Given the group’s consensus to not split up just yet, it moved as one into the junction room. The strangulated corpse in the room did wonders to reduce the collective level of ease and rocket tension right up. Though not all of the individuals present had deemed it necessary to comment on the situation yet, the next step seemed clear: choosing a path to take. Of these, the upward stairwell to the Living Quarters and the unmarked downward stairwell seemed least inviting, though the thought of walking through unlit hallway to the Traffic Center could certainly set a few hairs on end, particularly Luke’s. Any chance of peacefully ambling through the Brewing Storm seemed bleaker by the second, especially considering what happened next.
Out of nowhere –or was it everywhere at once?- a long, high-pitched, and disturbingly human giggle echoed through the distillery. It came from the walls, though not the intercom system, and could be heard clearly by every man and woman present. Suddenly the rhythmic tapping in the tubes, pipes, and vents turned into audible scurrying, threatening chatters, and laughs. Any panicked looking would turn up nothing for the moment, but no member of the rescue party could fail to observe that living creatures were moving around them. Without warning the overhead light blinked out, plunging the room into darkness. The next instant, a change in the sounds indicated that their owners now moved in the open. Every instinct, whether human or faunus, would be firing right now; few fears manifested as acutely as being attacked by many unknown creatures in the dark. A second later, a single, distant light appeared, shining from an opened doorway at the end of the Traffic Center hall. In this very thin radiance, flashes of activity could be seen all around the junction chamber. All that could be seen were vague glimpses of stooped, pitch-black backs just smaller than human ones, grossly skinny limbs and taut skin, and barely-visible red eyes that produced no glow of their own. Under this terrifying veil of darkness, the unknown foe attacked.
The already-damaged Deathstalker did not sustain the attacks of both Sarina and Sterling well. With a feeble shriek, it slid down the caravan’s side as it picked up speed, ultimately plopping off onto the arid terrain to be run over by the vehicle port wheels, causing a violent and abrupt bump that no doubt jarred the hunters but failed to dislodge them. Now rolling at a respectable velocity, the caravan easily left the remaining Nightmares in the dust, fading away into the distance in a diminishing cacophony of shrill neighs and whinnies. Though Jorie would be out cold for quite some time, her comrades fared admirably during the initial encounter, with no more than a handful of hurts between them. Beneath them, the tanklike all-terrain supertruck thundered across the cracked red dirt, its speed defying the idea that any Grimm could catch it. Team JESS settled in for the ride.
A good twenty minutes later, the terrain began to visibly change. Barren waste gave with to savannah, a sea of long yellow grass, but a sea in turmoil, for the landscape beneath the grass rose and fell unpredictably. Here, nature had molded the fertile dirt with clay, arranging it into a spectacular collage of bluffs, canyons, outcroppings, and natural arches, all coated with a scalp of that long grass that so beautifully billowed in the wind. One couldn’t be blamed for imagining all the strange and irregular formations as protrusions of some massive skeleton partially buried below. As the caravan vehicle rolled through an incredible, cagelike lattice of stone and clay, woven together with the roots of flat-topped scrubland trees, this place seemed like a fantasy.
Jessamine would not have long to sightsee, however. Their ride descended a gradual incline, into a canyon, about half again as wide as the vehicle on both sides, and headed for a gargantuan arch that stretched above the canyon exit like a monolith. Pitting the surfaces of the left and right walls like Swiss cheese were dark, ominous holes, and when the vehicle came roughly two-thirds through the canyon a distinct scraping noise could be heard all around. Without warning, black shapes burst from the holes ahead, stretching across the entire canyon like a wall of scaly ropes. Red eyes glimmered in the tunnels; this canyon, evidently, was home for an entire colony of unnervingly intelligent King Taijitus. Now the exit was blocked by five different lengths of snake, each at least a meter thick. Other Taijitus poked from holes, threatening to attack the hunters when the caravan slowed down. Out of nowhere, the situation seemed dire indeed.
On top of the arch beneath which the vehicle had been on course to roll, there stood a purple-haired wilderness enthusiast wearing a periwinkle sweater large enough to function as both shirt and skirt. The dust tattoos around her wrists shone with power as she surveyed the troubling scene below. Though Lilac knew these people not, there were people in danger, and she could not stand by and allow the Grimm to hurt them.
