Jin positioned his back against the wall so he could see the room, then inched further into the caves. Jacqui and Cassie mimicked him, and Takeda brought up the rear. The aura and tension in Cassie's panic was nearly tangible, and Takeda felt the waves hitting him. He blocked his mind from reading it any further, but not before a jolt of jittery fear shot down his back in a shudder. He gripped his whips so tightly his gloves chafed on the metal. He watched Jin brace Raiden's staff in front of him like a spear, charging the air.
The blue light from the staff spread much more light over the room than the glowstick or the flashlight, so Jin used it as their guide. The four of them stumbled and shuffled backwards, watching the room until the path narrowed once again into a tunnel, closing them off from it. The tunnel made a left, curling in on itself, and Takeda knew they were adjacent to the room they had just dodged. He felt Cassie, Jin, and Jacqui turn and face their new surroundings, but for a second he couldn't tear his eyes away from where they had been. He felt like the moment he looked away, something would be behind them. The source of the scratching would burst from the walls and attack them. It wasn't until Jacqui asked, "What is that?" that his curiosity forced his eyes away.
The tunnel floor in front of them dropped away into a pit, with a greyish-green mist obscuring the depth. It stretched about fifty feet in front of them, and directly across was another ledge. A beam of natural light lit up what looked to be an island, with a perfectly cylindrical, man-made pillar at its very back. At the top of the pillar was a red glint, like a gemstone. There was no change to the light, but it flickered to life when they stared at it. As though excited to see something new.
" . . . Looks like . . . " Jin began, but cut off to squint into the distance. Clearly he was unable to see whatever it was.
"I think it's a gem," Takeda said.
"A gem?" Jacqui repeated, and stepped forward to go towards it. Takeda thought she would stop at the edge, but her eyes were up, locked on to whatever it was. She nearly stepped right off the edge before he lunged forward and grabbed her arm, hauling her back.
"Wait!" he cried. "Didn't you see the pit?!"
She dropped her eyes, and they widened at the sight of the sudden drop. "Shit. Sorry! I was looking at the gem!"
"What do you think is down there?" Jin asked. "Is it worth looking into?"
"I definitely think the gem is more interesting," Cassie chirped. She kept circling the flashlight above and around them, looking for a potential source. The scratching, Takeda noticed, had mysteriously stopped.
Now aware of the silence, he tuned in to the tunnel around them, almost expecting to hear another bout of scratching. Instead, he heard a constant back-drop of wet-sounding scuttling coming from the pit, like the spiders in the large cavern they first entered through. Though the sounds from the pit sounded faster, harsher, and he often heard a punctuated hissing sound. Still, nothing that matched the scratching that was following them. His first thought was that it was a snake pit, but the more he listened, the more it sounded like actual air passing through a hole, not a snake hissing.
"Listen. What do you think that is?" Takeda asked, pointing down into the pit.
Jin cocked his ear to towards it. " . . . Could be scorpions. There's this one genus of scorpion that pushes air out of a hole on the side of its body. Like a hissing cockroach."
"How the hell do you know that?" Jacqui asked, leveling an almost disbelieving glare at him, like he made it up.
Jin shrugged. "The Shaolin have libraries full of stuff. And I know how to read," he added sarcastically.
"Okay, so either way, nobody fall in," Cassie said.
"How do we get across?" Jin asked.
"Nope," Cassie said. "We're not going across. That looks like a dead end back there, and I just decided the gem's not that important. Let's just get out of here. I don't want to be anywhere near whatever's scratching the walls."
"You're not even the least bit curious about it?"
"Yeah, but we don't know if it is a gem. All we know is that something fucking scary is following us, and I don't feel like dying right now in this shitty cave. Can we please just go?"
In her fear, she forgot she was their leader. Takeda opened his mouth to remind her that she could do whatever she wanted, but Jin interrupted, rolling over her reaction. "I can try to teleport over there."
"Since when can you fucking teleport?" Cassie snapped.
"Well, no, what I mean is try it with Raiden's staff."
She rolled her eyes. "No, let's get the fuck out of here. First of all, that's way too dangerous. If you don't make it all the way over there you're gonna fall into the pit. Sorry, I will not go in after you. Second of all, did we all conveniently forget that something moving through the walls is chasing us? And third of all, stop trying to use Raiden's staff! You can't control the power."
"Did anyone pack climbing gear?" Jacqui asked, hoping to diffuse the situation. "If we had a grappling hook, I could probably fashion something to get us across somehow."
Takeda tried to picture what she could do with just a grappling hook. Even if they threw it across and managed to lodge it in the stone, she would still fall in the pit on her way across. They needed something that could more propel them across-
"Wait! I've got Master Hasashi's kunai," Takeda said, and he shrugged his pack off his shoulders. He opened it up and immediately felt the chain when he reached inside. He pulled it out and set the blade on the ground, fully uncoiling it. The entire chain looked to be over twenty feet long. He went to work, pulling out a length of whip from his right hand. He thread the whip through one of the chain links and opened the blades, locking it in place. He experimentally tugged on it with all his strength, jerking it back and forth to ensure they stuck together.
He stepped up to the edge of the abyss and left a bit of slack between his grip and the blade. He was about to swing it a few times to gain momentum when the scratching started again, against the rocks on the side of the pit. Cassie's flashlight was on the spot immediately.
Scrrrrrrrritch! Scritch! Krtsch krtsch! Slow and methodical at first, it gradually increased in volume and speed. Krtsch krtsch krtsch krtschkrtschkrtsch-! Two sounds, then three, like more creatures were coming.
"Whatever you're gonna do, do it fast!" Jin yelled over it. He aimed Raiden's staff, and fed enough power to it for small charges to jump from one end to the other. Already he was having trouble controlling it as it vibrated in his hands.
Before he could reconsider, Takeda swung the kunai at his side. Once, twice, then launched it across the divide, letting the slack on the chain go. It sailed across, tugging a small length of his whip out with it, and Takeda felt the jarring of the chain as it chinked into what sounded like rock. Takeda did another experimental tug on it, and it seemed to hold him. When he was ready he retracted the whips, and the sudden motion hauled him off his feet, forward over the cavern below. A second went by, like a blink, and he was across the pit. He stumbled onto the landing, rolling to the ground to stop himself.
He stood and dusted himself off, and looked around the small island. There were mostly webs, tangled so thickly together he wasn't sure anything would've been able to free itself. They all seemed to congeal and direct towards what he now realized was a pedestal and not a pillar. It was old and cracked, with chunks of stone missing from what he guessed was once a beautiful carving. At the top was a carved spider, nearly grey from dust and coated in webs, and clutched between its front legs was a red gem.
Takeda inched closer to it. It looked to be a ruby, cut in an oval shape. He could barely see the outline of a spider's body inside of it, like it had been solidified there.
"What do you see?" Jin asked.
"It's a gem, alright," he said.
"Well, grab it, and let's go! It sounds like whatever's in the walls is trying to bust out!"
"Grab it?" Takeda yelled back.
"Sure! It's probably valuable! Souvenir! Hurry up!"
Takeda stepped up to the pedestal and had to stand on the tips of his toes to reach it. He clasped his gloved fingers around it and even through the leather the gem had a warmth to it. It wasn't a readable energy, but there was something supernatural about it.
"I don't know, Jin. It feels weird."
"Come on, Takeda! Take the gem."
"You always have shitty ideas," he muttered to himself. He sighed, but ripped it from its setting between the spider's legs, breaking some of them off. As soon as it was free there was one huge pulse through the cave, like a psychokinetic wave had been sent out.
The scratching stopped immediately.
A horrid screech echoed out from the room behind them, and suddenly the three spiders they left behind in the last room clattered angrily in their direction. Emerging from the dark, they hurled themselves out of the darkness while Jin, Cassie, and Jacqui dropped to fighting stances and immediately prepared for a battle. It was like the spiders didn't even notice them. They crawled along the ceiling and bypassed them completely, scuttling across the crevice, bumping into each other and snapping at each other, squealing and screaming. All of their eyes locked on his, and Takeda realized they were making a beeline for him. He quickly tucked the gem into his pack and ran to the ledge, swinging Master Hasashi's kunai around again.
"Move!" he yelled to them, and that was all the warning he gave before he launched it across. It latched into the wall behind them and he tugged on it. He sailed across, and the spiders swiped at him with legs and pincers but he was too quick. One of them dropped from the ceiling and whirled around in the air to wrap its legs around him, but he wormed out of the way. The tiny hairs brushed against his cheek and neck and down the length of his body, and he heard a thud and a panicked screech as whatever was at the bottom of the pit came to life.
The spiders that missed him whipped around instantly and began to chase him back across.
He was nearly at the landing when the rocks to his left exploded. Sharp chunks of stone and debris dashed and burned across his face. A massive black streak shot from the hole overtop of him, and something slammed into his side. He was pushed into the wall and all his breath left him. His head cracked against the rocks and stars burst in his vision.
All the momentum gone from the kunai, he plummeted a few feet down into the pit, just to the edge of the mist line. The chain snapped taut and swung him towards the ledge and his body smashed against the rocks. It was still pulling him up, but it chafed against the stone and slowed him down. As his vision cleared he used his hands and feet to try and find purchase on the ground. He felt a strike coming, and twisted out of the way as something slammed into the rocks next to him, kicking up dirt and dust. He choked on it, barely moving out of the way of the second strike. He rolled so his back was against the wall, being dragged slowly up the side, and finally got a look at what was in the walls.
It looked like it had once been a normal scorpion clasped to the rocks. It had a long, flat, segmented body that tapered into a tail. The tail curled up behind it and had a sharp barb on the end, larger than Takeda's head that dripped its venom. It had six legs with sharp barbs on them, making the scratching sound they heard, but where its head was meant to be it had grown and mutated beyond all recognition. It had a human torso, the flesh rotting in different shades of yellow, purple, green, and grey. The front two legs pushed out of either side of its ribs, the skin ripped outwards to accommodate them. Its shoulders looked normal, but torn from the forearms down were two massive scorpion claws that had blown its hands apart. The body flopped randomly to the left and right - wherever gravity carried it - and as it reared back once Takeda could see into its slack mouth. The teeth had rotten from its face and its eyes were milky.
Takeda saw two black, beady eyes shining from inside the chest cavity, and he realized it was wearing the flesh to protect its head. it had eaten its way through what was once a person. The scorpion reached for him, the arms of the body moving like a person reaching out to him, and the claws positioned themselves on either side of him, ready to clamp down. The whips shuddered in his hands and he was suddenly hauled upwards out of its grasp. The claws snicked down on air where he used to be, and it hissed angrily.
Jacqui pulled him over the edge and helped him to his feet, and nobody had to say the word 'run'.
They were already spilling and stumbling out of the tunnels and into the room before. The scorpion lunged forward and landed on the ledge, knocking the other spiders from their perches. It pressed its body up to the tunnel but couldn't fit any farther, and instead snapped at them with its claws. They stayed to the left, not bothering to dodge the body Jin had stabbed earlier. Cassie accidentally clipped it with her shoulder and sprawled out in the water. She rolled onto her back, drawing her gun and shooting at the mouth of the cave as though the spiders were already on top of them. The two spiders finally emerged, shoving through the claws of the scorpion, and though Cassie was the closest and the most defenseless, they seemed to draw straight for Takeda again. He grabbed the chain of Master Hasashi's kunai and lashed it randomly at them, hoping to ward them off, but it was like a raw, primal change had overcome them. They seemed intelligent before, only attacking when threatened.
Jin helped Cassie to her feet, then tugged on Takeda's shoulder. "Don't bother! Let's just go! Graveyard, graveyard!"
The four of them pulled away, and Takeda heard behind the splashing of the spiders' legs and the scratching around the walls. It sounded more frantic, like the scorpion was running, and Takeda followed the sound as it trailed from behind them to their right, to directly in front of them. If it broke through the walls again, it would block their escape. Then it was silent.
They ran until they cleared the length of tunnel, arriving to the first few torches they saw. They began to head to their left, back to the area where they found Raiden's staff, but the water-fall of hundreds and thousands of spiders was growing louder. Screeches, shrieks, the taps of thousands of legs echoed through the cave, and the first few burst through the mouth, the start of a literal wave.
They poured from the opening. Three, four, five at a time, as many as they could fit, tangling amongst themselves to fight their way through. They staggered, some fell, but still dragged themselves towards Takeda, even before they were upright again.
"It's the fucking gem!" Takeda yelled. "They're after us for the gem!"
"Ditch it!" Jacqui yelled.
"It's in my bag!" He was already shrugging it off his shoulder.
"This way!" Cassie said, and she turned and ran full tilt to the right, whipping past the pillars. As they reached the last one, another torch lit up the entrance to another cave system in front of them. She ran through it without hesitation. They followed her, the spiders snapping their jaws and dancing after them. They made a left, and the path opened up into another large cavern.
Then the path stopped. They skid to a halt at the ledge of another pit.
Another dead end.
COVID-19 Quarantine Day 28! I hope you all are staying safe!
~Keyblader