The fall was brief spanning only half a dozen metres before they hid the ground with a jarring thud then they were off again. Racing through the dark confines of tunnels that sat beneath the Market and most of the city lest it drown come the rains. It was a branching lattice that could confound even the most attentive, and her vehicle could not be remotely considered such.
“Keep going straight until I tell you to stop!”
Blessedly, the fool listened and sudden turns interrupted their path. Brief flashes of light from overhead drainage and the rushing wind were the only markers of their travel. Two had a few minutes to ponder her ill fortune before a sudden wall of stench struck her acute senses.
“Stop,” she commanded and gagged as the foul air assaulted her tongue. Snakes could taste and smell with the appendage, a trait Two was beginning to regret inheriting.
“We home free lass?” Butch asked as he let her down onto shaky legs.
“No, to get to the sewers proper , get above ground then make it into the slums” Two forced calm into her voice and managed to reassert control over her legs after a few steps. “and wee need to do it soon.”
“Wasn’t the plan for me to get back after dark? Didn’t expect a little tussle to make you panic, guess the boss’s flower ain’t all she’s talked up to be.” He tasted so very self satisfied.
Two halted her cautious steps and whirled on Butch. She couldn’t see him in the dark but, he could no doubt see her cold eyes. One of the many advantages of cultivation. “Butch I’m going to need to take a minute and pull your head out of your ass. The plan, died the second you trampled and killed however many people you did after you failed to get away clean.”
She took a long drag of the filthy air but it failed to ease her temper and only it only added hate to the pool. She wasn’t supposed to be here, yet she was and the cause of her problems didn’t even understand the pit he’d dug. “It takes time to mount a response to a kidnapping no matter how blatant, no matter how important the target and the underground is vast and circuitous.”
“Then I’m not seeing the problem.”
“But dozens trampled, a likely stampede caused by our actions, all those deaths. They demand an immediate response. There will be no careful response, half the cities going to flood these tunnels looking for us and they aren’t going to be helpless rabble. Their going to be cultivators and they’re going to be hinting.”
That blunted his pride, added fear to his scent. “Can’t we, I don’t know head straight to the slums. Their lots of tunnels their right?”
“Their cut off Butch, They’ve been cut of for the last five years.” Another long breath and she managed to rein in her anger, push it back somewhere where it would cause where it cause her to do something stupid. Yet in its place lethargy came. This was why she eanted out, a normal life. Where one mistake wouldn’t lead to her end. “If you want to get out of here, you need to listen to me. I’ll need your eyes so we don’t walk into something stupid. I’ll lead us out of here. “
“How are you going to do that.”
“You don’t need to know.”
Tension built in the following silence. She kept her gaze sharp and her posture confident. She knew he was watching her.
Laughter broke the tension. “Daisy’s little monster certainly earned her reputation. Lass you‘d have scared me if you were actually looking at me, I’m a touch to the right.”
Two sighed very slowly. Were looking for a door or grill or something. Find it.”
“Certainly Ma’am.” He chuckled.
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Butch broke a gate and they were through to the sewer.
The awful smell rose to take on a physical presence that struck two heavily and repeatedly, like every breath carried a blow. Like of light forced her to rely on Butch for guidance, lest she slip from the walkway inyo sludge. Said sludge plinked as as the occasional drop hit it.
This was not her first romp in a sewer, it was however her first experience with the smell. The slums sewers sewers were paradoxically far cleaner, largely because most of them were unused.
She forced a deep breath, and pushed past the awfulness to layer that lay beyond. The layer of of drifting emotions and essence, it was also unpleasant. The collage of every emotion those above felt on the toilet. A true of the mystical world.
She’d sigh but that would requite breathing. Two shelved the rueful thoughts and focused one the one awful thing she wasn’t smelling, the slum.
The slums or more accurately, the things that entombed beneath it had a very particular taste. Like rot and desiccation intertwined on an old carcass, putrid and stale at the same time. It was a subtle thing, faint yet ever present in the air and the stone of the place. It oozed through rock and slipped through every gap as it wafted from the depths.
Even here, there was a hint of it.
She followed that scent, it would lead her to the slums even if blockages prevented it from taking her all the way.
“We need to go right.”
“Right? Into the wall.” Butch chuckled.
“We follow the wall until we find a right turn.” She did not rise to the bait. “And try yo be quiet, when the guards start coming for us I’d rather not alert them.”
“Will do your great ladyship. Will do.”
Patience Two, patience Two Daisy would gut him for his mistake. The mantra helped her focus, she noticed something she overlooked.
A thin beam of light shone into sewer, illumination a a grimy ladder. It likely came from a manhole. It also silhouette Butch and the bag over his shoulder.
“How’s our package.”
“I though we were doing the whole silent thing?”
“Butch. I’d like to confirm you didn’t kill her by mistake, I haven't heard her moving.”
“Fine fine.” He dropped the back to the floor. She stared at him, there was enough light to see the contours of her grin. “She’s a cultivator, she can take a tumble.”
He opened the sack to reveal their target.
Her hood had fallen off and her braids became undone, even in the dark bruises stood sharply on her face. Her dazed eyes roamed the space as she spilled on the floor. Then flashed as she took a deep breath, only for the stench to silence her scream witch half chocked coughs.
“Now don’t ya go screaming on us or I’ll though back in the bag.” He glanced at Two. “Did you know its sound proofed, the boss sure does have the best toys. “
Two continued surveying the woman, she was battered and with her hitched breath and movements Two wouldn’t be surprise if she were nursing some broken bones. Death however didn’t look like an immediate eventuality.
“Put her back in the bag.”
Their pleading eyes turned to Two. The feeling of hugs and warm smiles rippled through the sewers, but it was cracked, fragile. “Please wait I-“
A sound from above interrupted them, her eye turned to the unseen manhole. She shot a glance and pressed a finger to her lip. She walked quietly and quickly in the direction they’d been heading. Butch stuffed the young woman into the bag and followed.
They turned a corner as the sound of boots thudding into metal echoed, soon followed by the faint light of a lamp. They continued on, risking a brisk pace, heavy boots thudded against stone thudded behind them. She was forced to hold grab Butch’s tenuous clothing, to make the pace. After the light had long receded she released him. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she couldn’t taste his smug self-satisfaction.
They slowed and too suffered through another deep breath to ascertain their direction. They were further away. She squeezed her eyes shut until her frustration abated.
“Well, well-“ she glared at Butch. She didn’t know what he saw in her eyes, but it silenced him.
With a final measuring breath she returned to her navigating. A few minutes later lamplight interrupted her, accompanied by the sound of boots.
Dim light spilt around a corner, painting the tunnel walls in deep shadow illuminating dark stains of moss. Two paused as her thoughts raced. What were the odds they stumbled upon another seeker? Low, but raising with every wasted minute. Another thought popped into her head. What were the odds they were being tracked?
She drank deeply of the sewer’s air. No longer focusing on the slum’s scent, she instead looked for any odd scraps of essence in the air.
Essence, the thing she knew only as taste and scent was the fuel and result of cultivation and their magics. It was raw emotion and all that a cultivator did relied on it. If they were being tracked with it there would be a mark. Her long forked tongue darted art, suffering the putrid air for clarity. She found the odd essence a thin scent trail leading off towards the light, but its source was unexpected.
It tasted warm and light but thin, hope edged with pleading desperation, it tasted familiar. Two turned to the bag on Butch’s shoulder.