“You need to keep quiet,” the stranger says in the darkness, still with one hand over Xiaodan’s mouth. “Am I getting through to you? Quiet.” A finger taps his cheek. “Not a sound. It’s coming back.”

It’s too much. The pressure’s been building up inside his head – the desperate flight from the Yèkǒng, the sudden impulse to betray Zhong, the mad dash into the mines, the headlong descent, and now this? All of it boils over like a pot left too long on the fire.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Xiaodan strikes with his left arm, pushing backwards with his elbow, seeking ribs or kidneys or whatever soft spot he can find. Contact. His assailant clearly wasn’t expecting this; the hand over his face lifts away and whoever it is goes stumbling backwards, coughing in surprise.

“What are you doing?” the stranger chokes. “It’s – ah, that’s just perfect –”

The giant footfalls are crashing back down the tunnel.

Light. He needs light. If he can just get a light going, he can see this mystery guest, and hopefully understand what in the world is going on. Xiaodan fumbles for his tinderbox, opens it and frantically stabs at the flint. It catches. The sparks ignite the wick. He looks up, triumphant –

And sees the creature that felled the Yèkǒng as it re-enters the cavern.

It’s huge. He remembers the smell of it, but listening to the fight hasn’t prepared him for how big this thing really is. It looks like a salamander, the kind of thing you might see sunning itself on a rock in the lake at some effete nobleman’s private summerhouse, but it’s immense, easily seven feet high or more at the shoulder.

Its skin, black as graphite, is so lumpen and encrusted with warts it looks like it’s armoured with the rocks themselves. Its breath plumes in the cold around its great lipless mouth. Two beady little eyes peer down from either side of its broad, flat skull, its gaze drifting from Xiaodan to the stranger standing behind him.

Small wonder the Yèkǒng couldn’t even scratch it.

“It’s coming for your light, you imbecile,” the stranger hisses urgently. “Put it out. Put it – move!”

And before Xiaodan can react, they’ve tackled him.

The stranger dives, pushing Xiaodan out of the way as the salamander, almost lazily, snaps at him. Despite its size it’s plainly capable of rapid bursts of movement when it needs them. The great jaws come together where he was standing only a moment before. From the sound when they close, that bite would have torn him in half.

Xiaodan rolls across the floor of the cave, slides to a halt and struggles to his feet. That bewildered indecision is gone; at least he knows the stranger would rather he not get eaten, which seems like a plausible show of good faith.

“Put it out!” the stranger is shouting. Xiaodan realises the tinderbox, lying on the floor of the cave, is still lit. “You have to trust me. Put it –”

The creature screams.

The salamander’s bellow isn’t as dreadful a noise as the Yèkǒng’s attack, but there’s considerably more of it. A blast of warm, rancid air floods from its open jaws, and Xiaodan stumbles, his ears ringing, momentarily deaf. He looks up, fighting to stay on his feet.

For some reason, the stranger seems to be taking things much worse.

They’re down on all fours, retching into the dirt; a figure in a dark, knee-length coat, breeches, and heavy boots. The stranger’s head turns. Xiaodan sees a shock of long, strikingly pale hair, and a flash of green tied around their forehead.

No, not their forehead –

“Run,” the stranger gasps. “Run, you moron –”

Xiaodan fumbles in his satchel, grips one of the earthenware bottles, lifts and throws it.

Whether by luck or good judgement, the bottle hits the salamander square in the face. It shatters. The creature sneezes, then again, backing away, plainly confused. The stranger is crawling away on their backside, looking up as if wondering, too, what this was supposed to accomplish.

Xiaodan snatches up the tinderbox, frantically works the flint – for once the wick catches the first time – and throws it after the bottle.

It lands in much the same place, and with a roar, suddenly the salamander’s head is on fire.

The creature lets out a howl of rage. Whether or not the flames are hurting it is open to debate, but this dancing light right in front of it is clearly far more deserving of its attention than the two irritants it was about to dispatch. It leaps, for all the world like a cow in a field, crashing back down to earth so hard a score of bats take off overhead in a screeching cloud.

The stranger is up, wiping their mouth on one sleeve. White hair, done up in long ropes like one of the island tribes or the wandering herdsmen, and – that green thing is a scarf that’s tied over their eyes. But how did they just –?

“We need to go.” The figure pulls the glove off one hand and stuffs it into a pocket of their coat. “Last chance. You take my hand, you follow me, and if you value your life you do not let go, okay? You need to trust me.” A glance at the rampaging salamander, and then back again. “Look, can you understand me at all?”

“I –” Xiaodan swallows. “I understand –”

“Well, gods have mercy.” The stranger sighs weakly. “It talks. That makes this easier. Maybe.” A wave. “Come on, then.”

Xiaodan takes the proffered hand. It’s rough, and callused. This is plainly somebody who’s used to hard work. There’s a sword slung behind their back, the hilt poking out from beneath the coat; presumably they’re familiar with its use. Yet the fingers are oddly slight, almost delicate –

The salamander is rolling in the stream, trying to extinguish the flames, but the concoction that was in the flask is stubbornly refusing to go out.

“Deep breath,” the stranger says. “Now run.”

And they run.

Xiaodan glances behind him one more time, and sees the salamander, standing in the stream, dripping with water, a few traces of the fire still guttering weakly along its jawline in a ragged half-smile. It’s turning its head, sniffing the air, trying to work out how the two of them have disappeared.

He sees the cavern behind it, oddly vivid in those last few seconds, even in the gloom, and then it’s fading, round a corner and out of sight entirely as the stranger leads him down the smaller tunnel he was considering not so long ago.

For a brief moment Xiaodan can see the outlines of this narrow passage, the rocky floor undulating like a river of frozen sap as they climb, the walls glistening with damp, a spider, the colour of frosted glass, picking its way along the ceiling, and then the light is gone entirely.

He can feel the stranger’s hand around his, their grip tight, unyielding – wherever it is they’re taking him, they don’t mean to let go. He can hear their footsteps, boots pacing quickly up the slope; the rustling as their coat shifts while they run; and their breathing, light and even.

Suddenly the stranger makes an odd, piercing click, a sharp burst of air from the back of their throat that echoes down the tunnel.

“Right,” the stranger murmurs, and pulls Xiaodan’s hand in that direction.

Xiaodan shifts. The fingers on his left hand, outstretched, brush across a sagging, gravid bulge in the wall. If he’d continued straight ahead, he’d have charged straight into it. How did they just –?

The stranger never slows down, carries on running, silent except for that steady, measured breathing and those whispered changes in course, and slowly it sinks in for Xiaodan that they’re all he has; deep below the mountain, in pitch darkness, with no idea where he is.