Chapter Fifteen:

  “Mountain Paths”

  The trail narrowed as the mountains loomed larger, their jagged peaks rising sharp and uneven against the pale horizon. The air grew colder as the group ascended. Each step crunched beneath heavy boots, and the sharp scent of pine and ice filled their lungs.

  Yumi kept pace beside Rai, her breath steady despite the chill. She was focused, but her thoughts kept drifting back to Kagemura, to the team she had left behind. To John.

  The landscape around them was otherworldly. Ancient trees reached skyward, their branches vanishing into the pale light. The silence swallowed everything. The snow decided noise didn’t belong here. It buried every sound along with the trail behind them.

  Rai broke the silence first, her voice carrying across the stillness. "I never thought I’d find myself in these kinds of mountains. Feels like we’re walking in the middle of nowhere." She wiped a few strands of hair from her face, her expression unchanged.

  Yumi shot her a sidelong glance. "Didn’t you come from the mountains?"

  Rai chuckled softly. "Sure, but they were nothing like this. These mountains are... different. There’s something about them, don’t you think?"

  Yumi nodded, her ears twitching slightly. "I can feel it, too. Like the land hasn’t been touched in centuries... and it wants to stay that way."

  A few paces ahead, Kaori crouched low near a patch of disturbed snow. Her ears twitched. Without a word, she brushed aside a drift with the back of her hand, revealing a deep, narrow impression. Something long, clawed.

  Takeshi stopped beside her, silent. He studied the tracks with a frown.

  "Not fresh," he muttered, "but not old enough to ignore."

  Rai and Yumi approached, their footsteps muffled by the blanket beneath them. Kaori stood, brushing snow from her palms.

  "They don’t match anything local," she said. "Too narrow to be bear. Too long to be wolf." Kaori looked out over the ridge, then back to the tracks. "It’s Tsuchigumo. Has to be."

  Yumi glanced at her. "Tsuchi-what?"

  Takeshi didn’t look up. "Spider-beasts. Big ones. Chitin, venom, way too many legs. They hunt in swarms."

  Rai shuddered. "God, I hate spiders."

  The group paused, eyes scanning the canopy and cliffs.

  Wind swept down from the peaks, stirring powder off the branches above. The air turned brittle. The path ahead narrowed further, winding between jagged boulders and steep drops.

  Rai tightened her gloves again. "Let’s not give them a chance to circle back."

  The trail bent along a narrow ridge, hemmed in by jagged rock and sheer drop. They moved as a unit now—Rai steady at the center, Kaori scouting ahead, Takeshi watching the rear. It wasn’t polished yet, but it was starting to feel like a team.

  Yumi kept her daggers close to hand, her ears twitching at the faintest creak of snow. Every breath came out as mist, vanishing into the still air, breath offered like incense to the mountains. The trees thinned, giving way to stretches of open slope. Too exposed.

  Kaori raised a hand.

  Everyone froze. Just ahead, half-buried in the snow, lay the body of a small deer—ribs split open, steam still rising faintly from the cavity.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Kaori knelt beside it. She didn’t touch the body.

  "Still warm."

  Takeshi crouched next to her. "Whatever did this is close."

  The ridge narrowed further. Below, the forest opened wide and dark. The slope below was treacherous, too steep to run, too far to fall.

  "Eyes up," Rai said. "If it’s watching, it knows we’ve got no way out."

  A chittering sound skated across the rock. Then another, closer. Then silence.

  Yumi turned, just in time to see the treetops behind them sway—then snap.

  The Tsuchigumo came all at once.

  They came fast.

  Chitin scraped rock as the first Tsuchigumo dropped onto the path, landing hard enough to crack the frozen ground. It scuttled forward in jerking bursts, its legs too long, too many, its fangs clicking in anticipation.

  Kaori struck first. Her blade flashed once, carving a shallow slash across its eyes before she vanished backward. Yumi was already moving, foxfire flaring at her daggers.

  "Spread out!" Rai called. "Watch the flanks!"

  Two more spiders burst from the cliff wall to their left, followed by another skittering down the ridge behind. The path became chaos—steel and snow, flame and fang.

  Yumi danced between the creatures, her blades trailing blue fire. One spider reared, and she lunged low, slicing through the soft joint beneath its belly. It shrieked and collapsed, legs curling in.

  Takeshi met another head-on, his weight behind a shoulder-check that knocked it back before his spear snapped forward.

  Rai moved like a storm. Her war fan snapped open mid-spin, catching one spider across the face with a gust sharp enough to shear bark. She pivoted without pause, the next swing driving another off the ledge.

  The Tsuchigumo didn’t come in waves. They just kept coming.

  "There’s no end to them," Yumi shouted, twisting around just in time to deflect a strike meant for Kaori.

  "Then we make one," Kaori snapped back, already turning to face the next.

  The cliffside echoed with metal, fire, and the shrieks of dying things. Blood—red and black—steamed in the snow.

  A low, rhythmic chittering rolled through the ridge, deeper than before. Yumi turned toward the sound just as the trees behind them split apart.

  The Alpha Tsuchigumo emerged, dragging its massive body into the clearing, tearing through the slope. Its shell shimmered with ice, its eyes clustered and glowing faintly blue. Venom hissed from its mandibles, steaming where it touched the snow.

  Rai cursed under her breath.

  "Big one’s finally here," Kaori muttered, flexing her grip on her blade.

  Takeshi planted his spear. "Then we finish it. Right here."

  Yumi's foxfire flared brighter around her daggers. She didn’t wait.

  She sprinted forward, flanking the Alpha, her blades a blur of blue light. The beast turned with a speed that defied its size, swiping with a limb thick as a tree trunk. Yumi ducked, rolled, and came up under its shell, striking deep.

  It shrieked. The sound vibrated through her body.

  Rai followed next, a burst of wind hurling her into the fray. She struck high, her fan carving a path across the Alpha’s eyes. Kaori was already behind it, blade drawn, and Takeshi’s spear drove into one of its legs.

  It buckled but didn’t fall.

  The Alpha lashed out, venom spraying wide. Snow hissed where it landed. Yumi’s leg burned. She stumbled but didn’t go down.

  "I've been poisoned!" She hissed.

  "I got you," Rai said. She threw a vial toward Yumi, who caught it and drank without question. The burn dulled.

  Kaori landed beside her. "We need to bring it down now!"

  Yumi nodded. "On your mark, Rai."

  Rai raised her fan.

  "Now!"

  Wind and flame hit together—foxfire laced with slicing gales, the strike centered at the Alpha’s exposed underbelly.

  It let out a sound like metal tearing, then its legs gave out all at once. The whole mountain seemed to exhale as the thing collapsed into the snow.

  Steam rose from the Alpha’s corpse, curling into the air like smoke from a dying fire. Around it, the remaining Tsuchigumo scattered into the trees. They skittered over stone, dove into crevices, and fled as though whatever held them together had been severed in an instant.

  No one spoke at first. Snowflakes began their fall, slow and aimless. The silence that followed the battle wasn’t peace, it was aftermath. Yumi’s chest heaved. Her hands shook, the blades flickering out as the last of her foxfire faded.

  Kaori broke the silence. “Still hate spiders.”

  Rai gave a breathless laugh and leaned on her knees. “You’re not alone.”

  Takeshi checked his spear, then turned his gaze up the ridge. “Others may have heard that. We need to move.”

  They regrouped quickly. Bruised, bloodied, but standing.

  Yumi downed her last potion. Warmth spread slowly through her limbs, though the ache lingered. Her thoughts drifted, John, Akira, the road ahead.

  They pressed forward along the narrow ridge. Step by step, breath by breath, the path widened, until snow gave way to stone, and stone to soft earth. Through a break in the trees, a faint amber glow lit the edge of the woods.

  The Yama-Okami camp.

  Tents fashioned from hide and carved beams dotted the clearing. Totems stood watch at the perimeter, weathered and marked with painted symbols. Smoke drifted up from low fires, the scent of pine and roasted meat carried on the wind.

  “Finally,” Kaori muttered.

  Takeshi’s voice was quieter now. “We’re home.”