Coco looked at her watch. It was half past two, but it was impossible to tell from looking at the sky. Thick clouds loomed overhead, throwing the world into grayscale. The rain came down in fat cold drops, soaking Razor Ridge and cutting visibility to fifty feet.
She looked into the rain from the general store's covered porch. The town showed no signs of attack: The buildings remained intact, generators appeared in working order, and the general store's shelves held ample supplies. Rain washed away any human footsteps that may have marked the streets but the ground wasn't gouged with grimm tracks either. Inside and outside, there wasn't a single sign of struggle or drop of blood.
But the complete absence of people cast a sinister air over the most mundane things. Every door they encountered was unlocked, most hanging open to the elements. Dinners at set tables lay untouched, save for insects buzzing around the now-spoiled food. In one house's kitchen, a set of tools was laid out on the floor in front of an opened sink cabinet, in preparation to fix a leaky pipe. The aftermath of violence was difficult to look at, trauma-inducing at times, but such brutality was concrete, unambiguous. The uncertainty they encountered in Razor Ridge stirred the imagination in subtle, powerful ways; nurturing a dread that was in some ways worse than seeing destruction and gore.
Coco shivered. She drew out her scroll from beneath her poncho, flicked through the pictures until she found the one she wanted, and gazed at the screen. Her hand hung poised over the top of the display, ready to swipe down and pull up the contact list, before she lowered it, pushing the thought out of her mind. Even if long-range communications worked, making a call would have been a low for tactical stupidity.
"Are you ever going to tell me who the lucky man is? Or lady, I don't judge."
Coco jumped back, startled. Nora dangled by her fingers from the canopy like a monkey, giving Coco an inquisitive look. Coco relaxed and holstered her scroll.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Coco said.
"Alright, I'll stop being nosy," said Nora. She popped her hips towards Coco and swung forward, landing underneath the canopy. She leaned on the porch's railing and stared into the storm. Coco grit her teeth, but said nothing, assuming a similar position. A few minutes passed like that, with no sound but the falling rain and the occasional rumble of thunder high above the mountains.
"So did you find anything?" Nora asked.
Coco suppressed a sigh. "No. It's like the town's a life-sized model; exactly like the report on Timber Falls. I found zero evidence of looting."
"Maybe they evacuated?"
"Possible, but I doubt it. Unlike the last two villages, there's only one way in, and we didn't see any signs of grimm activity heavy enough to make people run. Combine that with the fact that this village is built into a high cliff like an early Mistral settlement, and evacuation makes less sense. You could hold out here for a while so long as a flock of airborne grimm didn't attack."
Coco rubbed the heel of her palm against her forehead. "I'm guessing you had similar luck?"
"Pretty much. Lots of suspicious absences with no clues why. The only mystery I have a chance of solving is your reaction to me trying to peek at your scroll."
Coco scowled at Nora. "I do not need your usual antics right now. I thought you understood that this isn't a seek-and-destroy mission with your friends, but maybe I was wrong."
"I understand," said Nora. "But you're really tense right now; everyone is. I thought teasing you might help you ease up."
Coco seized Nora by the shoulders. Nora's eyebrows rose, but she didn't flinch.
"Have we been looking at the same villages the past few days? Because nothing I've seen since we've left Crescent Hollow screams 'ease up' to me. Meanwhile, you seem to be operating on a different planet where nothing serious ever happens."
"There's a difference between taking things seriously and stressing out over them," Nora replied, raising her hands in a mollifying gesture.
Coco let out a short bark of laughter. "Acting professional is stressing out over something? If that's how you see things I'm surprised you didn't lose more of your team at Beacon."
Before she could say anything else, Coco felt a crushing pain around her wrists. With slow deliberate motions, Nora pried Coco's hands from her shoulders and lowered them to the taller girl's waist. She gave them a quick squeeze, sending another spike of pain through them, then let go and folded her arms in front of her, glaring at Coco. Coco managed to suppress her wince of pain and stand her ground, but every nerve in her body screamed at her to move back from Nora.
"Choose your next words carefully," Nora said, her voice quiet.
The two of them stood there for a moment, eyes locked and poised to fight, but before either of them could escalate the confrontation, a humming noise came out of the rain. They turned to see Reese hop off her board and scale the steps to the covered porch. She drew her hood down, reached behind her neck to wring the water out of it, then grabbed her hair and repeated the motion.
"So we sort of found something," she said. "Royce said—"
She paused and looked back and forth between the two huntresses. "Did I interrupt something?
"No," they both replied.
Reese looked skeptical, but nodded.
"So we checked out the hut where they keep the village's radio," Reese said. "It's gone. There's nothing in there except a table and a couple of chairs. After we saw that, Royce said he wanted to check out the antenna."
"Which is where?" Coco asked.
Reese made a gesture for them to follow, pulled her hood back up, and stepped back out into the rain, leading them to the North end of the village. The villagers had carved a series of narrow switchbacks into that section of the cliff face, and they climbed them, rising above the village. When the village below looked like a collection of anthills they reached the summit; their feet too numb from the rain and cold to ache. The area was mostly flat, with small boulders scattered around. Blake stood watch at the end of the path while Royce examined the remnants of the antenna.
The group slowly approached where Royce crouched at the tower's former base. When it had stood upright, it had been a tall, narrow lattice of metal, supported by steel cables anchored to the stone. Now it laid across the ground, warped from the fall and twisted apart at a few places along its length. The bottom foot or so of the three main columns jutted out of cement that had secured them to the rock. After that they terminated in melted steel coated with a black goo that gave off a sour smell. Reese produced a screwdriver and extended it towards the goo.
Royce snatched her wrist. "Don't do that if you want to use it again," he said, his voice quiet.
Reese withdrew her arm. "What is it?"
"Komodo venom," he said. "Unpleasant local grimm. Don't get bit if we run into one; in addition to being acidic, their venom stops blood clotting and degenerates organs. If the melting doesn't kill you, the bleeding from your eyes probably will."
Reese made a face and scooted back.
"Don't tell me we're adding smart grimm to the list of creepy things in the forests," Coco said.
"No," Royce said. "They're cunning, but they're not intelligent enough to target an antenna. Some bandits keep smaller ones around to milk them for their venom. It's useful for melting through locks, prison bars; that sort of thing. Whoever's doing this may not operate like any bandit I've ever seen, but they've been in the wilds long enough to learn some local tricks."
"Looks like our friends are getting sloppy."
"More like they're taking calculated risks," Royce said, standing up. "When the antenna stood, you could see it from the village below when the weather's clear. If you guys had come looking in this storm without a guide, you might not have thought to check up here. If you came on a clear day and the antenna was still standing, you might have been able to jury-rig it to work. Maintaining secrecy is pointless if the people you're attacking can call for help."
Coco nodded. "Did anyone find anything else?"
"Nope," Reese said, tapping her scroll. "Blake came up empty-handed, and I didn't find anything in the buildings with the spectrometer. The rain would have washed away anything that might have been outside."
"Royce, how fast can we get to Harvest?" Coco asked.
Royce looked at his watch, then the sky.
"Not until tomorrow, but there's a cabin one of the locals let me stay in a couple times halfway there. If we go now, we can make it just before sundown."
…
By the time they reached the bottom of the cliffs, the rain had darkened the thicker patches of forest almost black as a cave. They traveled along the edge of a wooded valley between the mountains and Harvest as the sun sank, moving into a section of woods that was thinner, but not completely absent of foliage. As they came across a few fallen trees, Blake and Royce drew to a halt simultaneously; their faces contorted in similar looks of disgust and caution.
Nora opened her mouth to ask why they had stopped, when they smelled it: A sour fetid stench, like a dead cat mixed with industrial chemicals hit them and they began to cough. Blake wrapped a scarf over her face to filter the air and braced herself against a tree. Royce strapped a small round shield to his leading forearm and raised his halberd.
"It's one of those grimm I told you about earlier. The good news is that they usually hunt alone. The bad news is that this one's full grown judging by the trees; smaller than a taijitu, but bigger than an ursa."
"I think I have something for that," Nora said, unshouldering her pack.
"No!" Coco said. "Melee and small arms only; the rain won't cover the sound of heavy weapons."
Royce looked like he wanted to side with Nora, but he nodded in agreement. Nora glowered, but put away her pack and transformed Magnhild into its hammer form. Royce turned to face the group.
"Komodo are strong, and faster than they look, but they're not real nimble. There's a clearing nearby; if we get there we can run circles around it."
"Hey, here's a wild idea, why don't we just avoid the bitey acid monster entirely?" said Reese, her face pale.
"That would be ideal, but if we got this close to it, it probably knows—"
There was a crash from Royce's left, and he flung himself backwards out of the path of a massive, lizard-like grimm. Blake leapt onto its back, landed a few strikes on it, and ran down its body, past its tail into the woods. The grimm took the bait and whirled after Blake, temporarily leaving the path. Coco, Nora, and Reese took the opportunity to run past it after Royce, who had broken into a sprint down the trail. Behind them, they heard the Komodo roar and the crashing of falling trees.
Up ahead, the path opened up into a small clearing, turned to slick mud by the pouring rain. Reese hopped onto her hoverboard with a running start, zipping ahead of the others and arcing around back when she neared Royce's position near the center. Nora and Coco had gotten about fifteen yards from the trees when the grimm crashed through after them, and Reese got her first good look at the creature.
It had thick beaded skin, a head almost big enough to swallow a person whole, and its feet ended in long obsidian claws. Its shoulders spanned the length of a car, and its muscular tail doubled the length of its body. Its body displayed none of a grimm's distinctive bone plating, but when it bared its teeth they were the same unnatural white.
As it charged after Coco and Nora, it swiped at them with its claws. It sent Nora flying to one side and knocked Coco to the ground. Coco rolled onto her back in time for it to pin her leg into the mud. The beast hissed and lunged down at her, but before it could bite her Coco drove the boot heel of her free leg into the creature's jaw and its head was enveloped in a flash of blue as her boot gun fired. It tossed its head back, shaking it to try to dislodge the ice that had encased its jaws, forgetting Coco and allowing her to scramble away.
Gunfire cracked in a measured cadence and the Komodo shook, irritated, but not seriously harmed. Royce had reversed his halberd and turned it into a long rifle, the halberd's head forming the buttstock, and the spike atop the head folding to one side to form the bolt. He cycled the action and fired again as the creature swung its head into the ground, shattering the ice holding its jaws shut. It roared and charged towards him, claws digging into the mud.
Reese withdrew while Royce converted his rifle back to a halberd. He held his ground as the Komodo bore down on him, leaping back from its final lunge at the last second. Its momentum spent, the creature began a slower approach, slashing its claws at him instead of trying to charge.
Royce managed to parry the attacks with his halberd's blade or deflect them with the small shield strapped to his forward forearm. Occasionally he speared the grimm in the shoulder or foot with the halberd's spike, but he was ceding ground rapidly. He slowly stepped backward until he came up against a thick tree at the opposite edge of the clearing. The creature's tongue flicked and it lurched forward. Royce batted away the claw swipe, but the parry left him wide open to the creature's gaping jaws.
Blake burst from the trees, shoving Royce aside and the creature seized her, her head and shins protruding from either side of its mouth. The grimm shook its head, snapping her neck and rending her flesh with its teeth. It let out a satisfied growl, and chomped down again, making a loud cracking sound that made Royce's skin crawl.
Then there was a burst of flame as the shadow clone exploded, and the Komodo reared back, hissing in pain, its cries growing angrier as the real Blake pounced on its neck and hacked at it like an ax murderer. It writhed and coiled as it tried to toss her off, throwing off her strikes so they only glanced off its hide. She slipped on its slick skin, recovered, and retreated down the creature's body, but this time the beast was ready. It popped its hindquarters up, sending her into the air high enough to swat her across the clearing with its tail. She struck a tree not far from Coco and Reese, and slid down the trunk into the mud.
"My guns didn't even scratch that thing," Reese said, shaking a little. She watched Royce and Nora double-team the monster, keeping it backed against the trees, but just barely.
"I am seriously regretting my lack of melee reach right now," Coco said, rummaging in her pack. "If my minigun wouldn't make a racket, I'd just unload on the bastard."
"What should I do?"
"If you can't hurt it, distract it."
"Like Blake?" Reese looked over at Blake. She was barely moving, sprawled on her side.
"That's the general idea."
"What are you going to do?"
Coco lit a flare and held it in her left hand, and dangled her gun in its purse form from her right.
"Something I'd yell at anyone else for trying."
Coco shouted and charged forward, and a moment later Reese did the same, darting ahead of Coco as she rode.
Nora struck the creature's shoulder with her hammer. It growled in pain, but didn't fall, whirling on the girl and batting her away. Reese swerved out of Nora's path as she flew through the air and angled towards the grimm's head. Just before Reese entered the reach of its jaws, she slid into an abrupt stop and sent a plume of mud into its eyes with the force from her board's hover field, temporarily blinding it. It backhanded her the way she had come as it thrashed in frustration, and Coco leapt in and hammered its head to the ground with her bag. It roared as it picked itself back up and Coco roared back, waving the flare in its face. It retreated, snapping its jaws at the flare. When it grew bolder and struck back, Coco swung her bag into its attacks, redirecting the blows.
Coco felt the flare begin to sputter and tossed it to one side. The Komodo swung its head after it, but before it could turn back to Coco, she struck its head hard enough to stagger it, then moved in to deliver a kick with her other boot. The blow rolled the creature onto its side in a burst of force from a gravity dust cartridge and it lay stunned for a moment. Royce and Nora leapt in, striking it in the belly. Nora's hammer bounced off it, but Royce's halberd bit into the flesh. He tugged at it for a second, straining, but it stayed fixed in place. He turned white.
"Oh crap."
The Komodo kicked, sending Royce and his halberd tumbling across the clearing. The puny gouge Royce had left was so shallow it didn't bleed. The creature twisted upright and knocked Nora away with a flick of its tail. It began to slither towards Coco, slow and inexorable. She lit another flare, but the small flame no longer frightened the grimm and it continued to advance. She leapt back as it struck with its claws, dodging once, twice; but the third strike went low, sending a wave of mud crashing into Coco like a load of wet cement and she went down hard.
She raised her head, disoriented, and looked about. Belle Mort was nowhere to be found. The Komodo advanced, locking its gaze on hers with impassive eyes. The stench of rotten meat and sulfur flowed from its mouth and made Coco's eyes water. At the edge of her perception, she heard someone screaming at her to move. She tried to force herself to run, to start swinging, to do something, but everything felt sluggish and delayed, like she was moving underwater. The grimm's jaws yawned wide.
A pair of hollow thumps sounded in rapid succession, followed by two high-pitched shrieks reminiscent of roman candles, but much louder. Two hot-white, vaguely pointed lights streaked through the air and buried themselves in the Komodo's side, leaving a pair of holes the size of soccer balls in its flesh, and making it flinch and hiss in pain. A moment later a pair of massive explosions blew away most of the monster's torso, rocking the forest with its force, making Coco's ears ring as they echoed into the night. Coco looked up to see the Komodo laying on its side, howling in pain. Most of its body was gone, its hindquarters connected to its shoulders only by a cracked spine and a few partial ribs.
Distracted by its injury, it didn't notice Nora approach. She fired a third grenade a yard from the grimm's head, sending a cluster of thick flechettes into its skull. It slumped and began to smoke. She turned to look at Coco and gave her a flat look.
"Oops," she said in monotone, then walked off towards Blake. Coco sat in silence, stewing in fury, relief, and the waning dregs of fear. The rain fell harder, stinging as it hit exposed skin.
…
Blake woke to a low muffled rumble, like surf crashing on a distant beach. Looking up, she saw a wood ceiling in a dim room. She lay on the ground atop a thick mattress. Her damp clothes clung to her skin, making her cringe, but someone had also draped several thick towels over her, staving off some of the cold. Looking around she saw she was in a room with stone walls, filled with wooden crates, cots, and a few floor mats like hers. Against one wall, a ladder reached towards the ceiling. A soft glow came from behind a stack of crates. Blake let out a tiny groan and sat up, propping herself up with her forearms.
Someone moved behind the crates, and Reese emerged from the lit area, carrying a water bottle. She crouched next to Blake and held it out to her. Blake took it and drank in long, steady pulls.
"Man, you really got your bell rung," she said, a relieved chuckle in her voice.
Blake put the bottle down. "What happened after I hit the tree?"
"Nora used some of my special grenades to kill that thing. Then she carried you until we got to the cabin Royce told us about. We're staying in this little basement safe room in case anything comes sniffing around. Royce said the owner built it to withstand a group of ursae; dug it right out of the bedrock."
"That about matches up with the explosions I heard." She paused and blinked at her towel-covered feet.
"Where are my boots?"
"Blame Royce for that," said Reese. "He was being weird; he wouldn't let any of us track mud inside for some reason. The rain washed most of it off of us, but it was still thick on everyone's shoes. He also mopped all the water up before we came down here. Dude's priorities are out of whack."
Blake's head began to throb and she clutched her temples, her fingers brushing a bandage. "He's certainly strange."
"We're all a little off after that fight. Nora's been sullen and quiet, and every time Coco looks at Nora, she makes this face like she wants to tear her throat out, but knows she can't get away with it. I know Nora woke up everything in the valley when she killed that grimm, but Coco almost died. There wasn't another option."
"There's always another option," a voice said. Coco emerged from the shadows and joined the two huntresses. "But I wouldn't expect someone I found cowering behind a fallen tree to make robust strategic decisions."
"I couldn't scratch that thing," Reese said, her eyes hard.
"You couldn't," she agreed. "But did you shoot it anyway to distract it? Did you try to help Royce or Nora? Or move Blake to a safer location?"
Reese fell silent and bowed her head.
"In an ideal world, I'd replace you right now and do everything in my power to revoke your status as a huntress. But I can't. So until we get back to Vale, try to not get anyone killed."
Coco stretched, popping her neck. "Your shift's over; beat it."
Reese shuffled off into the gloom, her shoulders sagging. Blake pursed her lips at the exchange, but said nothing. When Reese was gone, Coco turned her attention to Blake.
"So, how are you holding up?"
"Did I vomit at any point?" Blake asked.
"No."
"Then I'm probably not concussed."
Coco made a small, amused sound. "Good, we'll need you extra vigilant tomorrow."
"You think we got spotted?"
"I don't know. We left pretty fast once that thing was dead, but it's still a possibility. Anything out there will be on high alert tomorrow after the noise we made."
Blake nodded. "Are we still going to Harvest?"
"It'll be an abbreviated stop after last night's fun, but we're going."
"You think we'll find any information or survivors?"
Coco stood silent for a moment, her arms folded. Then she sighed, her whole body drooping with fatigue.
"It is my hope, not my belief, that we find something."
Blake lay down, closing her eyes. "I don't give hope much weight."
"Neither do I."
…
An hour before sunrise the next morning Royce unbarred the metal trapdoor and let it swing down, revealing a panel of wood. He pushed that up and over like a manhole lid and climbed through, exiting into the cabin above.
"Coco, I thought about our conversation last night," Blake said, pulling on her boots.
"What about it?"
"Playing cat and mouse is only a smart play for the cat. If we've announced our presence, Harvest would be an effective place to lay a trap. You said—"
"—I know what I said." Her voice was low and even. "But I can't skip Harvest in good conscience if there's even a small chance there's someone we could help. Rescue might not be a primary mission objective, but it is the purest form of the huntress job description. Besides, even if someone unfriendly did hear us, they sure as hell haven't found us yet."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I can think of one reason," Royce's voice called down from above.
Blake and Coco exchanged looks, then climbed the ladder out into a modest one-room cabin. Royce stood by the trapdoor, concern etched into his features. The two huntresses followed his gaze. Then they froze.
A series of muddy footprints trailed away from the front door and through the cabin, meandering along the walls and around several pieces of furniture. There were at least two sets, both showing tread patterns that didn't match any of the group's shoes. One pair had left a set of prints directly on top of the wood panel that concealed the trapdoor.
Royce tried to grin, but the expression was stiff and pale. "Looks like being neat houseguests last night paid off for us."