Things were dying down with the daylight. Normally crowded streets were only briefly covered by the foot traffic of native Urchski moving about near the border. Among them, a small crew stood out completely. Saul, Xen and Plafluf had all finished gather the food and drink they would need in order to scout out the area.
Xen had to purchase a bag to carry his own food around in. He only carried a small amount of money on him, and was pleased to only buy cheap amounts of water and crackers to sustain himself. Plafluf had bought a few fried burrow beetles, a common snack in the Megaden that didn’t seem likely to spread. Saul was particularly outstanding among the group because he lacked a bag to carry his things. The sound of his jostling groceries in their appropriate places inside his outfit was enough to draw strange looks from those they passed by.
“I can’t imagine we’ll be good at sneaking about when you sound like a cattle’s bell.” Xen said, tightly pressing his canvas bag to one side.
“We’re not going to be sneaking after them right away.” Saul assured him. “Besides, I think you’re just jealous of my method. Spreading the weight of my supplies over my body makes it a lot easier to carry.”
They found themselves at the same bridge they had been at before. All of the guards were still tense, but the weariness of the long day was getting to them. Some of them seemed more irritable, poking at Saul’s pockets and demanding he show them what was inside. Eventually the long list of food, bandages, and water containers bothered them enough to let him pass. Plafluf was not as lucky and got the last of his food confiscated on made up grounds. His back flexed to show he was not intimidated, but did not resist them beyond that.
On the western side of the Megaden, things were much the same, but the woods were taller. Upon closer inspection, Saul was able to notice that the roads were paved with stone on this side.
I wonder if that’s to keep the trees from growing over them, or if their roots were messing up the plain dirt paths. Either way, it’s fairly obvious that we’re deeper in the Megaden at this point. He thought to himself, glancing around the area as they walked.
They stopped at a place near the thickets and waited as Xen kept watch. Once they were sure no one was around, they pushed into the treeline. Without a specific spot in mind, they headed straight back in the direction of the river. Saul and Xen both stumbled through the foliage as they walked, but Plafluf was more or less unphased. Every step forward required a readjustment as they curved around the massive tree trunks. The sound of insects and animals mostly came from overhead, but was enough to set them at unease.
By the time they broke through to the riverbank, all of them were showing signs of their traversal. Xen brushed some dirt off of his armor and looked around for the hatch. He paused as his eyes scanned over the river nearby. The water was rumbling quietly by, but it was enough to distract him. His eyes narrowed on some fish that were swimming against the stream, but he couldn’t make out what species they were. Fighting against the currents, they leapt out of the water. One of the unfortunate ones leapt out of the water and managed to land on the shore. It flopped and gasped, but a rock it had landed on was keeping it from rolling into the water below.
“Xen, we found it.” Saul told him, snapping him out of his trance.
“I see... do we go in now then?”
“No, we have no idea what they’re doing down there or what could be hidden in that place. Voldruun seems terrified of this place, and if it’s enough to scare an Enterus then it’s probably going to do worse to us.” Saul said before pressing his hand against the entrance. “Same as the door to the sewers, cheap metal. This one is more recent though, unsurprisingly. Seems like the rust on the side suggests that it was opened not too long ago.”
“So they’re inside right now?” Plafluf said, poking at it with his own paw.
“Possibly. That or they opened it and decided to come back later. There could even be some back exit that they’re leaving out of after coming through here.” Saul answered before moving back to the treeline and gesturing for them to follow. “But that’s why we’re going to wait back here. Unless you’d like to actually risk going inside?”
“I could run away at any time with my blessing. Just pop out of there, or back down the tunnel. Would be very quick, actually.” Plafluf answered. “This is how I get out of most fights where I am alone.”
“We’ve got no assurance that they will come back through this way. There might be another exit, or they might not leave for quite some time. It is better to actually go inside and investigate.” Xen added before pulling the hatch open with some effort. “Do not fear, my abilities in combat should be enough to subdue whoever or whatever we run into down there.”
“Am I really the only one here trying to play it safe? This is an investigation, we’re not heroes going out to plunder some tomb for an ancient evil.” Saul said with a frown.
Saul didn’t have much more time to complain about his companions eagerness. Xen was already moving down the pipe, and Plafluf had started crouching down to teleport away. Eventually he was left on his lonesome on the surface. Tapping his foot for the no one around him, it took a few seconds until he gave in and followed after them.
Xen and Plafluf didn’t expect the walls at all while they moved, choosing to stare at their feet while they walked to not trip. Saul was more diligent, pressing his palm into the cool dirt around them and brushing past it as he walked, occasionally pausing to feel over the many roots tangled across it as well.
The ground is packed in on top of being scooped out. We’re far enough down that I’m not sure how this structure is able to keep from collapsing in on itself. Probably the roots from Volruun keeping everything in place. I’ve heard that the Enterus are capable of expanding their own root system and breaking it off to reinforce or build structures, but this must have been a massive ordeal. Saul thought to himself, cocking an eyebrow in the dark. If he is the one that held up this entire tunnel, it makes me wonder what could possibly be in here that would shake him so hard. You don’t just leave a limb behind for nothing, after all.
They eventually reached the door heading in, but this time it was Plafluf that was holding back. Xen cracked the door open slightly and peeked through carefully.
“There’s no one in there, at least none that I can see.” He told them before opening it further.
As they walked in, Plafluf hesitated at the edge of the doorway. His foot pressed down onto the cold stone and it sent a shiver up his spine. Everything in his heritage had warned him about places like this. He sucked in a deep breath and scampered to catch up with the two others. Xen held up a hand to stop the other two and looked around at the walls.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Something is off. There’s no wind in here, and hardly any noise at all.” He said.
“We’re underground, there’s not going to be much wind down here in the first place, right?” Saul said.
“No, there should be a little bit of it. Unless there’s something deliberately keeping it in check, or every entrance is an airtight seal, then we should be feeling something.”
“The latter would not surprise me.” Plafluf said. “All of the old buildings are not made for people to be in. Only ghosts. Didn’t your mother ever tell you to not go poking around these types of places?”
Saul and Xen both look between each other before shrugging.
“I was actually raised in an orphanage. Closest I’ve had to a mother is the matron where I grew up, but there were about thirty or forty other children there.” Saul explained. “Heard my parents went missing around the crown massacre some years back, right after I was born though, so at least I wasn’t old enough to miss them.”
“The Erudine do not have singular family units, so the concept of a mother isn’t really meaningful to me. I might have had something like a caregiver when being raised as a child, but I was chosen to be one of the maskless at six. Until I was an adult, I was trained around the clock in order to become a servant of the law.”
“That is tragic. No wonder you are both poking around this place.” Plafluf said before he rounded the corner to the antechamber. “Personally, I would never set foot in one of these places. The closest I have been was the sewers. Well, that and... hm. This place looks familiar to me.”
All of them moved into the larger room, but Saul drew his weapon and Xen readied his hands for a fight. Both of them started moving around the edges of the room, searching for someone that might be in hiding. At the same time, Plafluf was drawn to the churning pool at the back of the room. His eyes focused deeply on the liquid as he got closer to it. Eventually the pool slowed down the bubbling until it was a plain black sheet on the surface. Plafluf could almost see his reflection on the surface.
“Huh, seems like it’s clear. There’s another tunnel out though, it seems like. They could either be heading somewhere down there, or they’ve not even arrived yet. Felt for sure like someone was watching me when we first stepped in though.” Saul said, keeping his weapon drawn and walking to the center of the room. “Plafluf? What is that stuff? You should stay away from it if you—"
“This is the soup.” He said breathlessly. “That soup! The stuff that gave me my blessing all those years ago!”
“Wait, what? I thought you were just making that up.” Saul said before he walked closer. “Sure doesn’t look like a normal chamber fluid... Those are normally sealed off and not even a fifth this size.”
He knelt beside the pool and cautiously stuck out one of his fingers. The skin on his hand instantly tensed and his whole body shivered. As his finger pushed in, the liquid around it seemed to press into him gently.
Wasn’t expecting it to be that warm. It’s like I’m touching a living creature or something. Just need to focus and figure out whatever this stuff is. Saul thought to himself, closing his eyes. Shoot, it’s incredibly old. Liquids are normally hard to read, but I guess maybe this stuff isn’t your usual glass of water.
“Hold on a second, this isn’t that far from the material used in regular enhancing chambers! There’s something really wrong with how it’s setup and feels though. Normally it’s just clear, maybe a soft teal color, but this is different. Do you think this is what they were after?”
“You think this is some sort of naturally occurring enhancement chamber? Well, at least as close to natural as you can get with this stuff.” Xen asked.
“It’s possible. But is that why Volruun was so scared about it? Seems like it would be fine just becoming a part of something else. Maybe there’s something else about this that made him...” Saul drifted off.
Something shifted within the pool, brushing against his finger. The sensation wasn’t familiar at first, but it passed by again. Short fur. Saul quickly tried to pull his hand away, but the liquid in the pool clung to his skin. That warm feeling from before was eclipsed by a sticking sensation. He threw himself backwards to get away, but the liquid stretched out with him. As he hit the ground, the long strand of it snapped like rubber, and a solid object bounced out of the material. The preserved tail of an Urchski.
Plafluf grabbed his own when he recognized the appendage. Saul slowly rose to a sitting position and picked it off of his chest. It wasn’t wet, but it was as if it had been put on ice just seconds ago. He got to his feet and looked around at the pool’s surface. Both Xen and Plafluf did the same.
“Can’t even tell how deep it goes with how black the liquid is. I might be able to tell by analyzing it, but I don’t want to go sticking my fingers back into that stuff just yet.”
“I remember...” Plafluf said in a low voice. “I thought that it was the ghosts of the dead, like old people will say. When I ran in here from a path I found in the sewers, I fell into this pool. There were Urchski all around me, but they were all dead... I thought that I was going to die as well, but there was some kind of thumping sound, and then the whole pool lit up. That was when I got my blessing, and I used it to get out of there.”
“From that description this sounds like some kind of automatic enhancing chamber. I’ll bet those urchski must’ve figured that out and tried to get in... only for that to happen to them.” Xen said before crossing his arms. “This technology is dangerous. I can see why Volruun didn’t want people getting their hands on it. Like you said, we don’t know how deep this goes down. There could be any number of dead Urchski lost down there.”
“If it’s this dangerous then it should have been made open to the schools in the Upper and Center rings. Something like this should be studied and made good use of, not poked and prodded with inexperienced hands while innocent lives suffer the cost of it.” Saul replied, pacing around the pool towards the tunnel. “We should get out of here for now and send a message back to the merchant’s guild. They’ll send someone that knows how to handle this properly.”
“Maybe this place should just be buried. It would be better to not have humans and Bouli poking around here like they own this place. Old buildings are cursed, or at the very least they do not want you to be in them!” Plafluf interjected.
A snap sounded in the area above them all. The calmed machinery of the pool began to churn once again, and the unease they felt at the start came over them once more. Saul heard noise coming from outside the room and gripped his weapon tighter. They all turned to the tunnel behind the pool and slowly inched toward it. Footsteps mixed with the sound of breathing. All of them braced for a fight from an unknown direction, made by an unseen assailant.
“Who are you?!” A frightened voice called out from the entrance they had come from.
All three of them spun around, ready to fight. Instead of their assumed suspects, they found an Urchski with the standard equipment for a bridge guard. His paws were shaking enough to make his spear wobble even while resting on the ground. The machinery in the room hissed softly and died down, the tension of the room bleeding away with it.
Saul shook his head and started patting around his coat, eventually finding and pulling out his journal to display the insignia of the Merchants’ Guild. “I’m an investigator from the center ring. Me and my associates here were tracking some criminals and wound up down here.”
“For the record.” Xen added. “I am also a member of the maskless. My target was found in connection with this place, and I am well within my rights to hunt them down without interruption.”
The guard was hesitant to accept what he was seeing. Unlike the strict orders of the upper ring, the Megaden’s power structure was more of a loose webbing of connections to people in power. Eventually he figured that whatever ranking they may have would outclass his own, he lowered his weapon.
“You are not supposed to be here. I must escort you out now.” He answered them, his curtness noticeably affecting his speech.
“Fine, we’ll have to look into this with your superiors anyway.” Saul said with a shrug before moving closer to Xen and Plafluf with his back turned to the guard to hide his next words. “Keep quiet about what we found in the pool for now. We want to make sure how much they know about this before we go angering whoever built the tunnel into here.”
Both of them nodded and they all followed after the frightened guard. The room seemed to shiver as they left it, with the hiss and clicks of machinery occasionally setting off with each step. The noise quickly died down as they passed into the main tunnel and then back into the dirt one. All of them notice a strange calmness pass over them as they moved across the threshold, a sensation so subtle it went unnoticed until it left.
Within several minutes they found themselves back at the entrance to the tunnel, though the hatch was closed now. The light was almost non-existent where they were standing, and only some cracks of light spilled through the edge of the passage above. The guard sheathed his spear to the back of his jacket and quickly climbed the ladder up, using his head to push it open.
A wave of daylight flashed, and Saul had to cover his eyes as they adjusted slowly. Once they did, he glanced around for the other. Only Plafluf was beside him.
“Xen?” He asked, checking his surroundings again. “Shoot, he might have gotten turned around in the darkness. We’ll have to go back and find him to bring him back here.”
“Hey! You can’t just go back down that way!” The guard shouted from the top.
“Get your superior and tell him that one of us got lost, then send some people to make sure we leave. It won’t be long to just head in there and then head back out as long as no one else is there.”
“Wait!” The guard called out as the two of them left back down the tunnel.