CNBR Chapter 5:
Dinner consisted of meat and rice with vegetables and sourdough rolls. Halfway through the meal, Royce unrolled a map on the table and pointed at various spots with his fork.
"Perfection and Thunder Gorge had the kind of grimm activity you see in the aftermath of bandit raids. Timber Falls was the abandoned village, and Razor Ridge and Harvest were the two we lost contact with most recently. Before that happened, they were also the ones with a higher than normal amount of disappearances."
"What counts as normal?" Reese asked, picking at her teeth with a knife.
"Ten to twenty on a bad year between all seven villages. They had about fifteen each in the last month."
"Damn."
"Exactly. So, which village of horror did you ladies want to visit first?"
"What do you think will be the most efficient route?" Coco asked.
Royce traced the map with his finger. "Thunder Gorge and Perfection are close enough to each other that we could hit both in one day, assuming you don't hang around too long at either place. Timber Falls is a bit farther, but we could go there first instead if we left early enough."
"Let's hit closest ones first. Do you think we could get there tonight if we left after dinner?"
"I…would discourage that."
They all turned to Royce to see him scratching the back of his head.
"You didn't seem too worried about scouting earlier," Coco said.
"And I'm mostly okay with it. But Marta and I agree that unless you're in immediate danger, you should be holed up for the night before the sun goes down. If it were just me, and I was close to a populated village, I might travel a little after dark. But that far from Crescent Hollow with four extra people…even if you guys were dead silent, our chances of getting noticed go up. The nocturnal grimm around here are vicious, even in good times. Nowadays, moving after dark is practically a death sentence."
Coco frowned, but nodded. "Fine. Anything else we should know?"
"Not at the moment." Royce pushed his chair back and tipped it on its back legs, resting his feet on the table. "I feel like I should be asking you guys if there's anything I should know. If the village didn't need me and my folks so much I would have loved to apply to Beacon, get some formal training."
A muffled sound came from Blake's right and the table turned to look. Nora held up a finger, swallowed the roll in her mouth and repeated; "Your grandma made it sound like you and your dad had plenty of experience handling trouble."
"My great-grandfather attended one of the academies. The rest of us had it passed down from him; everything from tracking grimm to unlocking aura. It's served me well so far, but I'd like to learn from a more formal source."
Blake sipped her drink and regarded Royce with a thoughtful look. "You haven't fought many humans."
Royce's eyes twinkled. "Mostly sparring. I've helped repel one or two bandit raids, but most of those begin and end much like our meeting at the gate. What gave it away?"
"The walls around the village are old, but there's very little damage to them. You're also far too trusting of well-armed people you've just met."
Royce turned his palms up. "There aren't many people my age in the region, let alone ones who are attractive and tough. I suppose I'm just weak-willed and desperate."
Blake rolled her eyes. Royce shrugged and stood up, popping his neck. "Anyway, we should probably turn in so we can maximize our daylight tomorrow. We've got a lot of ground to cover."
…
They left just before sunrise, cutting through the fields to reach a game trail. The trail took them through thick woods, at one point passing near an old road a few hours from the village. Once, Royce had them ford a narrow stream, eliciting a nod of approval from Blake. Sometime in the early afternoon, they descended a gentle slope and crouched behind some bushes overlooking a small valley clearing.
The side closest to the group was filled with the remnants of the village not far from the treeline. From their vantage point, they could see a couple buildings over the wall. They also saw through the wall in two places where something had broken through. The buildings were similarly damaged with sagging roofs and collapsed walls; some buildings merely burnt foundations, the remaining beams standing like blackened partial skeletons. The few structures that remained habitable were marred with holes of different sizes. In contrast to the destruction, a small field waved gently in the wind on the far side of the village.
"Despite the name, the inhabitants of Perfection made some pretty big mistakes planning the village," Royce said, peering through the vegetation. "With fields only on the one side, they wouldn't see anything approaching until it was right on top of them. Marta told them to clear trees back from the perimeter, but they thought the close treeline would help conceal them. I'm not pleased this happened, but I'm not surprised it did either."
"I don't see anything down there," Coco said. "But just to be safe, let's have Blake scout the fringes."
"Nah, I got this one. I know the area, I can scout it faster than her; even with her faunus senses."
Coco and Blake both stared at Royce. "How the hell did you know that?"
One corner of his mouth turned up. "I'm magic. Watch that window on the third story of the inn for the all-clear; you'll know it when it happens. I'll keep an eye on things from up there. Meet me inside when you're done looking around."
Royce disappeared into the underbrush, leaving the rest of them behind. Some time later, a set of yellowed old curtains drew shut inside the window, and they made their way into Perfection.
Street level was much like what they had seen from the trees, only with more debris. Blake scaled one of the sturdier buildings to peer down at the village while Coco, Nora, and Reese roamed at ground level, picking through the debris and searching the remains of the buildings. After a couple hours, they met in a rubble-filled depression in the center of the village.
"I found jack," Coco said. "What about you Nora?"
Nora kicked at the ground, her arms folded. "Nothing. A few bodies here and there, but nothing unusual about them."
"Reese?"
"Ditto," she said, her board resting on one shoulder. She tapped at what looked like a fat scroll with one hand.
"I didn't pick up any unusual dust residue with my spectrometer. There's some trace amounts, probably from when this place got attacked, but it's conventional stuff you can find at any dust wholesaler, nothing top-shelf. What do you think happened? Our friends hit this place and the chaos attracted the grimm?"
"Might have just been the grimm," Coco said. She pointed around the village.
"There's barely any damage caused by gunfire, and what little there is looks like it was stray rounds from the villagers, not offensive damage. That wouldn't be conclusive on its own, but in the houses that didn't burn I found a couple stashes of lien that weren't hidden too well, some decent weapons, good meat, a couple really nice dresses—I'm not saying bandits would have taken everything, but this was low hanging fruit. No way they attacked a village and left this much nice stuff behind."
Reese frowned. "I guess. Still feels like we're missing something."
"I feel the same way," Coco said.
"That's because we are, and it's not because we haven't checked the inn yet," a voice called out. They looked up to see Blake perched on a roof.
"Places like this don't get serviced by Vale Municipal Water. Did any of you see a well when you were looking around?"
The other three exchanged looks and shrugged.
"No, now that you mention it," said Nora.
"Look where you're standing."
They looked at the ground. On closer inspection, they noticed the rubble sat within a circle of stones embedded in the ground like pavers. They removed the rubble in the circle to uncover some rocks wedged so tight in the well's mouth that even Nora couldn't budge them without Coco and Reese helping her. After pulling two out, there was a crumbling sound and a shift in the ground and the three huntresses leapt back before the remaining rocks collapsed, cracking against the walls of the well as they fell, and ending in a distant splat. They peered down into the blackness.
"Now what?" Reese asked. "That was a lot of work for an empty hole."
Blake leapt down from her perch and walked over to join the others. "It's not empty. I can't see anything, and all I can smell is mud and mildew, but something's down there."
"You sure?" Coco asked. "It's deeper than I thought. Maybe someone wanted to sabotage their water."
Blake shook her head. "It only took you three a few minutes to uncover it. If someone wanted to sabotage the well they'd poison it, not fill it in."
Coco took off her sunglasses and turned them in her hands, thinking. She turned to Reese. "Hey Skate Rat, you have a camera in your bag of tricks?"
"No, but I have these:" Reese drew two long coils of rope from her pack. She took one, tied one end to her spectrometer, and adjusted a few settings on the machine and her scroll before lowering it into the well. After several minutes of feeding out the line, her scroll chirped rapidly.
"Jackpot!" she said, looking at her scroll. "There's hi-test lightning dust down there. You don't stick that in any old gun; let's go down and see what it's powering."
Blake shrugged off her coat and placed Gambol Shroud at her hip. "Okay, where are we going to anchor the other end of my line?"
"Uh-uh, you're not going down there," Coco said. "Since Royce is off being cryptic and weird, I need you on lookout. I'll climb down."
"What if a rock falls and you get stuck?" Nora asked. "I'm lighter and stronger than you. I'll be easier to lift and I can dig myself out if I get pinned."
"If something happens, you can send tools down and I'll dig myself out; you need to be up here to belay me and to hit anything nasty that comes by with your hammer."
"But you're the team leader!"
"Guys—"
"I like to lead from the front. I can do this."
"Guys—"
"Maybe we should find Royce so I can go down," Blake said.
A piercing whistle caused the three of them to turn towards the well, Blake clamping her hands over her ears. Reese stood at the lip of the well, wearing a climbing harness and swaying on the balls of her feet, her hoverboard slung across her back. The second rope led from her waist to a post from an old fence.
"I'm the second lightest and the one with the spectrometer."
Coco tensed and edged towards her. "Reese, you're not going. Sylva will kill me if she finds out I let you take unnecessary risks."
"So we won't tell her!" Reese said, pushing an earpiece into her left ear. "You don't know how to work the equipment and I have extreme sports experience."
"Ironically, you're also a klutz," Blake said.
Reese glared at Blake and jabbed a finger at her. "Normally I'd be insulted, but you've got a point. It's a miracle I haven't dropped this!"
Reese chucked another earpiece at Coco and she instinctually lunged to catch it. Reese seized the opening and leapt back whooping as she rappelled down. The sound of cursing carried down from above as she descended. Her scroll earpiece crackled a few leaps down.
"Get your ass back up here right now!" Coco said.
"Hey, I'm already a good ways down," Reese said, pushing off the wall. "You might as well let me keep going."
"Do you even know how to rappel?"
"I watched some videos on the CCT net, how hard can it be?"
"The CCT went down months ago!"
"And I'm doing fine from memory. Like I said, how hard—?"
Reese's foot slipped and she slammed into the side of the well, slipping several feet before bringing herself to a halt. She spun slowly as she dangled from the rope, wincing at the throbbing pain in her shoulder where it had hit the wall. She took a few deep breaths and steadied herself with one foot.
"You just slipped, didn't you?" Coco asked.
"…just a couple of feet?"
Coco let out an exasperated sigh. She snapped at someone up top to shut up, then spoke to Reese again:
"We're going to have a long chat when this is over, but right now let's compromise and have Nora act as your backup with another rope."
"That sounds reasonable," said Reese, peeking below her.
"Good. Just hang tight a few minutes; Nora's not quite ready."
"Is she okay?"
"She will be. Apparently this is all so funny that she can't stand or breathe."
Reese bit her lip to keep from laughing.
A few minutes later, another rope with a locking carabiner on the end clacked against the wall. Reese hooked it to her harness and gave it two quick tugs. She felt a tug from the other end, then started down again at a slower pace.
The circle of light above shrunk and the well around Reese grew dimmer. She clicked a button on her earpiece and a thin white beam of light shot out from just above her ear, illuminating a small section of the shaft in front of her. The rocks looked clammy and gray, like the stonework was suffering fever chills. It was quiet save for her breathing and the occasional drip of water. The air grew cool fast and Reese shivered. Her feet slid again a few more times, but she never completely lost her footing.
"You see anything?" Coco's voice sounded in her ear.
"Not yet." Reese said. "This well is deeper than I thought."
"You should have thought of that before you leapt in."
"What can I say? I'm impulsive."
"You're also too damn chatty."
"Hey, I answered the question; you continued the conversation."
"Ugh. Just shut up and hold still for a second, Nora needs some water."
Reese looked down during the pause in her descent. She craned her neck, shining her light around, revealing only vague shapes below—and a tiny glimmer of metal in the shadows.
"Looks like Blake and I aren't totally crazy."
Reese felt the rope slowly extend again and she descended. As she neared the bottom, she went to tap her earpiece to adjust the volume and turned the light off instead, plunging the well into darkness. Reese swore as she continued downward, fumbling with the earpiece. She jerked when she unexpectedly reached the bottom and stopped in a sitting position, the mud and a few inches of water at the bottom of the well coating the back of her legs and soaking her shorts.
"You okay down there, Ace?" her earpiece crackled.
"Fine," Reese said. "I accidentally hit the switch for my light." She fumbled in the dark with the earpiece, careful not to terminate the radio link.
"You're suffering user error with something you built?"
"You try multitasking while dangling down a smelly hole then—"
Reese clicked the light on. Her eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat. She shrieked in horror.
A corpse, still covered in some sort of armor, lay partially sunk in the muck. It was mostly decomposed, the eyes and organs gone, but the skeleton was still coated with a patina of rotted flesh. The skull was half-crushed from the impact of falling, giving it a disfigured grin. Reese's breathing came in quick shallow gasps, thin and high-pitched. She screwed her eyes shut, forcing herself to slow her breathing and fighting the urge to vomit.
"Reese, what's going on?" Coco said, her voice alarmed.
"I'm fine," she said a little too loudly. "Just got startled. Give me a minute."
Reese switched off the earpiece before Coco could ask any more questions. Any further mention of the surface, and she'd lose her resolve. She opened her eyes and found where the spectrometer dangled about a meter above the water. With slow, deliberate motions, she stood and grabbed the device, pointing it around the bottom of the well.
Reese found the glint of metal by the body's hip. When she brought the spectrometer towards it, the readings spiked higher. Reaching down, she dragged the body fully out of the water onto a rock, gagging at the fresh wave of decay that assaulted her nose. Still attached to its belt were the shattered remains of a device slightly bigger than a can of beans. She removed it, rinsed it by splashing some water over it, and slipped it into a pouch at her waist.
Fighting the urge to look away, Reese looked over the body again. Nothing struck her as important about the body or armor, but she snapped a couple pictures with her scroll just in case. She tapped the earpiece back on.
"I'm done, take me up."
She felt a tug at the harness and she ascended, the mouth of the well slowly growing as she rose. At the top, Reese seized the lip of the well with both hands, and began to pull herself out. Before she was halfway out, Blake snatched the neck of her hoodie and one wrist, hauling her out onto solid ground. Once Reese was out Blake let go and stepped back, pinching her nose shut. Coco and Nora approached her cautiously, put off by the smell, though not as much as Blake.
"What happened?" Nora asked.
Reese stood up, giving Nora a dismissive shrug. "There was a body. It startled me, but it's no big deal."
Without warning, Reese collapsed on all fours and vomited on the ground. After a few violent retches, she felt Nora's hand on her shoulder. She grasped it and let the red head help her stand, her knees wobbling a bit. She gave the other three a sheepish look.
"I usually do that after I climb something."
…
Reese sat at a long table in the inn's common room dressed in a t-shirt and knee length shorts, her hair dripping. Unearthing and investigating the well hadn't taken too long, but it had delayed them enough that making it to the next town before dark wasn't possible. So they met with Royce at the inn and fortified it for the night while Reese washed off her climb with water from a storage tank at the inn. It had been cold enough that her teeth had chattered even after drying off, but given the circumstances, Reese struggled to remember a better shower.
Afterwards, she disinfected the device she had recovered with rubbing alcohol and started examining it at the table in the common room, prodding it with a small screwdriver. The room looked like a hunting lodge, all log walls, animal skin rugs, and simple furniture that would last for generations. The curtains were drawn everywhere, casting the building into gloom and projecting shadows from the hunting trophies that adorned the walls. The windows also had furniture barricading them, blocking even more light.
A dragging noise came from down a hall, and Royce appeared shoving a bulky armoire with his shoulder. Nora crossed the room from where she had finished another barricade and helped Royce carry the latest piece into place. Coco and Blake ignored both of them in favor of the map they were examining.
"That's the last one," Royce said. "The barricades won't stop anything that really wants to get in, but it'll slow them down and make a racket if they try. We can hole up in one of the interior rooms on the third floor after dinner. They're the most secluded and private place in the entire village."
He dusted his hands off on his pants. "Any progress with the junk you pulled out of the well?"
"No," Reese said, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her hand. "I know it runs on extremely refined lightning dust, but it's not consistent with anything I know that uses such high grade material."
"Pretend this here country boy is an idiot."
Reese sat back and stretched. "Companies like the SDC sell various grades of Dust, right? Every huntsman and huntress knows that dust comes in different strengths, from the regular kind that Blake loads her pistol with to the volatile kind in Nora's grenades. What most people forget, or don't even consider, is that weaponized Dust isn't suitable for more delicate uses like precision electronics. For that, you need to purify it further in the refining stage. That much refining removes some of the destructive potential, so it's less suitable for weaponry; but it makes it act more consistent and stable at a molecular level, so it won't fry the circuits of whatever you're using it to power."
"So it's not a weapon," Blake said.
"It's not, but the fall wrecked it too bad for me to figure it out what it does."
"Which by the way, are we going to discuss why someone sealed a well with a body inside it?" Nora asked, spreading her arms. "No one's touching that goliath in the room?"
Reese stared at the device like she was trying to see through the metal, while Blake and Royce shifted uncomfortably. Coco finally looked up from the map.
"Someone's covering their tracks," she said. "I think the body in the well was with whoever's causing all the trouble. If the dust and the gadget Reese found weren't enough of a clue, the fact that someone tried to hide the well, not just bury it, suggests they didn't want that thing on his belt found. He accidentally falls in and they can't retrieve it, so they settle for concealing it. Plus, that was nice armor in the pictures Reese took, too nice for most bandits. It might not make sense yet, but I think we're onto something."
Nora nodded, then clapped her hands together. "So! When I was helping Royce finish barricading the ground floor, I got a peek into the kitchen. It's mostly canned or dried stuff, but it looks like it'll taste better than Vale's freeze-dried rations. Who feels like stew?"
…
The Atlas drones had stopped attacking, but that just meant the grimm could concentrate on the students and those evacuating them from Beacon. The docks were defensible and the assembled hunters managed to hold them, but the rest of the school was a battleground with no fronts, only chaos. Between the spreading fires and the wind carrying smoke across the grounds, Beacon was engulfed in a gray haze.
Bolin fought alongside Ayana, holding some of the fiercer grimm at bay, while Nadir patched up a huntsman bleeding from his thigh; his usual inept manner replaced with an entranced focus. A beowolf leapt high over the front line towards his patient, jaws gaping, and Nadir dropped a bandage long enough to fire the best shot Reese had ever seen him make, nailing the grimm between the eyes. It fell to the ground disintegrating, and Nadir dropped his rifle like nothing had happened, returning to the wound.
Instead of fighting, Arslan was dragging a massive huntsman with a shaved head by the shoulders towards the docks, hauling him at a pace most would call a moderate jog. Reese and Neon rode around her in a wide circle, intercepting anything that tried to get too close. An ursa lumbered out of a copse of trees, rearing onto its hind legs and they struck it; Reese going high and encasing half its face in ice while Neon went low, freezing both hind paws to the ground. Reese made a sharp u-turn back towards the grimm, leapt, slashed the creature's belly open with her board while it clawed at the ice on its face, and landed to ride away in one smooth motion.
"Don't show off!" Arslan barked.
"I'm being efficient!" Reese shouted, jumping over a fleeing student to deliver a kick to a beowolf's face, staggering the grimm long enough for another huntsmen to finish it off. Through the smoke they saw the docks and the thin perimeter around it a hundred yards ahead, their way blocked with a half-dozen grimm. Neon darted forward, striking several of the monsters and veering off onto a side path, drawing four of them away from the group. Reese accelerated, ramping off a toppled bench, and flew into the air. She split the board into her pair of revolvers and fired a volley, killing one beowolf and wounding a griffon badly enough that it didn't strike back when Arslan shouldered past it. Reese grinned, giving the revolvers a flourish before reforming her board—
A massive weight slammed into Reese from behind, knocking her out of the air and into a grove of trees off the path. She hit the ground and tumbled across it, stopping when she crashed into a tree. She lay still for a moment, unable to do anything but curl up and groan. Her head pounded from the fall and her back screamed from striking the tree. Aura was the only thing that kept her from breaking her spine, and even then she knew she'd find bruises across her body the next morning—if she made it that far.
After a few moments, she looked up and saw her hoverboard lying a few yards away. She tried to stand and let out a cry when she put weight on her right leg, collapsing to the ground. She began crawling towards it, exhaling in short pained breaths. She had crossed halfway to the board when something big crashed down behind her.
Reese turned to see a griffon, staring at her with its head cocked to one side. Its beak was large enough to encircle her torso. Her gaze fell to its talons and she saw shreds of fabric from her clothes impaled on its claws. Reese flipped back over and crawled to her weapon as fast as she could, her breathing shallow and panicked.
She was an arm's length away when she felt the beast land on her back, pinning her in place. She shrieked, covering her head as the beast tore at her arms and shoulders, rapidly depleting her aura.
"I'm not here, this isn't happening; I'm not here, this isn't happening," she said to herself over and over, her voice breaking. Her scroll blared a warning about low aura levels, but it was drowned out by the griffon's cries mixing with hers.
A roar cut through all the noise and she felt the griffon's weight leave her shoulders. She turned onto her back in time to see Arslan standing between her and the griffon. It swiped its talons at her and she leapt back, entangling its foot with her rope dart. She yanked it, making the creature tumble off balance, and leapt onto its shoulders, wrapping her arms around its neck. She made a quick jerking motion, and the grimm's neck snapped with a loud 'CRACK'. She stood as the creature went limp and started to smoke, turning towards Reese.
"I told you," she said, wiping her brow. "Don't show—"
A beowolf leapt from the bushes and locked its jaws over Arslan's shoulder and collarbone, pinning her right arm and bringing her to her knees. She screamed in pain and punched it in the snout with her left fist, but it just clamped down tighter. She dug her fingers into its lower jaw and tried to pry it loose.
"Shoot it! Reese, shoot it!" she said, her voice strained with pain and exertion. Reese stared at the monster, frozen in shock. She tried to will herself to crawl the last few feet to her weapon, but her body wouldn't respond. She could only stare in horror as she watched one of the strongest huntresses she knew slowly succumb to the grimm's powerful jaws.
"Dammit," Arslan said. She closed her eyes and let go of the beowolf's jaw, drawing her free arm back. She concentrated and her expression grew calm, her composure only faltering for a moment when the beowolf bent her arm at an extreme angle and she flinched in pain. Her face grew tight and she let out a short piercing shout as she drove the heel of her free palm into the beowolf's left eye. Half its head exploded and the grimm fell over, dead.
Arslan stood. Her body was covered with soot and dirt, and her robe and hair were disheveled. Aura had prevented the grimm from drawing blood, but simple physics had dislocated her arm when they had grappled, and it bounced off her side like the end of her sash. Her face was near tears, twisted into a grimace of pain, but she was alive. She met Reese's eyes and anger, then something more subtle, flicked across her face before determination set in her features. She gathered their weapons, then took a knee next to Reese.
"A-arslan, I'm—"
"Can you move?"
Reese looked at her right leg. "I can't put weight on it."
Arslan grunted and shoved her good shoulder under Reese's arm, then stood, supporting her.
"Let's go."
The two of them stumbled through the grounds in a three-legged hobble. Reese never fainted, but time passed in a haze. She was vaguely aware of staggering out of the trees towards the docks, of boarding a shuttle, of a medic examining her and bandaging some cuts on her forearms and shoulders from when her aura had thinned. When she felt lucid again she looked around the shuttle and saw the aftermath.
Most of the passengers had actually made out fairly well. Through his usual sheer dumb luck, Sun Wukong had made it out without a scratch, and his best friend had somehow shared that good fortune. The massive boy Arslan had saved was pressing a hand to a bandaged section of his upper body and flinching at the pain, and in one corner behind the seats a small dog was whining at a group of medics gathered around a stretcher, but everyone else had escaped with relatively minor injuries. Reese failed to find Arslan and felt her heart jump. She looked around a couple more times before spotting Bolin's staff resting against a wall not far from the cluster of medics.
Reese shot up from her seat, cursed when she put weight on her bad leg, then began hopping on one foot, supporting herself by grabbing the seat backs as she hopped towards the back of the craft. She came around the back row of seats and found her teammates crouched around Arslan, helping her to stand from where she had laid on the floor. Her arm was bandaged, hanging in a sling, and she stumbled like she was drunk.
"Oh god," Reese said.
"She'll be fine," Nadir said. "She's a little out of it from the painkillers, but she'll be fighting again soon enough."
Reese sighed, but instead of fading into relief, the bright panicked tension in her gut transformed into a heavy congested tension in her chest and head. She looked at Arslan. Her leader tried to present a stoic front, but even with the medicine, she still grit her teeth in pain. Reese felt her eyes begin to water.
"If I hadn't frozen this wouldn't have happened," she said, her voice breaking. "If I had acted faster, if I hadn't opened myself up to an attack like that, you wouldn't have gotten hurt. I wouldn't have almost gotten us killed. Arslan, I am so—"
Arslan pulled Reese into a hug with her good arm. Reese buried her face in Arslan's shoulder and sobbed, trembling. Arslan said nothing, but rubbed Reese's back to comfort her. After a few minutes, she felt Reese calming down, and drew back slightly.
"It's okay Reese. I forgive you."
Reese drew back and looked up at Arslan with a mixture of disbelief and gratitude. Arslan nodded, reassuring.
Then she seized the back of Reese's head by the hair and held her off the ground.
"But that doesn't mean there won't be consequences."
She hurled Reese back and Reese fell, sailing out a door that had been closed seconds ago, tumbling down from the aircraft through the night sky, her screams swallowed by the wind. She landed with a splash and flailed, struggling to stay afloat with her bad leg. She swam into something hard and slick and followed it up until she surfaced with a gasp, clinging onto the obstacle by her fingertips. She couldn't see what she was holding onto in the blackness, but as she moved along it, she felt multiple rectangular sections and noticed a gentle curve that bent inwards. Looking up, she saw a circle-shaped slice of the starry night sky.
Her heart stopped. She was back in the well.
From the darkness behind her, she heard something slide into the water. She turned to look and saw nothing but blackness. Then she felt the water in front of her ripple and a pair of red-orange eyes the size of softballs rose out of the water. A blast of hot, humid breath bathed her in a sticky, rotten smell, and Reese screamed.
…
Reese jolted awake, breathing hard. She didn't shout, but her heart felt like someone had stabbed it with a syringe of caffeine, and she was soaked in sweat. Her hands bunched up fistfuls of sheets and she lay curled and rigid beneath the comforter, focusing on her breathing. Over what felt like hours, she managed to wrestle her pulse back under control and relaxed.
"Everything okay Reese?"
She jumped again, then inwardly cursed. Of course I woke up during her shift, Reese thought.
Reese sat up and looked across the room. The room they had chosen had no windows so they were able to keep a small lantern going for whoever had watch. Blake sat at the table with the lantern on it, looking up from her book at Reese. Royce sat across from her, drawing a whetstone over his halberd blade. He looked at Reese with one eyebrow raised, echoing Blake's question. Reese looked from one to the other, gauging her reply, then sighed.
"I just had a bad dream. Pretty lame, huh?" She gave them a wan smile.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Royce asked, lengthening the question with a tentative drawl.
"No, I think I just had a weird reaction to one of those cans we took from the kitchen. Bad meat or something."
Neither of them looked convinced, but they nodded, playing along. Blake stood, drew something from a pouch on her belt, crossed the room, and placed it in Reese's palm. It was the size and shape of a chewy candy, and spinach-colored.
"Old field remedy for 'indigestion'. It'll help you sleep it off. Take it with some water though, it tastes disgusting."
Reese looked up at her. "But I'm the next in the watch rotation. I might as well stay awake."
"You sure about that? I could've sworn we traded shifts, didn't we Royce?"
"You absolutely did," he said. "I seem to recall Reese coming up with a new theory about that box she found and offering to swap shifts so she could see if she was right while the idea was fresh in her mind."
His eyes twinkled at Reese. "Go on. It'll be our little secret."
Reese looked between Blake and Royce, frowning. Then she downed the pastille in her hand, grimacing at the taste; a cross between asparagus and soap. She lay down, kneading the comforter with her fingers in guilt at the thought of Blake and Royce getting her out of watch duty. Then she slept, in calm peaceful darkness.