Field Ghost
The air is heavy in the tunnel. It's warmer, filled with gross humidity, with sticky walls.
It gets steadily wider with each step until it's almost fully ten feet across, dark with water dripping from the ceiling.
"This is horrible," Nyx mutters from behind me.
"We're close to our ticket outta here," I say. "Please don't do anything stupid.
Luc, Bryce, Neo and Ronin all say at the same time,
"Define stupid."
"We're deadass doomed," Krim says.
"I'm not saying I'm scared, but what if they come pulling out the tunnel?" Neo pipes up. "What if they can smell fear."
One day.
I will rip his mouth off his ugly face.
"They can smell YOU, which is worse," Ronin snaps. "Stop jinxing everything."
"You just jinxed it by saying that."
"You just jinxed my jinx."
"GUYS!"
"My bad."
"Luc, take point," I say.
"I gotchu."
He pauses.
"Wait what's point again?"
I stop moving. Neo stops moving. Bryce slowly lowers his weapon.
"This is the man who saves our lives," Ronin mutters.
"Oh please."
"UP AHEAD!!!" Elemental suddenly yells from the front, and everyone comes to a screeching, stumbling stop.
Panting, breathing heavily, we peer into the darkness ahead, and as we look on, shapes appear out of the dark.
Knock knock guess who the Floodmen.
Neo.
Please.
Shut up.
"That's at least thirty more," Dread says.
"Gimme a break already, god darn it," Artee curses.
"Did you really think you can escape the water…?" the Floodman at the front gurgles, dual wielding two wicked-looking spears. "The water craves your blood, and we shall serve."
"That's the leader, right?" Bryce whispers.
"Yeah." I mutter. "Probably."
Behind us, wet skittering sounds echo down the tunnel. I whirl around and a dozen more pour in from the entrance we just came from, crawling over each other, clawing at the walls. Filling the tunnel like a wave of flesh, bone and teeth.
We're boxed in.
Ronin yells,
"NOPE - WE'RE ACTUALLY SANDWICHED, WE'RE DONE, PACK IT UP, GOODBYE WORLD-"
"Focus!" I bark, raising my blade.
Jora trembles, and we bunch together, facing either side.
"These may well be our last moments," Krim mumbles.
"Just sayin', I loved you guys!!" Dread mock sobs.
"Anastasia, hold us close," Leon mutters, one hand holding his bloody hatchet at his side, other pressing his pendant to his forehead. "We are afraid, but we are yours. Protect us, and guide us to the light."
His eyes open, and he assumes his stance.
The leader roars and charges. Luc meets him halfway and everything turns to shit.
Bodies slamming against each other, blood spraying against the walls and ceilings, claws scraping against flesh. Screams bounce off stone.
A Floodman leaps at Ronin; I intercept him and slash across the chest, but another slices my shoulder open. The pain sears me, but I twist and slash him across the chest. My weapon glides through his collar bone frighteningly smoothly, and he drops like a stone.
Looking around wildly, I see Elemental fighting three at once, giving them a run for their money. Mist is cursing loudly as she pitches rocks like holy relics, and the others are a blur of blood and flesh. Nyx's being overwhelmed, Neo cries out and falls on one knee, clutching his shoulder. Leon's fighting like crazy, whirling back and forth, but he's surrounded.
Cold wind lashes against my neck. I turn, and seconds before I'm impaled through the face by the Floodman behind me Luc punches him out the way.
"Focus!!" he bellows. "You're losing concentration again!!"
He leaves me and dives back into the fray, tearing flesh and bone apart with his bare hands.
We're getting crushed, I can feel it. The walls are closing in, bodies are stacking, and even though there can't be that many of 'em it feels like there's infinite enemies.
A powerful hand grabs my arm just as I gut another, and I'm yanked down, hard.
My head strikes the stone ground with a crack and suddenly that Floodman leader is over me, spear raised.
"For the water," he rasps.
"SWORDDDDD!!!!" Krim screams.
Shit!!
His arm moves but never comes down.
Instead, he freezes, spear poised inches from my neck. His body trembles once.
Then, in front of my eyes, his head splits apart in a bloody mess and he falls back onto the rocks with a wet thump.
I stare, someone's shadow has fallen me. My eyes travel up his body. A strong frame, hatchet and knife in his hands, hanging by his side. Dark hair tied back.
"Tavin?" I ask.
He glances back at me once, with his serious, cold eyes, and then sighs deeply.
How the hell is Tavin here?
He flips the hatchet into reverse grip, lowers his centre of gravity, and with a rush of air past me he takes off. Hurtling through the air in a blue of movement, he weaves through twenty Floodmen in an instant, killing them all with one strike each.
Ronin stands beside me, jaw hanging open.
"What the hell…?" he asks what everyone wants to ask.
I'm too stunned myself to speak. It feels like that's happening a lot recently but this is different.
I feel like I'm mesmerized. I've never seen someone fight like this. Not even Elemental. Not even Airo.
As I watch, the last Floodman slump the floor, eyes wide, terrified and glassy, and Tavin lowers his weapons, surrounded by thirty massacred people. He breathes out once, then looks at us.
And I realize, that what I've just witnessed are the skills of a true veteran, someone who's been through hell and back.
"On your feet," he says to me.
"Tavin, we-" I begin, but he cuts me off.
"No talking. Move."
He grabs my wrist and pulls me up forcefully, but not cruelly. As he does so I feel how steady and strong his hands are - as well as how callous and rough they are - like a hard shell. Should someone only so many years older than me really have hands like those?
My feet find the ground, and then I find my body moving on its own. We hurtle along the passage, water splashing around our feet, and suddenly Elemental is in front of me, yelling,
"Climb, climb!!"
We fumble over each other and my hand grips a wet, slimy but definitely metal rung, and in the dark I reach up and find another, and then I'm climbing, pulling my tired, bleeding, body up through the damp chute.
At some point my brain goes blank and for a few moments I'm just climbing automatically, placing one hand above another and moving my feet steadily upwards, the metal creaking with each step.
Then my hand goes out into the air and I almost tumble back down, which would've a very embarrassing way to go out, but someone grabs my wrist and hauls me out.
When I come out of a daze, I realize that we've burst out of a hole in the ground into a small cavern lit with glowing moss. The air is cold and fresh (for an underground cave), finally free of the watery stench. Everyone collapses around me, wheezing, groaning, swearing, or all three at once.
Tavin sits down onto a rock, leaning back and breathing slowly, before starting to clean his hatchet. Instantly, the three stooges and Luc swamp him.
"Where did you learn to fight like!?!?" Ronin demands, eyes glittering.
"TEACH ME!!" Neo begs, bowing down like he's met Anastasia.
"You never told me about this the WHOLE TIME!?!?" Bryce squawks, offended.
"FIGHT ME!!" Luc roars.
Tavin just looks at them wearily, like he's wondering how four human brains can malfunction simultaneously.
I sigh. But really, I'm curious too.
As Elemental and Artee drag the (four) stooges away, me and Nyx replace them.
"Weren't you a medic?" I ask. "Where'd that come from?"
"I was a medic," he replies quietly. "I told you, a frontline medic."
"…damn. Some medic."
"Don't misunderstand," he continues. "On the Skather front, I'm counted as deadweight. These basic skills of mine are nothing."
I don't have a reply. But Nyx asks,
"More importantly, why did you follow us? After all that racket about not coming?"
He shrugs.
"You… reminded me of something."
"Good or bad?"
"Both."
Great. Love that. Super comforting. Thanks, man.
We retire to rest up, everyone's tired. Tavin's presence is reassuring, and we're able to let down our guard.
I just can't stop thinking, though. Basic skills. If that was basic, then what the hell did 'advanced' look like? I thought I was getting the hang of this place, finding my rhythm in this stupidity. I thought that maybe if I tried hard enough, fought enough, bit on without looking back, I'd catch up.
Catching something.
But Tavin's talking about the frontline out there like it's a completely different dimension. Like we're kids swinging sticks to him, like none of it matters to him.
Deadweight, that's what he called himself, deadweight. The guy who just massacred thirty people without breaking a sweat.
I think that's when the full brunt of it hit me for the first time. The existence of the people alongside me, Airo, Elemental, Tavin, the masked batsmen. The world is a big place. Of course I know that, but the world is a BIG place. I haven't seen anything yet.
There are real people out there - real soldiers, real monsters, real legendary figures - fighting.
Something, I don't know what, tells me that someday when we get out of here, we'll meet them.
The heroes we've all roleplayed at least once, collected posters for, fanboyed over… Alexa Solace, Victoria Borealis, Hozen, and all the others we see on TV.
I don't know whether that thought scares me or excites me. Maybe both. I guess that's fine. I'm still alive, and as long as I am I'll catch up.
To whoever I fucking need to.
***
I don't know how long I drift, but Bryce's high-pitched voice yanks me back. He's stumbling to his feet, hands on knees after finally escaping Elemental and Artee.
"I swear, I saw my entire future flash before my eyes," he's gasping. "And it looked… kinda mid."
Neo snorts.
"That's cuz your future is mid."
"Say it to my face, lag-spike."
"Literally just did? Also the hell is a lag-spike?"
Their arguing pulls a tired smile from most of us, until Artee claps his hands together.
"We should keep moving," he announces. "Before this crappy place catches us off guard again."
"Agreed," Dread mumbles, pushing himself wearily to his feet. "But we shoulda stayed in Tavin's crib."
Kino nods mournfully.
"I'll take the lead," Tavin says, getting up, and no one objects.
Artee checks on everyone, taking advice from Tavin, and finds we mostly have no large injuries. Jora's got a pretty deep gash in her side, and Kino was struck pretty badly on the head, but otherwise we're fine to keep moving.
The squad keeps pushing forwards into the next cavern. My legs feel like half-melted noodles, but I force myself to keep walking, Tavin at the front, knife and hatchet strapped across his back and sleeves rolled up. I fall in besides Elemental, and we march on quietly for a bit.
Then I ask the one question that's been tugging at me for a bit.
"Ellie," I whisper. "D'you think you can beat Tavin in a duel?"
"No," he says without hesitation. "He's definitely stronger than me. Let's follow him for now."
"Yeah. But how about Airo?"
This time he pauses for a lot longer.
"I don't know," he says finally. "Although I'm just like you."
"Huh?"
"Don't you also want to see them fight?"
"Ha, you caught me."
As we keep walking, he starts humming a tune I've never heard before in the back of his throat, but it sounds nice. Mist apparently thinks the same and asks him which one it is, but he just says something about heavy metals.
Then he mutters to me,
"Sometimes I wonder if they ever really figured out where I went."
"What, you mean… the p- before the Facility?"
I know he means his family, but if we mention it we're dead.
"…something like that."
"Heads up!" Artee calls from the front beside Tavin. "Something's comin' up ahead!"
My hand goes to the weapon strapped to my back, but Tavin tells us it's not living, and we relax. Coming out into a larger cavern, we see what they've come across.
My heart skips a beat. At the other end of this long cavern, there's a huge, double-sided corrugated iron gate. It's rusted and caked with cave moss and rock, but it's a metal gate all right, and it towers above us, at least twenty feet tall and forty feet across.
But across it, definitely freshly splashed on in uneven, dripping red strokes:
"If you wish for a white peace, then simply leave the wall to its devices," Tavin reads, eyebrow raising.
"White peace?" Neo asks, stepping closer. "What does that even mean?"
"Means someone here has terrible handwriting," Bryce scoffs.
Lean raises his necklace, his lips moving in a quiet prayer. The red words are reflected in the metal charm like a warning sign.
"Who wrote that?" Mist asks.
Ronin swallows hard.
"Maybe they're behind that gate?"
Tavin stands up from checking around the gate's base and edges.
"There are signs of it having been prised open recently, from the scratches on the ground," he mutters. "Question is, how did they manage to move this? It's at least a couple tens of tons."
"Sheesh," Luc says, glancing at me. "I know what I'm making Sword train with next."
"Screw you, you pig-headed muscle-brain," I snap. "You can't lift that anyway!"
He laughs.
"Is it locked?" Krim asks.
Tavin nods.
"Barred from the other side from the looks of it," he says, running his hands along the cold metal.
"So… no going through," Mist said.
"No shit."
"Well," Tavin muses. "Normally."
"What about normally?" Bryce says nervously, not liking it at all. "How about a plan B?"
"Yeah," Neo agrees, nodding fervently. "Let's walk literally anywhere else than the big, scary metal door with words written in blood on it."
Tavin turns fully this time.
"We can find another path, but I doubt it'll be as obvious as this one. Or we can wait for the… Labyrinth to shift now that we've escaped the lowest level. It's less safe."
"Since when has anything been safe?" I demand, rapping on the door with my knuckles subconsciously.
Beside me, there's a squeaking noise, and suddenly a hidden flap on the door flips open with a bang. I almost jump out of my skin.
"Hello," someone says from the open flap in the door. "I'm Chris. Who the fuck are you?"