solution. "That King Tai had have a way to get in here," Yang thought aloud. "What's a forest Grimm doing down here anyway?"
"There are probably tunnels closer to the surface," said Blake. "Or, it was lurking in that spot for some time and the collapse happened just now when it attacked us." There was no shortage of loose rocks and soil where they had fallen in from.
Blake looked away. "If we are in an old mine, it's probably from the time of the Great War." Her catlike ears folded. "A lot of faunus died working in the Dust mines back in those days, back when slavery was just a part of life in Mistral."
"Yeah…" Yang anxiously grabbed at the back of her neck. "Let's hurry up and find a way out of here," she sighed, walking in the direction that Blake indicated.
In the black they walked. Yang's scroll, minimized and clipped to her jacket's collar, softly illuminated the area just around her, but it was useless for detecting anything beyond her arm's reach. She was lucky that Blake was not only awake, but concerned enough to follow her out of the house and on her ill-advised walk. A mote of guilt quickened in her gut, but she tried to keep her eyes forward and mind focused on escaping this pit.
"Yang?" Blake was not more than two steps behind her.
"Hey! Maybe you should take the lead," she quickly replied. "You've got the eyes, after all."
Blake walked around Yang, her eyebrows askew. Her lips parted briefly, as though she were about to speak, but she said nothing.
On they walked. Rotted wooden supports arched across the seemingly endless tunnel. Uncomfortably, they appeared as though any one of them could have given way to a cave in. Some were already broken, but the shape of the tunnel yet held. Torch pickets lined the walls, bronze lamps unlit now for generations. Occasionally, they would come across the rusted over head of a pickaxe or shovel, or some other hand tool used in the unending pursuit of Dust. Blake's eyes frequently went to these artifacts, and her thoughts to the owners that once worked them.
The ache in her ankle flared with the slight incline of the tunnel. They were going up, ever so slightly. Half an hour passed before they came to a bend. The tunnel doubled back and went slightly upwards in the direction that they had come from. Blake leaned out here and switched her ears back and forth.
"We're headed in the right direction. I can hear the wind, though it's still pretty far." She paid a moment to examine Yang's stance. "We should rest."
"We should press on," Yang muttered.
"Yang." Blake turned to her. "Your ankle's still hurt, isn't it?"
Yang took an exasperated breath through her nose. "You take a few licks from a giant snake and fall into the earth and walk away from it all, but a root catches you off guard and the does what the Grimm couldn't. Ironic, huh?"
Blake furrows her brows. "That's not iro—" She shook her head and began to fold her arms, but stopped and clenched her hands instead. "Yang. Do you remember what you told me once? About slowing down and taking care of yourself?"
"Huh? This is different!" Yang raised her voice. "We're in a mine with no line to the surface! This isn't the place to sit down or take it easy!"
"Yeah," Blake said quickly. "Maybe you're right. But I…" Her voice wavered. "I am not going another step. Not until you do."
Yang stared, and her voice came like a whisper compared to her previous tone. "Blake, I'm not a little kid. You've been back with us for a couple of days and you're trying to tell me how to take care of myself?"
Blake kept staring. Her lips pressed tight, but her eyes said it. Yang gradually began to feel small, and finally, knowing Blake was right, she took a hobbled step back.
"Fine," she sulked. Her next step back brought her flush with the wall of the corridor's bend, and she eased herself down onto the dirt. Yang stretched her legs out and, with folded arms, stared ahead. Quietly, Blake went to the opposite wall and almost mirrored her. She glanced at Yang for a moment, then off towards the end of the tunnel they were meant to take.
Yang started awake. The first thing she became aware of was the pain in her neck, like the sort one gets from sleeping in a way people are not meant to sleep. She jerked her head back and forth, wringing hollow pops from her joints. Yang let her tongue hang out, which turned into a yawn. The chill of the old mine was fresh on her nose and fingertips.
Her eyes went to Blake.
Blake wasn't there.
Yang jerked her legs out and shuffled to her feet. The sprain in her ankle was reduced to little more than a dull pain, a days old bruise at worst. But her recovery was the last thing on her mind.
"Blake?" she said, voice raised. Her voice swirled away into the dark and got no response. "Blake!" She yelled this time. Only the echoes answered.
The leather of her gloves creaked beneath the pressure of her clenched fists. Yang took a trembling breath between her set teeth, hot tears welling up in her scarlet eyes. Not again. Not again.
Her rational mind tugged at her instincts, plying for peace. Yang steadied her breaths and began to think things through. With it her panic subsided, but her anger simmered beneath the surface.
Yang took her scroll and dialed Blake.
She got an answer almost immediately.
[Hello?]
[Blake. Where did you go?]
[Farther up the path. It leads to an elevator shaft. It doesn't work anymore but climbing it shouldn't be difficult for us.]
[I'm coming to you. Stay there.]
Yang ended the call abruptly. She spent the next several minutes debating her choice words for whenever she saw Blake. A not insignificant part of her wanted to open up with a full-voiced complaint. She thought she had worked through it, yet nearly a year of resentment was bottled up in her heart and she hated it. But it was there, and she knew grudgingly that her temper was her worst enemy, and it was also her greatest motivator. Blake, for some reason, pushed all her buttons and sent her systems haywire. Blake was her own girl—no, woman. And Yang understood better than most the desire for independence. She might even say that it was pushed upon her. Yet, when others expressed it, especially Blake, it felt like she was being shunned.
Ruby and Weiss' faces came into her thoughts. What wouldn't she give for either of them? Her sister, her team, her friends?
"Yang, over here," called Blake from the shadows.
Yang followed the voice, and the light pinned to her jacket gradually lit up Blake's face. She smiled at her. "Feeling better?"
Yang squeezed her hands together and approached Blake. Her eyes must have flashed because Blake suddenly looked guarded. Face to face, Yang put her hands on Blake's shoulders and squeezed lightly. The gesture helped her calm down, as did the sensation of Blake's hands going to her arms.
"Don't scare me like that again," she whispered.
Blake looked bewildered at Yang's words, but before too long the meaning behind them sank in and her ears flattened. "Oh. I'm sorry…" She grimaced slightly. "You dozed off. I… I know you've been having trouble sleeping, and there was your ankle, also. So I left you alone, and I just went to scout the path ahead."
She slipped her hands up Yang's arms, to her shoulders. She noticed a streak from a tear on the side of the taller huntress' face.
"I was going to come back." Blake managed that smile again. "I promise."
Yang let go of Blake and she did in kind. She ran her hands through her messy golden locks and bunched it all behind her shoulder.
"Listen, Yang." Blake lowered her eyes. "I don't know what you went through since I… left," she said, putting lingering sheepishness on the last word. "You. I—"
"Stop." Yang put a finger up. "All that matters is that... we're together now." It was something she needed to tell herself, too. She felt the anger go out with a puff. "We'll have plenty of time to catch up, but only when we get out of here."
Blake gave one last smile to that. "Right. So…" She gestured towards the large elevator platform, or what remained of it. A large shaft ran upwards and down from where they stood.
Yang and Blake looked up and considered the task before them.