Young Writers Society

Raptor wasn't the type to jump in surprise. But when Nikolai suddenly bumped into him, he couldn't help but give a surprised little start - which, if his feet had actually left the ground, would have looked suspiciously like a little jump.

He turned around just in time to catch what Nikolai had mouthed. He wasn't good at reading lips, but he could guess what the question was.

There was someone - or something - in the pile of clothes.

And Raptor was the one with the axe.

He wasn't scared. It didn't matter that this was something strange and unusual. It didn't matter that his first thought was that this room was haunted, since who else would stay in an empty room like this besides a ghost? And it certainly didn't matter that Eira had mysteriously vanished.

He was a magician. He could handle a weird moving pile of clothes no matter what or who had made that groan.

He glanced at Nikolai, held up his ax, and then slowly headed over to the pile of clothes.

When he finally reached it, he gave it a little poke with the very tip of the handle part of the ax - still standing as far away as he possibly could.

Something within moved and gave a small cry. A bald, wrinkled head peeked out from under a hood, round eyes blinking blearily in the dim light. It was an emaciated old man with a long white beard and a deathly pale face. He squinted at Raptor and Nikolai, then coughed deep in his chest, hacking sickly.

They weren’t the only people in the caves after all.

Nikolai had gasped, taking a small step back. He wasn’t actually scared of the old man, just... very startled. Also, he was coughing. Was he sick or something? Nikolai started to worry about catching a sickness.

He could’ve sworn he almost remembered something, someone else coughing— almost remembered— but it slipped away a moment later, and soon he wondered if he’d even had the brief memory flash at all.

He slowly turned to Raptor, tilting his head to the side to indicate he could lower the axe. Possible disease aside, this man wasn’t a threat to them, and a weapon wouldn’t do any good against anything that was contagious anyway. They’d just have to hope the cough wasn’t that.

“Who are you?” Nikolai asked slowly, giving the man a strange, confused look.

That was it.

Aumrauth was sick of this thing. As the serpent came surging out of the water, Aumrauth adjusted his stance, shifting his feet, and digging them into the sandy bottom of the lake - if you could call it that.

As a last-second decision, he decided he didn't need to use the deadly potion just yet, and he shoved it in his pocket. He dodged the serpent's open maw and stabbed the creature again, but this time, he ran up against it, pushing the dagger deeper, and deeper, with two hands on the handle. He'd gotten just below the head, and the serpent started writhing like he'd hit a nerve.

That was when Aumrauth held onto the dagger and leap up, straddling the creature's neck. It's head was flopping up near the shore, and Aumrauth wrapped one of his arms around tight, and used the other to rip the dagger out. Blood started oozing out, and Aumrauth grinned manically before he brought the dagger down into its head. He found the soft space between the cartilage and the skull, and the dagger pierced through, hitting the brain.

The writhing stopped. For just a second, he felt the serpent's muscles tense, before it flopped to the ground, and Aumrauth fell with it, into the water.

Aumratuh came jumping out, and returned to the serpent's head, tugging and tugging on the dagger until it dislodged. When he finally pulled it out he laughed, and he kissed the dull side of the blade, and then kissed it again.

Then he looked down at the serpent's bleeding head, and he kicked it.

Now that he'd properly gloated, he tucked his dagger back into the sopping wet robe and sauntered back over to where Elias was, cowering by the chest.

"That's how it's done," he said, flipping his finally-regrowing white hair over his shoulder. "Now get up."

He shouted back to Mel and Ainsley, still on the shore.

"It's dead!" he shouted. "Stabbed it in the head!"

The old man flinched back as Nikolai spoke, and his face twisted in fear and hostility. He demanded something weakly in a garbled, harsh language and scooted into the corner, clutching his filthy robes around himself.

Elias was fine with blood, usually. He was a doctor, after all. He'd been an army surgeon before, cleaned up severed limbs and everything. Aumrauth had looked just like one of his patients when he got burned and he hadn't batted an eye, but this....there was just so much.
Elias dropped the satchel, fell to his knees, and vomited what little food was in his stomach up onto the sand.

Aumrauth stared down at him, slow-blinking.

Okay, so he looked disgusting. Elias didn't have to vomit to tell him that. Aumrauth knew if he looked in a mirror, he would still be slowly healing from burn wounds and covered in blood. But he also knew he wouldn't be like that forever.

Whatever. This was his life now. Give it another hour and he'd be almost back to normal. 'Course no amount of regeneration would fix him being wet with blood and water. He'd need a bath for that, and he was pretty positive they weren't going to find anything like that anytime soon.

He sighed, and grabbed Elias by the shoulders, slipping his arms under Elias's arms.

At this point, he was just tired.

"Okay. Fine. I guess I'm obligated to bring you back, then," Aumrauth muttered.

Aumrauth wasn't the strongest person, but thankfully, Elias wasn't that heavy. He started heaving the man towards the water.

The ax had already been low to the ground when he first poked the pile in the corner, but he lowered it even more when he realized it was just an old man. It took a second for the sight to actually register; Raptor hadn't exactly expected to find an old man here.

He took a step back when the man said something in a unfamiliar language. He was sickly, too. Raptor didn't think he could get sick, but this entire situation was disgusting and weird. He hated it.

A memory of an old conversation with May flickered in the back of his mind. They had been sitting on the steps of the tutorial castle in one of their dreams what felt like an eternity ago. He couldn't remember what had got her going on the rant, but he strongly remembered her saying to always be nice to old people because they could secretly be gods in disguise.

Out of all the times in his life, this seemed like the most likely time he would meet a god. But this man didn't seem godly. He just seemed old and sick.

...Still, Raptor couldn't figure out what he was doing down here - or how he had presumably surveyed down here for so long.

He glanced between his ax and the man.

Then he sighed, slowly placing the ax on the ground and raising his hands in surrender as he crouched down right in front of the man. He knew he still looked absolutely intimidating.

He wished he could take his helmet off so the man could read his expressions - there was a language barrier between them. But he couldn't take it off. He knew that the man already didn't like or trust them; seeing what Raptor really looked like underneath his helmet would only make him think Nikolai was traveling around with a monster.

"Let go!" Elias struggled, managing to pry himself away. His suit, his perfectly tailored suit was completely destroyed by the water and the blood from Aumrauth's hands! He scrambled over to the satchel and hoisted it over his shoulder. "I'll make my own way," he snapped.

The old man blinked at Raptor, still wary. He was trembling badly, obviously terrified. He repeated what he said before, enunciating carefully.

Nikolai knew he was familiar with at least one other language besides English— Russian. There might even be a third he knew well, though he couldn’t think of what it might be. However, he didn’t understand whatever the man was speaking. He couldn’t recognize it either— maybe it wasn’t even a language from where he came from.

Seven people from what seemed to be very different backgrounds had all appeared here. It was a miracle they all had a language in common. Now there was an eighth person, who hadn’t arrived with them by the statue and chests. Was it really all that unlikely he didn’t speak the same language?

Nikolai bit his lip— which he’d been doing a lot lately from being so anxious. It was starting to hurt. He really needed to stop doing that.

Please don’t be sick, he pleaded silently as he stepped forward, very slowly, without any sudden movements. He raised his hands like Raptor had, indicating that he was unarmed— not that he was exactly threatening anyway. Something about the coughing scared him more than it should’ve. He didn’t know why. He just had to hope it wouldn’t spread to them or he had some immunity to it.

“I’m sorry,” Nikolai said slowly, saying each word very clearly. He was also doing his best to keep his Russian accent out of his voice, though it was difficult. “We couldn’t understand what you were saying.”

The old man seemed agitated now, and he tried to rise but fell back in another coughing fit.
"Migh'nur?" he asked. "Migh'nur c'lach ur wa?" His rheumy brown eyes narrowed, and he shook his head slightly as if to disagree with himself.

Raptor had absolutely no idea what the man was saying.

He gave the man one long, hopeless look underneath his helmet. After a moment passed, he shifted his weight back a little. Nikolai had the benefit of facial expressions to convey what he meant. The man had been shaking before Nikolai stepped in; he still seemed upset now. Some of that might have been because of this tunnel system, but Raptor was sure a good part of it was because a terrifying man with a deep voice and an intimidating suit of black armor was silently staring him down.

Letting Nikolai handle this made the most sense. He'd stay nearby in case things somehow suddenly turned dangerous.

But Raptor completely misjudged how his weight was distributed now that he was like this wearing a bulky suit of armor. What was supposed to be a few steps back while crouching resulted in a loud, crashing noise as Raptor went falling back with a startled yelp.

And then there was a little, tiny click-like noise as his helmet became dislodged from the rest of his armor - and as it shifted up ever so slightly.

Raptor panicked and pulled his bag up to cover the part of his face that was suddenly showing.

"Don't look!" he quickly exclaimed, only to remember that he didn't want to frighten the old man. He added a quiet, desperate, "Please."

The helmet hadn't been too dislodged, but it was just far enough that getting it back on without sitting up was going to be difficult. The bag hadn't helped, either - pushing it up pushed the helmet a little further off, too.

Giving a frustrated groan, he reached into his bag and blindly dug around for his cloak. If he could just cover his face for a minute! That was all he needed to get the helmet on and secured. After what felt like an eternity but was really just a few seconds, Raptor triumphantly pulled out the cloak and draped it over his head.

Then he sat up, hands reaching underneath his black cloak, and fixed the helmet so it was back in place.

All of this only took about a minute to happen, despite Raptor feeling like it lasted far longer.

The man watched all this with bewilderment. He had seen what lay beneath but didn't seem particularly phased. Instead he moved cautiously forward and pointed to his mouth, pinching his fingers together and making an eating motion. "Krak?"

Aumrauth let go the moment Elias started struggling and huffed. At least that got Elias out of his daze.

"Fine, fine, go swim by yourself," he muttered. "Don't get the satchel too wet. Pretty sure we'll need that stuff."

He then strode into the water and started swimming back to Mel and Ainsley.

Ainsley stood next to Mel, his hand in hers, nearly frozen. He had seen strange, and often magical, creatures before, but nothing as horrifying as the serpent. He hadn't seen anything like that outside of his mother's storybooks.

He had watched Aumrauth slay the beast and Elias tread through the water over to the chest. Mel was able to redirect the light so the others could see. Ainsley felt horrible that he wasn't able to help.

But, now, they were in the dark. He didn't mind the dark, though, just giant serpents.

"I'm sorry," he muttered sheepishly. "I should've done something to help."

Elias huffed and limped after him. "That was the most reckless display I've ever seen!" he retorted, glowering at the elf in an attempt to feel more like his usual unflappable self. "What were you thinking?" Was that his usual self? Or was it this cowering, irritable wretch who had survived the New Zealand Wars by the skin of his teeth and run from the authorities when they discovered what he was doing after?