The kids all fell to the ground, cradling their heads as they waited out the persisting trembling with debris and pieces of the ceilings coming down against them.
It was loud, the sound of the earth splitting open and the ceiling crumbling. The ground underneath them shook, threatening to break open and swallow them.
Just like...just like it had with Reo.
They had watched Reo and the little girl he carried fall through the ground, the ceiling of the tunnel raining down on them in massive chunks of rocks and boulders.
The massive cracks continued to spread, even to the ground underneath their feet. The raining boulders and massive chunks of the ceiling rolled a shudder through the partially collapsing tunnel. The tremor forced the approaching hounds to fall back with their tails around.
After a few seconds more, the trembling stopped, and the world appeared still once more. Smaller pieces and chunks of dust still rained down from what remained of the ceiling in the tunnel.
The railed ground underneath them turned into a mural of massive cracks.
The kids continued to shudder, cradling their heads as they all lay flat on the ground.
Feeling their whole environment begin to be still, Leon slowly raised his head, fearful that a piece of rock could crush his skull from above.
"...I-it's over," he muttered with trembling lips and hoarse breath.
"Reo...!" Lia's cry pierced the stuffy tunnel in a shriek.
She had hurried forward at the caved and crumbled section of the tunnel paths, the massive chunks and pieces of giant rocks forming a thick and impenetrable-looking wall of rubbles.
Her little hands shuffled through the surface pieces or relatively smaller rocks and pebbles, swatting them away and shifting them.
"Reo! Reo! Reo-!" She struggled with a sizeable piece of rocks, almost twice the size of her head, wedged deeply between two more massive pieces.
The piece of rock under her tug budged just slightly, and in correspondence to that, the tall slanted wall of rubble shifted just slightly. A particularly bigger piece rolled from the top, tumbling down and threatening to crush the head of the little girl.
That was just before Leon had quickly pulled her back, albeit a bit too roughly.
The big piece crashed into the spot Lia, until less than a second ago, formerly just stood, forming a groove in the cracked ground.
Dust rose, filling the already stuffy air.
For just a few seconds, silence reigned among the children. Then Leon snapped.
"What did you do that for?! You could have gotten yourself killed!" He frowned griping the wrist of Lia a little tightly.
Lia winced a little and forcefully pulled her hand out of his grip. Wiping the tears off her face, she walked passed Leon and said:
"I'm... I'm going to get Reo out. I'm going to save him..."
Leon felt a pain in his left chest as he listened. Before he could stop her again, Trise reacted much faster and frantically called out to her.
"Lia. Lia, yo-you can't do that...we can't!" Restraining as much of the tears as she could, Trise rushed to stop her best friend before she took another step.
The restrained tears flooded down her face like a broken dam, they wouldn't stop. Trise was terrified. She had just watched somebody die. And not just anyone, she had watched Reo get swallowed up by a rain of massive boulders falling against his head.
It was already too much — it was already far too terrible, the whole night, everything was! And it only got worse.
Reo died.
She hadn't known him well, but Trise having faced and survived until now the same ordeal, felt horrified.
And she felt sadness.
If Reo died, wouldn't that mean anyone else could? Wouldn't that mean, next it might be her, or Leon, or Kyle, or anyone?
And the others felt the same. Kyle, Don, Leon...
But Lia refused to accept it. She watched the same scene the others did play out.
Shorty impeded the advancement of the group, blindly attacked Reo, and forced a partial cave-in of the tunnel. Reo, the little girl, and the stunted man were the only victims as they were either crushed or swallowed up.
But she still refused to admit it.
No
This was Lia's way of protecting herself.
Her mind was slowly crumbling ever since. The mental and emotional strain the whole day had placed on it, forced the child's emotional makeup to wither, slowly at first.
Lia's mental fortitude had been tested and dragged to its limit throughout the day. With all that had happened, the fragile structure of a child's mind was bound to chip and crack.
Reo had managed to notice this earlier and even managed to, more or less, prevent it from truly happening.
But Reo wasn't here now.
No...to Lia he was.
He had to be.
Lia was only a push away from breaking. Watching that same Reo die...was more than enough to push her over the edge.
Lia's shoulders trembled to stand before the tall wall of rubbles. Then her trembling shoulders fell still. For more than just a few seconds, Lia hadn't moved.
Monitoring this, Leon was awash with a bad premonition and Trise was worried.
Trise sniffled one more time, then hesitantly, reached an arm out for Lia.
"...Lia...?" She shifted the little girl, turning her around just slightly then paused.
Lia chewed down on her whole lower lip, the blood drawn from that mixed with the flooding streams of tears as she wept silently, painfully, and regretfully.
Reo had died....Reo had died and that was it.
Lia's forehead creased, her expression shattering into glass pieces in tears. Her lip bled, her first clenched tightly at the hem of her gown, her face twitched the more seconds passed that Lia tried to maintain control of herself.
A second more passed.
And another...
Then another...
Then she broke.
Lia whaled, grabbing her head and falling hard against her knees, scraping the surface skin. She screamed, the last scene of Reo plummetting and getting crushed replayed over and over, each time more vividly than the other, in her head like mental torture.
Reo's last look...his final gaze. Each time she recalled it, Lia heard something shatter in the back of her mind.
The little girl grabbed at her hair, her little fingers gripping tightly at locks, and pulled them out from their roots. Her expression was a broken one; her throat strained in a ghastly scream.
Trise suddenly terrified by her friend's sudden display took an involuntary step back before breaking into tears herself.
Leon and Kyle, both sharing an equally dire weight of worry shuddered in place as the tears continued to persist from their eyes.
'Damnit!' Leon cursed internally, struggling to hold back and restrain his emotions.
Trise screamed, fell to her knees, and locked her friend in a tight embrace, her fleeting attempt at comforting her.
She caressed and patted the top of her head gently with trembling hands of hers. Trise sniffled in an attempt to hold back the snot and bit down on her trembling lips.
She forced a smile, or she at least tried to, resulting in an ugly, morbid, and twisted attempt.
Then she whispered in a hoarse, uncertain, and trembling voice into Lia's ear.
"Lia... it's okay... everything will be alright."
And for a second, Lia's expression shook.
—".... it's okay. Everything will be alright..."
The familiar words resounded softly like a rhyme in her head. Lia moved her hands unsteadily, wrapping them tightly around Trise and returning the embrace, she dug her crying wet face into her friend's chest.
The tears continued to flow though. She cried out, sobbed, and sniffled. But this time it was different. They were tears filled with pure sadness rather than agonizing uncertainty.
Trise could tell.
Leon watched the two in the comfort of each other's embrace with a heavy heart. Kyle still cried openly without a single trace of grace or dignity, but what did he care?
Leon wiped the traces of his tears and snot then turned to look behind him at the other kids.
The hollow kids retained their unresponsive and stoic nature despite all that had happened.
Watching the hollow faces of the kids, Leon couldn't help but frown.
Then he looked a little to the side of the kids. Don was passed out on the floor.
Chances were he hadn't watched Reo die, unlike the rest.
He would have to find out later.
'If we get out of here...' the blonde boy thought grimly, his realization spreading to his environment.
They were, more or less, now trapped, with their only way forward now sealed closed with an impenetrable seeming wall of rocks and boulders.
If they still had the will to escape the damn tunnel, they would have to turn back and retrace their steps till they found another exit.
But Leon didn't welcome the thought.
It was at the same time the wall of Stine rubble blocking their path forward shifted slightly. Pebbles and smaller chunks of rocks rolled down the top, the tunnel shuddering slightly as well.
Feeling the tremor in the tunnel once again, the bodies of the kids all stiffened up grim anxious, and agitated.
"Hey! Look out!" Leon urgently alerted Trise and Lia.
A larger piece of boulder came crashing down from the wall at a considerable speed.
Reacting as soon as she heard the warning, Trise grabbed Lia and moved away from the point of impact, evading the crushing boulder as it crashed into the ground.
"Trise -!" Kyle reacted, " Are you two okay?" He quickly hurried to the two girls. Trise in the process of evading at the last minute crashed into the rough ground and suffered some light scrapes and bruises.
"Ow. Y-yeah, I think we're okay?" Trise said sitting up and letting go of Lia. The girl seems to have calmed down but remained unsettling and quiet.
Trise perked around, feeling a cool breeze against the back of her neck.
They were stuck under a partially caved-in tunnel pathway, their possibly one exit, sealed away shut even before they could spot it. How was there a draft in such a place?
But Trise wasn't just imagining it, and at the same time, so did the rest of them.
Lamenting the question, the kids all looked around.
—" Hm? What's this? Looks like a collapsed tunnel or something?"
The voice of a quiet muttering leaked into the cave. And then another.
—"Oh, yeah, didn't they say there was some kind of abandoned mine in this forest or something?"
Following the direction the voices came from, Leon traced his gaze back and scurried the slanted surface of the wall. A sizeable gap was opened at the very top. The translucent glow of moonlight leaked in through the gap.
Leon's eyes widened slowly with his jaw gaping slightly. And it wasn't just because an escape route had presented itself, but because of the man who gazed through the space.
"...Dad...?" Leon's lips parted.
***
A/N: RED will be out soon . I hope you enjoyed this chapter and don't forget to vote us some power stones at this point. You've already come this far, you like ACMR, stop hesitating to admit it it and add to your collections. It'll only get better...sadder, maybe, but better.
Thanks for reading.