Ko didn't even want to turn around as she heard the thunderous crashing behind her. She knew it was Quin. But she didn't know what had happened. She didn't even think she wanted to know what happened. She had quickly put the puzzle pieces together and the only thing she could think about was seeing Kori's hand sticking out from under the rubble back at the temple.
A huge gust of wind suddenly blew against her back as she stood there contemplating what to do. Quin said she would be right behind her.
She wasn't there.
She waited for a few more seconds.
She wasn't there.
Her heart dropped like an anchor. A soft whimper escaped her lips. She didn't know what to do. She could keep going like she was told, potentially link back up with Fischer and the others.
And tell them what? That Quin was dead?
No.
Gently tapping her knuckles together, she began making her way back towards the sound. The pain-filled screech she heard moments earlier filled her with at least some confidence that the creature was dead.
She hoped it was the only thing that was dead.
Slowly but surely she made her way back down the hallway. Without Quin's biolights, it was pitch black. Her eyes had begun to adapt to the dark, she could barely make out the wall as she approached, but aside from that there was nothing.
The hallway gazed back at her like an abyss. She half expected some shadowy figure to jump from the darkness and take her away. She couldn't help but shake the feeling of being watched. The thought of Lust's smokey white eyes gazing at her as she walked.
"Q-Quin?" She whimpered. Her voice came out raspy and quiet, too terrified to speak up lest the demons that lurked in the darkness find her.
There was no response.
Her heart began beating faster and faster. Her eyes darted all around her. A petrified look was etched onto her face, her pupils slit and her brow tiled upwards. She held her cloak tightly around her. The sound of her footsteps was the only thing she could hear.
"Quin?" She repeated a little louder this time. The result was the same. She started to walk faster.
Keeping a hand on the wall to make sure she knew where she was going, she retraced her steps until she found the remains of Quin's handiwork. A quiet gasp escaped the zapher's lips as she saw what was in front of her.
The hallway was completely blocked off. The other side was nigh unreachable due to the immense amount of debris that had come crashing down. Ko was shocked the entire cave system hadn't collapsed.
Sticking out from underneath the rubble was the corpse of the creature that had been chasing them. After realising what it was she was standing in front of, Ko let out a terrified yelp and jumped backwards a few steps. She kept her eyes locked on the beast but it made no advances. It didn't even make a sound. Atop it lie what she could only assume were tonnes of stone. It was most likely dead.
Not one to take that risk however, she cautiously picked up a stone on the floor before hurling at the creature. It bounced off the beast's exoskeleton and dropped harmlessly to the floor.
Slightly more satisfied with the fact the creature wasn't going to be getting up any time soon, she moved a little closer.
"Quin?"
Her horns tilted backwards and a horrified gasp escaped her parted lips as she made out the body of her friend lying unmoving underneath the creature.
The top of her chest was showing, her arms laid out on the floor. Her head was rolled to the side and there was a line of bioluminescent blood seeping from a wound above her left eye.
"Quin!" Ko cried. Immediately any fear she had of the creature was jettisoned from her body as she scrambled down to her friend.
"Quin? Quin hello?"
She tapped at the carcan's cheek gently, a vain attempt to wake her up. Still nothing.
"C'mon Quin, say something, please!"
Immediately she felt an intense burning sensation rising in her gut. That feeling had once again returned to her hands.
"We have to go, please, wake up!" She begged.
Jumping up, she started grabbing rocks and throwing them aside. The wall of stone gazed back at her, stoic and unmoving, as if to say 'stop trying.'
But stop she would not. Her stomach began to ache and she could feel her eyes beginning to water as glimpses of Kori's fate began seeping back into her head.
She refused to lose another friend.
"Wake up!" She cried, to no avail.
Quin's body remained there. Silent and still.
She threw away more and more stone but it only served to allow the rocks on top of the ones she removed to fall down and take their places.
The zapher began pounding away at the dead creature in a futile attempt to move it. She knew full well that it was all in vain, but that didn't stop her from trying. She wasn't going to give up on Quin that easily.
A river of tears began to seep from her eyes and the intense feeling of nausea in her gut only strengthened.
"Wake up! Wake up please!"
Her words fell on deaf ears. The feeling inside her grew and grew into a burning cauldron of guilt and pain. She started screaming as she hit the creature, unleashing a side of herself she didn't even know existed. Over and over she hit it as if it was going to do something.
Then it did.
With her final punch Ko was thrown back by an intense shock wave that blasted through the cave. And immense blinding orange light erupted from the point at which she landed the blow on the creature. She tripped over her own tail and fell to the ground as a shower of stone and dust began raining down on top of her. She was so shaken by what just happened, she didn't even realise the fact her right hand was now glowing a bright orange.
The colour quickly faded but it wasn't like she was going to notice anyway. She was too busy trying to ignore the ringing in her ears. She scrunched up her face and held her left hand in front of her to try and block some of the dust.
After the debris had stopped falling, her eyes fluttered open and she became aware of the result of whatever the hell had just happened.
The dead creature had been pushed back at least a metre and a good portion of the rocks that had been surrounding it were now either split into pieces or simply turned to dust.
The burning sensation in her hands was more extreme now than ever, but was rapidly fading.
However all that was pushed to the back of her mind as she saw Quin's chest slowly rising and falling. Instantly she got to her knees and began checking her friend over, trying her best to wipe away some of the glowing blue blood that was seeping from her various wounds.
"Quin! Quin please wake up!" She begged. This time however, it seems like the carcan had heard her.
Quin's eyes slowly fluttered open, almost like an engine trying to start but sputtering out at the last moment.
Ko gently tapped her cheek again, which seemed to do it. Quin's eyes opened up.
"Thank the angels, I thought you were gone," Ko whimpered.
Quin blinked a few times before letting out a pained groan.
"Gahhhh, what... oh... hey Blue. What... what happened?"
"I...I-I...I don't know... but that thing is dead and I don't wanna be down here any longer."
Quin rubbed the back of her head, noticing a warm feeling as she did so. She looked at her hand and realised it was covered in glowing blue blood.
"Oh shit-"
"It's ok Quin, you just fell is all. But we need to go," Ko pleaded.
Seeing her friend so terrified seemed to kick the carcan back into protect mode. She nodded firmly, wiped her hand on what little remained of her maranish and with Ko's help, rose to her feet.
With her head still spinning slightly, it took her a while to regain her balance. Thankfully Ko was there to support her. She looked down at herself to gauge the severity of her wounds. A slight grimace overtook her features as she saw just how bad it actually was.
She was covered in bruises and gashes, her thick carcan skin had been peeled back and shaved away in various places. In others she'd just been sliced wide open and was bleeding. It wasn't anything to be too worried about, but the pain definitely made sure she knew she was injured.
Her clothing had been torn to shreds. The maranish had not been designed to protect against collapsing caves. Thankfully it seemed as though being sandwiched between the ground and the creature had actually prevented a lot of damage, her legs and lower body being relatively unharmed. But the edge of her tail and fins were covered in blood and the top of her maranish had almost been entirely stripped away, leaving her rather exposed.
Her lights turned a bright pink as she realised the top of her suit now looked more like a bra than an actual piece of clothing. The top of her breasts and her collarbone were covered in cuts and gashes as well.
Noticing her now bright pink accents, Ko wasted no time whipping off her cloak.
"Here, you can use this if you want. You need it a lot more than I do right now."
Quin smiled nervously. "Yea uh, thanks. I think I might take you up on that one actually."
She grabbed the purple cloak and hung it over her neck, making sure it covered her chest. Normally she wasn't afraid of showing some skin. She rather enjoyed it. However, this time was a bit too much skin, and what wasn't skin was blood. It also was really not the right time or place.
"Gahhh," she groaned as they started to move, Ko immediately turning and holding her gently.
"What's wrong? Are you ok?"
Quin winced her way through the pain.
"Yea, turns out havin' a cave fall on ya isn't exactly good for yer health. Think my collar bones done for. That among others. I can walk, it's all good. Just gonna have to put up with a bit of groaning," she grimaced.
"I'd rather that than nothing at all. You had me really scared back there," Ko spoke softly and her words were rather wobbly.
Quin looked down at her friend, noticing her horns were still tilted back. A pit of guilt began to fester inside of her. She couldn't help but feel horrible about what she just did. Ko almost lost another person that was close to her.
The girl was tough, there was no doubt about it. She'd been through more in 20 years than most people do in their whole lives. But she was hanging on by a thread. And had things panned out differently, Quin may have just broken that thread.
"Yea... look Ko I'm... I'm sorry 'bout that. That wasn't right of me. I shouldn't've left you on yer own there."
"It's ok, I'm just glad you're ok. I... I thought you were gone..."
Quin chuckled a little and rubbed the top of Ko's head gently.
"It's gonna take a lot more than some rocks to kill me. Besides, I had you by my side, I knew we were never in any danger," she jested.
Her words ripped the frown from Ko's face, instead replacing it with a genuine smile and a slight chuckle of laughter.
The two walked for a bit more, the darkness still surrounding them. However the fact they'd just cheated death twice was more than enough to lift their spirits a bit. But Ko's mind was elsewhere.
What exactly had happened back there? There was an enormous explosion that had almost pulverised the entire cave. They hadn't brought any type of explosives with them, and she was almost certain that the creature she had hit wasn't a walking bomb. Nature was cruel, but not that cruel.
She remembered the burning feeling in her hands being more intense than she'd ever felt before in that moment; but still it didn't hurt. She had felt no pain from it.
Had she caused the blast wave? Or was it something else?
Whatever it was, it was the reason there were two of them walking down the spooky corridor, not one.
That spooky corridor eventually started to resemble the architecture they had seen of the desert planet. More and more of the walls had engravings of creatures, symbols and runes marked into them. The corridor grew wider and wider until eventually it expanded into an entire room.
"Wow. Well I think we found the exit," Quin stated as she marvelled at the room they were now standing in.
The ceiling was covered in blue and green bioluminescent plants which was a nice relief after the infinite darkness of the corridor. The walls were the same golden silver colouration as the temple as well, small specks of rare metals glistening like stars.
However something decisively less beautiful caught Ko's eye.
"Uh... Quin..." she quivered, pulling gently on her friend's arm and pointing over to the corner of the room.
"Hmm? What's- oh..."
A mound of bones lay piled up in the corner of the room, armour plating and weaponry scattering the floor. The same weaponry that the two had discovered in the corridor.
The skeletons looked like they belonged to a myriad of different races. Quin could make out some carcan shaped skulls, as well as human and veranah.
"Guess we're not the first ones to find this place then. 'Spose that's why we've never heard of it before. Anyone who found it never came back alive."
"W-what does that mean for us?"
Quin's answer was one of silence. Her eyes instead were fixated on the other side of the room. A huge statue of a humanoid figure stood up in an indented part of the wall. In its right hand was a sword lodged into the ground. In its left was a shield. And upon that shield was a symbol.
A symbol that was instantly recognisable.