Britta Stonefoot's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The dust settled, and Britta heard the beast again. It moved out where the seal used to be, no longer trapped behind stone. Its wide mouth clicked as it tasted the air. It could not see her. But it could hear her. One scrape of her heel would bring it running. She pressed her back to the cold wall and held her breath. "Stop moving," Trikar whispered. All three of his heads went still. "It hunts by sound. We wait." But waiting was not a map. Britta needed to know how far the passage ran. She slid one bare foot forward. A pebble rolled. The beast's head snapped toward the noise, and it lunged, jaws wide, straight at the sound. A green shape stepped out of the dark and caught the beast mid-air. Britta had met this stranger only once, at the crooked house shaped like a giant pickle jar, where bacon hung in the windows and claw marks scarred the fridge. Brinley Picklesworth had thrown her out then, tail thumping, too busy for a small dwarf's questions. Now that same spiked tail swung hard and knocked the beast into the wall. Brinley planted their lady legs wide, red cape flat against their back, and glared with their one eye. "Wrong tunnel to be quiet in," Brinley said. "This one carries every sound. I followed you both from the noise you made an hour ago." The beast shook itself and turned toward Brinley's voice. It charged. Brinley did not run. They braced both muscled arms and shoved, driving the pale thing back toward the open passage. "It won't die," Brinley said. "But it will chase noise. Give it noise it can't reach." Britta understood. She grabbed a fist-sized rock. She threw it hard down the far tunnel, into the deepest dark. The rock clattered and bounced, loud and rolling. The beast froze, then bolted after the sound, claws scraping stone. Its steps faded down the black throat of the passage. Then Brinley's tail swung once more, not at the beast, but at the cracked ceiling above the tunnel mouth. Spikes bit rock. Stone groaned and dropped. A slab crashed down and sealed the far passage where the beast had run. The clatter stopped. The breathing was gone, walled off in the deep. Britta stared at the fresh rockfall. She had opened one seal. Now a new one blocked her path, and the beast was trapped behind it with the tunnels she had come to map. "You sealed it," Britta said. "Now I can't go through." "I sealed the beast," Brinley said. "Not you. There's another way down. I've seen it." They pointed their tail at a low crack in the side wall, no taller than Britta herself. Trikar bent to look. "Smells like old rot down there," he said. "Wrong. Like something cut." Britta was already on her knees, peering into the crack. The beast was behind her now. The map waited ahead.