Tulip's eyes were fixed on the ones above her, and the horrible, pointed teeth that curled up in a grin and looked too big for the tiny beady eyes that looked down on her. The darkness in front of her had formed something, but Tulip couldn't say what. As she looked, she saw shapes in the darkness. Claws. A wing, maybe? Horns. Sometimes, eyes, and they all bared down on her, transfixing her like they were physically holding her down. Tulip couldn't move, even if it had occurred to her to do so.
Impossibly, the smile widened even more.
"Tulip!" someone was yelling. Kai! Tulip's head snapped to the side just as she felt a hand on her arm pulling her to her feet. A sharp pain shot through her leg, and Tulip nearly tripped and fell, but Kai pulled her with him as he ran through the fake wall and down the tunnel. Tulip's lantern jumped and shook in her hands, so she tightened her hold on it, making sure it wouldn't fall. The metal cut deep into her already burned fingertips, and she felt the cuts on her palms reopening.
Together, she and Kai raced through the tunnels, taking random turns at each junction they came to. The darkness followed, enveloping them all over. The jumping like revealed and then hid the things in the shadows, and Tulip could hear whispers emitting from the walls. They hadn't gotten away from Nacht at all, in fact, it was still here, all around. The presence that Tulip had always felt, but now she had a name to it. They couldn't escape it, and Tulip could feel it pressing down on her as she ran.
Footsteps, many footsteps, from all directions ran after them and with them, and sometimes Tulip thought she saw people with those sounds, but they weren't really people. They were horrible monsters with bloodied faces and mutilated bodies that had terrible eyes fixated on her and Kai as they ran. The monsters were faster than her and Kai, she knew, and they would catch up. Soon.
She and Kai turned another corner, and then jumped back as something reached for them from the darkness: a pale white hand. They turned around, rushing the way they came, and heard a cruel laugh from behind them, in front of them, and all around.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tulip thought she saw a face peeking out from behind a pillar as they ran past, but as she looked back, she saw she was wrong. There was nothing there. Or so she thought.
Suddenly Kai tripped, and they both went sprawling down, and Tulip let out a scream as she felt her leg bend horribly, almost feeling like it had snapped clean off. Her arms slid on the rock floor as she came to a stop. Kai wasn't so lucky, and Tulip watched through wet eyes as he crashed into the wall, colliding painfully. She heard him screaming as he jumped away, clutching his face. In the flickering light, she saw his face was wet and his hands were tightly pressed against his eye as he hollered in agony. Tulip watched, horrified, as he jumped around, before falling to the floor, shaking.
Eventually, Tulip got her senses back. "Kai..." Her throat was scratchy and sore. Tulip swallowed, and tried again. "Kai!"
Finally, Kai looked up, and Tulip flinched. His face... the hard rock wall, lined with the flowery crystals he had been looking at earlier, had gorged into his face, tearing out chunks of it, and... well, Tulip couldn't see what happened to his eye, but she could guess. Tulip gulped again, and then shakily forced herself to her feet, ignoring the bite of pain in her leg. She could feel the exhaustion overwhelming her, but still she reached out a hand to Kai anyway, letting him lean on her as he got up, one arm around her and the other pressed tightly to his eye. The flickering lantern light was still on the floor, and Tulip glared at it. Before she could attempt to get it though, she realised something.
They were in the exact same tunnel they had been in before, where they met Nacht, just further along it. Tulip could see the pieces of the lantern she's left behind off to the side.
However, there was also something else. At the end of the tunnel, where the false wall was and where the light didn't reach, Tulip could see it: teeth and two eyes, staring daggers at them, and looking a little too amused.
But it didn't say anything. It just started coming forward, dragging the things in the darkness with it that Tulip could only barely make out. Legs. Horns. Wings. Tulip tore her eyes away, looking behind them. The light illuminated a hole behind them in the ground, but it didn't go far into the hole. Tulip tried to peer into it, but it didn't help. There was nothing to see except the darkness.
Tulip glanced back at the approaching darkness. It seemed like it was picking up speed, and its mouth seemed to stretch bigger. That toothy smile that looked like it could swallow her hole. As if to make a point, the mouth slowly opened, and showed her the inside of its mouth. A dark, gaping maw laid within, stretched open like a snake and had rows upon rows of teeth inside, waiting to chew the two of them up into little bits.
Tulip flinched away, back towards the hole. She'd made her choice.
"Tulip, wait," Kai said, quietly.
"What?!" Tulip cried. To her horror, Kai stopped them from approaching the hole any further, and turned back to the monster.
"Kai, no!" Tulip yelled, glancing at the monster, and then turning away, because it was impossible to look at. It was picking up speed. "What are you-?!"
"You told me to believe you, right?" Kai asked her. His voice was weak, and he was shaking, but he stood resolutely. "Well, I'm... I'm doing that."
"Are you insane?!" Tulip shouted at him, tugging at him to go, but Kai didn't budge.
As the monster came closer and closer, a shrill scream filled the air. Terrified, Tulip threw her arms over her face, as did Kai. But as the monster passed over them... nothing happened.
After a long minute, Tulip dropped her arms, looking around. The monster was gone, the light was back from the monster's darkness, and Kai and Tulip... were completely unharmed.
Kai and Tulip stared at each other; matching looks of terror filled shock on both their faces. Tulip's mind took several seconds to work.
They were... fine.
The monster hadn't even been real, just like Tulip had said before.
Tulip and Kai made their way back to the false wall, with Kai clutching the lantern, more carefully than Tulip had, with Tulip leading them both. Nacht wasn't there waiting for them, and they both could feel the oppressive weight of their stalker had lessened. It felt like a weight off of Tulip's shoulders, she'd never have guessed how great it'd be to feel alone, other than Kai.
They didn't speak to each other, instead gathering as many flowers they could hold in arms that weren't around each other and, in Kai's case, the lantern and his eye. They continued on through the tunnel, until all the flowers have disappeared and were replaced with scenery that Tulip was taken aback to find was familiar. At first, she didn't say anything, convinced that she was making it up, but when the soft blue glow appeared above their heads and Tulip saw a very well-known landmark, she knew she had been right, somehow.
"Follow me," Tulip whispered to Kai, her voice rough from not using it for a long time. Kai didn't say anything back, but Tulip didn't need any assurance than his curt nod anyway. She had been exploring these tunnels for a long time while Kai was down in his basement, messing with his machine. She knew them well, even if they looked confusing and without the need for a map. Tulip was more confident than she had been in a long time, and soon, she had opened the puzzle door that led out of the place, and they stepped through to the welcoming landscape that held their town on the horizon.
"We're back here?" Tulip said, confused. Kai shook his head.
"Can we...?" he started, and Tulip nodded immediately, knowing what he wanted. After all, she wanted it to. When their makeshift home was so close, why would they wait? But still, Tulip turned around, back to the tunnel they had just come through. Despite how much she had been praising the tunnels and saying how much she knew them... they were now tinged with a concern, and a fear. She and Kai hadn't walked that far... how close had Tulip been to that thing when she wandered this place?
The terrible hole was right beside them, but none of them had taken a step towards it. None of them dared to, and besides they weren't even in any condition to consider it. They felt the urgency and the pleading in Kipo's letter that they had each received. But when they arrived, Coraline and Luz first, then Mabel, then Fei Fei, they each saw, for the first time, what they'd lost.
Luz, for once, couldn't say anything. She wasn't moving, either, staring down at the floor as the realisation sunk into her. Six watched her closely, an unreadable expression on the creature's face. Soon, though, Six turned away, unable to look any longer.
Coraline didn't know how to react to any of this. The sight of Fei Fei and Mabel showing up alone, and the news they brought... it was like a cold reality had settled over them. Coraline didn't know Kris or Anne very well, and she didn't know Norman at all, but the mere fact that they'd all died was horrifying. Coraline hadn't experienced much death in her old life, and now it was looming over them like a tidal wave.
Mabel, though, had come to the hole with hope that Norman and Kris could still be alive. She had been disheartened when they didn't show up with the rest of the group, but she hadn't given up. It was only after Fei Fei had haltingly told her what happened to Anne that Mabel's hopeful expression fell. She probably didn't completely accept that Norman and Kris probably weren't coming back yet, but she was no longer voicing how certain she was that they would come back. She was curled up on the ground, hiding her face.
Fei Fei gazed at all of these people, each stopped in their tracks by the horrible news she had brought. For Fei Fei, the reality of their situation was like a weight on her shoulders, one that made her want to cry and scream and just sink to the floor in all her awful feelings, brewing like a stew.
But as her fingers tightened on the piece of the letter Kipo sent, Fei Fei knew they couldn't afford any luxury of sitting here to try and grapple with what happened. They had to move forward, at least for now.
She stepped up to the hole, opening her mouth to try and say something that would motivate everyone else, before changing her mind at the last second.
"We need light," she said at last. She waved a hand at the hole. "To search for Kai and them."
It took everyone else a good, long minute to respond, but that last, Luz nodded.
"I-Six?" Luz asked, and the creature on her shoulder jumped at being addressed so suddenly.
"Uh, yes?" Six asked, and Coraline seemed to suddenly startle, staring at Six with wide eyes. Fei Fei was startled, too, she'd never heard Six ever sound anything but annoyed.
Luz, however, didn't seem to notice the strange shift in tune. "I need you to make light for us with your magic. I don't know how. Can you do that?"
Six seemed to frown, peering into the hole. "I can..." Six said, but then hesitated. "But that might not be a good idea. You shouldn't go down there."
"We have to," Luz told her sagely. "We need to help Kai and Mira and Tulip."
Six hummed, and then hopped off of Luz's shoulders, onto the hole. She strolled up to the hole, studying it and sniffing it with her snout. Suddenly, she shuddered and backed away, shaking her head.
"No, no, no," she sniffed, her nose in the air, but when she was on the ground, it didn't look as haughty. "Luz, you can't."
"I-," Luz started to argue, before she frowned, taken aback. "Did you just call me Luz?"
Before Six could properly form an answer, Mabel gasped, drawing everyone's attention to her. She was standing beside the hole, peering down into it like the rest of them were, but while everyone else had been focused on Luz and Six's conversation, Mabel had been looking down into the darkness.
"There's something coming out!" she cried, and the rest of them quickly looked down to find she was right. A slowly moving figure was coming up the steps, emerging from the darkness. Fei Fei backed up quickly, out of its way. The others followed her lead, not wanting to get in its way.
The figure moved in an... odd way, swaying from side to side as it moved as if unsteady on its feet, and lurching forward in a way that suggested it was hurt. It had odd jerky motions as it climbed, and its outline was vaguely human, but misshapen as it made its way up.
Mabel cried out as it finally broke out into light, and Fei Fei covered her mouth, feeling sick. The person, though horrible mangled and broken, was easily recognizable from the long black hair that flowed behind it, and the clothes that now hung loosely off its frame.
"Mira..." Luz whispered, hardly daring to believe it. But none of them could deny it. Her head was hanging at a sharp angle no human could survive, and one of her forearms was missing. She walked oddly and slowly, and the little group could see that one of her legs was twisted horribly to the side. Mira's skin was covered in so many little cuts and bruises that it looked like it had been painted red, but not all over her skin. On some cuts, she bled black.
Her eyes were the worst part. Usually covered with her black hair, sometimes, it parted to reveal that both her eyes were gone, replaced with a darkness that seemed to bleed out of them like black tears.
Fei Fei searched for words, but she came up empty, unable to tear her attention from the dead person in front of her, walking forward like a zombie. But this zombie wasn't like the others, because it completely ignored the little group it lumbered through and continued off into the desert that stretched out in front of it, its eyeless sockets fixed on something the rest of them couldn't understand.