[Indigo]

It isn't every day that you see someone charge excitedly into Craiss Caverns, without any obvious light source and with shouts of childlike excitement. It's even less common that the someone is a small black cat with a wide belt around her middle, holding a sword longer than she is and what appears to be a blowgun. But probably the most rare is that this overburdened cat is accompanied by a multicolored stuffed seahorse as big as she is.

Naomi had been awaiting this day for months.

"This is going to be the greatest!" She barely even noticed the sword scraping against the ground, although every few feet she had to stop and adjust it so it didn't fall out of her belt. Hard to get a weapon for someone of her size, or at least the right kind of weapon. Monster hunters carried swords; everyone knew that. "I bet we're gonna find a big Akail and he's gonna come after us but we'll trap him and corner him and then we'll bring him home and everyone will cheer for us! And we'll be famous maybe!"

"Could be," Raleigh said. He was in something of an uncomfortable position, somewhat squashed and held on by Naomi's belt, because she couldn't just carry him, not having hands, and they hadn't been able to find anyone to make him autonomously mobile on such short notice. "It's kind of dark in here. Not all of us have night vision."

"Oh, I forgot!" Naomi reached over with one of her tails and gave Raleigh's snout a squeeze; there was a click, and a bright beam of light suddenly shown out of it. It had been the best place she could think of to store the flashlight. "Now try to be quiet, okay? If the Akail hears us it might run off, or it might come after us before we're ready! So we gotta try not to make noise." This, from someone who had no inside voice.

[Indigo]

Timigaj Dentoj was hungry. Or, no, maybe that wasn't the right word for what he was. Empty, perhaps. Whatever it was, it certainly made him feel hungry, and that wasn't something he was about to ignore. So the stalking nothing through the tunnels, and the attempts to flatten himself against the walls whenever he heard something coming, and the constant motion of his six beady eyes as he waited for some tender morsel to walk by.

There were a few people around, of course--there always were. Foolish explorers, looking to tame one of his kind or for something else entirely, he didn't really know. He didn't care much. But none of them were quite suited to his taste. This one was too old, that one was the wrong shape, the other had too many people around him--although he wasn't normally averse to devouring large groups, and maybe if one escaped his infamy would grow...Well, it bore thinking about, if he couldn't find something more to his liking. But there was a certain something missing.

There! His head twisted; somebody several tunnels away, a convoluted route, but he could taste the scent from here: a child, or nearly, and where there was one child there were usually more. It might not be much more than a mouthful, but that was the price you paid for being the stuff of children's nightmares. And he was hungry all the time lately, anyway, so he didn't imagine it would bother him any more than usual.

He focused his attention on that one scent, and began making his way toward it, moving smoothly into shadow any time someone came too close.

[Indigo]

"Hey, Naomi, I have a question."

"Shh!"

"Sorry," Raleigh whispered. He waited a few moments, and then said, "How are we going to catch the Akail when we find it?"

"Oh, that's easy," Naomi said, like she'd done this a thousand times before. It was true that she'd gone on more than one monster-hunting expedition, of course, and even brought something home with her, but it was nothing on the scale of an Akail in size or probable viciousness, and she'd let it go after showing off, anyway. This was different. "You have to get a monster to respect you. There are two ways to do that, by outsmarting it or by smacking it around a little. I don't know if Akails are supposed to be super-smart or anything, 'cause there aren't a lot of movies about them, but I got a whole bunch of riddles memorized. And if that doesn't work there's my trusty sword." She jostled it for emphasis, making a terrible scraping sound against the ground. "Or the blowgun. Then I'll have to drag it back, though. Better if it comes willingly."

"And it'll just do that if you get it to respect you?" Raleigh had seen most of the same movies that Naomi had, of course, but he'd been left behind on the last couple because she'd gotten too excited and forgotten him, so he wasn't quite up to date on the latest monster-hunting information. He'd have to fix that soon.

"Yeah, 'course! That's the whole point! It's not, like, a monster that's terrorizing the people!" Naomi frowned. "Then I guess I'd have to kill it. Huh. But I don't need to do that now because it's me going after it and not the other way!"

[Indigo]

He walked with his mouth open, tongue dangling over the side, to better track the smell of the child. It was female by the smell of it, some kind of feline probably, and very excited about something, it seemed, though what he didn't know. It wasn't especially important. The child was only there for him to eat.

It also seemed to be accompanied by some kind of toy--there was another smell much like the child's but with a less alive taste to it. He'd encountered toys before, in his time as the lurker in children's closets and under beds. Nasty things, with hard pieces that caught in the teeth, filled with an awful flavorless substance that, if he'd had experience in the matter, he might have compared to steamed milk. As it was he just growled distastefully at the thought of it, startling a Batti from the ceiling up ahead. No matter, he wouldn't have to eat that part. He was fairly certain toys couldn't call for help.

As he drew closer he could hear talking--more like shouting--in a voice that matched his scent profile of the child. It was saying something about riddles, which were familiar to him; once he'd tried to use them to play with his food, letting people escape if they could get the right answer. They almost never could, and he was impressed enough with the ones that did that he didn't even regret not getting to eat them. They deserved their freedom.

He hadn't done anything like that in over a year. It wasn't as much fun. The emptiness ruined it; the last person who'd answered correctly had been eaten anyway, just to see what it would be like, and it had left him with an unfamiliar unpleasantness for the rest of the week. Thinking about it now brought that feeling back a little, but he shook it off and continued on his way. Not far now.