COBALT: The Red Phantom (Book One)

Chapter 12: Molve Bait (part 4/4)

          "Forty six in total," Alestra said with a smile. "Bet you none of the other teams have that much, great work Káel."

          Káel nodded and slowly got to his feet with a wince. The exhaustion was getting to him.

          "Excluding the two Molves in the building there's another one coming this way, but it's moving pretty slow, so I'm not sure if it knows we're here," Phantom warned, stretching his legs on the grass. Káel was still getting used to the familiar voice coming out of such an unfamiliar person. Sure the hair was the same, and the creepy mask, but whenever he looked over to Phantom the first thought that would come to his head is what the heck a random classmate was doing following them.

          "We should head back now," Káel said, retracing his steps to the dangerous path they had taken to get to the cathedral.

          Everyone jumped up to follow him, only with a cheery and victorious atmosphere, to contrast how much of a zombie he was. Xavier took the lead yet again, followed by Janiel, then Talli, Cinder and Vera, and lastly Alestra, Puff and Káel, with Phantom cheating by walking through the wall.

          Xavier was a little more careful when stepping on stone slabs this time around, and instead, kept on getting caught in puddles of thick mud. They had made it to what they deemed a halfway mark, where the narrow path fattened to a bedroom sized area full of dangerous cracks and weak stone slabs, made apparent by the large hole Xavier had made on the way to the cathedral, with his saving grace still standing tall and green.

          "Wait," Phantom whispered, as the group made their way across the broken scape. "There's a Molve on the other side of that wall," he whispered, pointing to his right.

          Káel tiresomely shushed the group, and explained the situation. His teammates didn't even question his statement, and stealthily started their escape, jumping over any stone slabs they saw, and trying their hardest to land on the soft dirt.

          Talli almost finished making her way across, and landed on a pile of dirt like everyone else had, unaware of the weak stone it was concealing. With a loud crack the ground gave away, and Janiel grabbed Talli by the shoulder, pulling her to safety with Xavier's assistance.

          Vera froze where she was, halfway across the path while she dish eyed the wall, then back at Alestra and Káel. They could hear the muffled growling coming from inside the building.

          "Keep going," Phantom cooed. "It's in the building, not like the ghoul faced chalk sniffer can do anything from in there."

          The Molve barked, the ferocious twang showing it had heard Phantom's comment. With a scraping thud, everyone froze. 

          It was attacking the wall.

          "Nice one," Káel muttered, watching as Vera bolted across the clearing, followed by Alestra who was having troubles navigating around the broken ground.

          "Whoopsy," Phantom chimed. "Didn't think the beast was capable of coming up with such brilliant ideas."

          The wall was filled with large cracks, and the Molve's dark grey snout was peeking through, getting further and further as its massive claws pulled away at the broken chunks of wall blocking its path. Alestra was halfway across, with Puff perched on her shoulders motioning at good spots to step with his head. Unfortunately his good senses wore out when, just like Talli, she jumped onto a mound of dirt and the ground broke beneath her.