CHAPTER 37

"Thou shalt eat thy dead?" He looked away from the little man on the ground. "Would hate to see the other nine commandments."

"It's not really for us to judge," Yuki said as she summoned a blanket of snow to cover the body. "To them, the act of eating their own is no different than you brushing your teeth after meals."

"That serves an actual purpose, though," he objected.

"And you think this doesn't? At a bare minimum, their bodies become food for others. You only find it detestable because you were raised with the idea that you don't eat grandma when she dies."

"Maybe that started because grandma is too chewy," he said. "Not a lot of great meat on an elderly woman."

Yuki snorted. "Maybe humans don't eat grandma for the same reason that Nirumbi eat each other—as a sign of respect."

Mike nodded. Though cannibalism didn't make complete sense to him, his own lifestyle could be seen as immoral and confusing to others.

They continued onward for a few more minutes before the path narrowed, leading them down into a small ravine surrounded by majestic trees and thick bushes blanketed in snow. If not for the footprints, they would have missed the narrow path that ran beneath a trio of very large pine trees.

Yuki crouched down and went ahead of him. He knelt to follow, but paused when he heard Abella thump into the ground behind him.

"Nowhere to land inside," she told him. "It's completely surrounded by trees."

"Great," he muttered, then followed Yuki in. When he emerged from under the tree, he stared in awe at the large stone overhang above them. They were surrounded by trees on every side, and the overhang itself formed the entrance to a large cave.

"Wow," he muttered, then snapped a few pics with his phone. "Do you think this is one of the goblin caves?"

"Maybe." Yuki inspected the mouth of the cave. It was only a few feet tall, and Mike would need to crawl to properly fit inside. "From what I can tell, they all went in here."

"So, what's the plan?" he asked. "Find a way to follow them in, maybe flush them out?"

"Hold up." Abella moved to the mouth of the cave and inspected the rim. She traced the edges with her hands, then moved away from it with a frown. "This is a recent opening."

"How can you tell?" he asked.

"It would be hard for you to notice, but you can see where the edges look clean." She pointed at a few areas. "Moss grew along here, but there's a thin line where there used to be stone. This cave was blocked off at some point, but it's been recently opened."

"Hmm." Yuki swished her tail, and the snow around their feet turned into frosty cyclones as the snow shifted about. What would have taken hours to find with shovels became only a couple of minutes when a pile of rubble was revealed away from the mouth.

"Aha!" Abella picked up a small boulder and hefted it up to the opening. She rolled it back and forth, then pinned it against part of the wall. "This piece came from here," she noted.

"So the Nirumbi dug their way free?" he asked.

"When you dig, the dirt goes behind you," Abella told him, then dropped the boulder. She inspected the rim of the cave again. "There are scratch marks on the outside. Big ones."

"Bear?" he asked.

"You wish." Abella opened her hand and put it against the stone. "Some of these gouges are deep enough for even my fingers to fit inside."

"Something dug them out?" He moved to where Abella was standing. "Who and why?"

"All questions we may not like the answers to." Yuki looked down at the rubble. "If we can fit this back inside, I can help seal the entrance."

Mike stood back as Abella pushed and rolled boulders back into the opening. Yuki created a ramp made of ice, which caused the boulders to roll further down into the cave. He kept expecting the Nirumbi to arrive and fight back, but assumed that maybe they had had enough.

Yuki blasted the cave with ice magic, creating a thick wall of ice that sealed the rocks in. They backed out of the small clearing and Yuki stayed behind long enough to use one of her tarot cards to break apart the overhang. It collapsed, creating an even bigger pile of rubble outside the cave system.

"Even if they can dig their way out of that, it will take them weeks," she said. "And once the ice starts melting, this part of the cave will flood."

"I guess that means mission accomplished?" He tried to sound nonchalant about it, but his thoughts were on the large claw marks. Who had found the Nirumbi and let them out?

"The sooner we get home, the better," Abella declared. She took off, leaving Yuki and Mike alone in the forest.

The two of them exchanged a look. He wanted to ask the kitsune if she knew why Abella seemed so tense, but knew that Abella would hear them. His few attempts this morning to start a conversation with the gargoyle had gone nowhere.

"I guess we just need to get Bigfoot back on his feet," he said. "He can help us get home."

"That could still be a couple of days," Yuki replied. "Whatever they dosed him with would have killed a lesser creature."

"I guess the question is whether the attack was intentional. Were the Nirumbi sent by someone, or did Velvet happen to wander into their territory?"

"No idea. But their territory is inside that shitty cave, and they're welcome to it." They were following the tracks in reverse now, and she was walking beside him. "Did you know that Emily used to talk about this place? I always wanted to come check it out, but she kept telling me there was nothing to see. Naturally, now I know why."

"The Arachne?"

"Mm-hmm. Some say that gunpowder was invented by the Chinese just to scare them off. Their bodies are covered in fine hairs, gives them amazing sensory abilities. However, melt those hairs off and they're like a bunch of drunks in a bar."