It happened the moment their eyes all took it in.

It dropped on top of them.

A phantasm.

These were the waking nightmares. Great and small. Weak and strong. Ugly and beautiful. Wherever civilisation went, they went with them. As part of life as breathing and as inseparable as death, they were the vanguard of the night and the jailers of peace.

Horrors formed of all shapes and sizes. They were creatures half living and half apparition. Whether they were dreamed or summoned or dragged crawling and shrieking from the unknown depths of the world, not a soul knew. They were the unsolvable enigma. The mystery with no clues.

All that was important was the fact they were beings of hatred.

And they would devour and devour and devour, until they became so great that a single phantasm would threaten the survival of cities, of nations, and of all people — as has happened before — until they are destroyed and returned to whichever unknowing realm they came from.

Mireille rolled, her body slamming hard into the jagged wall as she instinctively sought to avoid the mass of dark flesh from crushing her beneath its weight. Yuela jumped to the opposing wall. As she did so, a diamond-headed arrow gathered on the string of her bow, which for the briefest of moments shared the same prismatic hue as Coco's aura.

Coco grabbed Tabitha. Displaying strength that was beyond human, let alone that of a thirteen year old girl, she crudely tossed the older girl far out of harm's way.

Almost at that same instant, a creature as black as charred wood dived on top of her. It hadn't simply landed. Its hind legs had kicked into the protruding rock face above in order to engulf its prey below.

“Coco!” coughed out Mireille, holding herself up with one knee.

She saw Coco consumed from her clear view against the base of the wall. More than that, she saw what descended on her in all its lurid monstrosity.

Its immense body exuded a twisting, shifting darkness, an army of fingers desperately clawing and coiling for something to hold onto. To choke. The shafts of sunlight freely pierced the crevice, but no light would reach the phantasm. Nothing from the world of day would touch it. The monster twisted the air around it. Repelled it, as if denying the very world it resided in.

And within that darkness was a creature with a trio of bottomless eyes, unblinking and unmoving. They were as hollow as its soul. Whether they functioned to provide sight or merely to invite terror, Mirielle did not know. A trail of frothing black liquid bled from them, dripping down the lower half of the creature's grotesque head, and yet none of that unidentifiable liquid would drip to the ground.

It had no mouth. It should have been a relief. It merely made it seem more macabre than it already was.

Behind the creature's head was its abdomen. Or what would have counted as an abdomen were it forcibly compared with any spider in existence. Its shape seemed to morph — to breathe — continuously from a shrivelled tail to an oval sac, like a balloon being constantly emptied and stung with air.

A phantasm the size of the crevice. This was no coincidence.

And all of it had crashed onto Coco's petite frame.

But to Mireille's horror, she saw that the vast phantasm wasn't done. It hadn't even started.

Requiring no time to recover from its drop, the main head of the phantasm started rising at once. Its mass of scissor-like legs stabbed into the solid ground around where Coco lay, each one wringing forth a sharp burst of gravel as easily as shovels ripping up sand.

She couldn't see her. She couldn't see her at all.

“Get up, Mireille!” yelled Yuela. “Coco needs help!”

Yuela was the quickest to act. She didn't hesitate to draw her bow the moment she landed against the wall. But there was no time to aim. No time to consider a weakness. She simply pulled and released.

Her arrow regained its prismatic form as it whistled through the still air. It struck cleanly into the phantasm's flank, piercing whatever flesh existed.

The creature's abdomen jolted. Whether phantasms shrieked in pain or hatred couldn't be told, and this one made no sound except for its pounding against the earth. Either way, Yuela's arrow into its flank wasn't enough. The prison which was its eight legs did not move.

“Nngh . . . Coco . . .”

Mireille tried to shake away the numbness in her sides. She felt disparate that something as trifle as a rock had winded her before the battle had begun. Before she'd even shown her weapons. She'd scored the absolute average in the entrance examinations, but if they'd seen her being beaten by a wall, she would've been the first candidate in history to be dumped into the minus category.

She rose unsteadily. Much less fluidly than the hulking phantasm, which had fully extended its legs. Its great abdomen, even when shrivelled, brushed against the crevice ceiling. All light was extinguished in that one moment, save for the area on the near and far sides of the passage.

Despite this, the creature gleamed.

The darkness which covered the phantasm repulsed even the shadows.

“I'll draw it!” shouted Yuela. “See if you can grab her!”

On the other side, Yuela launched another arrow, this time burying it within the rightmost of the creature's empty eyes. It jerked its head away and trembled, and for a sickening moment, it threatened to flatten itself down onto the ground where Coco could still not be seen. Mireille didn't know whether or not Coco could crawl out. She didn't know whether or not Coco could still crawl.

All Mireille knew was that Yuela had given her an opening, and that was by drawing the creature's attention onto herself.

As the phantasm twisted, Mireille saw her chance.

If she couldn't spot Coco, she'd just have to find her the hard way.

Eyeing the unnatural glimmering of the legs as they heavily, menacingly turned like a dial to face Yuela, she held her breath, ignored the overwhelming urge to vomit at how objectively bad an idea this was, and dived.

“Mireille?! That's not what I meant!”

Mireille didn't reply. Her heart was caught in her throat, anyway, but she didn't want to draw the creature's attention if it possessed hearing.

On her hands and knees, Mireille reached out, flaying blindly as she patted the earth. All she could see was the windows of light beyond the phantasm's legs. She dearly hoped every part of her was beneath its shadow. In fact, she dearly hoped for a lot of things right now.

At the same time, Yuela's feet landed on one of the patches of light. She'd jumped from her spot on the wall and was immediately circling the phantasm. The relative sluggishness in which the creature turned, in addition to its limited range of movement within the crevice meant she could evade it — or so the ten whole seconds of combat suggested. She also couldn't draw it backwards or forwards, in fear of its array of giant kitchen knives turning Coco or Mireille into ground mince. There was very little room for them to manoeuvre, but judging by the fact that the phantasm had not attacked until they had turned back, it could mean that this certainly wasn't the optimal battleground for it, either.

Mireille didn't want to think about what would've happened had they continued onwards into the passage.

As it was, they had just barely enough room to commit to basic tactics.

If diving beneath the earth-shattering legs of a moving phantasm could be described as tactics, that is.

“I can't attack it while you're there!” cried Yuela, clearly hoping that only the phantasm's two front legs could do any lunging. “I don't want to shift it!”

Something about the situation was comical, but it couldn't last. This creature was too intelligent to play revolving doors forever. Mireille had to move quickly.

Mireille crawled a few inches further in. She would've preferred crawling over a mile of broken glass. But when she stretched out her arm and swiped the ground, she hit her target. Her hand grabbed at something. It felt like a limb, but it was impossible to tell which.

The amount of things she was wishing for increased by several times over.

Now she had to pull her and either roll or crawl out together. The creature might notice the contact, but Mireille banked on the optimistic thought that its only weapons were the points embedded into the ground. All she needed to do was get Coco out from beneath the phantasm and to safety. Wherever safety was.

What Mireille had to do afterwards, well.

She could think about it when the time came.

In the few seconds that would be, of course.

At that moment, Mireille tugged Coco towards her, forcing herself to ignore the fact she was neither speaking nor moving. She would wait until Yuela had circled in front, allowing her to extract Coco via the phantasm's hind legs, which seemed to be used solely for wheeling itself around.

A problem occurred immediately.

“. . . . . . ?!”

Mireille's heartbeat sped to the point where she thought it'd fail entirely, although it wasn't because the phantasm had reacted to her presence.

She couldn't move Coco.

What's more, her limbs were hard. Too hard.

What was going on?

Questions raced through Mireille's mind. The image of spiders weaving silk cocoons around their prey was known to everyone, but this wasn't a spider. It was a phantasm.

It was a waking nightmare. It could kill. And it could devour. But all the intricacies of a real spider was beyond it. This wasn't a lair. It was a hunting ground.

Mireille tugged again and again to the point where her desperate breathing was leaking to her ears. It was no good. It was futile. Coco wasn't just unmovable. She was completely solid.

And still, Mireille couldn't see her.

She couldn't do anymore. But perhaps she didn't need to. A sturdy Coco was in a better position than anyone else here. She just had to hope that whether by the phantasm's design or something else, those scissor-like legs wouldn't be able to pierce her.

Mireille sent out a short prayer to anyone who was listening, waited for the phantasm to twist, and then rapidly crawled out. She pushed herself off the ground just before leaving the creature's shadow, and for a moment, felt the darkness grasp at her back. It sent a deathly shiver through her. There were many documented reports on what contact with a phantasm felt like, and the overriding conclusion was that it should never be done without as many layers of anything as possible between them. Her uniform shielded her, but the cold, cold touch still fought to shut down her nerves.

“Mireille?!” shouted Yuela, her face absolutely white with terror and stress as she continued faithfully circling the monster. “Where's Coco?! Is she . . . ?!”

“I-I don't know!” called back Mireille, more grateful than anything that Yuela's voice helped to bring her out of that plunging shock. “I couldn't move her!”

“What?! Is she—”

If Yuela had finished her sentence, Mireille wasn't able to hear it. At this point, the creature had had enough. Instead of turning, it leaned down on one side and thrust a penetrating leg out.

But it landed nowhere near Yuela.

It almost hit Mireille.

The impact alone sent her lurching to the ground. It was the phantasm's very first attack, and although Mireille suspected its legs excluding the front pair were weaker or less suited to striking out, the narrowness of the passage meant there was no escape from its range. She witnessed a cloud of stone burst in front of her, and a leg crawling with living shadow withdrawing from what was now a very sizeable hole in the wall.

“. . . . . .”

She'd been underneath those things!

Mireille regained her footing. She didn't know whether or not to engage the creature in melee. She could earn its attention, but to what purpose? Seeing the ghastly strength in those legs, it was clear there was no hope of any contest. If she were to assault it, then it had to be for Yuela to take advantage of a weakness.

At the same time, the phantasm completely abandoned its previous mode of attack. It appeared to randomly strike another section of the wall, presumably where it predicted Yuela would go. However, she'd already jumped back towards the far side of the passage where the path led towards the entrance. Her intention was to focus solely on her aim.

The target was the creature's eyes.

“Look at me!” she shouted, with much more bravado than her ghostly face suggested. “Haven't you been chasing me? I'm right here!”

Either because it'd heard Yuela's wavering challenge or had by now accumulated an instinctive hatred towards her which brushed off the need for senses, the phantasm drew itself towards her. For the second time, she punctured the same rightmost eye.

The eye wasn't empty, after all.

Frothing liquid the consistency of tar surged out like a grotesque blister split in two. But although it dripped from the creature's body, it neither resembled nor functioned as blood. It did not circulate to fuel its organs, of which it had none. As was everything about the phantasm, it was a pale imitation of life. An apparition's blood.

Whatever the secrets behind the phantasm's anatomy, it still reared itself on its hind legs like a wounded animal. Its front scissors scalped the air, before viciously lunging forwards. It was a brutal assault ignorant to where it struck, and Yuela managed to evade it with a deft skip to the side.

She didn't try to steal an attack into the flank. Without stopping, she skid to the floor, almost burying the back of her head into the dust as a leg more deadly than any sword point flew above her. She glanced at the ground in search of Coco, then stumbled as she propelled herself back onto her feet. Mireille caught her with a heavy thud into her chest.

The disorientation didn't affect Yuela. She hadn't been allowed to swallow a single breath during her mad dash, but still immediately swivelled around with an arrow notched on her bow.

She released it into the back of the phantasm's head. The arrow buried itself inside, but the reaction was far less volatile.

Furiously digging into the earth where Coco still lay, the phantasm not only turned, but accelerated while moving up the passage. For the first time, both its prey were together and the only direction they could go was back.

Back towards the narrowing passage where a deathly end most certainly waited.

Play time was over.

Yuela could no longer safely circle around the creature with its willingness to thrash out with its side legs, nor could she always evade its lunges while still hoping to aim accurately with her bow. At some point, she had to stand her ground and try to bring it down head on.

And for that, she needed someone to shield her.

“Y-Yuela!” said Mireille. “Get behind me! We'll help Coco after. Just focus on attack!”

“That's not enough,” replied Yuela, her voice hoarse. “My arrows. I'm not damaging it enough.”

“You're damaging it.”

It sounded a bit clumsy, but Mireille hoped she got the point across. Yuela merely gave a small nod.

For someone like Mireille, who wasn't sure if her weapons could leave any lasting impact on the hulking phantasm and its shield of creeping, hungry darkness, all she could do was push that responsibility onto Yuela.

She had her own duty, after all.

At long last, Mireille Kloeter, knight cadet of St. Florin's Academy, drew her weapons.

They breathed as they their left their sheaths.

In her right hand was a steel rapier, as sleek as Yuela's arrows and glistening at the tip. In her left hand was a tall sabre, its shining, single-edged blade reflecting the image of the approaching phantasm.

This was Mirielle's irregular dual wield style, which favoured relentless aggression as both offence and defence. No matter how many enemies were in her way, she would face them with the training her sister had imparted on her.

How lucky for her there was only one.

Mireille's figure became illuminated by the floundering sunlight as she stepped in front of Yuela. The back passage lay behind them. If necessary, Yuela could retreat further in and strike at the phantasm from a distance, but she could not do it indefinitely. There was no telling how fast the creature was in a straight race. Certainly fast enough to stalk them while they walked along its trap.

“Don't fight it head on,” said Yuela, once more drawing her bow. “You can't beat it.”

The sudden calmness in her voice helped alleviate some of Mirielle's terrible anxiety.

Not all of it. But enough.

“I know.”

“I just need to take out its eyes. I think that's its weakness.”

“Okay.”

Buy me time.

That's what she wanted to say. Mireille accepted the words for her.

“Are you ready?”

“Mm.”

Mireille wanted to answer with maximum enthusiasm.

In truth, she also wanted to maximum not fight the giant death spider.

However, she had the morsels of a plan as she held up her swords against the monster.

It was the only choice she had, so maybe it couldn't even be called a plan, but a cowardly gamble. At least she had that. Were this any other phantasm, perhaps it wouldn't have been available to her. And for that one spark of hope, she could only be thankful.

Even so, Mirielle had not been lying. She had no special abilities or powers. And she did not know why she had earned a scholarship. When she got back, she decided she would ask the principal.

As it was, she really was quite average. If she was to survive, it wouldn't be due to an awakening. Life was not so charitable.

Therefore, she would fight in a way that befitted her examination score.

As the creature began its lunge, she said a single word to Yuela.

“Retreat.”

For the first heartbeat, Yuela's expression turned to shock. For the next, it was one of grim acceptance.

As the phantasm's front legs arched forwards, both Mirielle and Yuela skipped back in unison, heading further within the passage.

And then they broke into a stumbling, reverse dash, absurd in all its desperateness.

With her swords up, Mireille received the creature's first blow. It was a straightforward thrust with the crude points of those lethal legs, and intended to impale her.

But she did not block it. She did she parry it. She did not deflect it.

She hacked at it.

There would be no elegance in Mirielle's defence. No beauty. No great swordsmanship. For this fight, she would be a lumberjack wielding a heavy axe. A set of them.

The light sabre. The graceful rapier.

They were now little more than improvised batting weapons.

The phantasm paused to gather itself on its support legs before striking out. That brief lull, not even a second, was their only hope of survival. Moving quickly even in the dire conditions, that one vulnerability in the creature's attack pattern provided for barely enough room. Using this as her only lifeline, Mireille swiped out at the tips of the great blades seeking to puncture her.

The creature was unhesitating. Its first lunge was scarcely repelled. It drove itself onwards, its two front legs ceaselessly launching themselves at the prey tantalisingly within range. Beginning the fight at the limits of her strength, Mireille abandoned every technique she had and commanded every muscle into swiping, swatting and hacking.

Her movements were a waste. She didn't care. She couldn't care. She used all her energy to swing. She used all her energy to drag those weapons back. And all the while she crudely abused her fencing weapons, Yuela was behind her every step of the way. As the creature prepared to run them down, she launched an arrow above Mireille's shoulder. Colour flashed in her peripheral vision as it sung past her ear and entombed itself into the advancing foe's eyes.

It jolted. It reared itself. And then it advanced.

Untiring and undeviating in its maddened pursuit, the creature was inescapable. It was all Mireille could do to fight a running retreat, using her weapons to swipe away at the impaling legs as she fell back and back. All the while, the arrows flew past her shoulder as Yuela shared the burdens in this desperate retreat.

Because of Yuela's well executed, perfect strikes, she alone prevented a phantasm of this magnitude from overwhelming Mireille in mere seconds. Even when a single, wayward arrow would result in her absolute loss, she never lost sight of her aim.

And so, they fought their retreating battle, never allowing the monster to sweep them off their feet. When it lunged, Mireille's heavy arms hacked away. When it charged, Yuela's faultless arrows embedded themselves into its trio of eyes.

The darkness of the creature became a familiar sight to them. It was not only the darkness of its shell clawing at the air, but the darkness of its frothing, mocking blood dripping freely onto the floor. The creature's face was an oily painting of its own sickly viscera, and they watched it without faltering. Mireille and Yuela faced forwards, blind to where the narrowing passage behind them led. Blind to the unevenness of the ground. Blind to the rocks and stones which sought to fell them. Blind to the nauseating exhaustion which wrecked them. Mireille held up her rapier and sabre even as the vomit fought in both her stomach and her throat. Yuela held up her bow even as the sweat ran down her brows and walled her sight.

Neither could afford to stop. Neither could afford to think.

Walking. Stumbling. Running. It might as well have been a rout, but fought they still did, and never once did they turn away from the encroaching darkness.

This was the first battle Mireille and Yuela would fight together.

Not one of victory or survival. But unthinking desperation.

The retreating battle into the deep, dark end.

Until finally—

“Haa . . . aah . . . ah . . .”

“Hngh . . . nngh . . .”

They heard a sound they thought they would never hear again.

The sound of their own breaths against the quiet air.

Wordlessly, they continued walking, stumbling, and running. And they continued even as the immense creature dropped to the floor.

Such was its weight and size, and the narrowing of the passage, that its still abdomen and legs lay spread over every surface. The phantasm had gone silent.

Mireille and Yuela had survived.

They had won.

Or so they wanted to believe. But the dim voice of sanity in their minds told them otherwise.

A defeated phantasm did not lie down. Their corpses did not erode with time.

Phantasms went as they came. Suddenly and without understanding. Just as they did not have organs, they did not have a corpse.

They simply disappeared.

And so Mireille and Yuela watched as the great creature's wilted abdomen began to rise. They watched as the its legs began to stab into the walls once more. They watched as the three unblinking eyes returned. They watched as all hope left them.

The disgusting cavity that Yuela had carved out in its head was no more.

“Regeneration . . . ?” whispered Yuela, her voice so quiet that Mireille struggled to comprehend. “No . . . this can't be . . . no . . .”

This was an intelligent phantasm.

It had survived on its own. It wasn't new. It was old. Mireille knew by the unnaturalness of the crevice. By the path. It had excavated it.

It was already an outlier among its kind. Of course, it made sense that it also had powers of fortitude.

Finally, Mireille's arms gave way. She tried lifting them up, but they had long emptied of strength. In another second, her knees would buckle and her legs would also fail her. How she had remained standing, she did not know. She wondered how many years of her life she'd secretly traded away for those extra seconds. All of them, apparently. She was about to die.

Only her hands still held her swords. She could not raise them. It was a death grip.

The phantasm approached, its every wound gone. The darkness exuding from it was greater than ever. It was not the darkness of malice, but of delight. Its movements were slower than it had ever been. A victory parade. The phantasm would devour. It would grow.

Mireille wondered how it was going to gobble her without a mouth.

It would probably be painful.

Yuela collapsed on the ground, but like her, still held her weapon. She raised it, but no arrow would appear on its strings. Even her bow had fallen silent.

Mireille dropped her sabre. Using both arms, she feebly lifted her rapier halfway. It was doing nothing more than being offered as a toothpick.

The creature moved to strike.

Mireille kept her eyes open. She didn't know she had such a morbid side to her.

Finally, its hungry, front legs burst forwards.

They burst forwards and stabbed the ground inches in front of them.

“. . . . . .”

It was toying with them. That was what Mireille thought.

And then she watched the phantasm move.

Not forwards.

But backwards.

It was the most minimal of movement. But with its legs motionless, Mireille saw as the creature's body nevertheless shifted in the opposite direction.

Almost as though it was suddenly pulled backwards.

In a reversal to its measured, taunting approach, the phantasm was now a mass of movement. Each of its bladed legs stabbed into the ground, and once more, gravel and dust faithfully shot up to meet every strike.

And then, it moved again.

Mireille and Yuela's eyes widened, watching in disbelief as the entire creature, so vast that it covered the entire passage, was jerked backwards in a single, forceful movement. Its legs remained dug into the ground, except that the ground also moved with it. Short trenches now marked the location between where each of the creature's legs were compared to where they'd first ingrained themselves into the earth.

The creature's response was the most revolting they'd seen yet. Even more so than at any point during the retreating battle.

Its legs dug even deeper into the ground, frantically burrowing until almost half their length was drilled into the mountain's heart. Meanwhile, its head twisted and turned, as though silently attempting to scream. The abdomen was in an even more distressed state. Great veins ran across all the surface as it ballooned in and out at a grotesque pace.

With another unnatural jerk, the phantasm was pulled further away. Deep, seismic crunching could be heard as its legs tore through the rocks beneath the ground.

Then, the phantasm stopped struggling.

It utterly collapsed. Its head drooped to the ground, twitching and writhing without end. Its abdomen utterly shrivelled up and joined it. Its many legs remained buried in the ground at an unnatural angle, no longer supporting the weight of its own body.

And behind the squirming, shuddering mass was a thirteen year old girl.

“Coco apologises for the delay. She was immobilised as she shielded herself.”

Coco blinked at them, seemingly treating the deadly phantasm beneath her as nothing more than a mild nuisance that required her to stand on her toes. She looked none the worse for wear after her trip beneath the very same phantasm she was now standing behind.

Mireille and Yuela were so utterly shocked at the scene, neither raced to question the legitimacy of what they were seeing. For all they knew, they'd already died.

“C-Coco?!” said Yuela at last. “Are . . . Are you okay?! Are you hurt?!”

“Coco is uninjured,” she replied, her composure in contrast to everyone else's ruined states. Phantasm included. “Coco specialises in offensive strengthening magic. Her defensive abilities are not optimised, requiring significant downtime after the activation of unrestricted shielding magic.”

Offensive strengthening magic.

Mirielle repeated the words in her head. Although she did not know what the specifics entailed, she got the gist of it through seeing what had happened in front of her. The phantasm looked like a rag doll being dragged across the ground by a little girl. Because that's exactly what happened.

That must be why she didn't carry a staff. She used herself as a weapon.

“I . . . I see,” said Yuela, clearly not seeing at all. “Did . . . did you do something to the phantasm? Aren't we in great danger? It . . . It has regeneration abilities.”

“Coco is standing on the phantasm's hind legs. She is using her body as a conduit to invoke subjugation magic. Any regenerative abilities remain active, but it is no longer capable of exerting significant movement.”

Yuela swallowed a gulp. She hadn't done that even when the phantasm began its final advance.

“You're . . . treading on the phantasm . . . I see . . . and may I inquire as to your next plan of action?”

“Coco will now punch this thing until it dies.”

Without waiting for Yuela's mouth to close, Coco proceeded to kill the phantasm.

It really was as simple as that.

The dim, prismatic aura which surrounded her grew in strength. As she raised her little fists, it seemed like most of the light congregated around her knuckles.

And then she punched the phantasm.

It wasn't a punch charged with any great emotion.

It was on the same level as kneading dough.

Except that instead of punching air out, she punched out swathes of black mass. Hitting the unresisting phantasm, Coco literally swiped away portions of the phantasm's flash with each hit. Its cold body and its oily blood. All of it were scattered in neat, rounded chunks against the crevice wall, whereupon they immediately dissolved into nothingness.

Finally, when all that remained were the creature's legs, they too disappeared.

From flight to exhaustion to surrender to complete and total victory, Mireille and Yuela stood with their mouths agape as they watched how the little girl efficiently did away with the big, bad phantasm as though she were shovelling out snow from a garden.

They looked at the remains of where the victor of their lives once stood.

“Coco . . . are you invincible?” asked Yuela, her voice more polite than at any point she was speaking with Principal Priscelia.

“Coco regrets to dispel any notion of invincibility. She is a witch and is limited by her Mana reserves. Coco also wishes to add that her strength enhancement does not correlate to a significant increase in her passive defence.”

“I see . . . so you're just . . . you're just really good at punching things . . .”

“Battle situations similar to this encounter are preferred, where Coco can strike from behind without threat of counter attack.”

“I . . . shall keep that in mind,” said Yuela, groggily returning to her feet. “In any regard . . . you have my unreserved appreciation for coming to our side in time.”

As Mireille rose to join her, she caught the sound of footsteps approaching from the nearest bend in the passageway. For some reason, they sounded meek and uncertain.

The first thing she saw was the shiny red jewel peeping down the passage. The second thing she saw was the face of Tabitha Holtsen. The third thing she saw was the rather large bump on the top of her head.

“Ooh, there you guys are!” she said, nursing her head trauma with a little rub. “Coco, you gotta be more gentle when you throw me about like that. You're not a little girl anymore, you know? Well, you are, but you're not a tiny one. More importantly, I'm a fragile and gentle lady at heart!”

She then broke into a poorly fitting smile as she studied Mirielle and Yuela's battered states.

“Soooo, anyway . . . my memories kinda fuzzy, but wasn't there, like, a super big, super scary creepy-crawly somewhere? You, uh . . . you guys need any help or . . . ?”

Mireille had to hold Yuela back.