Chapter 11: Caved In
Lucas sat, staring at the sky as various thoughts ran through his head.
He wasn’t awake because he was on watch duty. He was awake because he was afraid of dying in his sleep again.
’Well, that did happen when I was with this group so it’s only expected to be cautious, right?’
He knew it was unreasonable but that traumatic experience made him loose all trust he’d ever had in sleep.
In the end, he kept himself awake all night.
***
They left the valley the following night. The flood long since receeded and the walk out felt almost gentle compared to everything that had come before it.
The notifications started an hour in.
[Ding!]
[A Faction has been formed.]
[Faction members: 17]
"Another one," Callum said, squinting at his own system. "That’s, what, the fifth we’ve seen today?"
"Sixth." Iris didn’t look up from the path. "People are figuring this out faster than we did."
"Makes sense." Lucas kept walking, watching the notification stutter and fade. "A few days ago nobody even knew Factions existed. Now it’s apparently common enough that we’re tripping over the notifications."
"Word travels fast when your life depends on it," Bertram said.
They’d barely gone another mile before the system chimed again, differently this time — not someone else’s notification but a prompt addressed directly to all four of them at once.
[Ding!]
[Your group has been together for 48 hours.]
[Would your group like to form a Faction?]
[Y/N]
Nobody answered right away. The silence settling comfortably between them. Lucas himself was staring at the system blankly.
"I mean," Callum ventured eventually, "we basically already are one. Feels like it’d just be making it official."
"I’ll pass," Lucas said.
The silence that followed had a different texture than the one before it.
"Right," Iris said, her voice sounding a bit too even.
"Your friends."
"Yeah." Lucas kept his eyes on the path ahead. "Once I find them, that’s where I need to be. Doesn’t seem right to lock any of us into something that says otherwise."
"Makes sense," Bertram said, though something in his voice had gone carefully neutral.
They walked on without saying anything as they all selected the "No" option—the window closing afterward.
Nobody brought it up again. They just continued their walk in silence...
***
Three days of walking turned the silence to something that they had gotten used to.
By the time they reached the cave mouth yawning dark at the base of a ridge, the silence and awkwardness had almost completely disappeared.
"Gateway’s not too far ahead. It’s just beyond this cave according to the map," Iris said, studying the dark cave. "This is the only way through unless we want to add another two days going around."
"After the valley," Bertram said, "I vote around."
"We don’t have two extra days of rations," Lucas pointed out. "Cave it is."
The first half hour inside was, against every instinct the past week had trained into them, almost peaceful.
Cool stone underfoot, the distant drip of water somewhere deeper in and tiny streaks of lights that passed through cracks in the rocks.
Then Callum’s foot caught on something that wasn’t a rock.
It moved....
"What—?" He stumbled back, and the shape at his feet rose from where it had lain coiled and still, revealing itself as something low and grey and covered in overlapping stone-like plates, a long segmented tail tipped with something that caught the light like a blade.
[Warning: Bora Class entity detected.]
The creature growled... A low shaking growl and coiled itself into a tight ball in a single fluid motion, launching forward with terrifying speed straight at Callum’s legs.
"Move!" Bertram’s shout came moments later...
Callum threw himself sideways, the Bora’s armored mass slamming into the wall hard enough to crack it.
[Ding!]
[Cave has been sealed]
[Objective: Slay five Bora Class entities to proceed.]
[Survival probability: 32%]
The cave mouth behind them had vanished. It didn’t close, it wasn’t blocked.
It was simply gone...
Replaced by solid unbroken rock like it had never existed at all.
"Five," Callum said, voice climbing toward panic. "It said Five—!"
Lucas was already backing up, [Ignition] flaring to life around his knuckles as more shapes began stirring in the dark around them, more of the low grey shapes uncoiling from where they’d lain hidden among the cave’s stone.
The first Bora came at Bertram, tail whipping in a vicious arc that he barely deflected with his good arm, stone grinding against stone plating hard enough to spark.
His other arm — still weak from the flood hung mostly useless at his side, and Lucas watched him compensate for it, gritting his teeth as if sensing that things wouldn’t end well of this dragged on.
"Iris, thin them out before they surround us!"
She was already firing, arrows finding gaps in armor plating with the same precision she’d shown against the Avallion.
But the Bora moved low, fast and unpredictable, curling and uncurling in ways that made her shots skid off armor more often than they found flesh.
Lucas caught the second Bora mid-lunge, burning fist driving into its exposed underside as it uncurled to strike and felt the satisfying give of something soft beneath armor plating.
It shrieked and thrashed, but three more were already closing in from the dark beyond Callum..
"There’s too many—" Callum’s voice, thin with panic, throwing pale light desperately trying to heal Bertram’s wounds
"Keep moving!"
It happened too fast to stop.
A Bora Lucas hadn’t tracked — hidden behind a stone slab launched from above where it must have wedged itself into a crevice in the ceiling.
It only took Lucas a second to register the shape falling before its full armored weight came down directly on his skull.
There was no pain. Just a sudden, absolute silence, and the last thing his eyes registered was Iris’s mouth opening around a scream he was never fully able to hear.
[You have died.]
[Regression Activated.]
***
Cold air. Then that familiar sense of vertigo...
The fading streaks of light slowly coming into focus in his surrounding.
Lucas gasped, staggering upright at the cave mouth, the memory of impossible weight crushing down still ringing through a skull that was whole again.
[Player has returned to designated checkpoint.]
[Checkpoint has been restored to the last stable moment prior to death.]
"Lucas?" Callum’s foot was already inches from the coiled shape at his feet. "You okay? You look—"
"Don’t move your foot—"
Too late....
Callum stumbled, the Bora unfurling exactly as it had before, and the cave sealed itself shut behind them with the same absolute finality, the same unforgiving notification appearing before them.
[Objective: Slay five Bora Class entities to proceed.]
’Above.’ Lucas thought grimly, already moving and scanning the ceiling for the crevice he now knew held a fifth attacker waiting to drop. ’One’s hiding above us. Watch the ceiling this time.’
"Bertram, don’t favor your left arm too hard, there’s one coming from above once we’re spread out!"
"How do you—" Bertram didn’t finish the question, already ducking on reflex as Lucas’s warning proved itself true a moment later. A Bora already moving where he had warned.
They fought harder this time, smarter too.
Iris’s arrows finding the joints between armor plates more often now that she knew to aim low, Callum’s light was steadier, aimed to blind rather than simply illuminate.
Lucas took down a third Bora with a burning fist to its exposed belly, then rushed to cover Bertram’s blind side the instant the fourth crashed toward him at an angle his weak arm couldn’t defend.
But he qdidn’t see the fifth, the actual fifth, curling low and fast along the cave floor until its tail whipped up and through him from behind, the impossible reach of the thing driving straight through his ribs and out the other side before he’d even registered the moving shape.
He didn’t hear Bertram’s warning shout and he didn’t feel himself hit the ground.
[You have died.]
[Regression Activated.]
***
Lucas’ breath tore out of him in a ragged, furious gasp, both hands pressed to a chest that was — again, whole, no wound, no blood, nothing but the phantom ache of a tail that had gone through him like paper a lifetime ago.
[Player has returned to designated checkpoint.]
[Checkpoint has been restored to the last stable moment prior to death.]
He quickly steadied himself. Eyes closed and taking deep breaths.
"—!!"
Callum exclaimed as he felt a hand grip him on his collar.
He turned and saw it was Lucas— eyes closed and gripping his collar so hard it stopped him in place.
"Huh?"
"Don’t. Move," He said, "not even another step."
Lucas opened his eyes and glanced at Callum’s foot—foot, inches from the coil.
The Bora stayed dormant, undisturbed, and for a moment, nothing happened at all.
The cave didn’t seal...
No notification. No vanishing exit. Just four people standing in the dim mouth of a cave that hadn’t yet decided to become a death trap because the trigger — Callum’s foot, simply hadn’t happened yet.
"...Lucas?" Iris, watching him with the same sharp, careful focus she’d worn back at the fire. "What is it?"
He sat on the ground. Chin resting on his hands—eyes sealed shut.
He opened them again, mapping the dark ahead of him — five shapes he now knew the location of, one hidden above, one coiled low near the wall, three more scattered through blind spots he had paid for with two deaths already.
He knew where every single one of them would strike from. He knew Bertram’s weak side would fail against the fourth if he didn’t get there first. He knew the fifth’s reach was longer than it looked.
He just didn’t yet know how to use all of it without losing someone who wasn’t him....
"Nothing," he said finally, voice rough and scanning the shadows for the crevice in the ceiling that held the second beast. "Just... give me a second to think. This cave’s worse than it looks."
’Two deaths,’ he thought, closing his eyes again cataloguing every death he’d experience.
’I know where all five of them are now. I just have to figure out how to keep the three of you from dying without me having to pay the price for it...’
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