They packed what little they had and left with the grey light.
The brawl found them before they had been walking an hour — a cluster of scavengers moving along the shore like they owned it, slow and arrogant in the way that things are slow and arrogant when nothing has ever given them a reason not to be. Three of them, spread loosely across the terrain ahead.
Quinn found Cassie a position between two coral formations that offered cover from three sides and a clear exit on the fourth. She settled into it without being told twice. Cassie had developed, over the past several days, a very practical attitude toward being left in safe places while violence happened nearby.
The three of them assessed the spread of the scavengers.
Nephis looked at Quinn. "Keep up," she said.
Then she ran.
Quinn stared at her retreating back for approximately half a second before accepting the situation and going after her. Behind them, he heard Sunny peel off to find higher ground.
Nephis ran the way she did everything — completely, without reservation, her body carrying no suggestion that it was aware of the concept of hesitation. One arm trailing behind her with the sword angled down, the other cutting forward with each stride. The distance between her and the scavengers closed faster than the scavengers seemed to understand was happening.
By the time they registered the threat she was already almost on them.
They charged. Four pincers came down.
Nephis dropped.
She fell sideways, letting the momentum carry her forward through the mud, sliding between the two creatures as the pincers hit the ground on either side of her. Then she twisted and drove the sword into the earth to stop herself.
A moment slower and she would have been split open.
Quinn had peeled away toward the third scavenger before the slide finished, which was the arrangement they had arrived at without discussing it — Nephis drew and disrupted, Quinn found the angle, Sunny finished. The third creature had oriented toward the movement and was bringing one of its forelimbs up in a strike that had a clear path to Quinn's ribs.
He moved inside the arc, close enough that the pincer passed over his shoulder, and brought the axe up toward the joint where the limb connected to the body. He felt for the weakness in the structure — the seam between the plates, the place where the carapace was thinner — and when he found it he pushed the ability through the blade, brief and controlled, the axe cutting through the surface and finding the softer tissue beneath.
He did it three times. Each time he waited until he was certain of the angle before using the ability, because certainty was a resource and so was the spiritual energy that the Sequence 9 Door pathway ran on, and he didn't have enough of either to spend carelessly.
The creature buckled. From the outside it looked largely intact — the carapace unmarked except at the joints, where something had gone wrong that the exterior didn't quite explain. The inside told a different story. The training had been useful. The potion had been useful in ways that Quinn didn't feel like examining too closely right now, because thinking about the Apprentice pathway and what it had actually done to him was a conversation he kept postponing.
He heard the other two go down and walked toward where Sunny and Nephis were standing.
Sunny was looking in a specific direction. Not at anything in particular — just away, with the focused determination of someone who has decided that a particular patch of the horizon requires their full attention. His shadow, Quinn noticed, appeared to be doing the same thing, oriented away from the scene with an air of studied disinterest that was almost impressive given that shadows didn't typically have an air of anything.
Quinn looked at Nephis.
Her seaweed armor — the makeshift covering she had assembled from the shore's materials — had not survived the slide through the mud intact. It had not survived it much at all, really.
Quinn turned to look at the same patch of horizon Sunny was studying.
"First time?" he asked Sunny.
Sunny turned to look at him with the expression of someone who has decided that violence is a proportionate response to the current situation and is only refraining out of practical considerations.
Quinn accepted this as an answer.
They went to collect Cassie from her hiding spot and walked back together. By the time they returned, Nephis had reassembled what could be reassembled of the seaweed covering and was standing with the particular composure of someone who has decided that whatever just happened is not going to be discussed.
Quinn noticed the look she gave Sunny when they returned. Brief, specific, difficult to categorize.
Nephis looked at Sunny. "Memories?"
Sunny shook his head and reached for his status screen out of habit, the gesture of someone double-checking information they already know.
Then his eyes went wide.