Chapter 9: Cherries & Mustard
"Each day we learn new ways to die."
— 22 —
Coco remembered the first time she ever met her grandfather; the first time she ever met a Huntsman. And perhaps, the first time she'd ever met her paternal grandmother.
With his dusky Vacuan skin, Coco wouldn't even have known she was related to Esfandiyar Adel if no one had told her so. He'd married a white woman from Graad, whose son had married a Valais girl from Orthoux-Sérignac-Quilhan before settling within the pomœrium of Vale. And no, she couldn't pronounce where her mother was from either. She remembered her grandfather's dark eyes, the same eyes that she had apparently inherited from him somewhere down the line. She couldn't look away from the scars across his face, and his woolen shawl plated with the armor of some giant scorpion. Coco had cowered behind her father's leg at the old man and the rifle he leaned against, as long as he was tall. It'd been her dad's idea to visit his father for the Long Night, so they did, visiting where grandpa lived in a part of Sanus called Eranstan, where they didn't celebrate Valean holidays.
She'd only mustered the courage to approach him when Mom let him hold Coco's infant brother. Coco half imagined she was defending little Maté from being eaten or something. Her big brother Toma didn't seem to really care or mind, too engrossed in examining Esfandiyar's rifle. Coco had been the only one to stick around when everyone went off to help mom and dad make dinner.
"You're scared of me," Esfandiyar had said later as he was sitting on the edge of his roof, Coco beside him, both of them looking out at the whole moon. The shards had aligned to make that giant rock in the sky look put together as it sometimes did.
"What's scary about you, old man?' she asked, puffing up her chest. "Why, you gonna eat Mate? Kill us with that big gun?"
"Wasn't planning on it, deldâr," he said mildly, opening the bolt chamber of his rifle and looking down it.
"My name's Coco," she said, stabbing a finger at him. "And you better not forget it!"
Her grandpa laughed. "It means one who holds my heart. You're kith and kin. I suppose you've got my blood pumping through your heart in that way. It's a term of endearment, Coco."
"I'm not 'in a deer,' I'm a girl," she huffed.
Esfandiyar let himself smile warmly. "You would have gotten along with your grandmother. She was just like you. Everyone goes to leave, and she sticks around, angry and defiant at me for her own insane little reasons. It's nice to meet my granddaughter and know she's tough."
Coco folded her arms. "Where is Grandma? I met my mom's mom and she made cookies I couldn't pronounce. Why aren't you making me stuff I can't pronounce? All you do is squint and look all moody. You're an awful grandpa. I want a better one."
Rather than reply directly, he had patted the spot next to himself. Reluctantly, Coco took the cue and sat down beside him. She didn't want to; he was so big and that armor looked so tough. But she wasn't about to let this old loser scare her. His cottage was on a hill overlooking a small town and a little harbor that Coco and her family had arrived through.
He had pointed one of those long, bony fingers towards the sky. "There she is. And there. Sometimes there."
Coco squinted. "I don't see anything. There's just little lights in the sky."
"They're called stars."
"I know what a star is!" she snapped.
He smiled. "Long before kerosene lamps and electricity, all we had were the stars and the moon. No matter where you were, you could look up at the stars and find the ones watching over you. Do you see that big band of light that looks like milk? That's Nahr Aljana, Heaven's River. Everyone who has ever lived and ever died is right there, swimming freely in the sky. But I bet you've never really seen it before, have you? The lights of the city block out everything but the rarest of stars and the wounded moon herself."
"No," she said sheepishly. And then jumped when he put his hand on her shoulder. But she refused to give in. Refuse to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had beaten her and scared her.
"They can't see you either," he said softly. "This is the first time I've ever seen you. And this is the first time your grandmother has ever seen you. See there, that twinkling star? That's her right now, waving. Crying. Tears of joy to see her beautiful granddaughter growing so big and strong and afraid of nothing."
And Coco had just stared up into the sky, at the milky band of stars across the firmament. They were like grains of sand on a beach of glass, reflecting the light of the sun. She had no idea how her grandfather could pick one out and point to it. But once she knew the star in question, it was impossible to miss. The way it twinkled softly in the infinite void of night. The sky was endless, filled with infinite possibilities, and right here, right now, there was only one she could truly focus on.
"Will I be up there one day?" she asked softly.
"If you can see them when you die, yes," her grandfather had said, not bothering to sugarcoat the implied morbidity of the question. Her parents probably would have dodged or deflected, but he gave her a straight answer. She respected that. It wasn't as if she didn't know people died.
"Are they with a higher power?" she asked.
"No," he said, scratching at the plates of his armor. He threw the coattails of his shawl over her, wrapping them both up together in the chilly night. "That higher power is down here. It's right here."
He pressed his finger to the center of her chest.
"My heart?"
He nodded, and she realized what he meant.
"Love!"
Esfandiyar smiled. "It is the only thing worth living for. The only thing worth fighting for. Love. The only part of yourself you can truly give away is your heart. Which is why you must only do that to the people most important to you. Because when you die, if someone has your heart, a piece of you remains on Remnant. That's why we call it Remnant. It connects me to her, through life and death and a billion miles into the sky. Love alone has that strength. If there is a power in the world higher than that, I've never met it."
All Coco could do was stare in wonder at the sky and her grandmother. At the man beside her connected to it through the infinite vastness of the sky. Bringing her grandmother back to the world, letting her cry tears of joy to see the way her granddaughter was growing up.
She wanted to meet her grandmother and talk to her.
So she did.
Slowly, Coco raised her hand and waved. With a smile, she said, "Hi, I'm Coco. I'm pretty cool. What's your name?"
Coco Adel lay there in the darkness, her legs refusing to work. Her breaths came in shallow and ragged. One of her lungs felt like it had something inside of it that didn't belong. It hadn't been the longest she had ever fallen in her life, but it was the longest without something to break the trip. Her weapon or tree branches or something to grab onto or anything. Aura was strong and could let you survive the impossible. But it wasn't an invincibility button. It didn't make you an immovable wall impervious to damage. She remembered Jaune talking about the way he liked to grapple in a spar, how he could still choke out his partner and get her to concede even when her Aura was active.
Urban legends painted a worse picture. In the same breath as stories of the girl who went commando in her school uniform skirt came tales of students who didn't know how to land right during Initiation. They would catch themselves the wrong way. Hit the ground at funny angles. Wind up snapping their necks when they landed long before the Grimm got to them. Or even made the mistake of trying to land in one of the ponds or lakes in the forest, not realizing just how heavy their armor was, and how impossible it was to remove that deep underwater. Invincible as they seemed to everyone else, Huntsmen died like everyone else if you knew what to twist and bend.
In a way, none of that mattered right now. She was too far away to reach out to Fox anymore. Everything hurt too much to really think coherent thoughts or make a plan of action. In a way, it was the least of her problems. She knew she had landed on her arm and an awkward angle. Something was stabbing her in the back, likely something in her broken backpack. And if she paused and let herself truly think about it, her crotch felt a little too wet. But she refused to think that somewhere in the terror and the falling and the landing, that she had pissed herself. Coco didn't do that. That wasn't what the coolest, most fashionable student in school did. That wasn't what super awesome badass Huntresses did.
It was what scared little girls did. Scared little girls who needed their diapers changed to avoid the smell and humiliation and the chafing.
Heh. Chub rub.
Everything was coming full circle.
They called her pain-wise, because it was all she knew, Coco distantly recalled from some poem or short story she had to read in a grammar class. The thought bubbled to the surface of her mind and felt so appropriate. And high above her, without her flashlight to ruin her night vision, she could make out the infinite strands of what looked like stars on the cave ceiling.
It took a colossal effort of will to find where her arm was. She had landed on it and it felt dislocated. Maybe broken and fractured. She cowled herself with Aura just to find the strength to encase it and make it move. Finally get her arm out from beneath her at that awkward angle so she could raise her hand and wave at the false stars high above.
"Hi," she croaked, her voice weak. Trying to speak made her cough up the fluid in her lung; The sound was deafening, and she knew if there were any of those demons nearby, they would hear her for certain now. Coco didn't care. "My name is still Coco. Still pretty cool. How're you doing, grandma? I'm asking because I don't have plans to visit anytime soon."
The twinkling lights high above didn't reply. She knew they couldn't be the stars this deep below the ground. They had to be those glowing strands of thread spun by the silkworms to catch bugs and bats like she had seen earlier, just on an infinitely more vast scale. In a weird way, it improved her mood. Whatever room of the cave she was in now, it was positively titanic. If her lungs weren't filled with fluid, she might almost feel like she could breathe.
That just left trying to figure out any other details about this black void she was laying in.
If she closed her eyes and tried to listen beyond the rugged gasps of her breath, she could make out the sound of distant water and something humming like a tuning fork on a crystal glass. Coco found it was all hard to focus on. With her arm no longer trapped beneath her body, something else kept arresting her thoughts and attention. It kept her mind off the task at hand, and off the sensation of pain everywhere and the wetness in her pants.
It was the fact that she knew her fat ass had landed straight on the sunglasses in her pocket and snapped their spine completely when she landed.
It pretty much ruined her day.
More than possibly breaking her arm, fracturing her spine, and filling her lungs with blood. Given enough time in a hospital, that could all go away. But her shades were designer and expensive. She didn't have the money to just readily replace her wardrobe. Her new beret alone cost—
Wait, where was her beret?
"Goddammit," she groaned, feeling out in the darkness, only touching the scattered, broken debris that had fallen out of her backpack. Her beret wasn't on her head. It must have fallen off when she hit the ground. And wasn't anywhere near enough for her useless floundering to find.
"Oh, come on, don't do this to me, don't do this to me, don't make me get up," she moaned, finding every word harder than the last. Until she wasn't really speaking. Just making a low series of noises and flapping her gums. Even that felt too much.
It bubbled up in her stomach first. This tightness like a heart attack in her guts. Like any girl who's been to a party or two, she knew that when someone fell asleep drunk, you did everything in your power to make sure you put them at an angle, let them lay on their side. If they woke up in the middle of the night on their backs and vomited, that's how they drowned, and that's how they died.
Coco was lying on her back. Broken and wet and suffering, but this wouldn't be how she fucking died. Not the awesome Coco Adel. Not when she couldn't see the light of the real stars, knowing where she'd go when she died. Who the hell knew where some pathetic little bitch drowned in her own vomit would go if she died in a place like this?
She screamed as she propped herself onto her elbow and tried to sit up. It turned into a hacking cough. And the cough turned into retching. She doubled over and vomited what tasted like blood and acid and bits of a fancy hotel breakfast.
She tried to scuttle backwards on her knees to get away from the vomit. As if getting puke on her pants would make it any better than the piss that she was categorically refusing to believe in. In the end, she wound up hunched over with her knees beneath her, like someone whose elbows had given up halfway through doggy style.
Coco heard the skittering of insects and something slimy. It was all there in the background of that humming further down into the cavern. Face covered in sweat, and still spitting up bits of bile, she watched with morbid fascination as something moved towards her vomit. In an abstract way, she felt like a mother bird feeding her chicks. Until she saw the little pink light. It blinked the life in front of her eyes, looking like some kind of thumb sized jellyfish. It even moved like one, pumping itself up and down on an invisible breeze. A little glowing light from deep in the cave that came from the darkness and settled on her puke.
Others came. Gasping with her one good lung, she backed away as they appeared from thin air and swarmed the puke. She watched as others who couldn't find room went towards her broken cans of food and trail mix and everything else that had scattered across the ground when her backpack crashed open. They pulsed with their little pink light, tiny tendrils feeling at food and eating.
It made her want to vomit again. But that would mean attracting their attention. And she didn't know if these were dangerous. If they would swarm her and eat her alive, with those little wispy tentacles digging into her skin or anything. Coco didn't even know what the hell these were. She had never seen anything like them in biology class or in movies or books or anything. They were just eerie glowing organisms deep beneath the heart of Remnant.
Slowly, they seem to eat their fill, and begin to disperse, floating away in every direction as if each one had found its own current. They didn't just vanish like how they appeared, though. She watched them land and settle on mushrooms and other plant growth she hadn't seen in the darkness without their light. The fungus quivered, and she watched irregular row upon irregular row of mushroom glow to life like someone flicking on the city lights as the sun faded. Until all around her she realized she wasn't in some barren rocky moonscape; she was in the middle of a vast mycelic field of light, some from mushroom caps, and others from lichen, others looking almost like edible berries. It was a veritable forest only now coming to life with enough ambient light that she wouldn't need a torch to see, at least not if she squinted, or when her eyes properly adjusted.
Those little jellyfish were like bees, pollinating everything, she thought.
And then, with a grimace: It's a puke powered forest.
That distant twinkling hum only got stronger. She wanted to climb to her feet and follow after it. It felt important somehow. Like it mattered. She bit down a wave of nausea as she pulled her head back to look at the direction she had fallen from. The light from the cave floor didn't reach up that high, and she had no idea where the ledge even was or how to get back up.
When Coco tried calling for her team, all that came out from her voice was this pathetic rasp. She had used the last of her ability to talk to make some kind of joke about the stars and her grandmother. Now she couldn't call for help. She tried reaching out to Fox, to send him a message, something she realized she probably should have tried to do earlier if only she had the right headspace. But when she tried thinking to him, she felt her thoughts bouncing back in her own empty coconut. Nothing was getting through. Either he was too far away, or, just as likely, he had opened up a connection with another member of the team and was talking to them. She was pretty sure his ability was directly two-way. He could sense aura in life signs from a distance and tap into them, but she wasn't sure if he could isolate her amidst this forest of fungus and little floating jellyfish bees. Too many big living things. Or maybe he could and it was just a matter of time. It was anyone's guess how the exact specifics of his power worked like that.
In any case, that felt like the bad option. Just sitting here next to her own vomit, in her own piss, waiting for her partner. It was useless. It was what a coward would do. Someone afraid of doing anything. Who couldn't be trusted to be team leader.
No, that wasn't Coco. Even if it might have been the smart, safe option, it wasn't the Coco option. It was too pathetic. Even Jaune would probably laugh at her if he found her like this. She'd lose all respect and credibility, and everyone would probably default to him as leader of this little expedition instead of her. The student becoming the master because the master was a trainwreck and a failure.
She forced her knees to extend, pushing against the ground until she was standing. Her vision swam with blackness, and she nearly doubled over. Until she realized that was because one of her heels had broken.
Stupid fucking lady stilts.
She couldn't walk around and operate with these. So even if it made her a mere five foot eight, she kicked them off and felt her bare feet against the cave floor and bits of moss and water.
Water?
Oh please don't be piss. Please don't be a puddle of piss.
Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the ground and felt a weight lift off her chest. There was a little puddle nearby, part of a small stream leaking off the rock wall. Coco hadn't pissed herself. She probably just slid along the water. She put a hand to her chest and tried to laugh, but all that came out was a croak. But it felt so good. She could deal with chafing from accidentally getting wet instead of accidentally losing her bladder control on herself.
Everything still hurt, but now a little less so. And when she cowled herself in her full Aura, even less. Aura could reduce pain and help healing. It wasn't a complete miracle worker. Hospitals were still required for the real big injuries. But it let a Huntress make the difference when the chips were down.
Covered in the light of her own soul, she oddly felt like she belonged down here. Not that she intended to stay, but that she was glowing just like everything else here was. Idly, she wondered if fungus could have an active Aura. On a technical level, her partner Fox told her, everything alive had an Aura. It's why a particularly attuned Huntsman could sense not only other Hunters, but average people, and everything down to small animals and big bugs. He hadn't remarked on plants. And if biology class served right, mushrooms weren't plants. Coco didn't really like to think about that, however. It raised troubling theological questions about the nature of the soul, and whether or not vegans had a point.
She would die before she let the vegans be correct. Some of her best outfits were made with genuine leather!
She took her first bare step forward, in the direction of the humming. Every footfall sent a lance of pain shooting up her spine. Her right arm continued to feel some kind of way. Reflexively, her good left arm grabbed and held it in place to keep it from jostling too much. From letting fractured bits of bone rustle up against each other and sandpaper itself down. With one of her lungs feeling less than optimal, even just walking made her feel out of breath. Everything that came out of her mouth sounded like a death rattle. But all she could do was swallow, grit her teeth, and bear the pain. Hoping that eventually her Aura would numb the worst spikes of it and allow her to at least pretend like she could function if anyone were to see her like this.
So she entered the mushroom forest. The bushes and lichen that tickled her feet. Trying not to think about stepping onto centipedes or worms. If she squinted, it almost looked like there was a path forwards. Maybe there was. Maybe this was part of the artificial tunnels that had been overgrown.
Her suspicions felt almost correct when she came across a little overgrown shrine. Like the little statuette and fountain with the white rabbit chalk marking, it looked like nothing more than a little stone archway with room for one person to hunker down, curl into a ball, and give up. There look to be a faint indentation on one of the little pillars holding the tiny roof up. Brushing her fingers against it, she realized they were words. If she had chalk or crayon and a piece of paper, she might have been able to decipher them. But given these tunnels were probably a billion years old or something, there was a good chance the words would be complete gibberish, just like the fancy pretentious mottos of any quality university. Puellae optimae or catapultam habeo or anything else that lost its meaning once you really know what it said.
About the only thing worthwhile about this little shrine Coco found was a pretty decent chunk of rock. It looked a bit like a broken stalagmite or stalactite or stalag-whatever the fuck. It felt a bit like a heavy dagger. Carrying it made her feel like she was armed, which did wonders for her confidence.
Something crawled down from the shrine's room. At first she thought it might have been a giant bug, and figured it was perfect to try killing with her rock. But all she saw was a bat, an oddly fluffy thing. It was almost kind of cute. It was even carrying a baby on its back. She really didn't have the heart to just kill simply to prove she could. She wasn't a monster. She was a Huntress. Broken and bloodied, she wouldn't let herself be a killer for its own sake. Even if it was a flying rodent.
The centipede didn't share her moral qualms. Coco gasped, nearly falling backwards on her ass as the bug snatched from the shadows and broke the bat's neck in its jaws. Its baby squeaked and chirped in pure terror, watching its mother be devoured. The centipede ripped the bat's head off before remembering the child was there.
"No!" she shouted, bringing her rock down on the bug. Its armored hide would have probably kept it safe. But she hit it with a full force of her Aura, crushing its head.
It collapsed in on itself, curling into a death ball like a spider. The baby continued to scream and shriek, flailing around on the corpse of its mother. Coco just stood there, staring at it, panting, unsure what to do. It felt like she had to do something. But what option did she realistically have? She reached down, hesitated, and then went with it. Coco scooped the little batling into her hand and brought the screeching, screaming thing to her chest. She really hoped she wasn't about to get rabies or some kind of disease from touching a cave bat.
"It's okay, it's okay," she said, lying to herself and the bat. Until eventually the little animal grabbed her as tight as possible and fell into a shivering silence.
Coco leaned against the side of the shrine, no idea what to do with this situation. Had she just claimed some random stolen baby animal as her newest pet? She recalled somewhere that bats were communal animals. Maybe she could find where the rest of the bats were roosting and return it to its family or something? The thought felt stupid and pathetic. But it wasn't like she could take care of a bat. It kind of cramped her style; way too dark and edgy. Yet, she had saved this thing. It felt like a metaphor for everything she wanted to do as a Huntress on a smaller scale. And if Fox was right, this little animal had an Aura, which theologically you could argue was the same as the soul.
Gods, she was pathetic. She couldn't even save herself. Let alone some infant animal that made its home in guano and darkness. Hell, even though she had adopted Jaune, she barely felt like she had a concrete influence on him. They mostly just talked about this, that, and tattoos. The most basic of basic stuff. More like they were people who just tolerated each other, instead of her actually giving him concrete, solid advice to make him a better Huntsman. This entire expedition into the labyrinth, she almost felt like everyone was looking to him for guidance, and not her. She was failing everyone by proxy. By her sheer inability to act and do anything and be the Huntress she was supposed to be.
A real Huntress wouldn't be terrified of a thousand pounds of earth above her head and tight walls on either side. Wouldn't be horrified watching animals kill each other like they always did. Hell, a real Huntress probably wouldn't even call them animals, because Velvet found the term insensitive when used around her. A real Huntress would be more considerate and avoid hurting people's feelings.
But if Coco Adel wasn't a Huntress, then what the hell was she?
A fashionably dressed corpse.
She shivered at the thought.
So as she stood there and tried to figure out what to do next, she watched as the little glowing jellyfish bees slowly swam through the air. They came out of the woodwork to settle on the dead bat and centipede. And as they started to eat the warm corpses, she realized she couldn't watch. Carrying her rock in one hand, and covering the bat on her chest with her arm, she had to go and leave.
Had to follow the only direction she knew to go towards: that infernal humming sound.
The mushrooms felt rough against her feet. Every little pebble she stepped on, she had to wince. The air this deep below the ground was cold and damp. It seeped into her lungs with every breath like pneumonia. She thought back to her grandfather, who had come from the Eranstan border region between Vale and Vacuo. He had told her that the name Adel meant "fair, honest, just" in one of the many languages out from the desert. It made her wonder if it gave her some kind of genetic predisposition to want to avoid moisture. About the only thing warm that was going for her was the bat clutched to her chest, still occasionally making sad, pathetic noises. Noises that were slowly getting more and more drowned out by the humming.
— 23 —
Then, after what felt like forever on her feet, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of painful minutes, she found it.
The fungus all seemed to give it a wide berth, as if afraid of it. It was all alone on the barren rock with the glowing silk high above. It looked like nothing so much as a tree, but somehow all wrong. Coco had been on a mission once to a volcanic region and had seen something called petrified wood. Magma and lava or something had turned organic lumber into rock. And that was almost what this looked like.
Except for the corpse embedded within it.
It looked like a tree climbing up against a boulder, its bark black and stone-like. Glowing red streaks of something ran through the bark, like gems embedded in rock or the veins on Jaune's arms. The canopy on the branches looked fake, like this stony, singing thing was merely imitating what a tree should look like. It had the colors of a Grimm. Looking at it, she was struck by how it resembled a bonsai tree when she really thought about it. She knew that bonsai trees were just trees in miniature but this was giant and it still had that feeling. The sense of being pruned and artificial and so horribly bred as to be inherently fucked up. Like someone had taken a JPEG of a bonsai tree, altered the coloring, and then scaled the image up and claimed it was an original work of art. She knew the comparison didn't make any sense, but it was what came to mind when she looked at this thing.
The clearing smelled of cherries and mustard.
The corpse the tree had grown through and around stared back at her, the red veins of the tree making it look like its eyes were glowing. But it was nothing more than a leathery mummy of a man in some ancient armor that still looked in good quality.
Coco couldn't help herself. Still clutching her nearly broken arm, she stepped forwards towards the humming tree. That smell of cherries and mustard was so… it was beyond words. Even calling it cherries and mustard felt wrong; the two things didn't go together, but it was the closest approximation her nose could make. She couldn't even tell if it was honey mustard or dijon. But as she stepped inch by inch towards the tree, focusing on her nose was why she noticed it first.
A new smell entering the arena. It mixed with that background smell of musty cave and earth and mushrooms. With that inexplicable smell of the tree. It was a smell she knew way too well for a girl her age.
Blood and carrion.
As soon as she realized what it was, Coco gagged. For a single irrational moment, she thought it may have been coming from the mummy in the tree. But no, that didn't make sense. She didn't know if she could pinpoint smells like she could sounds. And looking around was useless; smell was by definition invisible. The little bat clutching to her chest stopped making its occasional squeaks. She could feel it grabbing tighter, pinching a breast, as if terrified of letting go. She wanted to pet it, to stroke it, and let it know it was all right, but she just couldn't find the words. Even the idea of talking to some bat that had probably never seen a human being in its life, struck her as ridiculous. She wasn't this thing's mother.
When she was a couple of meters away from the corpse in the tree, it moved. Coco couldn't gasp or yell or anything; walking this far had rendered her too out of breath to do that. All she could do was stare at the man as he slowly lifted his head, overgrown with those little veins. This close, she realized there was a patch on his armor that she recognized as branding from Atlas.
Almost morbidly fascinated, she watched as this mummy of a man fixed his dead gaze on her and opened his mouth. The red veins intruded into his lips and cheekbones, forming grotesque ridges in and under his flesh and into the bone. There were little glowing growths where his tonsils should be.
Coco half expected it all to be some kind of illusion. Like some trap meant for a human being. A Venus flytrap on a grander scale. But then the mummy started to glow with the unmistakable light of an active Aura. The veins in his body pulsed, sending a little waves of red light throughout the entire stone tree. The man made this kind of screaming noise but then stopped. All he did was breathe, this ragged, shallow sound worse than her own.
And then he spoke, every alone syllable sending goosebumps all across her body.
"They didn't drag you here," he said, almost ponderously. His voice was gruff and she couldn't tell if that was natural or because of the way his body was mutilated and destroyed.
She felt her hand shaking as she raised it to wave. "Hi," she said, and gulped. "My name's Coco. I'm pretty cool. What's your name?"
The jawbone moved aside to side as if he were physically chewing up the words before spitting them out. "Haakon."
Coco swallowed hard. "Haakon? Haakon Solstrahl of Team CCHS?"
His neck creaked in a way she interpreted as him trying to nod.
"Oh my God, what did they do to you? They sent us to try to find you. I'm a Huntress! I—" Coco took a step forward before she heard the rattling.
Unlike the smell, this she could pinpoint. She spun around to face it and saw only death. Grimm. It crouched there at the edge of the stone field surrounding the singing tree, lurking in the bioluminescent darkness. It wasn't like any Grimm she knew of. Absolutely gigantic, standing maybe three meters tall despite having a posture like it was severely slumped over. Lean, massive legs like a jackal, with four sets of clawed arms, one pair on the ground like legs, and the other set further below on the rib cage, looking somehow deformed and malnourished. The smaller arms gripped a wrought iron chain that held on to its neck like some kind of leash, tight enough that she could see how it had dented the black flesh. Its back looked like a mess of blood soaked fur and feathers, glowing pink with colonies upon colonies of those little floating jellyfish darting to and fro. There must have been thousands of them, using it as a living hive.
It didn't really have eyes. Just this elongated beak like a vulture's skull. It opened its mouth, revealing the rose upon rows of jagged razor teeth, and sent its long slender tongue to lick the empty hole where its eyes should be. It was what smelled of blood and carrion, without a doubt.
Coco stepped backwards, towards Haakon. The Grimm tightened its rattling chain, and she felt its gaze digging into her.
"Come back to tend your crop?" Haakon asked.
The Grimm said nothing. It wasn't like that human mimic that faked a voice. It was just giant, silent, and staring. It wasn't rushing into attack with mad delight. It wasn't acting like a normal Grimm.
Professor Oobleck had once tried to impart a particular piece of wisdom into Coco. When you're out fighting those demons of Grimm, never underestimate them, and whatever you do, don't you dare think they're stupid. They're not just mindless beasts. They're all driven by a central desire to eradicate sentient life, but if you give them the chance, natural selection takes over. The more brutal ones, the smarter ones, survive perhaps forever. They learn to pick their battles, use strategy, and sometimes even avoid humans if they think it'll give them better odds in the future.
How old was this monster? Where had it acquired a wrought iron chain? Was it a tool? Coco didn't know if Grimm could even use tools.
Why was it only interested in staring at her?
Coco angled herself so she could keep it in the corner of her eye, and talk to Haakon. "We were sent to rescue you. What happened to your team? How did you get like this?" She tried to project strength and confidence. The very perfect model of a modern major Huntress. Yet she couldn't keep her voice from quaking.
Haakon didn't seem to notice. "Faunus jumped us."
"The White Fang? They're behind this?"
"No," he croaked. And then: "There was a Grimm below. A monster so big it had grown into the walls of the cave. We did our job, and these goddamn animals came from nowhere and overran us. We couldn't fight them and Grimm. They weren't interested in killing us."
"Wait, since when do faunus and Grimm work together?"
"They didn't. They just didn't want us to kill it, the giant," he said. "Stabbed me through the thigh. Shot me a couple times. I would have gotten back up. But then that thing came and dragged me away."
"Here?" she asked, flicking her gaze frantically between the man and the Grimm just staring impassively. "It dragged you here? Why? How did it put you in some kind of stone tree? What the hell is going on in this place?"
Haakon groaned. The sound was as much his mouth as the wood growing into his body. "Hurts to talk. Help me get down."
Her eyes were wide. "I—I don't know how. The tree grew into you!"
"Shoot it out," he said in a quiet, solemn voice. "I'm not going to be mulch. I've got a blaster on me. Dust charges."
Coco felt a lance of excitement. Dust! She had packed plenty of rounds with her, but most of it was in her purse still. The one that the other Grimm stole. If she could just get a little bit of Dust, she could use her Semblance, Hype, and turn just a little into enough to blow this place sky high.
"Where? Where?" she demanded with a frantic edge.
The Grimm and its vulture skull face just kept staring.
"Back of my coat," he said. "It's a spare weapon. They didn't disarm me, just dragged me here."
Coco stepped forwards, trying to grab at Haakon. To see if she could try to pry him from the tree and reach around. Find that blaster.
The chain rattled again. When she looked, the monster had stepped beyond the circle of stone. It made a singular, deep clicking sound she felt in the marrow of her bones. Its malformed arms held the chain, as if a leashed bloodhound ready to be freed. All Coco could do was freeze, her one working arm trying to pry away at this mummy of a man. She tried to tug at him more frantically, and the Grimm lurched forwards. The smell was so bad she had to gag. If she hadn't thrown up from the pain earlier, this would have done it. Coco did her best to ignore it, but as the monster got closer and closer, creeping on its claws towards her. Ignoring the smell was like trying to hold water in a blanket: it found ways through.
She put everything she could into her active aura, trying to give her the strength to pry Haakon from the tree, to grab his weapon, but he was stuck in place.
"Harder," he said.
"I'm trying but you're stuck!" she screamed.
"Please," he said with his sudden, desperate edge. "I'm not fucking dying down here. I have to see my daughter again!"
She grabbed and she pulled and she pulled and he just didn't move. "Don't you fucking put that guilt on me; I'm doing my best!"
The smell of blood and rotting meat wasn't just a passive aroma. It was the fetid scent of the Grimm's breath. She didn't even know Grimm could breathe; they were just so alien she presumed that they didn't do anything like that. It snorted, and instead of being hot, a cold, wet air went down her neck. Coco flung herself back, swinging wildly at the air. Her fists hit nothing. Her fractured arm wailed in pain, reminding her that it wasn't even properly in the socket, and was held together more like a jigsaw than by a proper series of bones.
This is it. I was too slow. Broken arm, probably a shattered back. Maybe it's better I die here than go through years of embarrassing therapy.
Death didn't come. She pushed out with all of the Aura she had left, the Aura she was using to numb the pain and continue to function. Coco expected one slash from its claws; or maybe it would lift her up, tearing her limb from limb; or maybe strangle her to death with that wrought iron chain.
Instead, as she stumbled onto the ground away from Haakon, the monster merely stared at her. Only now she could see the glowing red of its eyes deep within that skull. They faded to black as it took a step backwards, almost mirroring the way she was keeping distance from the trapped Huntsman. She could feel its breath, from lungs bigger than a horse's must have been, blowing out across and hitting her in the face with that awful smell. Even looking like its malformed spine was cripplingly hunched over, it was just so big, towering over her. Its long, thin tongue crept out to lick its empty eye socket. More little jellyfish floated in and out of its back, pollinating the mushroom forest. The claws of the arms it used to crawl across the ground idly tapped on the stone ground, as if waiting for her to move.
"Help me," Haakon groaned. "Please, Coco."
"It's holding back," she said. "Why is it holding back?"
"I'm its garden," Haakon said.
"What does that mean?" she asked.
No response. He just hung his head there. The Grimm simply breathed.
"What does that mean?" she demanded, trying to take an angry step towards him.
The Grimm tightened the grip on its chain, lowering its head to her eye level. It raised one of its good arms, flexing its claws, staring at her intently.
And in a sudden, horrible moment, Coco Adel understood. It wasn't something she could concretely explain how she knew. More like premonition upon premonition building upon each other, making impossible yet logical leaps. It was the feeling of inherently knowing what somebody was going to say next before the words came out.
"It's protecting you. Protecting the tree," she said, stepping back. "It doesn't care about me. It doesn't care about anything so long as you're stuck in that tree. So it can eat you or whatever the fuck is going on here."
"You have to be fast," he said, and a bit of black drool leaked from his mummified lips. "I know I can move. First come get me down, and we can kill it."
"I tried; you don't know how stuck you are! You don't even have eyes. You're a goddamn mummy!" she screamed.
The Grimm impassively cocked its head. It almost looked bored, not terribly interested in her save for the sudden outburst. The chain around its neck rattled whenever it moved.
"You're a Huntress," he groaned.
"Yeah—we've established this!"
"So do your fucking job and hunt, Huntress," he hissed. "Save me, help me kill that thing, do it yourself—something, please!"
Coco grabbed her head, stepping backwards. "I'm trying, but I can't. I can't touch you. This, this fucking thing!"
"Help me!"
"I can't!" she screamed, and her inundated lungs sent her into a coughing fit. But that only seemed to make the mummy angrier. He thrashed and writhed, getting nowhere.
"Then what good are you?"
She turned around, as if hoping her team would magically be there. But they were all alone. "I can—I can—I can get help," she stuttered out. "I don't know where they are, but I didn't come alone."
The man suddenly grew still. "Do you really think I have the time left? Fucking look at me. Look what these monsters did. I haven't been able to sleep or eat or piss or anything in weeks. I've just been staring here in the darkness, watching my body become something else. Feeling these goddamn roots in my veins. Thinking and writhing and trying to get out to see my kid one last time. If you leave me here—"
The monstrous Grimm made that single clicking noise that rattled through her bones. It reached out with one of its good hands, the claws caressing Haakon's infected face.
He tried his best to turn away from the hand, but movement that far was beyond his abilities. He groaned, this low noise in the back of his throat.
"—then once it's done with whatever it's doing to me, you're next. You and all your friends. This thing needs to die, and now. Get me out of here and we can do it together!"
"I'm sorry," she pleaded. "I can't. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I don't have weapons, and I'm hurt and that thing is—"
"Then what fucking good are you as a Huntress?" he hissed with all the rage of a man nailed to a cross. "Just a scared little girl playing pretend with big guns."
"No, that's not—no."
"You can't protect yourself, you can't even do your basic duty. Fucking leave me to die, then. Leave an orphan and a widow behind all because you were too scared to do the very thing you exist to do, Coco."
"No!" Coco sobbed, shaking her head. "I'm trying, alright! I'm trying my best, but I can't save you. I'm just a student and—"
Haakon laughed, this raspy noise somehow perfectly in tune with the way the tree was humming. "Little girl, look me in the face. Look me in the fucking eyes and know exactly what you'll become if you leave me here."
She screwed her eyes shut, backing away. "No, that's not—please, I can't."
Haakon laughed again. "You know what? I hope when this thing kills me, it hunts you down wherever you are safe in bed and drags you here to die too! Then maybe you'll know what it's like!"
He was wrong, he was so wrong, and cruel, and spiteful, and just the fucking worst. Fuck you, Haakon. She hoped he didn't die here, and just kept living and suffering forever. It's what he fucking deserved. It's what—
Gods, but he didn't. She couldn't save him and he knew it. And he knew if she left him here, he would die for sure, whether or not she ever got back up. A Huntress was supposed to save people. She was the most badass thing in the world, unafraid of dying, laughing in the face of monsters and tragedy. A Huntress was what Coco wanted to be ever since she met her grandfather. Just to prove she was cooler and more badass than he was. But right now, when her life was truly at risk for the first time as a Huntress, what was she doing? She was holding her head and crying, backing away. Unable to risk it even on a long shot to save a life. Save a father and a husband. And here she was, starting to rationalize his anger as a reason for leaving him here. Justifying cowardice to herself so she wouldn't feel as bad when she left him to die.
Coco Adel wasn't a Huntress.
Coco Adel wasn't anything.
She hoped she would die. She wanted so badly to reach out and try to find the blaster for the one in a million chance she could get off a shot and kill this monstrous thing. This far below the ground, she didn't know if she'd ever go to the stars in the sky and meet her grandmother. Maybe those silkworms stringing traps in the ceiling would capture her first and devour her mortal soul for all eternity. She would almost prefer that. At least that way, no one would know how scared she was. How broken, and afraid she was of dying. She would never have to face her grandparents in the stars and admit she failed. That she was a worthless granddaughter. A worthless friend. A worthless Huntress. Just a fashionable corpse who couldn't even save a single life.
"I'm sorry, I'm just so sorry," she wept, choking up into her hands. Breathing like this hurt her lungs. Whenever she shuddered, she felt it in her fractured back. The only thing keeping her on two legs was her rapidly diminishing Aura. There was no way it could take a single hit from this monstrous Grimm. Even if she tried to save him, all it would do was get her killed. There wasn't honor or glory dying a stupid, pointless battle, even if for a good cause.
It was what she had to tell herself.
What she had to convince herself to believe.
Because the tears wouldn't stop any other way.
Wouldn't stop until she lied hard enough that she could live with herself. Live with the fact that she was pathetic, a failure. She wasn't leading her team. She had gone off on her own and gotten hurt. Everyone was looking to that boy Jaune for direction instead of her. And she was just some side piece to the action. And in her moment of solo glory, when she had the chance for an epic showdown, a final fight to truly prove she was the best of the best?
All she was doing was backing away and crying.
There would be no last hurrah. No sudden reversal of fate. The cavalry wasn't about to arrive and save the day. Even if they did, Haakon would know her name and would tell everyone how she had cowardly ran away. Maybe it was better that he did die. Hide the evidence in the forever silent mouth of a corpse. She couldn't tell anyone about this. It would destroy her. Everyone would know she was a coward and a fraud.
The only thing she could do was just grab her arm, pump her Aura to maximum to stay on her feet, and try to hobble away. Ignoring the way the man screamed her name and demanded she get back here.
Ignoring everything but her tears. But the pain coursing through every fiber of her being. In every ounce of her soul.
"Coco!" Haakon shouted, voice filled with desperate, frantic rage. The echo died in the stems of the mushroom forest. "You fucking embarrassment!"
"I know," she said through tears and snot. "And I'm sorry. I'm so goddamn sorry. But you don't have to forgive me. Because I won't forgive me."
She stumbled, landing on her knees in the fungal forest. Surrounded by those little pink jellyfish and the off-blue glow of bioluminescence. She tried to stand back up, only to see a Grimm before her. An armored Beowulf, red in tooth and claw.
"Just fucking do it," she whispered. "I don't care anymore. Let them think I actually had the balls to die fighting. Please."
The death of a Huntress.
You're supposed to die fighting. You're supposed to face the monsters head on with your friends, unafraid of anything. You're not supposed to be too scared to risk your life. And you're not supposed to just give up when you've already proven yourself an embarrassment.
No higher power would forgive her. No higher power would have her. It wasn't like she herself could love a coward. The only good thing she'd done, the last good thing on her list of deed, was just try to save some stupid little bat that still clung to her chest.
She tried to cover it up with her good arm. Grimm didn't typically go after animals. Maybe if she shielded the little baby with her body, when it tore her limb from limb, some fat or muscle would protect it.
At least Coco could save one life that way.
The Grimm snarled and launched forwards.
The wrought iron chain hit the Beowolf square in that face with enough force to pulverize its skull. Bits of bone and gore splattered across Coco, before they all started to turn to that ash Grimm did when they died.
Panting and sweating, she turned around on her knees to see the three meter tall monster hovering behind her. The faint red glow from its eyes was fading to black. It pulled the chain back to its neck and made that singular deep clicking noise. They stared at each other, and for the first time, Coco felt like he was really seeing her. Truly aware and perceptive of her as only the oldest, wisest Grimm ever were. Self-aware, and infinitely cruel, filled with nothing but malice and hatred for humanity and faunus-kind.
It reached out with an impossibly long limb and took her by the good arm. Unable to resist or do anything, she allowed it to pull her to her feet. Petrified, her heart not even beating, she watched helplessly as it stroked her hair with an almost affectionate care. It reached back into the hive of jellyfish on its back, and came back holding her beret. The Grimm shook it free of the jellyfish that must have carried it there, and put it on her head.
Coco tried to speak. Tried to ask it why, or maybe thank it, or something. All she could do was let in a series of dry, gasping breaths. The tears streamed down her face.
The monster stepped backwards, looking towards the tree. At the man with his head hung low and silent. Somehow, without words, it managed to communicate its intentions to her perfectly.
I'll be seeing you again soon. Stay strong and alive for me. They make the best sacrifices.
Coco turned away and ran.
a/n With this chapter, I think, ends bi-weekly updates. I've conquered my demons enough that work is resuming in full swing, and everyone loves my work ethic and the fact I got jacked while away. Expect weekly weekend posts going forwards, though. Keeping a schedule ensures there's a fire enough under my ass to keep writing.
So, welcome to cliffhanger central. Cope and seethe, bros.