"Seeing anything? Carvings, cave paintings, décor of any sort?"

Adam squinted into the darkness, his natural faunus vision providing him with a decent look at his surroundings. As the glyph continued to descend into the abyss, he could tell that they were above some sort of underground lake. The walls of the cavern seemed naturally carved, perhaps by the water itself when it had been higher in the past. There was nothing particularly distinct about their surroundings, other than the fact that the chamber was huge- it seemed more like a stretch of land that had been buried by water and sand than some long-forgotten cave. Adam couldn't help but wonder if there would be traces of life in the underground… and if he was looking at some ancient, proto-Vacuo that had disappeared beneath the sands over time.

"Nothing interesting," Velvet replied for the pair as she stood at the edge of the floating platform. "Just seems… dark. Dark, wet, and kinda cold. Not something I'm used to."

"It's nice," Adam said softly. "Reminds me a bit of home."

"Home meaning…?" Porella asked, standing in the center of the glyph.

"…Beacon," Adam replied firmly. "The weather's nicer there than in Vacuo. I'm not a fan of the heat."

"You do wear a lot of black," Velvet pointed out. "Not a great choice for the desert. Might help you camouflage down here, though."

"Is that something we need to be concerned about?" Adam asked as he turned toward Porella. "Are you expecting… resistance, of some kind?"

"Hard to say," the woman answered with a shrug. "These caverns and tunnels… they spiderweb beneath practically the entire continent. There's a popular theory, and one I subscribe to, that we're in the place that Vacuo used to be right now- it was just slowly covered over hundreds, maybe thousands of years. There are fragments of civilization buried out among the dunes, and I've seen other… opportunists down below the surface before. Some are friendly. Others, not."

"Any grimm?" Velvet asked as the light from the glyph was brought low enough to reflect upon the surface of the water.

"Now and then, yes," Porella said. "Though the grimm down here are… different."

Adam knew he was going to regret asking as the glyph sailed across the surface of the water, picking up speed a bit. Even so, he knew that Velvet would ask if he didn't… and he had to know.

"Different how?"

"They're less…" Porella began, seemingly searching for an adequate descriptor. "…familiar, I suppose would be the word. Given that grimm spirits possess the bones of fallen animals, the ones they have to choose from down here are from ages long past. Potentially prehistoric, if you go deep enough."

"Deep enough?" Velvet asked, looking a bit rattled for once. "How deep down have you gone? This already seems pretty far beneath the surface."

"Oh, this is nothing," Porella answered with a dismissive wave. "I've been in tunnels that descended much farther down, according to my monitoring gear. Still, you two should be ready for anything. Do you have much field experience, Adam?"

The faunus boy didn't register that his host was talking to him at all. Something had moved far below the surface of the lake- something huge and serpentine. Or had it? Adam closed his eye and opened it once again to try to clear his vision. He looked at the spot where he thought he'd seen a massive coil of some giant creature disappear down into the blackness, only to register nothing at all. Adam didn't quite trust his eye- it still felt like something was down there, watching them.

"…Adam?" Velvet asked, earning the boy's attention as he looked over to her. "You fought much grimm back home?"

"Huh? Yeah, I…" Adam said as he glanced at the water once again, finding the surface of the lake to be completely still. The water was as still and clear as glass laid over an infinite abyss, interrupted only by the occasional drops of water from the ceiling high above. Adam's heart was pounding erratically in anticipation of something suddenly swimming up underneath them as faster than he could react. "Yeah. I'm… not worried. Just curious, is all."

"Bullshit," Velvet accused. "You're distracted and jumpy."

"Whatever," Adam returned. "I just… I don't particularly love being underground. Spent a lot of time in the mines before Beacon."

Adam hadn't intended to say it- the statement had just come out of him as a deflection tactic… but that didn't mean it wasn't true. He was jumpy and anxious, and the familiar sight of underground tunnels was doing his nerves no favors. The two women at his side were silent as the glyph coasted to a jagged, rocky edge of natural red stone that extended away from the lake. Velvet stepped off the platform to solid ground, her ears slightly wilted as she kept her eyes off of Adam. Porella, however, rested a gentle hand upon his shoulder, her tone shifting to one full of comfort and reassurance.

"…if you don't want to do this, I can take you back up," the woman offered. "I didn't mean to dredge up something in your past, Adam… and most artifacts are perfectly content to stay buried for a while. Just say the word."

Adam met Porella's eyes and found a total lack of judgment in her gaze. He quickly looked away, completely unwilling to make himself a burden no matter how much his sudden revelation had shaken him.

"No. We're going deeper… provided we can reliably find a way back up…"

"Don't you worry about that," Porella reassured as she pulled her scroll from her pocket and held it out in her palm. "Basil's monitoring us from the surface. Speaking of- we touched down on some sort of rock shelf. There's a huge underground lake down here- might be worth trying to scan later for resources."

"Noted," came Basil's reply from the scroll. "Generating map data from your location and adding it to our systems. Walk the perimeter of the lake, if you can?"

"Might be hard," Adam warned. "Seems like the majority of the lake is right up against the cavern wall. Nothing to walk on, and… I don't think swimming around the perimeter would be a good idea."

"No, definitely not. We'll put a pin in it for now."

"Got an additional note," Velvet called from some distance away. The huntress was knelt down at the edge of the rocks, peering into the water at close proximity. "Look here. There's dust."

Adam slowly approached with great caution, half expecting to see something rise from the depths and pull Velvet into the water. Oddly enough, he could actually see some distance down into it on account of a light purple glow beneath the surface. Upon getting close enough to see what Velvet was looking at, Adam saw a haphazard arrangement of natural dust crystals growing underwater and just out of reach.

"Hard light?" Adam questioned. "That's… exceptionally rare…"

"Depends on how far you're willing to go for it," Porella let on as she joined Adam's side. "You asked about the war earlier, but… maybe we shouldn't discuss it, all things considered…"

"No, do go ahead," Adam insisted as he eyed the water warily. Despite the beauty of the distorted reflections, he still didn't trust the lake. "I'm… I'll be fine, now. Just a warning, that was all. What does this cluster of dust have to do with the war?"

"Like I said- Atlas stole a lot of our dust," Porella answered simply. "Rumor has it they then planted some of the rarer varieties, like this, to try to grow their own organic patches in some kind of labs at Atlas Academy. Hard light is what they were after more than anything else, given how useful it is in weapons tech and shields. If this lake is full of deposits, it might be enough to start another invasion. Definitely a place of note."

"And one we'll contract miners to thoroughly search, after doing a sweep of the water. How big's the lake?"

"Big," Porella answered. "Maybe… a quarter mile across? Hard to tell from here without faunus vision."

"That sounds about right, 'sfar as I can tell" Velvet agreed as she stood up into a stretch. "Now that you've made a note, though, no point in lingering. Shall we?"

"Let's," Porella agreed. "It might take days just to map out and fully explore whatever tunnels are connected to this place… but I don't expect either of you to stay the duration. We should make the most of this experience while the two of you are here."

Adam watched as Porella pulled a thick cylinder about the length of her forearm from a pouch on the back of her belt. With a quick crack, the stick ignited and was held aloft, illuminating the area in a persistent and quite bright red glow. Contrary to what Adam had noticed before, two tunnels were present in the walls before them, each leading in opposite directions. Porella chuckled softly to herself as she turned to the teens.

"Decisions, decisions. Any preference?"

"Left," Velvet answered immediately with a twitch of an ear. "Go left and keep turning left. Maze theory."

"…I thought it was start going right and keep turning right," Adam replied as he approached the tunnel on the left side. "Though I guess it doesn't matter…"

"It doesn't," Porella confirmed as she held her flare higher. An odd sort of symbol was scratched into the rock wall next to the entrance, and the woman paused to study it. After a moment, she used her scroll to take a picture before sending it along to the surface. "That's… a new one. Any ideas, Basil?"

"Not a one," the man replied. "Doesn't look like anything I can remember offhand. I'd have to check our reference books, but nothing's jumping out at me."

Adam moved a bit closer to where the woman stood and froze in place. He had seen the insignia before… but he couldn't remember just where. The memory flitted about the corners of his mind, teasing him as he tried to figure out exactly what he was looking at.

Instead, he realized exactly who would be able to help him figure it out.

Raven didn't have a plan… but she did want to follow her instincts toward something more. What 'more' meant exactly, she wasn't quite sure, but she wanted to deepen her connection with Taiyang. Full-blown sex was off the table… at least, for the time being. Despite that singular barrier, though, she had an urge to do something with him. Something a bit intimate- something just for them. And so it was that she had straddled atop her teammate's lower body in their shared bed, wearing only her bra and panties while Taiyang had only his boxers. Raven gently rocked atop him, getting used to the feeling of him beneath her and dipping forward for intermittent kisses. It didn't feel like enough… but she also didn't want to rush and ruin things.

Taiyang swallowed hard as he ran his hand along the curve of Raven's hip, snaking his fingers under the side strap of her underwear. As a knock came at the bedroom door, he jittered and nearly ripped the garment clean off of her.

"Oh, for the gods' sake!" Raven spat as she glared venomously at the door. "I told them to leave us alone!"

"Must be important," Taiyang said breathlessly as he tried to sit up, only for a cold hand in the center of his chest to push him back down. "Raves…?"

"I'll handle this," the huntress declared as she dismounted Taiyang and stomped toward the door. "Is a shred of privacy so much to ask? If it's Kali, I'm going to kill her…"

Raven threw the door open to a very confused Bartholomew, who took a step backward upon seeing her expression and state of undress. Upon seeing him, Raven calmed slightly and knew immediately that Taiyang was right- it was something important. Bartholomew wasn't one to cross boundaries otherwise.

"Barty?" Raven asked. "Is… something wrong?"

"No, no, at least… I don't believe so," the boy replied as he looked down at the scroll in his hand and then back up at her. Slowly, he turned the device to face Raven, showing off a photo of a symbol upon a rocky wall. "Adam just sent me this. Is that not… the symbol branded into the back of your shoulder…?"

Author's Note:

We're not done with Those Above All. Not even close.

-RD