It was pitch-black inside the Blind Worm.

Coco took her glasses off, but that didn’t help at all. Maybe that’s why they called it a Blind Worm, because if it swallowed you, you couldn’t see inside its stomach, or whatever this was.

Or maybe it was called a Blind Worm because you never saw it coming. Only she had seen it coming, and she’d ended up inside the damn thing, anyway. She had pulled Velvet out of the way, only to take her friend’s place. Coco figured sacrificing your life for your teammate was one way to be remembered as a good leader, but maybe that was just cheating.

The air was warm and wet and foul smelling. And the darkness was even more disorienting because the worm was moving—fast. She was inside a living, runaway train with no idea how to get out.

“The only way out is through,” Coco muttered, her voice muffled and lost, like she wasn’t even there. She held back a scream.

She turned her Scroll on, but the light almost made it worse. Now she could see just how tight the space was, how it glistened and pulsated.

Coco screwed her eyes shut. She was back in that cave in Lower Cairn, scared of the dark. Scared of failure. Scared of dying.

Her hands trembled. She was losing it. She opened her eyes. “Get yourself together, Coco,” she said aloud. The heavy darkness swallowed the sound.

She wasn’t going to let the nomads end up like the Gray family back at Lower Cairn. Coco clenched her hands into fists and held to the strap of her purse. She wanted to move, she wanted to fight, but still she was rooted to the spot.

“Fight, Coco,” she said. She unfolded her Gatling gun and tried to identify a weak point, but it all looked the same, a seemingly endless expanse of mottled gray flesh. She planted her feet, aimed at the wall opposite her, and fired.

The world turned upside down as the worm lurched and rolled. Coco tumbled around it, cushioned by the spongy lining on the walls. She watched her gun slide deeper into the beast and saw a bright light bouncing around—her Scroll, which soon went dark. There went her only communication with the outside and the only source of light in this oppressive blackness.

“Great,” she said.

- RWBY: After the Fall, Chapter 18