Chapter 9: Flood Valley
"Doesn’t work right?" Iris asked, a bit surprised.
Lucas nodded. "The notifications, the objectives, the way things spawn... They’re all rigged in ways that aren’t obvious at first. I often have to learn the hard way."
Callum sighed. "Well, sucks to be you. Honestly if it were me, I’d be dead by now... you got skills."
Lucas stayed silent for a moment then nodded. "Yeah, I guess..."
Walking for a few more hours, they approached a valley...
The valley looked peaceful from the ridge above it.
But Lucas knew better.
Peaceful... That should have been the first warning.
"Down there," Iris said, shading her eyes against the midday sun. "The Gateway marker is still far ahead but if we cut through, we save maybe half a day."
"Or we go around," Bertram said, already eyeing the terrain with suspicion. At his age, there’s something he’d learnt.
And that was to trust nothing that looked easy.
"Half a day, Bertram."
"Things that look easy in this forest have a bad habit of trying to kill me."
Lucas said nothing, staring down at the valley floor. dry and cracked pale stone, nothing that looked dangerous at all except for a faint, almost imperceptible dampness clinging to the air.
[You have reached a new Zone]
[New Zone: Flood Valley]
[Warning: Terrain hazard detected.]
Iris studied the window and stared at Lucas as if expecting him to say something.
Lucas shook his head.
Of course he didn’t get a notification yet...
"My system’s flagging something," Iris said. "Hazard warning."
"Comforting," Callum muttered.
"We keep moving," Iris decided.
They descended into the basin, boots crunching against sun-bleached stone that felt porous and riddled cracks.
Lucas noticed the first bead of water an hour in.
It welled up from a crack near his boot, small and unremarkable, gone almost as soon as he noticed.
He might have written it off entirely if he hadn’t looked up a moment later and caught Iris frowning down at a similar bead a dozen feet away.
"You seeing that too?" he asked.
"Yeah." She crouched, touched two fingers to the wet stone. "Ground’s sweating."
"Ground doesn’t sweat," Bertram said, and then stopped talking as another bead welled up some steps from his boot, followed by another,
And another...
And another...
Wetness spreading slowly across the dry pale rock in every direction they looked.
[Ding!]
[Flood Cycle initiating.]
[Water rises with the sun. Reach high ground before the basin floods.]
Iris was already moving, scanning the cliff walls for a route up and out.
Soon, the water started leaking out...
Lucas broke into a run first, the others falling in immediately behind him, and the valley floor — dry and solid under his boots moments ago — was already slick beneath a thin, spreading sheet of water by the time they’d take fifty steps.
It rose faster than anything should have risen.
Not a trickle. Nor a slow creeping tide.
Water surged up out of every crack and channel at once, ankle-deep within minutes, climbing his shins by the time the cliff walls started to feel impossibly far away.
The whole basin was filling like something unseen had pulled a plug.
"Move faster!" Bertram bellowed, machete strapped tight, holding it in place as he ran.
"Working on it!" Callum’s voice cracked with panic, water already dragging at his knees, slowing every stride into something heavier and desperate.
That was when the growling started....
Two of them. Lucas heard it before he saw it — a low, snarl from somewhere behind to the left simultaneously followed by an identical sound from the right, and his stomach dropped so hard he stumbled.
[Warning: Makara Class entity detected.]
[Warning: Makara Class entity detected.]
[Objective: Survive.]
Two of them... Of course it’s two.
The first Makara broke the surface behind them in an explosion of white spray, black-scaled and horned, moving through the rising water like it had been built for exactly this, gaining ground with horrifying ease on four people who were only getting slower as the flood climbed past their knees to their thighs.
The second Makara surged up on Callum’s flank, jaws already opening, and Bertram threw himself sideways, tackling Callum out of the creature’s path a moment before its jaws shut.
"Bertram!!"
The Makara’s jaws snapped shut on nothing, and its momentum carried it crashing past both of them in a wave that knocked Callum fully underwater.
"CALLUM!" Iris’s scream tore across the valley, raw with a fear Lucas hadn’t heard from her before, not even facing the Avallion.
Lucas didn’t think. He dove.
The water was colder underneath than it had any right to be, murky and dark.
For a horrifying moment, he couldn’t find anything at all —nothing but cold, grey and the distant thrash of something huge moving nearby.
Then his hand closed on fabric, and he hauled with everything he had, breaking the surface with Callum coughing and gasping and very much alive clutched against his chest.
"Pull yourself together! Move!"
There wasn’t time for more than that. The water had climbed to his chest now, dragging at every movement and turning what should have been a sprint into something closer to a nightmare where his legs simply refused to move fast enough no matter how hard he drove them.
[Warning: Water level critical.]
[Objective: Reach high ground.]
[Survival probability: 44%]
"There!" Bertram’s hoarse voice, pointing toward a jagged outcrop of rock jutting from the cliff wall a hundred yards ahead, high enough to clear the flood, close enough that it might actually be reachable if every single thing went right for the next few minutes.
"GO, GO, GO—!"
They ran...
Lucas kept one arm locked around Callum, dragging him through water now chest-deep and climbing.
Behind them both Makara had found their rhythm again, cutting through the flood with the terrible ease of predators who’d done this exact hunt a hundred times before now..
He could hear them.... Could feel the water displacing at his back, closer every second, and every desperate stroke forward felt like hell.
"Iris!"
She turned and shot an arrow...
She missed.
"Shit!"
She aimed again. Clutching the cables so hard her hand almost bled.
She fired at the Makara’s face with terrifying precision.
It shrieked, veere and lost ground...
The second one used the opening to surge ahead, jaws opening wide enough to swallow a grown man whole, closing the last stretch of water between itself and Bertram’s exposed back.
"Bertram!"
He turned a second too late. The Makara’s jaws snapped down...
...and caught nothing but a stone-plated forearm, thrown up on pure reflex, teeth grinding uselessly against Stoneskin hard enough that the impact still sent him spinning sideways into the water with a strangled shout of pain.
"I’m fine! Move!"
He wasn’t fine. Lucas could see that even through the chaos the way Bertram’s arm hung wrong even under its stone plating.
But there was no time. The outcrop was close enough now to almost touch and the water climbing past all their shoulders, threatening to swallow the last of the gap between swimming and drowning.
Lucas reached the rock first, hauling himself half out of the water and turning immediately to grab for Callum, still coughing in his arms.
He shoved Callum up into the safety of the outcrop, spun back toward the water.
He found Iris and Bertram both still fighting for the last stretch, the two Makara circling closer, sensing the escape and refusing to let it go easily.
"Iris! Forget it, just swim—!"
She turned and swam hard. Lucas’ hand soon closed around her wrist the second she came into reach, dragging her body up onto the rock beside him.
That left Bertram, ten feet out and one arm useless, the nearer Makara gaining with every labored stroke he managed.
"Bertram! Come on—"
"...CAN’T—" His voice was ragged and exhausted.
Lucas didn’t think. He dove back in.
The Makara was close, close enough that Lucas could see every one of its three horns clearly through the churned water, close enough that diving between it and Bertram felt less like a plan and more like a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.
If he died, he could always redo everything.
If only it were that easy...
Lucas knew from the bottom of his heart that dying was the last thing he wanted.
[Ignition] roared to life around his fist, hissing and steaming against the flood.
He drove it into the creature’s snout with everything he had left in a body that had already died twice.
He desperately did not want to find out what a third time in open water felt like.
The Makara reeled back and that half moment was all Lucas needed.
He got a shoulder under Bertram’s good arm and hauled until his knee finally scraped stone and he threw themselves up onto the outcrop in a graceless, gasping grunt.
Behind them, the two Makara circled the base of the rock for a long, tense minute snapping at empty air, frustrated and hungry.
The rising water finally covered the last dry footholds nearby, sending a signal to the beasts that their hunting had failed.
They went off one after the other, vanishing back into the flooded basin in search of easier prey.
Silence... Except for four people breathing like they’d run through fire.
"Everybody..." Lucas spat out a mouthful of water and tried again. "Everybody still alive?"
"Define alive," Bertram wheezed, cradling his ruined arm against his chest, but he was grinning even through the pain, a wild, disbelieving thing. "We’re breathing. That counts right?"
Callum was curled against the rock still shaking.
"That’s—" he coughed. "That’s twice now you’ve pulled me out of something. I’m starting to feel like a liability."
"You’re not a liability." Iris said it before Lucas could, sharp enough to leave no room for argument.
"None of us would’ve made that outcrop without him."
[Ding!]
[Water recedes at nightfall.]
"Oh, sure," Lucas said, staring flatly at the window, water still dripping from his hair. "Now you tell me"
[Flood Cycle complete.]
[Survival pr
obability recalibrating: 68%]
"Tough luck man" Bertram snickered...
"So uh... what’s the plan?" Callum—who was steady now, asked.
Lucas stared at the expanse of water for a moment before answering. "We wait till night fall"
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