Chapter 7: The First Rift Always Goes Wrong

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. Of course it does.’

He had read this scene in a hundred stories. The first dungeon that everybody swore was safe. The instructors who promised 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 crawled out of the dark that had no business being there.

He had been right about the humiliation, the System and the cruel girl on the balcony. Now he was right about this too, and it felt a lot worse than he had always imagined. In the stories, the main character survived his first dungeon because the story needed him. Aren had no idea whether 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 clearly cost effort. She had already turned toward the way they’d come, her silver braid swinging over her shoulder. Celia was standing frozen with both hands pressed over her mouth.

"It’s probably nothing," Darius said, sword out, chin up. "The instructors panic about 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 reluctantly followed, because everyone followed her. Celia stumbled clumsily after them. Aren grabbed the packs he could carry, left the heaviest one in the moss, and brought up the rear.

The sound came again behind them, long and low, and the pale branches rattled overhead like old bones.

They had walked in for an hour, and running back took less than half that, though it felt much longer. The grey forest looked the same in every direction, and Vivienne led without hesitating once, as if she had carefully memorized the path on the way in. Knowing her, Aren suspected she had. Nobody spoke, and there was only the soft thud of their feet in the moss, Celia’s quick breathing, and every few minutes that deep sound somewhere behind them, a little closer each time.

They heard the screaming before they saw anyone.

It came from a clearing ahead, beside a stream of dark water. When they broke through the trees, Aren saw a team of students huddled by the stream. One boy was on the ground with blood all over his leg, and two others were trying to lift him. In front of them all stood a girl with her arms spread wide, and around her shimmered a faint orange dome, like the glow of a fireplace.

Aren’s stomach dropped sharply, because it was Mira.

"Team Four. What happened?"

"Something came out of the ground!" one of the boys said, his voice high and cracking. "It took Roderick! It came up right under him and pulled him down and he was just 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 slowly.

The ground rose slowly, as if something underneath were breathing. Moss tore away in long strips. Dark earth spilled outward in a wide ring, and the smell that came up with it was old and cold and wrong, like 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 ending in claws like shovels. Its back was covered in heavy grey plates, flat and square and cracked with age, stacked over one another like old gravestones. It had no eyes that Aren could see. It had only a mouth at the front, huge and round and lined with ring after ring of stone teeth that turned slowly inward, grinding.

[Gravemaw.][Rank D: Flesh.][Warning: Target exceeds Host’s rank.]

’Rank D. In a Rift rated F to E. Two whole ranks above anyone in this clearing. Fantastic.’

Celia made a small sound and fainted. She simply folded into the moss, and nobody moved to catch her.

Darius attacked first, predictably.

He didn’t wait for orders, and he didn’t even glance 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 sharp silver-blue light of his class flaring along the blade. It was a good charge, Aren had to admit grudgingly. Against a pack of wolves, it would have worked beautifully.

The sword hit the grey plates with a sound like a hammer on an anvil. Sparks flew. The blade bounced off, and the recoil threw Darius onto his back in the moss.

There wasn’t a single scratch anywhere on the plates.

Gravemaw turned unhurriedly, pointing its mouth at Darius. The rings of teeth spun faster, with a sound like a millstone grinding bone.

Vivienne raised her hand. Six silver crescents flashed across the clearing and struck the creature’s flank, one after another, and each left a thin white line on the grey plates. That was all. Thin white lines, like chalk on stone.

Gravemaw paused, as if it had felt something very small. Then it calmly started forward again.

Darius scrambled to his feet. He looked at the creature, at the faint marks Vivienne had made, and at his own sword, which now 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 much older and much simpler take its place.

Darius was afraid.

"The entrance is that way," Darius blurted, suddenly very fast. "Two hundred paces. We can make it if we run."

"There are wounded here."

"Then leave them!"

He was already backing nervously toward the trees. Gravemaw turned to follow the movement, its huge mouth swinging toward Darius, then toward Aren, who was standing between them with the packs still on his shoulders.

Darius saw it too. Their eyes met.

Then Darius grabbed Aren by the front of his shirt and threw him at the creature.

It wasn’t even a particularly hard throw. Aren was tired and loaded down, so he stumbled three steps sideways and fell to one knee in the moss, right in front of the grinding mouth. As Darius turned to run, he said something that sounded a lot like Servants serve. Then he was gone into the grey trees, and the sound of his running faded away.

[Darius Holt. Hostility: 91% -> 98%.]

’Interesting. He hates me more for seeing him run.’

Gravemaw lunged.

It was far faster than anything that size should possibly have been. One moment it was ten paces away, and the next its mouth filled his whole world, a tunnel of grey stone teeth spinning toward him. He threw himself sideways, and one of its 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 winter fire, and the blow that should have broken every rib he had hit the light instead. The light shattered like glass. Aren flew backward across the clearing and slammed into a tree trunk hard enough to see stars.

He slid slowly down into the moss and found, to his genuine surprise, that he could still breathe. He pressed a hand to his chest and felt the broken pieces of Mira’s clay charm crumbling under his fingers.

’It might stop one hit, she said. It stopped exactly one. Thank you, Mira.’

Across the clearing, Mira still stood in front of the wounded with her orange dome flickering. She had seen him get hit. Her face was white, and she was shouting his name, but he couldn’t hear her over the ringing in his ears.

"Hale!" Vivienne’s voice cut cleanly 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 watched her make the choice he would have told her to make.

"Yes."

"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 exactly one heartbeat. Then she hauled the wounded boy over her shoulders with the strength of her new class, yelled 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, slim and silver,, catching 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 perfectly 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, and the cut on his arm from the iron post had opened again under 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 understood that she wasn’t going to run.

He also understood, very clearly, that she was going to lose.

Her crescents were beautiful, but he had seen what they did to those gravestone plates, and so had she. He could see it in her stance, feet set wide, ready to buy everyone else as much time as she could.

[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 didn’t 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 dies here, every investment I’ve made dies with her. That’s all this is. Business.’

Gravemaw lowered its body to charge.

Aren reached down, tore a long strip from the bottom of his ruined shirt, and started tying it around his face.