Chapter [B5] 4 — Home Front

Chapter [B5] 4 — Home Front

A copper kettle steamed on a spirit-warming plate. No one paid it any attention.

Sheldon looked up when Labby entered. He was in his small form to conserve chi, bright-eyed, almost cute enough to make her want to copy his form. His aura was that of a sea in winter, calm on the surface with a deep pull underneath. (She’d once sat on his head like a hat. He hadn’t noticed for three breaths. That was talent.)

He chirped and greeted her with a slow nod.

Labby bowed back respectfully.

“How goes your attempt to contact the Lunar Court?” Ash, currently in his human form, had no patience for such niceties.

“Labby is still trying,” she admitted unhappily. “But Labby can do it! If Labby can climb higher with Zhang’s help and improve her dragon-thunder.”

Sheldon nodded. “Good. West ridge tonight, relay. First, help fight.”

The reception windows narrow when the sky dims, so they would raise a relay on the west ridge later.

Ash spoke next. “We need your help today first. Sheldon has pushed some demons underground, but now they’re probing through the salt caverns and the old river vein. Can you take them out? Perhaps with Yan Yun? I have too much to do here to waste time pursuing them, and Sheldon is needed here, but if they’re left to themselves they may come up elsewhere in the region and hurt our civilians or even form some kind of surrounding.”

“Lantern-charms,” Sheldon added, nudging a small tray over with his beak. “Mark your path. We will watch.” He tilted his head toward the map-plates across the back wall of the room.

“If the tunnels shift, the charms will fail and return,” Ash added. “If that happens, don’t force the path. Surface and regroup.”

Labby nodded and clipped the charms to her belt. Sheldon’s table had three map-plates inked with lines she recognized: fault paths, groundwater flow, and the protective arrays they’d threaded into the bedrock. A fourth plate on the table pulsed faint green where the wards touched the sea, Sheldon’s constant meditation point. He kept one foot on that plate even while speaking, eyes half-focused elsewhere.

She turned to go and paused. “Do you want Labby to leave a message for Master if Labby meets him on the way back?”

Sheldon turned his little head her direction with his usual steady calm. “We kept the tunnels. South line is stable.” Then he paused before adding, “Tell him to be safe.”

Ash paced in the corner, his desk holding a full plate of food he hadn’t touched. Labby lifted a paw to wave, then let it fall. Lately Ash seemed irritated with Labby and her belief that Master would come back. He’d given in to hopelessness, which irritated her back. How could he? Master would return. Obviously.

She tried anyway. “Ash, Labby will be quick. Then practice together? You promised to help Labby with the coil-step.”

He looked at her, then at the door, then back. “Later. I have a lot to do.”

“You said that yesterday,” Labby muttered.

“I’m busy,” he said, voice flat. “Guard duty tonight, patrol after. Not all of us have time to sit around watching the plants grow.”

“You don’t sleep,” Labby said. “Rest is important.”

“Still busy.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Fine. Be busy. But don’t be dumb.” She tapped the plate near his elbow and pushed it closer. “Eat.”

He didn’t move. His aura stayed even. Irritating.

Sheldon chirped softly. “Labby.”

She perked up and turned.

“Miasma bloom samples. Yin needs more. Mark them.”

“Labby understands.” She wanted to burn all miasma, but Yin’s projects always turned into things that saved lives. She could hold back. A little. “Labby will still burn any that are active, but Yin may have the rest.” ⱤÄɴÓβÈṢ

Zhang arrived then, hovering at the threshold, polite as always. “Ready to go?” He glanced at Ash, then at Sheldon’s map-plate, reading the flow at a glance. “Good. I’ll escort them to the lower entrance. I can lock the ceiling if something big shifts.”

“Good,” Ash said. “If the ceiling locks, pull out. We’ll clear it later.”

Labby adjusted her belt again, checking her tools. Treats, coil-wire, two spare talismans in case the lantern-charms cracked, and the tiny bronze whistle Master had given her long ago for emergencies. She touched it for half a breath. The metal was cool. She took her hand away.

The three of them stepped outside together.

Snow dusted the flagstones and brown slush formed ridges alongside the paths where it had been pushed out of the way, though ordinarily it should have been well into spring by now.

The courtyard gate stood open, and beyond it the main street seethed with motion. A supply cart rattled past, pulled by a spectral ox. Junior alchemists jogged by with crates of pills, shouting numbers. On the wall, two elders argued about array harmonics and electrical interactions while a scribe tried to keep up.

From the southern tower, a bird cry crackled. A moment later Leiyu blazed past on some urgent errand.

“Yan Yun’s at the east ring,” Zhang said. “She’s expecting you.”

“Good,” Labby said. “We’ll go straight down the tea-pond entrance. The old root tunnel connects to the salt caverns there.”

Zhang’s lips twitched. “The ‘tea-pond entrance’ was not named by the cartographers.”

“Cartographers name things long,” Labby said, serious. “Labby’s tea-pond is short.”

“Fair,” Zhang said.

They cut across a training yard. A dozen militia practiced reload drills while a sect instructor paced behind them, correcting their breath timing to match the recoil suppressors. On a side range, three cultivators fired bolt-arrows into a target dummy that bled dark smoke.

Liuxiang’s disciples were carving ward plates under a tarp, their gloved hands precise and tired. A cook banged a ladle on a pot and yelled about lunch loans and bowls not returning.

Yan Yun waited at the east ring’s inner gate, hair tied high, armor-light robe wrapped tight over padded cloth.

A small bag lay at her feet, which she tossed to Labby without preamble. “Explosive charms. Don’t stick them to wet rock. They slide.”

Labby nodded, unbothered by the idea of sliding explosions. “Underground demons,” she said. “Sheldon wants them gone.”

“I heard,” Yan Yun said. She didn’t smile much these days. She still tried sometimes, and the effort showed in her eyes before she stopped trying again. “Ready?”

“Labby is ready,” Labby said.

Zhang touched the gate terminal, sinking gravity into the lock so the bars moved without grinding. He pulled the lever once. The gate swung inward. Cold air rose from the tunnel mouth. The lanterns flickered, then steadied as the sub-array synced with the wall’s ring.

“I’ll shadow your descent for two strata,” Zhang said. “If the ceiling shifts, I’ll catch it. If something climbs above you, I’ll crush it.”

Labby grinned. “Crush many!”

He gave her a formal nod. “And you fight well.”

“Labby will fight steady,” she corrected, repeating Master’s phrasing.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Right,” Zhang said, amused despite himself. He reached out and ruffled her between the ears with his off hand. The gesture was brief and careful, but it helped. He took off, straight up, and then hovered over the tunnel entrance, already closing his eyes to listen for movement.

Labby and Yan Yun slipped into the tunnel. The first passage angled down through limestone. The walls were damp. The lantern-charms painted the rock with a soft glow that kept shadows clear without ruining night-sight. Labby kept her hands ready. Her thunder gathered around her bones and skin, a tight coil instead of a spray. The instructor who had helped her tune it had said she burned too much. She had nodded and then burned too much anyway. Today she would not.

They passed the first junction. Yan Yun marked the keystone with chalk and set a second mark at shoulder height. “In case we have to run,” she said, as always. Labby set a small copper bead near the floor as well, Master’s design, which would hum if a demon crossed it from the other side.

The air cooled. The tunnel widened and tied into the old river vein. Water trickled somewhere unseen. Labby heard it under the ward buzz. She put two fingers on the rock and felt for the hum of Sheldon’s lines. They ran clean. Good.

“You’re certain you can climb high enough?” Yan Yun asked as they walked. “To reach the Lunar Court’s relay, I mean. The stars are dimmer since… since that day.”

“Labby is sure. With Zhang’s lift, yes. Without it… Maybe. Even then, with thunder, yes, Labby should be able to. It will hurt, but it is okay if it hurts.” She spoke fact, not bravado.

“Don’t waste yourself before we go to the Cradle,” Yan Yun said. “We’ll need you.”

“Master needs us,” Labby said. “So Labby will go.”

Yan Yun didn’t argue. She scraped frost off a rock with the edge of her hand. “I hate waiting too,” she said after a moment.

The tunnel dipped into the salt caverns. Here the walls gleamed faintly. Labby’s steps crunched on crystal dust.

"Ceiling's compromised," Yan Yun whispered, marking stress fractures with chalk. "If it comes down..."

"Zhang will catch it," Labby said, but her voice wavered. Zhang couldn't be everywhere.

They passed the first junction where Mei's squad had made their last stand two days ago. Labby tried not to look at the scorch marks. Yan Yun set markers with mechanical precision, but Labby caught her wiping her eyes.

The air grew thick with miasma. Labby's throat burned. Her threatened to burst out from sheer pressure, but she held it back. The last time she'd let loose down here, she'd brought down fifty feet of tunnel and nearly killed a rescue team.

Yan Yun slowed and listened. Labby listened too. She heard the faintest clatter. Then a hiss.

“Left,” Labby said.

They moved as one. Two small tar-black demons scrambled over a ridge of salt toward them. They avoided the lantern light, clever enough to try flanking, but it was a futile strategy. Labby flicked a bead with her thumb. The bead rang once, and the nearest demon turned its head at the sound. Yan Yun’s spear flashed. Clean thrust, clean exit. Black smoke dribbled from the wound. Labby slapped a talisman on the second demon’s face and pulsed a short bolt through it. The talisman sparked; the demon collapsed, twitching.

“They’re not even strong,” Labby said.

“Or maybe you’ve just gotten stronger, Labby,” Yan Yun chuckled.

They pushed on. The caverns opened into a bowl with a low ceiling. A split in the floor bled dark mist that smelled wrong. Labby recognized the cut. A demon had clawed through the rock, then been forced back by Sheldon’s sea pressure. Miasma streamed like breath. She wanted to blast it. She remembered Yin’s samples.

Mark, don’t burn, she reminded herself, and set two markers around the vent. The marks pulsed on her lantern-strip and, she knew, on Sheldon’s plate above. She walked the edge, sniffing for the telltale tang of a bloom ready to bind. Nothing, not yet.

“How many more?” Yan Yun asked.

“Not many. Sheldon said he pushed most of them. We got tail-end stragglers,” Labby said. She didn’t complain. Small work mattered. Small work kept the wall from failing and the people above from dying. Master always said that.

Yan Yun slowed again. “Your belief,” she said, words careful. “That he’ll return. I want to hold it too. Sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I close my eyes and the bond is a thread I can’t feel.”

Labby kept walking. “It’s there,” she said. “Master is there. We just can’t feel him because the tree is big and the sky is wrong. When the sky is right, we will feel him again. You can borrow my belief if you want.”

“How do I borrow it?” Yan Yun asked, almost smiling.

Labby thought. “You say: ‘Labby is right.’”

“Labby is—” Yan Yun exhaled. “You’re right. I’ll try.”

“Good,” Labby said, pleased. “Also eat. You forget to eat. Ash too. With the Chi dwindling, forgetting to eat can harm the body.”

Yan Yun grimaced. “He’s worse than me.”

Labby’s ears drooped. “Ash is mad at me,” she said. “Labby can tell. He doesn’t like that Labby says Master will come back. He thinks Labby is a child. He thinks belief is stupid.”

“I don’t think he thinks you’re stupid,” Yan Yun said. “He’s… scared. It makes him quiet. It makes him sharp.”

“Labby doesn’t like sharp Ash,” Labby said, honest.

“Neither do I,” Yan Yun said.

They reached the second stratum. Above, a ripple rolled through the stone. Zhang caught the ceiling with a breath of gravity and held it still until the pressure passed. Labby felt the weight ease, then step away.

A skitter rose behind them. Three more demons crawled from a side pocket, all limbs and open mouths. Yan Yun threw a charm. The air popped. Salt dust jumped. Labby lunged and slammed her shoulder into the largest, driving it into the floor. She put her fist through its head, then yanked back before the teeth could catch. Her coils held steady. She didn’t flood the cavern with thunder. She'd learned control, which also meant recognizing when not to use it.

The tunnel system proved larger than Sheldon's maps suggested. What should have been a simple sweep became a methodical hunt through branching passages that carved deeper into the bedrock.

"Something's wrong," Yan Yun murmured, touching the wall. Ice crystals spread from her fingers, then cracked. "The miasma's thicker than Sheldon reported."

Labby's thunder coiled tighter around her bones, nose wrinkling. "More than stragglers?"

Yan Yun frowned, studying her detection talisman. "That can’t be right.” The paper was turning black at the edges. "This reads forty, maybe fifty demons below us."

"Sheldon said he pushed them deep." Labby hoped Yan Yun was wrong more than believed it. Forty demons could kill a lot of people if they reached the surface. Labby set her copper bead near the floor and immediately felt the vibration. Not one or two demons, dozens just as Yan Yun had said, moving in coordination below them. Her ears twitched as she leaned closer to listen. "They're not running. They're organized."

“Then we don’t have time to waste.” Yan Yun led the way. They moved more quickly as they descended, keeping watch for danger, and it wasn’t long before they found the signs they were looking for. Fresh claw marks scored the walls in deliberate patterns. The demons had been carving. Building.

“Labby doesn’t like this.”

“Yan Yun doesn’t either,” Yan Yun muttered.

They followed the deepest cut and found only more evidence the demons had worked with purpose, not the mindless scratching Labby expected. The tunnel angled upward, following a natural fault toward the surface. Worse, she could smell fresh air mixing with the miasma—they were close to breakthrough.

"They've been busy," Yan Yun murmured, examining a freshly carved junction, then pointed to a set of gouged handholds spiraling upward toward the surface. "They’ve made stairs, this isn't random tunneling. They're planning a breach.” She paused to pull out her map, leaned closer to Labby’s sparking light to read it by. “I thought so. This connects to the old aqueduct. If they break through there..."

"They reach the refugees," Labby finished. Her thunder coiled tighter as her hand clenched into a fist. Three hundred families had sheltered there since the Fourth Peak fell.

"We need to collapse this," Yan Yun said, studying the ceiling. "Before—"

The attack came from three directions at once. Labby barely got her guard up before claws raked her shoulder, parting cloth and drawing blood.

No more doubt, these were soldiers, not stragglers. A planned incursion in the guise of a standard attack and retreat.

Labby's thunder exploded outward in a crackling sphere. Where her power had once been wild spray, now it carved precise arcs, each bolt finding its target. She'd grown terrifyingly strong, but there were so many. The nearest demon shrieked as lightning burned through its core and bounced to its neighbors before frying them too.

Yan Yun's spear work had become a deadly dance, each thrust finding gaps in demonic guard. But more kept coming. A demon leaped from above. She caught it mid-air, stabbing clean through its torso, but three more replaced it.

"The breach!" Yan Yun shouted over the chaos. "They're almost through!"

Labby could see it—a shaft of grey light filtering down from above. The demons weren't just trying to escape the tunnels. They were trying to surround the village from above while everyone watched the known entrances.

She gathered every scrap of power she had, thunder building until her bones ached. "We have to reach the surface," Labby said, gathering power. Her dragon-thunder had grown since the war began, fed by desperation and refined by constant battle. Where once she might have burned herself out in seconds, now she could sustain devastating power. "Labby will clear the way."

Yan Yun jumped forward to keep the enemy from reaching her back and Labby unleashed everything. Dark moon thunder cracked the cavern walls and sent salt crystals raining like knives as she launched herself up the shaft, lightning wreathing her form. Eclipse lightning that devoured the miasma around them, turning their own essence against them.

The demons shrieked, but kept coming, their eyes fixed on that precious shaft of surface light.

Then, without warning, every demon froze mid-attack. Their burning eyes dimmed and one by one, they simply... dissolved. Black miasma streamed from their collapsing forms, flowing upward and away like smoke drawn by an impossible wind, and all the heavy miasma of the tunnels joined it.

A few seconds after it began, it was over. The tunnel was empty, the breach unfinished, the area as untainted as though the miasma had never been there to begin with.

Labby and Yan Yun stood panting in the sudden silence, surrounded by empty salt and a lingering sense of wrongness. They'd won, technically. Sheldon’s escaped stragglers were gone, the breach was prevented, the refugees above were safe.

But the way the demons had disappeared, as if something had snatched them away for its own purpose… that made Labby's blood run cold.

"What just happened?" Yan Yun whispered.

Labby stared at the dissipating miasma, her thunder still crackling with unspent energy. The demons hadn't been trying to escape or attack the village at all. They'd been gathering, moving close enough to answer some distant summons.

And now they had.

“Labby doesn’t know,” she whispered. “And Labby doesn’t want to find out.” It reminded her of That Day, the moment when every demon in the city had disappeared at once, but while that moment had been a hopeful one, the feeling she had from today was anything but.

Please come back soon, Master. Please prove Labby is right to believe. We need you.

Please hurry.