The red flare hung in the purple sky like a drop of blood in water.
Aren looked at it and felt a strange, cold calm settle over him.
Of course, he thought.
Of course it does.
He had read this scene in a hundred different stories.
The first trip into a dungeon, the one everybody called safe.
The instructors who swore nothing had gone wrong in two hundred years.
The quiet forest, the easy monsters, the arrogant young master showing off.
And then the ground shook, and something came out of the dark that had no business being there.
He had been right about the humiliation, the System, the cruel girl on the balcony.
Now he was right about this too, and it didn’t feel nearly as good as he had always imagined.
In the stories, the main character survived the first dungeon because the story needed him.
Aren had no idea if this world needed him for anything at all.
“Back to the entrance,” Vivienne said.
“Now.”
Her voice was calm, but it was the kind of calm that cost effort.
She had already turned toward the way they had come, her silver braid swinging over her shoulder.
Celia Penrose was standing very still with both hands pressed over her mouth.
“It’s probably nothing,” Darius said.
He had his sword out and his chin up.
“The instructors panic over everything.
If something big came through, I want to see it.”
“You can see it from the Academy,” Vivienne said, without stopping.
“Move.”
Darius hesitated for half a second.
Then he followed her, because everyone followed her.
Celia stumbled after them.
Aren picked up the packs he could carry, left the heaviest one in the moss, and went last.
The sound came again behind them, long and low.
The pale branches overhead rattled like old bones.
They had walked in for an hour.
Running back took less than half that, but it felt much longer.
The grey forest looked the same in every direction.
Vivienne led without hesitation, as if she had memorized the path on the way in, which Aren suspected she had.
Nobody spoke.
The only sounds were their footsteps in the moss, Celia’s quick breathing, and every few minutes, that deep sound from somewhere behind them, a little closer each time.
They heard the screaming before they saw anyone.
It came from a clearing just ahead, near a stream of dark water.
When they broke through the trees, Aren saw a team of students standing in a tight group by the stream.
One of them was lying on the ground with blood all over his leg.
Two others were trying to lift him.
A fourth stood in front of them all with her arms spread wide, and around her body, faint and orange, shimmered a dome of light like the glow of a fireplace.
Aren’s stomach dropped.
It was Mira.
“Team Four,” Vivienne said.
“What happened?”
“Something came out of the ground,” one of the boys said.
His voice was high and cracking.
“It took Roderick.
It just took him.
It came up under him and pulled him down and he was gone, and then it got Tam’s leg…”
“Where is it now?”
The boy pointed at the moss in the middle of the clearing.
It was moving.
The ground rose slowly, like something breathing underneath it.
Moss tore apart in long strips.
Dark earth spilled outward in a wide circle, and the smell that came up with it was old and cold and wrong, the smell of a grave opened after many years.
Then the creature came out of the earth.
It was the size of a wagon and shaped something like a giant beetle, low and wide, with six thick legs that ended in claws like shovels.
Its back was covered in heavy grey plates, flat and square and cracked with age, stacked over each other like old gravestones.
It had no eyes that Aren could see.
It had only a mouth, a huge round mouth at the front of its body, lined with ring after ring of stone teeth that turned slowly inward, grinding.
A window opened in front of Aren’s face.
[Gravemaw.]
[Rank D: Level 6.]
[Warning: Target exceeds Host’s rank.]
Rank D, Aren thought.
In a Rift rated F to E.
Two ranks above anyone in this clearing.
Celia made a small sound and fainted.
She simply folded and dropped into the moss, and nobody moved to catch her.
Darius attacked first.
He did not wait for orders.
He did not even look at Vivienne.
He shouted something that might have been his family’s battle cry and charged across the clearing with his sword raised, and the air around his blade shimmered with the sharp silver-blue light of his A-grade class.
It was a good charge.
Aren had to admit it.
If Gravemaw had been a pack of wolves, it would have worked beautifully.
The sword hit the grey plates on the creature’s back with a sound like a hammer on an anvil.
Sparks flew.
The blade bounced off, and the force of it threw Darius backward onto the moss.
There was not a single scratch on the plates.
Gravemaw turned.
It did not seem to hurry.
It turned its huge round mouth toward Darius, and the rings of teeth inside began to spin faster, and the sound they made was like a millstone grinding bone.
Vivienne lifted her hand.
Six silver crescents flashed across the clearing and struck the creature’s side, one after another.
Each one left a thin white mark on the grey plates.
That was all.
Thin white marks, like chalk on stone.
Gravemaw paused, as if it had felt something small.
Then it started forward again.
Darius scrambled to his feet.
He looked at the creature, then at the thin marks Vivienne had made, then at his own sword, which had a fresh crack running down the middle of the blade.
Aren watched the understanding move across his face.
He watched the confidence drain out of him and something else take its place, something much older and much simpler.
Darius was afraid.
“The entrance is that way,” Darius said.
His voice was suddenly very fast.
“Two hundred paces.
We can make it if we run.”
“There are wounded here,” Vivienne said.
“Then leave them!”
He was already moving, backing toward the trees on the far side of the clearing.
Gravemaw turned to follow the movement.
Its huge mouth swung toward Darius, and then toward Aren, who was standing between them with the packs still on his shoulders.
Darius saw it too.
For a moment, their eyes met.
Then Darius grabbed Aren by the front of his shirt and threw him toward the creature.
It was not even a hard throw.
Aren was tired and carrying weight, and he stumbled three steps sideways and fell to one knee in the moss, right in front of the grinding mouth.
He heard Darius say something as he turned to run.
It sounded like Servants serve.
Then Darius was gone into the grey trees, and the sound of his running faded behind him.
[Darius Holt.
Hostility: 91% → 98%.]
Interesting, Aren thought, distantly.
He hates me more for seeing him run.
Gravemaw lunged.
It was faster than anything that big should have been.
One moment it was ten paces away, and the next the mouth was filling his whole world, a tunnel of grey stone teeth spinning toward him.
He threw himself sideways.
One of the creature’s front legs swept across the moss and caught him in the chest.
Something cracked against his skin.
Bright orange light burst from under his shirt, warm as a fire in winter, and the blow that should have broken every rib in his body hit the light instead.
The light shattered like glass.
Aren flew backward across the clearing and slammed into the trunk of a grey tree hard enough to see stars.
He slid down into the moss.
He could breathe.
That surprised him.
He pressed his hand to his chest and felt the broken pieces of the clay charm Mira had made for him, crumbling under his fingers.
It might stop one hit, she had said.
It had stopped exactly one.
He looked up.
Across the clearing, Mira was still standing in front of the wounded students with her arms spread, her orange dome flickering.
She had seen him get hit.
Her face was white.
She was shouting his name, but he could not hear her over the ringing in his ears.
“Hale,” Vivienne said.
Her voice cut through everything.
“Can you carry him?”
She meant the boy with the bleeding leg.
Mira looked at Aren one more time, at the tree he was lying against.
Then she looked at the wounded boy, and her jaw went tight, and Aren saw her make the choice that he would have told her to make.
“Yes,” Mira said.
“Then take your team and go to the entrance.
Take Penrose too.
Don’t stop for anything.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to make sure it doesn’t follow you.”
Mira hesitated for one heartbeat.
Then she lifted the wounded boy over her shoulders with the strength of her new class, shouted at the others to pick up Celia, and ran.
The orange glow went with her into the trees.
Vivienne stepped into the middle of the clearing, alone.
She drew her sword for the first time.
It was slim and silver and caught the flat purple light like a strip of moonlight.
Above her head, more crescents began to form, ten, then twelve, then more than Aren could count, until the air around her was full of thin silver blades.
Her face was pale and completely calm.
Gravemaw turned toward her and stopped.
For the first time, it seemed to take her seriously.
Aren pushed himself up against the tree.
His chest hurt.
His arm, the one he had cut on the iron post, was bleeding again through the bandage.
He watched Vivienne Ashgrave stand between a monster two ranks above her and a group of commoners she had never cared about, and he realized she wasn’t going to run.
Even with courage, she was still going to lose.
Her crescents were beautiful, but they wouldn’t be enough.
He had seen what they did to those grave-stone plates.
She knew it too.
He could see it in the way she stood, with her feet set wide, ready to give everyone else as much time as possible.
[Primary Anchor in mortal danger.]
Aren looked at the message.
He thought about the iron post cut in half, and about one second with his own body as soft as paper in front of a mouth full of grinding teeth.
He thought about Nell, and the thirty days, and what would happen to her if he did not walk out of this forest.
Then he looked at Vivienne’s back, at the silver braid and the raised sword and the hundred thin blades waiting in the air.
If she died here, every investment he had made died with her.
And maybe more.
Gravemaw lowered its body to charge.
Aren reached down, tore a long strip from the bottom of his torn shirt, and began to tie it around his face.