Eskir grabbed my hand and pulled me away.

"Slow down," I protested. I could have stopped him, obviously, but he was moving with such... something. Fear, passion, I couldn't quite tell.

"Are you crazy?" he shouted back to me through a new group of people we were now careening into. "What if someone saw you?"

He was right, of course. Obviously, he was right. Tearing down a poster of one of the three paths of pathoticism was one thing, but tearing down the zenith path was quite another. That was the path I was supposed to be following. The one the First Deacons followed. The same Deacon we had met, the Fifth Deacon of Senvia, followed it too. All Kindred were supposed to. It wasn't law, not technically, but practically everyone outside of Eaden Helm at least feigned its worship.

Die on the battlefield, your blade drenched in blood.

That's how you're supposed to ascend. When you reach your moment of enlightenment, it's supposed to be in the middle of a battlefield, where the fighting is thickest, where you've come out on top. That's what the zenith path teaches you. The star directly overhead. Not to the north or east or west like the other three, but entirely devoid of cardinal directions, ever-present and always watching. Mind, body, soul. Each of the three paths represented one. The zenith path represented death, because, as its teachings said, "how can you possibly master life if you can't master its end?" All the other paths combined.

I never thought about it much, but now... how dangerous that philosophy truly is.

Obviously, Eskir was hauling me away as fast as he could from the place where I'd torn apart a poster of the zenith path.

And then, like an idiot, I'd stuck back up the For Peace sign. I might as well have screamed out, "I'm a heretic."

I never was one much for religion anyway.

I tried to shake Eskir off, but he had a death grip and I didn't want to hurt him. "It's okay, Eskir, we're far enough away now."

He didn't answer. Instead, we took a sharp turn right and nearly ran into a bell tower. It was one of the older ones in the city, and certainly the oldest we'd passed by. It was large too, big enough to eclipse the gatehouse at the entrance to the city. Around it were two-story businesses and residences that kept close to its edge. The upper floors formed lips that jutted out from the buildings, casting extra shade onto the street.

We walked around the curve of the bell tower to a small alcove that had been seemingly accidentally created by newer construction. It was dark, with only a little light making its way down from above.

Eskir finally let go of my hand and knelt down to a sewer drain.

"Help me," he said.

I lifted it for him. It was much heavier than I'd expected, and likely would have taken two people had I not been Kindred. The drain cover slammed against the ground like cymbal. Eskir winced at the noise.

"Sorry. But why are we going into the sewers?"

"It's safer."

"Eskir."

"Shut up and follow me."

We snaked down a grimy ladder covered in something I really didn't want to think about. It was sticky and pulled away with my hands, and let's leave it at that.

Eskir's feet slapped against wet stone, and I jumped down beside him. The sewer was dark, but a bit of light streamed in from the opening above.

He looked up. "You didn't close it?"

I glared at him. "I am not going back up there."

"Xera..."

"My hands, Eskir. Look at my hands. This stuff got everywhere, on my clothes, on Stoneguard, and somehow in my hair?"

But I could make out his face enough to know he had these giant puppy dog eyes. It felt like Lyana staring me down, only the emotions plastering his face were pleading, not disappointment. I climbed the ladder again, nearly vomiting in disgust from whatever was coating my hands. I considered against closing my eyes for a moment when I grabbed the cover from the surface, but immediately thought better of it and clamped them shut. I would rather not know what it was. The cover slid across the sky and plunged us back into the darkness.

At least it wasn't Hunak again. No magic here, and probably nothing wanting to eat us alive in the sewer.

Probably.

It took me a bit to remember that I could open my senses again. The arcane darkness we'd experienced before made that concept feel almost foreign to me now, but I was able to make out most details in the sewers around me. The ladder descended to a narrow corridor flanked on one side by a narrow pool of water and archway windows on the other side. One end of the corridor opened to a larger archway before immediately splitting off left and right, and the other trailed down as far as I could see in the dark.

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"Where to now?" I asked a few moments after my feet slapped against the watery stone for the second time.

"No idea," he said.

I sighed. "Why are we down here?"

"Can't say."

That perked my ears. It must have been more than some safe zone he'd be familiar with. A secret lair? But who builds a secret base in a sewer system?

"This organisation of yours... is it entirely human, or are there rats?"

"You mean informants? Well, you've seen what they did to me, so I can't imagine so. Informing isn't really in everyone's best interest anyway."

"No, I mean..." I smacked my mouth rapidly, trying to sound like a rodent.

He laughed. "What?"

"Seems like at least some of you live in the sewers, right?"

His laughed turned into a belly-aching giggle. "I like this interpretation. You can run with it if you'd like. But no, sadly, there are no rodents forming up the ranks."

"Sadly?" I mused.

"Well, I think they'd make good company. Think of the stories they would tell, if they had a voice. More than me, certainly. All the hidden holes and pockets, the subterranean insulation and the perpetual warmth that shit produces in the winter, and all the leftover food in Bell Haven to keep them fed. They're already living the dream, if you think about it. What have they got to worry about? Housecats? A few traps? Statistically speaking, they probably have a better shot at living through us than we have of surviving... well, everything out to get us."

"I wonder if they do. Dream, I mean. And what must they dream about. You know, I've never actually seen a rat."

"Never?" he exclaimed. "Not once?"

"I've seen mice," I said. "Beavers. Squirrels. Shrews. Never a rat."

"I don't believe you."

"We didn't have them in Senvia," I insisted.

"How could you not... they're rats! Like I said, not so easy to get rid of."

"Magic," I said. "Senvia had enchantments placed around the city decades ago, long before Lyana was born. No living thing under a certain size was permitted entry without first having a specific protection charm cast on them, or they'd be incinerated. After that, they just purged out the city. It took years, but they were militant, and they used spells to hunt them down. Eventually, they were gone. Occasionally, the enchantment would catch them at the gates sneaking in with inbound food, but they'd always burst into flames."

Eskir's face keeled back in shock. "I thought you were exaggerating when you said incinerated. That seems like... a dangerous solution."

I nodded solemnly, forgetting he likely couldn't see me. "Before signs were put in to warn people, the gate guards had to clean up far too many charred corpses of pet rodents and birds from the children of folks moving to the city."

"That's... horrible," he said. "But I've been to Senvia, I don't remember any signs."

I shrugged. "Some gates have them, some don't. The guards will stop you before going in anyway. Their new process requires some form of inspection for most travellers."

"That's horrible," he repeated, his voice dying off as his mind wandered to all the burned parakeets.

"This way," I said, changing the subject and pointing towards the archway. "If this sewer does lead to a secret base, I'm guessing the path we take there will have options. A straight line isn't exactly difficult to follow."

He nodded. "First, let me just..."

Eskir pulled something out of his sleeve and held it up. It looked like a scrap of crumpled parchment, but as soon as he released his grip, it began to shine white. I shut my eyes, toning down my vision in a hurry. When I opened them again, the shine had died back in intensity to a white glow. Or rather, it burned white. It wasn't fire, but something similar to it.

"Speaking of enchantments," he said. "Only works in these tunnels. Won't guide us the right way unfortunately, but..."

The light wrapped around the room. It wasn't quite as good as my Kindred eyesight for distance, but it did a better job of illuminating the details. I kept my hands at my sides, still conscious of whatever disgusting slime coated them.

"Can't you just lead?" I asked. "You brought me here."

He shook his head. "I can't do anything that would lead you to the truth, remember? Except perhaps withhold information. I seem to have more lenience with that tactic. When we ran here, I was guiding you under the premise of hiding from anyone who might have seen you tear down the poster. Tut tut, speaking out against the Warrior's Path? Shame on you. Had to hide us both, really. I didn't intend for you to guess what this place was, that part's just a happy coincidence."

I sighed. "I'm going to punch whoever did this to you in the groin."

"Please do. Oh, and I should correct you: there's no secret base down here. There is a secret, you got that part right, but it's not a base. Not really. It... it might not be what you'd expect."

"Fine with me," I said. "As long as there's no people."

He grimaced. "I can't tell you anything there, either."

"So there are people," I concluded. "Fine. You hold the light, so you go first. I suppose I'll tell you where to turn."

I led us through a tunnel network far more extensive than I had anticipated. We were walking for at least an hour, with the option to take branching paths every few minutes.

"Does this never end?" I complained. "At the very least, I just want some water that isn't from a sewer so I can wash myself off from the grime from that ladder."

Eventually, we rounded a corner... and saw a light.

It was similar to Eskir's, but nobody held it. It was a slight burning white, like the tip of a lit candle wick, hovering in the air.

"What is that?" I asked.

"On this one, I really do wish I could tell you," he said excitedly. "I'm an academic, you know. And a scribe. I spent a year studying these things! I could go on for hours about them. They're one of the most fascinating things about our world."

I eyeballed him. "That is a loaded statement for something that looks like your portable torch there."

He swayed his hand in a brushing off motion. "Oh, this is just a mockery, an imitation. A lookalike, really. All it does is offer a bit of light. But this..." he held out his hand to the light in front of us. "This is a joy. It's actually making me quite angry that they stole my voice. Did they really need to take this from me too?"

"Are there more of them? Here, I mean. In the sewers."

He turned back to me, his face beaming with delight. "You'll have to pop your head around the corner and find out."

I walked ahead and looked out from the next fork. There were three paths this time, and down the left one was another floating white light.

"Eskir," I called back, my voice echoing through the tunnel. His expression sank a tad when he pulled his hand away from the candle flame, then hurried up to me and peered down the tunnel.

I pointed to the flickering thing. "Shall we follow the lights?"