Chapter 5
It wasn't long before Sands heard her sister's voice over the communicator. "Sands?" That at least answered the question of if the magical communicator would work between realities at all. Of course, they still didn't know if it would work if the hole closed, but hopefully they wouldn't have to test that.
"Scout, I'm here. Are you and Koren alright?"
"Okay. Koren's hurt, but she'll heal. The Stranger ran off," Scout replied quietly.
"Is the hole still open?"
"Don't know. Can't check until Koren's better. The Stranger's still on this side."
"Okay. Let me know if anything changes."
A couple of minutes later, Koren had healed enough that she was no longer coughing up blood, and she was able to stagger to her feet. "Next time, we stay mobile," she said. "You've got that enhanced stamina, so run away if it gets too close, and I'll use my axes to distract it and teleport away before it gets me." Scout gave an affirmative nod. Koren picked up her flashlight, and they walked in the direction the Stranger had come from until they found the hole in the tree with Sands's metal brace around it. "We found the hole. Your metal has no signs of warping, so I don't think it has started closing at all."
"Good. Any sign of the Stranger?"
"Nope, haven't seen it."
"I hear it, but it's not close," Scout reported.
Koren noticed Scout glancing between where she stood, leaning on the tree for support as she continued healing, and the hole in the tree. "Go ahead, help your sister search," Koren said. "I've got this." Oddly enough, even though she was healing injuries from the first time she fought the Stranger, Koren wasn't bluffing. Now that she had some idea of what it was capable of, she was sure that she could at least hold it off for a while if it attacked again.
Scout let her sister know she was coming and crawled through. On the other side, she found Professor Kohaku kneeling on the ground, examining the tree with the hole in it. A thin rope lay on the ground, forming a circle around the teacher. Kohaku looked up briefly as she heard Scout before returning to her work. "Move quickly. I don't think I can finish before the Stranger comes back."
Scout stood up. To her surprise, the other side of the hole was actually a bit brighter out, so she could possibly have scouted around with her rifle, but the fog and spores in the air combined with the darkness made the overall visibility even worse than in the normal world. Instead, she consulted her map and, using a flashlight for illumination, headed off in the direction of the Byers house to start her search from there like Sands was going to.
After a few minutes, Koren was only a little sore, her injuries completely healed otherwise. Her flashlight was off, allowing her to hold both axes and look at the darkness in every direction without ruining her night vision. However, standing here in the dark waiting for a monster was all too familiar of an experience for her. She tightened the grip of her slightly-trembling hands on her Hunga Munga and reminded herself that she was a Heretic now. She didn't need to be afraid of the monsters anymore now that she was training to kill them. Still, she was almost pathetically relieved when she heard Sands announce that she had arrived at the creepy version of the Byers house. The relief was immediately followed by annoyance at her own reaction, which she channeled into her speech. "Took you long enough. I was starting to think you'd forgotten where it was already. Now can you hurry things up? I'd like to actually use that room we rented for the night."
"Why don't you just…ugh, I'm too tired and busy to fight with you right now." Koren could hear Sands tamping down on her frustration. "We're lucky the layout of this place is the same as in the normal world. Seriously, this place is already disgusting and weird. It wouldn't have surprised me if the geography was all messed up."
"At least if it had been different, Scout could actually live up to her name. Hey, why aren't you in the Exploration track, anyway?"
Of course, Sands answered for her sister, sounding half offended and half willing to carry on a conversation. The two of them continued in a similar vein for a while, alternating civil conversation with halfhearted verbal sniping. A few minutes later, Scout also found the Byers house and began her search outward from there, checking a different area than Sands was.
Eventually, Sands found a small wooden clubhouse. "Hey. I always sort of wanted one of these. Of course, we couldn't build one in the jungle on the island. That would've been way too dangerous, so we were stuck with pillow forts indoors."
"I made a treehouse with my dad out behind our house. It was awesome," Koren said smugly.
As Sands walked to the front of the little fort, ducked under the sign that said "CASTLE BYERS," and looked past the white sheet dangling in the entranceway, she saw a small boy curled up in the back corner. "I found him!" she reported. Then, she rushed forward, crouched down on her knees, and checked his breathing, letting out a sigh of relief when she saw his chest moving up and down. "He doesn't look good, but he's alive." She reached out and tried to get a good angle to pick up the emaciated boy, but as soon as she touched him, he jolted awake and curled up further into a ball in the corner, if that was even possible. Sands raised her hands and said, "Whoa, it's alright. I'm going to get you out of here." The boy uncurled himself a little, and the terrified look left his eyes. "You're Will Byers, right?"
"Yeah," Will croaked out with his parched throat. "How…are you here?"
Sands pulled her backpack off her back, unzipped it, and pulled out a bottle of water, which she unscrewed and handed to Will. "Here, drink this." Will's hands were shaking as he grabbed the bottle, but he managed to bring it to his lips and get at least half of the water into his mouth. Shining her flashlight in her pack, Sands started to pull out some snacks as she answered his question. "We waited for the Stran—monster to try to hunt us in the forest, and when it came through, my…classmates distracted it so I could go back the other way and come find you." Will finished the water bottle and reached shakily for the granola bar in Sands's hand, but she pulled it back and dropped it in her backpack. She zipped the bag closed and swung it onto her back, saying, "Sorry, but we've gotta get out of here before the monster gets back. Koren's holding it off, but she won't be able to stop it for long. I'm gonna carry you, alright?"
"Don't think I can walk, anyway," Will said weakly.
Sands put one arm under his shoulders and one under his legs and lifted him up. She was a small girl, but she could bench-press 400 pounds, so she barely even felt like she was lifting him. Still, even her strength shouldn't have made him feel this light—he really needed to get some food in him. She stood up, carefully staying hunched to avoid hitting the roof, and made her way outside before setting off at a quick jog towards the portal.
It happened so fast. One moment, Koren was standing in front of the tree, scanning the darkness, Hunga Munga at the ready in her hands. The next moment, she heard a noise and saw a blur in her peripheral vision. Rather than stand her ground this time, she threw her left axe forward as hard as she could, letting out a scream of fright as she did. When it was about four feet away, she pressed the button on the handle of her other axe, teleporting to the first one. She could hear the Stranger rushing by behind her, so she whirled around, swinging the Hunga Munga at it, but was a little too slow to make contact. The Stranger whirled around, opened its mouth, and charged at her. She again threw her left axe and used her remaining axe to teleport to safety, this time about twenty feet away. She quickly alerted the others that they needed to hurry up and get back to the portal. The Stranger was still charging at her, so she threw her right axe and teleported away yet again.
This time, she stood her ground as the Stranger charged at her. Taking careful aim, she threw one of her axes at the beast's head as hard as she could. Unfortunately, its freaky mouth was closed as it ran, and the axe was deflected off the hard, angled skin of its head. Koren tightly gripped her remaining axe and stood in a ready stance. The Stranger swiped at her with a clawed hand, trying to use its longer reach to its advantage, but Koren ducked under it and drove her axe into the Stranger's side. The force of the Stranger's charge made the axe cut deep, but it also knocked Koren off her feet. Before she could be crushed between the Stranger and the ground, she pressed the button that teleported her to her other axe, which lay out of harm's way in the bushes.
Unfortunately, this meant Koren was now in a bush. Cursing in annoyance at the scratches the various branches gave her, she hurled one of her Hunga Munga at a nearby tree. The blade bit into the bark, and she used the other axe to teleport to it. Her peridle healing was already fixing the scratches and the sore wrist she got from blocking the Stranger's charge, so she ignored them and turned to see where it had gone. She peered into the darkness, lit only by whatever light from the nighttime sky filtered through the tree branches, but could see nothing but indistinct shapes. The Stranger was either out of sight, or it had caught on that she couldn't tell it apart from the surroundings if it made no sudden movements.
Koren sheathed an axe and grabbed her flashlight with her left hand. Wary of missing the monster's approach by focusing too intently on one area, she left the light off as she looked around. Her heart pounded in her chest, fueled by fear long after she had caught her breath from the exertion. She spotted a sudden movement to her left and shined the flashlight that way, but there was nothing there. There was a rustle of leaves to her right, and she jumped, swiveling around to face that way. The rustling sound intensified, and she realized it was the wind blowing through the trees. Then the whole forest seemed to get darker.
"It was a cloud, genius," Koren admonished herself under her breath. "You got all freaked out because you saw the shadow of a cloud. Some Heretic you are." Then, she triggered her communicator and said out loud, "I lost it. It's still on this side of the portal, but I don't know where it went. I'll head back to the portal now." Then, she started to walk slowly backwards towards the portal, panning her flashlight across the forest around where she had last seen the Stranger. She knew she needed to get back to the portal, but she wasn't willing to turn her back on the Stranger.
Then, a horrible thought struck her. It couldn't have gotten behind her already, could it? An adrenaline rush sent her heart pumping as she whirled around to check behind her, but there was nothing there. She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself down as she turned back around. Then the beam of the flashlight revealed the Stranger standing right there. Koren let out a piercing scream, violently jumped a foot backwards, dropped her flashlight in shock, and swung her axe to block the claw reaching towards her. Her shock left the grip on her axe loose, and it was knocked out of her hand by the Stranger's arm. It reached for her with its other arm, and she avoided its grasp through the undignified means of falling to the ground.
"Koren! Are you alright?" Sands asked frantically through the communicator, but Koren had no attention to spare. Leaves crinkled as she scrambled backwards along the ground and reached for the axe at her belt. The Stranger easily kept pace. With a painful thud, Koren hit her head against a tree. She couldn't back up any more, and she had no time to go around; the Stranger was right in front of her, reaching down. She finally got a good grip on the axe at her waist, and before the Stranger could grab her, she teleported to her other axe. Picking it up, she threw it as hard as she could, waited for it to fly a decent distance, made it stop in midair, and teleported to it. She did this three more times until was a good distance away. With a tree at her back and a backup flashlight in one of her hands, she finally felt safe enough to reply to the communicator.
"I'm fine. It almost got me, but I got away. But…I'm sorry, but I got turned around in the fight. I have no idea where the portal is from here. There's just trees all around me."
"The important thing is that you're okay," Professor Kohaku said. "Don't you worry about the portal. Scout just went through to fight off the Stranger from your side. I'm still working on keeping the portal open, and while I don't think I'll be able to finish it quickly enough, I'm nearly certain that it's possible, so nobody is going to be trapped over here permanently."
Gunshots sounded through the forest. Koren's immediate response was to slump down to the ground in relief. She was safe. If the Stranger was trying to get past Scout and through the portal, then it wasn't hunting her anymore. Her breathing evened out and her heartbeat slowed to a more normal rate as she calmed down.
After a couple of seconds, Koren rose to her feet and started to jog in the direction of the gunshots. "What's wrong with me?" Koren muttered to herself. "Oh, yay, the monster's attacking my classmate, not me. Yeah, she couldn't beat it before, but that's fine, as long as it's not attacking me I don't need to worry about it. What a bitch."
Koren arrived at the portal in time to see Scout shoot the feet of the Stranger as it crawled through the hole in the tree. She heard it screech in pain through the portal. Then, Professor Kohaku announced over the communicator, "The Stranger's back on this side. Sands, I sent it fleeing away from you, but you'd better hurry up. The portal's starting to close."
Hearing that, Scout put her massively oversized rifle into its far-too-small carrying case and crouched down to crawl through the hole again. "What are you doing?" Koren demanded. "It's not going to help anything to have more people stuck on the other side!"
"Scout, you'd better not be trying to join me!" Sands said in between heavy breaths as she carried Will at a run towards the portal. "Professor Kohaku's here. I'll be fine!
"She's still going," Koren reported, feeling awkward. What was she supposed to do here? It was probably best just to let the sisters argue it out and let Scout make her own decision, but she couldn't deny that there was a part of her that just wanted to grab Scout by the ankles and drag her back to safety.
"Look, if the portal does close before I get there, somebody needs to draw out the Stranger again so I can get back out. You can't just leave Koren to fight it alone," Sands argued.
Then what was that earlier? Koren thought indignantly, but for once she held her tongue. She didn't want to get in the way of something that would get Scout to stay out in the normal world. Plus, as she thought about it more, she realized that earlier they hadn't known just how outclassed she would be in a one-on-one fight with the Stranger, and she had just been meant as a distraction anyway.
Scout lay still for a couple of seconds, partially inside the tree, before crawling back out, standing up, and saying, "Be safe." The two girls stood silently, one with a uniform and exposed skin covered in slime and dirt and one with small tears in her uniform, dirt all over her, and twigs and leaves in her hair. Before their eyes, the bark of the tree in front of them sealed up over the slimy portal, leaving no visible sign that it had ever existed.