They spread out and headed west, in the direction of Viper and Su's crash landing. Boar had instructed that they split into pairs: He and Su's father, Pong, would search to their right. Qiang and Anwu would search to the left. As for Viper, her ribs were still too badly damaged for her to move around on her own, so Anwu let the snake rest on her shoulders. She could smell the burnt dust in Anwu's fur, which was so close to Viper's face it overpowered the smells of the forest. She did her best to ignore the pain, keeping her eyes open for Su or any of the soldiers undoubtedly searching for them.

On Boar's instruction they avoided the bushes as best as they could, and tried to keep their footfalls as quiet as the grave. He had also forbidden Su's parents from calling out for their daughter. "If you don't keep your voices down, you won't live to find her." Was his reasoning.

"How are you feeling?" Anwu asked after an eternity.

"Like Po sat on me." Viper said.

Anwu didn't even smile. "Why did this happen, Master Viper? Why did my baby have to get mixed up in this mess?"

Viper's eyes stung. "I'm so sorry. We never should have brought her to the palace, we never meant to-"

"Don't." Anwu cut her off and looked away. "Don't apologise. She was supposed to return, anyway."

"What are you talking about?"

Anwu stopped dead. "I said too much. Let's just find my daughter."

Viper curled her body around the side of Anwu's head so she was looking her in the eye. "Is there something about Su you didn't tell us?"

Anwu looked back pleadingly. Qiang was glancing at them. "Please, Viper. Once we find her and get back to Master Shifu, I'll tell you everything. I promise."

Viper slowly returned to her shoulder, and that was when she saw it. "There!" She said, pointing with her tail. "That's where I landed."

They rush to the big chunk of stone and the dirty trench it had formed. Of course there was no sign of Su. Viper repeated what she had told them in the cave, about how she felt Su leave her side before they hit the ground. Boar's expression looked grim. "We should follow the trench. She might have landed in a tree somewhere along the stone's path. Spread out and keep quiet."

Anwu and Viper stood there a little longer, staring at the crack, mud splattered stone, until Qiang put a paw on Anwu's other shoulder and gently urged them onward. "This is neither of your faults." He said to them.

Above their heads, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains, the sky steadily turning from a royal blue to jet-black. There was no moon tonight, so they didn't even have the bluish white lunar glow to see with. Soon it would be too dark to see anything without torches, which Boar had also forbade them from using. Viper hoped Su was wearing bright colours.

The dried dirt crunched softly beneath their feet as they walked alongside the trench. When the reached the end of it, they continued in a straight line, following the stone's trajectory. They kept their eyes on the trees, but they could see nothing through the leaves and branches. Viper kept her eyes to the ground for any signs of black and white. Her ribs hurt. It was hard to breathe. But she kept searching.

Boar was thirty paces ahead of them, furtively watching out for soldiers. Pong had moved further right, pushing aside bushes and grass for any traces. Qiang had fallen behind. Anwu looked nervously at her husband. "Maybe we shouldn't spread ourselves out like this."

"Why?" Viper asked.

"I don't know. I just have a bad feeling about this place."

"If there's soldiers about, Boar will take them out."

Anwu didn't reply to this, instead keeping her tired eyes ahead, her mouth a thin line out of worry.

Suddenly she stopped, her eyes widening, and bent down. Keeping her balance on the panda's shoulder, Viper listened. She heard the nervous breathing of the other members of their search party, the sounds of dirt and grass being crushed as they walked, a tiny gasp from Anwu as she grabbed the object on the ground...

Other than that, nothing. No distant voices, no faraway footsteps. Viper looked around, but she didn't even see any torches flickering in the distance. They weren't that far from the ruined prison, and with three inexperienced pandas they hadn't been exactly stealthy, and yet the world around them was still. Where were the soldiers who were supposedly searching for them? Shouldn't they have at least run into a scout by now? Anwu is right. Something is really off about this place.

Anwu straightened. In her paws was a knife with a blade so thin and short it wouldn't piece a man's heart. The handle was made of roughly carved wood wrapped up in thin rope. Hardly part of a soldier's weaponry.

Anwu seemed to make a decision, and put the little dagger in her pocket. "What? You've got fangs."


Qiang saw Anwu put the dagger away in a pocket, and realised that he didn't have a weapon himself. Fortunately in a forest such as this they weren't hard to come by, and after a few more steps he found a thick fallen branch.

He didn't know who he should be worried for more, Su or Po. On one hand, Su was just a little girl and less able to defend herself, and was out here alone in the middle of a dark, dangerous forest. On the other, Po was his son, his only son, who until a mere couple of years ago Qiang had feared died along with his wife. Qiang knew he wouldn't be able to handle losing him again. The mere thought made him tremble. He had already promised himself that he wouldn't let Pong and Anwu go through that same horror.

With anger he thought of that day two months ago, when he, Pong and Anwu had been strolling down the road to the village when they were ambushed by a group of about nine people. When Qiang fought back, their masked leader personally knocked him out cold. When he woke up, he was in that blasted cell, and the cut on his head had taken a whole month to heal. If he ever saw that thug again he would return the favour.

The bushes to his left quivered. Qiang's eyes narrowed, and he held his branch out in front of him. He stepped toward the bush, ready to pound anything that leapt out from those leaves.

The bushes didn't move again. All the same, Qiang reached out with the branch and pushed down one of the outer branches. His eyes, by then adjusted to the darkness, caught red fabric.

He was about to widen the gap in the bushes when something else caught his attention.


Boar came to a halt as a sudden pain assaulted him. It felt like someone was sticking cold needles through his eyeballs. He cursed and rubbed his eyes, and the pain soon went away. He blinked, wondering if something had fallen into them. At least he could still see.

He heard a rustling nearby and saw Qiang thirty feet away, carefully approaching a nearby bush. With a big branch he started to poke into the bush. Boar stayed where he was, waiting for the next thing to happen.

Suddenly he heard running footsteps.

He turned his head to find a monster springing right at his face.


"DAMN!"

Anwu, with Viper still on her shoulder, spun round to see the dark beasts bring Boar down.

"Master Boar!" Anwu shrieked, the scream hurting Viper's ears. She didn't even think about her ribs as she slid down from the panda's shoulder and rushed onward. She soon remembered, but set her jaw against the pain as she raced through the dirt and grass, desperate to get there in time. Boar was shouting, but the guttural growls of the creatures were louder. Stones flew over her head towards the creatures, from Anwu's own frantic efforts.

Viper burst through a thick patch of grass and gaped at what she saw.

Boar was on the ground, almost completely hidden by the six or seven creatures swarming him, stabbing at him with silver claws and ignoring the stones that bounced off the dirt around them. They looked almost like a mixture of small and big bears, except bears didn't have dragon's heads, or bull's horns. And their eyes, they had no pupils, no eyelids, and were so red.

Yaoguai.

That was the only name she could think of for these beasts. Viper's blood had completely drained from her face.

Their lidless red eyes stared down at Boar, who was covered in bleeding puncture wounds. He weakly punched at the beasts, but the wounds couldn't have been deep enough to cause severe blood loss in such little time. Poison, Viper suspected.

There was no time to waste. Viper started to race toward the scene, eyes fixed on the beast right in front of her. If she could fight through the pain and wrap herself around its neck...

The Yaoguai raised its claws high and plunged them into Boar's throat.

Viper stopped, her heart stopping and her blood turning to ice.

"No!" Anwu screamed, and farther away Pong and Qiang gave similar cries.

The snake stared. She didn't feel the pain anymore. She didn't feel the ground beneath her scales. She could only watch as Boar went limp and the creatures started to run their reddened hands over his body.

The Yaoguai that dealt the killing blow turned. Its red eyes fell upon her. They were blood red just like Embers, and flashed in the sockets of the dragon's head that looked so much like her helmet. Viper's eyes went even wider and she started slithering backwards. The beast broke away from the group and bounded on all fours in her direction. Viper tried to get into her stance, but she was shaking too much, and she couldn't stop thinking about Tujiu and his horrific immolation.

The Yaohuai pounced. A big black and white shape also lunged, and sent the beast flying back with a swing of his branch.

It was Qiang. He stood over Viper, reached down for her even as the other beasts looked up from their fallen prey and noticed them.

"Viper!" Qiang slung the stunned snake over his shoulder and took off. "Everyone, run!"

A little further ahead, Pong was rushing to Anwu, who was reaching into her pocket for her little weapon. When she pulled it out, she shrieked and tossed it away.

In her disorientation, Viper wasn't sure what she saw.

Was that a knife...

Pong reached Anwu and they started to run.

Or was it a claw, sliced off at the base?

Qiang soon reached them, and then they were all sprinting through the woods, branches in the bushes slapping at their bodies and branches on the ground threatening to trip them. Viper could hear their pursuers, tearing through the bushes with their claws and muscular bodies.

Pong turned and threw rocks behind him. Viper didn't see if they hit anything, but she could see the pure terror in his face. She couldn't get the image of Boar's final moments out of her head.

I can't let anyone else die.

She reached out and grabbed a thin limbless branch from a tree they raced by. The momentum broke it right off, and Viper turned to face the six beasts that howled for her blood. She aimed and threw the branch like a dart. It hit one in the eye and it fell with a screech that chilled the snake.

There were too many, and one of the two remaining fighters in the group was wounded. They weren't going to make it out of this.

Wait, the mine!

They were heading in its general direction, she realised. When they'd last been in the mine, there had been abandoned tools. Picks and shovels. Improvised weapons. If they could just reach it, they might all be able to fight them off.

"Keep going!" She cried. "The mine, quickly!"

Qiang glanced at her, still running, panting from the prolonged exertion.

Viper actually felt the smooth side of a toxic claw touch her body. Qiang swung his entire body and slammed the branch into the Yaoguai. It cried and fell away, but five more still chased them.

"There! I see it!" Anwu yelled. Through the trees Viper saw the square framed entrance, leading into blackness.

Anwu and Pong reached it first and raced inside. Qiang and Viper followed after, and then the Yaoguai. Viper thought of the red cloth she had seen when Qiang started to open up the bush. If that had been what she thought it was, she hoped to all the gods that Su had gotten the hell out of there.