53. What lies beneath Rockspine

“Ah, “ Marius stopped in his explorations, his face suddenly serious. “Somethings coming!”
From behind, the group could hear a high-pitched and lonely piping sound. Jaden and Nox looked at each other, Nox scrunching up her nose in distaste. It didn’t sound right. Like something was copying a sound they’d heard a long time ago.
 
Suddenly, Marius fell backwards into the pool as something grabbed his leg from below. A bow wave clearly showed him being dragged to its dark centre. Pulled past Fureva-Yung, she plunged one fury arm into the water, grabbing and lifting Marius’ leg. Fureva-Yung felt a wave of intense cold as the creature let go. Marius flew backwards into the air, somersaulted, and landed on his feet.
 
Nox levitated out of the water as Marius examined his leg. A spiralling red mark cold to the touch scars his skin.
“I think something’s living in the water.”
A mote of light flew towards Nox. She floated aside as more appeared, circling the pool. Jaden pulled out an electric baton, and Fureva-Yung started for the centre of the pool.
“You might want to leave the water,” Jaden called, holding up her baton. Fureva-Yung chuckled deeply and picked up Marius, getting him clear. Standing on the shore, Jaden plunges the baton into the pool and turned it to full. A bright pulse of white light emitted from the baton before exploding in her hands. She dropped the baton and ducked as the swirling motes of light flickered momentarily. As the lights above faded, the baton’s glow lit the water, and Marius, Fureva-Yung and Jaden saw a massive black silhouette. It was almost amorphous with streaming twirling tentacles that made them hard to count.
 
A tentacle of shadow, as thick as a tree trunk, exploded from the water in front of Fureva-Yung. It lashed out, trying to grab her, but Fureva-Yung grabbed it instead and lifted it above her head. A second tentacle went for Marius. He dodged aside and activated his light gloves. More lights appear above the pool, swirling angrily like angry bees. Marius struck out and hit the creature, cooking it with the light from his gloves. Standing on the shore, Jaden watched, studying the beast.
“It didn’t like that attack, “ She said after realising its weaknesses, “And I don’t think it like the light from my baton either.”
She pointed out the lights were just distractions, to ignore them for the creature in the water.
 
Fureva-Yung dropped the tentacle and pulled out a tube of friction-reducing gel. She took a moment to apply what she could to her body. Nox, floating above the water, reached out to find the creature's mind. To everyone else, she disappeared into a black sphere of nothing as their telepathic connection shut down. To Nox, she was suddenly in a new space, a dark void with a yawning portal ahead. Somewhere beyond the portal was a presence, a mind she could communicate with, maybe even reason with. She looked around her. With no way back, she propelled herself mentally forward and entered the portal.
 
Marius dodged another tentacle as he pulled out a concussion bomb from his supplies. What had happened to Nox? One moment, safe above the water and next gone. A tentacle caught hold of Fureva-Yung, but the friction-reducing gel made it impossible to hold her. Fureva-Yung once more felt the burning cold from the tentacle, leaving frosty marks on her skin. Jaden pulled out an iotum and sent a ray into the water to blast the beast with heat. Steam rose from the water, but she missed the creature. Marius set up his concussion bomb with a crude timer and threw it at the central dark mass.
 
One second
Two seconds… BOMB! A plume of water erupted from the water. All around them, tentacles shuddered.
 
In the grey and colourless light, Nox sensed a face made of beak, tentacles and two large black eyes. The eyes looked back, and a wall-like mind attack pushed against her. With all her strength practised over the months since leaving Cerelon, she held just. She tried reading the mind and received back only an intelligent curiosity and hunger. For the first time, in the places of the mind, Nox knew what fear was.
 
Outside, Fureva-Yung used her fleet of foot to jump up and crash down on the black mass under the water. With her chain out to its full length, she wrapped it around the beast's mass and pulled tight. Now standing on what she thought of as its back, she wrapped the chains around her arms and readied herself for a ride.
 
Inside, Nox didn’t know what to do. This creature was powerful and intelligent. Her puny jabs at its mind would do little to make it let go of her friends. She’d resisted it once; maybe she could bluff it out. Putting all the force she could behind it, she constructed a collection of sensations and thoughts. She repeated the curiosity and hunger, feeding it sensations of warmth and light. All these she sent and just as forcefully snuffed out as if they never existed. She hoped that her bluff would work. Suddenly, the impressions she received changed. Hunger disappeared for fear.
Yes, you should fear us! She thought and prepared for a fight.
 
Outside. The black mass rose out of the water momentarily, Fureva-Yung standing like a sailor lashed to a whale and suddenly dove. Fureva-Yung instinctively filled her huge lungs before she was covered in the warmth-sapping cold. They were swimming down a shaft in the centre of the pool. She could feel the pressure building in her ears as they sunk deeper into the dark. She twisted her chains once more around her arms and reached down, patting the creature’s almost insubstantial skin.
 
Above water, it was just Marius and Jaden. Jaden pulled out a swim enhancement cypher and dived down after Fureva-Yung. She could see Fureva-Yung disappearing into the gloom and quickly swam after her. Marius, another concussion bomb in hand, looked around at the now calming surface of the water, the empty cavern around him.
“What?! All powered up and no place to throw?”
 
Inside, Nox received a feeling of confusion, warmth and comfort before another mental attack tried to push her out of the space.
NO! This is my space! She held her ground. This couldn’t go on. She was exhausted. One more attack like that, and she was finished, but she wasn’t willing to give up her bluff that quickly. Now that she’d proven she meant business, she tried another tactic. This time, the thoughts and sensations were of her friends standing at peace in the pool, the lights still above them. A feeling of calm water, of a surety that this could be. With the last strength, she sent the message and…it was received.
 
Less fear, relaxing of defences and then a polite request, the image of Nox leaving via the portal. Nox nodded, smiled to herself and, seeing the portal ahead, left the monochromic mind space.
 
In the inky darkness, Fureva-Yung could feel something stirring in the beast. It had stopped swimming down and now hung still in the shaft. Just ahead of where Fureva-Yung stood, a mouth opened, and from a maw almost two metres in diameter, a frosted icy bubble appeared. The bubble ejected from the mouth and began to rise. As Fureva-Yung and Jaden noticed the figure hovering inside the bubble, the telepathic network came back online.
Hi! Nox waved at her two friends, freezing in the cold water, I’m in a bubble!
Fureva-Yung once more patted the creature’s back, also taking the opportunity to scratch the base of a tentacle. As if the patting was acceptable, but the scratching was not, her hand was slapped by the cold end of a tentacle. Jaden handed her a personal environment shield before floating up beside the Nox bubble. Fureva-Yung wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with the cypher. She could hold her breath for ten minutes if need be, and the cold wasn’t too bad. Shrugging, she put the cypher in a pocket and, giving the cute creature a final pat, released the chain.
 
It was quiet in the cavern. The lights had disappeared, and there was only the natural drip of water and his own movement. Looking down to see where his friends had gone, Marius was suddenly aware of a glowing sphere rising towards him. Beside it, Jaden glided up, Fureva-Yung floating up behind. As the bubble rose, he could see through the icy surface, Nox! How had Nox got down there?!
 
The bubble popped to the surface, with Nox floating inside. She looked tired but happy in her frosty ball. Marius placed his hands on the bubble, the heat from his gloves melting its shell, and the bubble disappeared.
“Hee hee! That was fun!” She exclaimed, wobbling and stepping for shore as Jaden and Freva-Yung returned to the surface. Fureva-Yung gestured across the cavern, and in the darkness, the creature rose, breaking the water.
“It's so cute!” She said in a voice much too high to come from Fureva-Yung. She returned the cypher to Jaden, who gave her a scathing look.
“I’m surrounded by idiots!”
 
On a small sandy island above the waterline, the group made a small camp. Humming the weird tune of the creature across the way, Marius tried his hand at healing. The healing failed, but the beast seemed to appreciate the singing and joined in, filling his mind with its force of will. He quickly ceased singing to have Fureva-Yung start a thunder rumbling up the shaft above their heads. Jaden kept herself busy making a makeshift camouflage hide for the camp, and Nox slept, dreaming of flying in bubbles through the air.
 
Marius was on watch. The lights of the creature had gone with it soon after Fureva-Yung’s attempts at singing, and he was left in near darkness. A little light broke through the hole in the roof where the waterfall tumbled, but even that tiny spark grew dim as the night grew on. He slowly became aware of a…skittering of sharp claws on stone from above. The darker shaft was lost in the general darkness, but his head still turned that way as he discerned three individual creatures crawling down its walls. He quickly awoke Fureva-Yung.
 
Something plopped into the water, sending ripples to lap against the sands of the island. Fureva-Yung’s sonar could sense a figure, human in height but with limbs like an insect, ending in claws. It sniffed the air loud enough for Marius to hear as he went and woke Jaden. Still in her guard uniform, Jaden pulled out a stasis detonation and quietly walked out to the ant-man. A second one dropped into the water. Jaden signalled for silence and pointed towards the deep in the pool's centre, looking frightened. The two ant-men looked at each other, accepted her bluff as genuine and turned away from the hide.
 
The third dropped just as Jaden felt she was out of range of her companions and detonated her paralysis bomb. Water rained down as pebbles and mist as dust. Standing just before the lip to the creature’s shaft, four statues now stood. Fureva-Yung had fun trying to knock the heads off the ant-men, pushing them down the hole for the beast to eat as soon as the stone returned to flesh.
“What do we do with this one?” She asked Marius.
“Colour her in? Give her a moustache?” Marius suggested as Fureva-Yung shook her head.
“That would be childish.”
Marius momentarily looked Jaden over and smiled, “We can put her to bed like a dolly.”
Fureva-Yung laughed a very girly laugh and picked up the stony Jaden. They lay her down with her pack behind her head, and wrapped up their life-sized doll with her blanket. Frozen in the moment of the detonation, it was the most peaceful the two friends had ever seen Jaden.
 
The rest of the rest, Fureva-Yung, watched…listened. For her, the darkness was nothing but a slight inconvenience. Sound filled her world with stalactites and stalagmites, the cavern’s shape and the looming shaft above. Just before dawn, a new something entered her peace. A buzzing whirling sound resolved itself into a smooth-sided metallic sphere. Following the stream from the first room, a central lens scanned the space. Fureva-Yung crouched amongst the rocks that constituted their sandy island, slipping in behind Jaden’s camouflage hide. The drone buzzed by their hideout, spinning in place to scan the area, and then moved on. Eventually, satisfied it had completed its task, the drone flew up the shaft and disappeared from view.
 
An hour later, Jaden’s paralysis wore off. She awoke to find herself tucked in up to her chin, her outstretched hand that had once held the bomb now holding a skull-shaped rock. She looked at the rock, shrugged and rolled over, returning to sleep. Fureva-Yung grinned. If Jaden was back, then Fuzzy-Wuzzy could now enjoy their meal.