Emily slid down the treacherous slip-and-slide, twisting and bracing herself to stay level. Cupcake’s flailing body only made it more chaotic as they collided in a mass of limbs and fur. Emily clung to the torch, keeping it above the water as they barreled through the darkness.
She could only make out the nearest walls and a little ways up ahead, but that was enough to see the fork in the road rapidly approaching.
“Cupcake! Left!” she yelled.
Emily had no idea which way was better, but she didn’t want to be separated from the Rime wolf again. So she stomped her feet against the side of the slippery tunnel and slammed her back into Cupcake, causing them to both hurtle towards the left passage.
After that things only got more intense as Emily felt the decline rapidly sharpening and the surrounding water speeding up.
The light flickered and sputtered as the wind tore past them.
They continued crashing down the tunnels for what felt like an eternity, bumping into rocks and crouching under low-hanging ceilings. Unable to see an end in sight, but then Emily saw their chance.
It was another fork in the road, but it had one distinct difference.
The right passage was slightly more elevated than the one they were on. This was just enough that most of the water could not yet reach the right passage. Seeing the potentially stable ground, Emily shot a whip of blood out and latched onto the incoming opening, pulling Cupcake with her.
The blood sunk into the soft stone and pulled them into the other tunnel, landing with a wet splat.
Emily collapsed onto the stone breathing raggedly until she hissed at the sudden pain emanating from her thigh.
Looking down, Emily spotted that same rock monitor that had latched onto her before they had fled. The little shit had hung on through all of that.
Reaching down she clamped her hand down on the creature and pried its jaw open, before wrapping a noose of blood around its neck and ending it.
Emily groaned as she fell back into the dry stone.
“You okay girl?” Emily mourned.
Cupcake got up but thankful she didn’t shake herself off until she was a little ways away from Emily. The Rime wolf seemed physically fine, but Emily sensed that the beast was starving.
“Eat the lizard if it's safe, but leave me some,” Emily said rubbing her temples.
“God, what am I even saying?” Emily muttered as she blinked rapidly.
She never thought she’d be in a situation where lizard meat was something to be excited over. Emily sat up and thought of all the foods she wouldn’t have the chance to taste again. Burgers, pizza, hotdogs, bagels, hell, even a dry piece of toast would go down incredibly well right now. Emily wallowed in pity for a short while but then with a brief, sharp breath out, she sat up.
“There's nothing for it but to keep moving. But after this, I’m going to stuff my face with whatever this world considers junk food. Fuck my weight goals.”
One pep talk later, Cucake had already guzzled down pretty much all of the lizard’s usable meat, save for a leg which Emily managed to pry from the wolf's hungry jaws.
Their sleep had been interrupted partway through, but if they didn’t want that to happen again they would need to move as it looked like the water level was still rising, and it would reach the lip of this tunnel in a couple of minutes.
Because they didn’t know how deep this tunnel went, Emily decided to buy them some time by creating some blood. She shaped it to fit the bottom of the tunnel and then pulled her life force from it. This caused the blood to coagulate almost immediately, hardening into a ten-centimeter-thick barrier. The dried blood would not last long against rushing water, but it would at least buy them some time.
Clicking her tongue for Cupcake to follow, Emily headed down the only path forward.
Without the water making things difficult, her boots held a grip on the steep decline. The winding path continued on for kilometers, and as Emily continued to walk, she would throw up the odd dam here and there.
As they traveled, Emily noticed the gradient evening out. Before long, they arrived at another chamber. Like the previous one, it contained a pool of water, but this chamber also had two additional exits.
What was strange was that Emily's torch was not the only light source in here. As she looked up she could see a weak light from above, peaking through tiny holes in the ceiling. It took a while for Emily to realize it was daylight. She confirmed this seconds later because there were odd gaps all across the ceiling where rainwater was dripping into the still pool of water. In some places, she even thought she could see the cloudy skies, but that could have just been a delusion of a hopeful mind.
The pool of water was not that large, and Emily could see the bottom so she was fairly certain nothing was in it, but then she spotted the small ledge near the end of the passage. It was big enough that they could rest on it, but seeing that the lizards had gotten the drop on them in the last chamber, Emily scoured the place for any more of their kind. She found two of the creatures huddling in the corner which Cupcake took care of for her, in exchange for keeping all the meat to herself. They couldn’t afford to stay long, but Emily took a quick break while she could, using the torch to cook her piece of meat, which tasted pleasantly like chicken. Once she had finished, she extinguished the torch to conserve fuel and closed her eyes, hoping to catch a couple of hours of sleep. However, she was soon awakened by the sound of water trickling through the chamber.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Hearing this, she reignited the torch and made another barrier of dried blood, heading further down the pathway. She kept searching for more forks in the road but they seemed to have exhausted those.
They walked for kilometers but soon came out to another ovular-shaped pool, where Emily killed over a dozen lizards. Once Cupcake was content they rested again but the water followed them soon after.
This continued for a while, Emily only managing to steal a couple of hours of rest here and there.
“Alright, I’m getting sick of this, let's just ride it down,” Emily said when they got to another pool of water.
She’d gotten tired of walking so the next best option was the path of least resistance.
Cupcake whined as Emily built another blood dam, but this time they were on the side with all the water.
Water trickled into the room from behind them, slowly filling the chamber. The longer they waited the heavier the stream behind them got, and when Emily thought they had reached the right water level, she picked up a rock from the bottom of the pool and cracked it against her own barrier.
The brittle blood gave way with a crack and broke apart, causing the water that had built up in the chamber to rush out of the lower opening.
The sudden pull was strong but Cupcake could keep them away from it for long enough to give the water a head start.
At Emily’s signal, they leaped forward, but this time she was on Cupcake’s back. The Rime wolf lowered herself onto her belly and they rode the water down the shaft, hurtling towards the unknown.
They traveled through the underground rivers like this for a couple of hours. When they got tired they damned up the passage and rested for however long the barrier held. The light from above was common at first, but soon even that could not penetrate the depths they were traveling through. Emily tried to conserve her singular torch for as long as she could, but after what must have been days of travel, it was beginning to splutter at even the slightest of draught.
Traveling without it was beyond dangerous, so it was a huge relief when she spotted a pinprick of light in the distance.
Emily was currently clinging to Cupcake as the ceilings had become rather low, but as the light became more pronounced, they began to widen again.
After the initial surprise at seeing light down here, caution followed. The last while had been in a constant decline, so any light down here could not be from a natural source, could it?
Unfortunately, they were going to find out whether they wanted to or not, as they couldn’t stop now because of the current. Even though Cupcake tried to slow them down, they burst forth into a large chamber.
Right away, Emily sensed something unusual. The chamber around her was far from natural—its walls appeared to be carved deliberately into the sandstone, shaped by tools or some skillful technique to direct multiple streams of water into this single space. It reminded her of a routing chamber used in a sewer system. Her eyes widened as she tried to understand why such a structure would be hidden here, deep in the mountain.
Looking down, Emily spotted a grating embedded in the chamber floor, catching the various streams of water from the different openings above.
Then, something else caught her attention: natural light.
At the opposite end of the chamber, a large opening revealed a view of the ravine she’d seen days prior.
The light caused Emily to squint, but she could make out the gorge ahead, and directly across the bottomless expanse was the other wall of the massive gorge rising up out of sight.
As she’d expected, they weren’t at ground level but instead partway down the cliff, forcing her to crane her neck to see the tops of it.
She’d arrived, just not at the right altitude.
Emily edged Cupcake forward so she could see more of the gorge and realized they were dozens of stories below ground level, even the murky sky looked far away from down here.
When they got to the other end of the room, Emily spotted a waist-high railing near the edge, which she leaned on to see out over the entire expanse.
The ravine stretched out on either side of them for kilometers as birds dotted the horizon, flitting between rock faces. She could see dozens of other streams of water coming from her side of the wall, only for it to crash down into the depths below. If she had to guess, these chambers were dotted along the cliff face. Though she wasn’t sure of the reason, the stream of water flowing from below her window suggested they were collecting the water.
The crowning jewel of all of this was the city that sat off to her left. The structure looked like a rod buried halfway into the wall of the ravine, tapering to a narrow spike toward the bottom and expanding to a massive bulbous top. Hundreds of figures moved around the tops of the city but were too small to make out.
Emily tried to poke her head beyond the opening to get a better look, but it bumped into what felt like a screen of glass.
Rubbing her head, Emily inspected the area and noticed a ring of wards going all the way along the perimeter.
As she backed away, a ripple moved through the pane of force, and the ward began to glow.
Suddenly the air in the room churned, and a voice resounded through the space.
"Warning! You have entered the territory of Lorethil, the city of questions. If you can understand this message, you are in a prohibited zone. Leave and return through public channels. Failure to do so will result in the dispatch of the Enforcers."
Emily clamped her hands over her ears as the hollow voice echoed throughout the room on repeat. The sharp tone grated on her nerves as the message blared out in a never-ending loop.
Emily’s frown deepened. Enforcers sounded exactly like what she needed, but did she have time to wait? By the third repetition, the blaring voice was making her grind her teeth in irritation.
“Yeah! Okay, we get it!” she growled, but the alarm continued blaring to itself.
Glancing at the ward around the perimeter, Emily tried to decipher it but quickly realized she was completely out of her depth. The ward contained runes she’d never even seen before, let alone understood. She had no way of parsing out what this was, but that didn’t mean she was hopeless against it.
Closing her eyes, Emily imagined the shape of the unlocking ward Alex had drawn for her, shaping her blood into the appropriate runes.
Seeing as this was a large-scale ward set up by a city full of Mages, she decided to go all out from the start.
So once the ward was complete, she drew in as much grey source as she could through her bridges and funneled it into the blood ward.
At the same time, she brought it up to the plane of force blocking her path and pressed it against the wall. There was a brief hum echoing from her ward, followed by a low buzz rippling through the room.
The two wards fought, and arcs of power jumped between them as the blood ward sang like a resonating piece of iron, vapor rising off it.
The ward etched into the walls began to glow blue in contrast to Emily's blood, and seconds later it crumpled with the screeching of metal. The wall of force blinked out of existence, and the room fell silent.
Emily sighed in relief at the calm—only for it to be replaced by the sound of metal grinding and clanking.
Turning back toward the center of the room, she froze as a portion of the grid opened up, and a metal monstrosity rose from the depths.
Its shining humanoid body reflected the light, casting a cold gleam across the chamber. Emily’s shoulders slumped, and her heart sank. This was not the response she’d hoped for. She braced herself as the golem took its first heavy steps forward, preparing for what would come next.
As if Emily didn’t already have enough to worry about an explosion went off somewhere far above them causing the surrounding rock to tremble.
Blood points: 289