“Lil Jung, let her go, she’s gone…” Sojung knelt down by where Eunbi was sprawled over Yuna. Around her, the rest had their heads held low. Yewon was crying silently, and Yerin stoically held her tears back while looping an arm around the other Eunbi, who had her face turned away to hide the tears.

“No…no. I won’t. I won’t!” Jung Eunbi’s voice rose almost shrilly, trembling with barely contained emotion. “She would never let go. I won’t give up.”

“It’s not the same, she’s dead. She’s not coming back.” Sojung tried to be firm, but her own lips were trembling. She could never get used to losing anyone. It had been bad the first time, and it had never gotten better since then. Each loss was a staggering blow; she was responsible for their lives and she had failed. Again.

“You don’t know that.” Eunbi straightened up, eyes glittering with teary determination. She cocked her head, as if hearing something only she could hear. The battlefield had gotten eerily quiet, without even a breeze to stir the air. It seemed to satisfy her. Sojung shook her head in resignation.

“Look, I know you’re in shock, you two were always close…”

“There’s still a chance.” Eunbi mumbled absently. “I won’t let her go like this. She deserves better.”

“God ing dammit you need to get a grip!” Hwang shook off Yerin’s arm and strode forward, grabbing her slightly catatonic name twin by the collar. “Yuna wouldn’t want to see you like this!”

The girl looked up at her, her face and arms streaked with blood her own and Yuna’s. Her irises had shrunk to mere pinpricks of dark light, and something in them made Hwang hesitate, loosening her grip as she took a wary step back.

“What the is wrong with you?”

She did not get a reply. Instead, the ground rumbled again in response, like an ominous warning.

“Seriously!?”

And that was the last thing anyone had to say, before the earth itself cracked open, swallowing them whole.

--

Pandemonium. Darkness.

The fall.

Sojung vaguely remembered tumbling forward as the ground suddenly gave way beneath her. She might have slammed her head directly into someone, most likely Yewon who was the closest to her in that direction, but the sudden vertigo threw her entirely off balance right after. There was much flailing, and she barely remembered to tuck herself into a roll to minimize the inevitable impact.

It felt like forever, but was probably less of a drop than the experience implied. The roll definitely helped when she finally hit the ground, but it didn’t quite stop the forward momentum, and she wound up crashing face first into a pillar,. Mercifully, she blanked out right after that.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Sojung stirred. Her body creaked with every move as she carefully unfolded herself from the pillar. She catalogued herself as she did so.

Bruises, many. Cuts, several. Headache, pounding.

She could live with that. At least she hadn’t broken anything vital. The young sergeant cradled her aching head in her arms, her eyes tensed close as she tried to re-orientate herself.

Dust, mold, and a damp cold. A chill tickled the back of her neck, despite her hair - which had come loose from its ponytail - in the way. Silence seemed to reverberate around her, and she could feel the measured thuds of her heartbeat press hard into her ears.

Not too distant from her, a couple of familiar groans interposed themselves, breaking the suffocating stranglehold the thick silence had on her. Inhaling sharply, the tall soldier patted herself on her cheeks, forcing herself to squint through the thin dark in search of her errant squadmates. The feeble light trickling down from a wan dawn so freshly upon them was hardly of any help.

Fumbling at her pockets, Sojung finally fished out her much battered tactical flashlight, flipping it on to pierce the relative gloom around her. The high-powered beam sliced through the shadows like a knife as she swept it around methodically in the general direction of the grumbled whimpering. It finally landed on a tangled pile of limbs and hair, and Sojung paused, trying to process what she was seeing.

“Get off’a me.”

“No you.”

“You fat--”

“You’re breaking my something!”

“My in’ arm--ow ow ow fffff”

The struggling pair was, simply put, a disaster. Sojung resisted the urge to facepalm as she limped forward, her ankle still tender from the fall. It would be a lie to say that she wasn’t strongly tempted to walk away from the mess before her, but alas her sense of responsibility kicked in, and thus Sojung spent the next five minutes carefully untangling an annoyed Hwang Eunbi from an equally miffed Jung Yerin.

Hwang struggled to sit up as her left arm dangled uselessly from her side. Opposite her, Yerin remained sprawled on the ground, curled into a wince as she clutched vainly at what was probably a broken leg. Sojung had tried to be careful separating her resident idiots, but apparently they had collided into each other on the way down and gotten a lot unluckier with obstacles in the process than she had.

As for how they had finally wound up in the tangled mess she had discovered them in, perhaps the less said the better.

“Where’s the rest?” Despite her dislocated shoulder, Hwang seemed more or less alert, if in a worse temper than usual thanks to the pain. Sojung shook her head.

“I heard you guys first. Gimme a sec, I’ll take a look around.”

It didn’t take long to find Yewon. She was only a few meters away from where they had generally landed, though still out cold. Her breathing seemed to come in wheezing gasps, which made Sojung wary of moving her.

A strangled exclamation shot up from behind her, and Sojung turned the light back onto where Yerin had finally managed to sit up, and had, apparently, just managed to shove Hwang’s shoulder back into place.

“I think my elbow’s fractured…” Hwang was sweating and pale as she cradled her much abused arm.

“Can’t help you with that.” Yerin shrugged. “Help me up.”

“Will you two stop moving already?” Sojung exclaimed, already shuffling back to get on Yerin’s side with the good leg, lending a shoulder to heave her up as Hwang supported her on the other side with her uninjured shoulder.

“Let’s get over to Yewon first, then you two are staying put.” Sojung scolded as she herded the remnants of her squad together. Hwang was in no shape to handle her rifle, so she handed it over to Yerin in exchange for the pistol.

“You’re going off to look for Lil Jung.” Hwang noted critically. Sojung nodded.

“Well I saw a patch of blood earlier, and it was trailing off…”

“Sounds like a horror film already.” Yerin observed. “This is the kind of that gets you killed, going off alone.”

None of them mentioned Yuna, but all three of them had noted the very obvious lack of a corpse alongside with the resident midget of the squad when Sojung had been sweeping the area earlier.

“Well we can’t leave Yewon alone, Yerin can’t walk, and you’re the only one still sort of mobile, Hwang. If anything happens it’s down to you two to defend Yewon. I’ll be fine, I won’t take any risks.” Sojung assured her skeptical team.

“Don’t get too far, backup should be already on the way. I think Yewon did send out messages to HQ before our comms went down earlier.” Yerin cautioned. Sojung nodded.

“I’ll investigate the trail first. Can’t leave Lil Jung alone for long, she’s…unstable right now.”

The duo on the ground nodded somberly. Hwang saluted with her pistol, then turned to check on the still unconscious Yewon.

“You take care of yourself.”

Sojung was already almost out of earshot when she heard Hwang mutter that. The squad leader smiled, briefly. Hwang Eunbi might act like a brat at times, but she had a good heart.

Pausing briefly to switch the lens on her flashlight to blue, Sojung swept the floor slowly until she found the human-sized smear of blood she had seen earlier. Getting down on one knee, she touched a finger to the patch. Still damp, but starting to dry on the edges.

“At least 30 minutes to an hour then.” Sojung muttered to herself. The blue light from her torch made the blood trail more distinct, but Sojung sorely missed the attachments on her helmet. The helmet itself had survived her collision with the pillar, but the more delicate attachments that came with it were less fortunate. Night vision would have come in a lot more useful in this place.

As it were, she could only pull out her pistol with one hand as her other was still occupied holding the torch for light. Thankfully, the trail was fairly easy to follow.

Judging by the scuff marks and the occasional smears every few steps, it was as if someone had been struggling to move with something that was bloodstained, stopping every so often. Sojung remained alert as she tried to take in her surroundings.

The ground was broken stone, and it almost tripped the tall soldier up more than once. At a particularly bad patch, she saw something glint in the light of her torch, and bent down to pick it up.

A familiar badge. Sojung closed her fist around it tightly, her suspicions mildly confirmed.

Why was someone, most likely Jung Eunbi, hauling Yuna’s dead body around? The medal must have fallen off by accident along the way, but Sojung had recognized it instantly. Only Yuna had earned the Expert Rifleman medal out of all of them, and carried it around like a lucky charm even when she wasn’t wearing her dress uniform.

Looking up around her, Sojung saw more of the pillars on either side of the passageway she had followed the trail into. The air was mostly stale, yet oddly clean and free of dust for whatever underground ruin this was. Her unease grew stronger. What sort of place was this, and where was Eunbi going?

Wherever that was, it was down. The passageway was about three meters across, and had been angled downwards from the past ten minutes. Sojung knew she should probably not keep going ahead without knowing what was going on, but curiosity got the better of her.

That and she was worried. This entire situation was FUBAR, and she had a responsibility to her entire team, even if Eunbi seemed to have lost her mind somehow. She could not leave anyone behind.

There was no more blood to follow, but there were no other way save for straight ahead, and so Sojung continued on.

The tunnel eventually opened up into a wider cavern. Oddly enough, Sojung thought she smelled the sea. Just a tinge of brine, then it was gone. In any case, her attention was shifted away by a faint red light in the distance.

Instinctively, Sojung turned off her torch, ducking behind yet another of the stone pillars as she squinted at the source of the light up on the raised platform ahead. It was dim, but she could see two distinct figures up against it. One was slumped up against what seemed like a pedestal that was crowned by the light source -- likely Yuna -- and a smaller figure next to it, back facing Sojung.

Eunbi, what are you doing?  Sojung crept closer. Something about this entire place was giving her the creeps, but she kept shut in order to observe what was going on.

It didn’t take her long to get within earshot of the platform. This close, Sojung could see better, and revised her earlier assessment of the place. This looked a lot more like some sort of an altar, and the pedestal had a glowing orb mounted on top of it, with stony claws framing it.

“...anything. I just want her back safe and sound. I want all of us to be together again.”

Above her, the orb pulsed. Eunbi hesitated, then reached out.

--

Yuna was heavy, but Jung Eunbi only grunted and kept going. She had already stumbled more than once, adding fresh scratches to her already battered body. The earlier fall should have hurt her more badly, but even in death Yuna protected her, cushioning her from the hard ground.

No, not dead. Eunbi shook her head. She was just sleeping. Everything was going to be fine.

A small part of her was terrified. The ruins were dark. She didn’t know what exactly she was doing. Just a feeling that ahead lay the answer to her troubles. Her shoulders shook with both the weight of her load and her emotions. But she persevered.

When she first sighted the red light, every cell of Eunbi’s body flared up in alarm, and she almost dropped Yuna. Sheer grit kept her up, and this close to the source of…whatever that was, Eunbi felt that familiar crawling sensation across her skin. Power and danger called to her both, bubbling up from within. It energized her. It also terrified her.

Whispers ahead. Determinedly, Eunbi struggled up the steps and carefully laid Yuna down by the pedestal. It was just a little taller than she was, and the orb atop it seemed to pulsate with living energy.

Dread dug deep claws into the pit of her stomach. was dry, and her hands were shaking. Despite herself, she took a step back, her flight response blaring sirens in her head.

Only the sight of Yuna’s unnaturally serene face stopped her retreat. Pulling herself together, Eunbi craned her neck upwards, looking full into the orb once again.

It felt like a black hole, in her entire attention. Again she caught a fleeting glimpse of an explosion, like a deeply buried memory coming alive, and she shuddered.

WHO GOES THERE?

The voice was in her head. The sudden invasion split through her skull like a jackhammer, and she flinched back, slapping her hands over her ears to block out the sound that was not a sound.

DID FATHER SEND YOU? NO MATTER. NAME YOUR PRICE, HUMAN, AND SET ME FREE.

A trickle of blood oozed from Eunbi’s nose, dripping onto her lip. The presence was overwhelming, and it didn’t seem to come from the orb. No, this came from below, as if the ground itself was barely holding a lid on the tremendous power lying beneath.

opened and moved soundlessly, as she tried to regain her balance. Thankfully, the presence seemed to have sensed her discomfort, and eased off on the crushing weight. Eunbi staggered, placing her hands on the pedestal to steady herself.

“Can Yuju come back?”

Her voice came out as a croak, and she sank down to her knees to place a hand on Yuna’s cold cheek, tracing the defined cheekbones so dear to her. Eunbi felt as if she was in a dream. None of this could be real. It had to be dream. A really bad dream, but she could come out of it. She would wake up, and everyone would be with her. Not like this.

INTERESTING. BE MORE SPECIFIC, CHILD. THE PACT MUST BE MADE.

Images flashed through her head. A skyline of iron, impossibly high freeways. Neon signs she had never seen before. The rush of wind whipping her hair back, and the crackle of fire on her fingers.

Yuna’s face blurred before her, the image of a wolf seeming to superimpose itself over her features, and Eunbi felt her heart pounding in time with the rest of the team, her pack. A disembodied howl echoed in her ears, and her own voice…

NAME YOUR PRICE, FOR MY FREEDOM I WILL GRANT YOU A BOON.

“Anything?”

ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.

Eunbi pushed herself off the ground with an effort. Red traced her face like tribal war paint, but she seemed heedless to the fact that she was weeping bloody tears.

“For your freedom, I will ask for Yuju to live.” Her voice was slow and deliberate, almost distant. “I will do anything. I just want her back safe and sound. I want all of us to be together again.”

DONE, AND DONE. TAKE THE ORB, AND OUR BARGAIN WILL BE SEALED.

Eunbi hesitated. She wanted nothing to do with that orb. It radiated danger, but she had no other choice. She reached out, stretching on her tiptoes.

Her mind went blank on first contact, a rush of something washing through her, hot and familiar. Her senses expanded infinitely for a second, catching sight of a crouched Sojung at the base of the altar, before it snapped back like a whip, sending her reeling. Her fingers closed around the orb.

“Eunbi! Stop!”

Sojung’s voice was close, yet so very distant. Eunbi felt her very soul tremble, resonating with the orb under her fingers. Vaguely, she felt another, further, voice calling out to her. Desperate, she tightened her grip, and yanked.

The orb came free. It felt both hot and cold to the touch, but Eunbi barely registered it as she saw Yuna’s face before her. She smiled, and reached out.

A shockwave exploded from the altar, throwing Sojung back and she skidded a good twenty meters before coming to a halt. Something landed in her lap, but she barely registered it before the ground around the altar cracked and erupted in chunks of dirt and stone.

Falling debris caught Sojung in the face, and right before blacking out, the image she saw would remain seared into her memory.

A gigantic serpent, not unlike a dragon out of myth, bursting out from the center. A triumphant roar, then darkness as the broken ceiling rained down on her.

--

A screech like thunder ripped through the air, and in the same moment the entire area rocked, jostling a surprised Jung Yerin and Hwang Eunbi together. Next to them, the still unconscious Kim Yewon stirred, groggily opening her eyes as more chunks of falling rock landed around them.

“Not another earthquake!”

Hwang struggled to her feet, but the tremors were thankfully brief. As Yerin attended to a still confused Yewon, Hwang looked up again at the same crack that had dropped them into this pit. It wasn’t the first time she had done that since Sojung left to investigate the blood trail. Being underground felt claustrophobic, and the tiny glimpse of sky was better than nothing.

A huge shadow fell over the crack. Hwang squinted suspiciously, and in the next second raised her pistol and started firing indiscriminately at the serpentine eye that suddenly opened above.

“WHAT THE IS THAT!”

Yerin also looked up, swore creatively, and also started unloading her ammo at the unidentified thing looming above. The eye flinched back, and they caught a glimpse of scales undulating across the crack that was their only window to the world above.

“, what is that thing.” Hwang moved rapidly to stand next to Yewon, who seemed a little dizzy but otherwise functional. “Can you move? We need to get Yerin out of here.”

“Yeah…I think so…” Yewon wheezed painfully, coughing as she staggered to her feet. She also looked up, and this time caught sight of the full profile of the thing circling over the crack overhead.

“Please tell me that isn’t a dragon. That isn’t a dragon right.” Yerin, being on the ground the whole time, had never taken her eyes from above.

“Kinda. More like a serpent.” Dizzy as Yewon was, she was still knowledgeable. “A very big one. What are they supposed to be called again…?”

“I can see that!” Hwang hissed, moving to Yerin’s side. “We gotta get out of sight. I don’t want to be eaten.”

“Imugi!” It finally clicked as Yewon helped Yerin up. The youngest snapped another glance upwards, where the serpent was most definitely still eyeing them.

“Whatever that’s supposed to be, let’s move.” Hwang growled. Her pistol was entirely out of ammo and she felt without weapons.

“Uh Yewon, if it isn’t actually a dragon, can it breathe fire?” Yerin gasped as they shuffled sideways out of sight like an odd human crab.

“No, and anyway Korean dragons are in charge of weather. Fire is a western dragon thing.”

“I can’t believe you two.” Hwang grumbled. “Dragons don’t exist.”

“We just saw one.”

“Maybe we’re hallucinating.”

“All three of us?”

Yewon cocked her head, interrupting her bickering unnies. “Wait, do you guys hear that?”

A distant roar from the direction where Sojung had left earlier. Before any of them could react, the source of the noise was upon them.

A wall of water surged out in an enormous wave, engulfing them in an instant. They didn’t even have time to take a breath.

Far above, the thunder screeched again, a serpentine body rising high enough to blot out the sun itself.

TO BE CONTINUED IN IMUGI: DRAGONFALL