Chapter 12: Five Beasts
Lucas sat with his eyes closed for longer than he meant to.
The cave hadn’t changed around him... the same darkness, the same faint streaks of light bleeding through cracks overhead, the same five Bora waiting somewhere in the dark for a mistake that hadn’t happened yet.
But in his head, he was already two fights deep, running the same room over and over, shifting one variable at a time and watching in memory, exactly how each version fell apart.
’If I go for the ceiling one first, the wall one gets to Callum before Iris can turn. If I cover Bertram’s blind side the whole time, nobody’s watching the floor for the fifth.’
"Lucas"
’Order matters, If I go loud first, they scatter and regroup somewhere I can’t track. If I go for the hidden ones first, the ones already in the open will close in while I’m distracted. .If Iris takes the ceiling shot from here instead of after they scatter—’
"Lucas."
He opened his eyes. Iris was crouched a few feet away, watching him with an expression akin to worry.
You’ve been sitting there for quite a while,"she said, her voice soft.
"Thinking," he said.
"That’s a very intense kind of thinking."
"It’s a very intense cave." He managed something like a smile, tired at the edges but not entirely fake. "I’m working out an approach. Wanted to make sure I actually had one before we walked back in there."
Iris studied him a moment longer, and then let it go. "Fine. What’ve you got?"
He exhaled, standing back up. "Okay. Here’s the plan." He pointed toward a jagged seam in the rock ceiling, a few feet up and slightly to the left of the cave’s main path.
"There’s a Bora wedged into that crevice. It drops on whoever’s closest once we’re spread out fighting the others. I want it dealt with before that happens." He turned to Iris. "Iris, you put an arrow into that gap the second we start moving. Don’t wait for it to show itself. Got it?"
"You want me to shoot at nothing."
"I want you to shoot exactly where something’s hiding."
She studied the crevice for a long moment, bow already coming up off her shoulder, doubt written plainly across her face had an expression of the reasonable hesitation of someone being asked to trust a guess she had no way of verifying.
"And if you’re wrong?"
"Then we’re down one arrow and mildly embarrassed." Lucas managed something like a grin before turning to Bertram. "Bertram, favor your right side no matter what. There’s one that goes for weak spots, and your left arm’s still healing. Callum, light aimed low, not high, there’s one that hugs the floor near the back wall and it’s fast."
"You’re doing that thing again," Bertram said in a quiet tone. "Where you know things."
"I’m doing the thing where I don’t want anyone else getting hurt," Lucas said, and that much, at least, wasn’t a lie. "Can we just go with it? Please?"
No one argued further. Just a collective nod as they walked inside.
"On my count," Lucas said. "Iris. Now."
She drew, held a moment longer than usual to steady the angle, and loosed.
The arrow sailed toward the crevice — and clipped the stone by inches, deflecting wide with a sharp crack instead of burying into the beast hidden within.
"Shit—"
The Bora dropped anyway, startled loose by the impact rather than killed by it, plummeting from the ceiling in a furious, disoriented tumble that landed hard enough to crack the cave floor beneath it.
[Ding!]
[Warning! Bora Class Entity Detected]
[Objective: Slay five Bora Class entities to proceed.]
[Survival probability: 32%]
With that, the exit of the cave also disappeared...
"Everyone move!"
The rest of the cave answered to the disturbance instantly.
The coiled shape at the entrance uncurled and launched at Callum’s legs exactly as it had every single time before, and the back-wall Bora peeled off the shadows a moment after that, and Lucas felt the fight arrive all at once instead of in the staggered rhythm he’d planned for.
"Bertram! On your right! It’s disoriented!"
Bertram didn’t question it. He just surged forward and brought his machete down one-handed on the fallen Bora’s exposed underside before it fully recovered its bearings, the blade finding the soft gap between plates and driving deep. It screeched and thrashed and went still.
’One down.’
Iris had already recovered, arrows flying fast and low now, aimed exactly where Lucas had told her to aim, and the entrance-Bora took one through a joint mid-lunge and staggered, giving Callum the half-second he needed to scramble clear.
"Callum! Back wall. On your left!"
He spun in time to catch the shape emerging from the dark, throwing a burst of blinding light directly into its path.
It recoiled with an ugly grinding shriek that gave Lucas the opening to close the distance and drive a burning fist straight into it before it recovered.
’Two.’
The entrance-Bora, still limping from Iris’s shot, uncurled for a second lunge, and this time Lucas was already moving to intercept it.
"The fourth one’s coming wide. Bertram on your right!"
"I see it!"
Bertram pivoted on his good side, machete catching the fourth Bora’s tail mid-strike and turning what should have been a crippling hit into a blow that still sent him stumbling, but standing.
Iris finished it a moment later, an arrow burying itself clean through the gap Bertram’s deflection had opened.
’Three.’
That left the the floor-crawler, the one of the two Lucas had died to.
However, this time he was watching for it with a focus that bordered on obsessive, tracking every shadow low along the ground while the others dealt with the entrance-Bora’s last furious lunge.
He caught the ripple of movement a moment before it would have found Callum’s exposed back.
"Callum, Down. Now!"
Callum dropped flat without hesitating and Lucas threw himself over him, burning fist slamming into the Bora’s flank as it surged past where Callum’s body had been a moment earlier.
The impact sent them both sprawling, but the creature reeled, disoriented, and Iris finished it with two arrows in quick succession before it could recover its bearings.
’Four.’
The last one — wounded, furious and cornered made one final desperate lunge at Bertram’s weak side, exactly where Lucas knew it would go, and this time Lucas was already there, shouldering into Bertram hard enough to knock him clear while driving his flaming fist down into the creature’s skull with everything his body had left.
The Bora shrieked once, jerked and went still.
[All Bora Class entities defeated.]
[Cave unsealed.]
[Survival probability recalibrated: 54%]
Silence, except for four people breathing hard in the settling dark. The lighting intensifying in the cave as the entrance and exits sat there like they never left.
Lucas leaned against the wall, chest heaving and hands trembling now that there was nothing left in his bosy.
Around him, Callum was sitting up slowly, unhurt.
Bertram was flexing his good arm, testing for damage and finding none.
Iris stood over the last fallen Bora, bow still in hand, staring at the corpse like she was trying to convince herself it was actually over.
"Everyone good?" Lucas managed.
"Unscathed," Bertram said, disbelief laced through the his voice. "Actually... we’re actually fine."
"That felt like it shouldn’t have worked," Callum said, voice still shaky. "Any of it. That was—"
"That was insane," Iris finished for him, turning to look at Lucas. "You called every single one of those before it happened. The ceiling, the wall, the one on the floor nobody else even saw coming."
She opened her mouth like she meant to ask it properly this time and then, visibly, stopped herself.
Lucas watched the decision cross her face... The old frustration, the urge to push, and then something quieter settling over it instead, something that looked like resignation.
She already knew exactly what answer she’d get if she asked.
"Luck. Impressions. Heat signatures."
The same thin answer, polished from repetition, that told her nothing and closed the conversation.
She spoke, shouldering her bow. "Whatever it is. Same as before, I’m just glad it’s ours."
Lucas smiled and again, just like before he replied. "You’re welcome."
***
They walked for another after the cave, the terrain gradually shifting from stone and root to something flatter and more open, the Gateway on the map growing closer with every mile.
Conversation came easier now, the old awkwardness from the Faction question almost gone and replaced with the shared memory of walking out of that cave alive.
They stopped, staring out at the wide clearing ahead — tents, banners, the unmistakable shape of dozens of people moving in organized clusters.
[Ding!]
Bertram glanced at his window the moment it p
inged.
"...Well," he said slowly. "That’s new."
[Ding!]
Lucas looked at his own window. It had arrived late. As usual...
[You have entered a Faction Zone.]
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