Corvayne opened an eye and saw Wick straddling him, grinning and fully clothed, glasses on, hair in pigtails.
Hari, in pajamas for a change, stirred a little next to him but rolled over taking more of the blanket instead of waking up. He looked back at Wick, who was beaming and raised her eyebrow. “Uh, good morning Wick?”
She yanked his arm. “I need your service as a body guard!”
She had, of course, wanted a copy of the map Horton had, so after dinner they went to where he lived in northern Ko-Ban and pounded on his door until he gave her a color copy then shut the door in their faces. Wick repeated the door slamming gesture later, so Corvayne ended up having Hari stay over, watching a movie on her phone that put her to sleep while Corvayne stayed up to finish watching.
“All right. I could use breakfast-”
Wick pulled a wax bag from her pack and jiggled it. “Sausage sandwiches! Lets go! The other world map had a bunch of stuff under Ko-Ban, including the ruins of a library by where the Bone Dawgz were.”
Corvanye slowed her pulling him. “So you want to do a two person run into dangerous territory...”
Wick groaned. “You wanted a date? This is THE fucking date! A dark place, the kinda weird mystery that gets me excited, and there might be a magic tome.”
He nodded. “Okay Wick. If it's that kind of date, I better dress up.” He opened his closet and pulled out a plastic garbage bag where he kept the Jam-Jammies.
“You are such a fucking troll!” Wick said, as lovingly as he had ever heard her say anything to him.
Geared up for a battle despite Wick's insistence the gang had fallen apart, Corvayne entered the most romantic sewer access in all of Ko-Ban. It was further north along the sound from where he had fought the hell-hound, a squat building with vines crawling up it's graffiti covered exterior. It was connected to the water walk, but tucked away from every other direction by a parking ramp and two older buildings with bricked over windows.
The exterior door was locked via chains, which Wick pulled a bolt cutters out and snickered at before she clipped the lock, called out. “Sundering Strike! Hah, remind you of anyone?”
Corvayne opened the door, checking the dark interior for threats then holding the door for Wick. “You sure got me down.”
“What a gentleman! Though, we'll see if you don't show your true colors in the dark.”
Corvayne gave her a blank look, winked, then took the lead by hopping down a flight of steps, strolling into the gloom while Wick got her flashlight out and shone it at his back. He kept his spear out and his whip and dagger ready on his belt.
The stairs went down about four floors into the ground before he entered a sewer tunnel.
“It should be not too far east of here.” She said, correctly picking the east branch of the tunnel they were in.
To Corvayne it looked like the same storm drain system they had used before. It was odd to him there was an empty one built along side one that handled all the actual run-off. “So you think there's a library from that map down here?”
“There's some weird shit with this two city shit going on, and I mean, this gang that lives in the ground here HAD to have learned to summon a monster from somewhere. If we don't find this library, well, we'll go to a movie and lunch.”
Corvayne stopped. She just said if she was wrong, they'd go on a regular date. “You really are that sure of it?”
Wick stepped around him and turned, winking. “Yep!”
The storm tunnels they were following were cleaner than the ones near where the Bone Dogs operated, but still had some muck from grime washed in from the regular tunnel's overflowing. They were under sea level, so Corvayne started to wonder where the trickle of water that was running down the middle of this pipe went.
Well, that wasn't on the menu today because they reached a spot that looked like a gap in the pipes, and Wick gestured and they walked into the hole, entering a stone cave. A few beer cans and chalk drawings of a stick figure sucking off another stick figure suggested that the Bone Dogs or some other immature vandal who went drinking in sewers had found it.
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It was a short jaunt to what looked like a collapsed subway tunnel. Corvayne had Wick climb onto his back and they leap over the black murky water where the tracks would be, moving towards double doors on the other side, which lead to what looked like an underground station. The light from her flashlight caught puddles and old metal work. It was very quiet aside from little drips and distant rumbles from things happening far above them.
Looking at the abandoned station, he guessed it wasn't always underground, as it looked like there was one window that had mud spilling out of it to coat part of the station in a layer of brown film. A skylight was a source of one of the drips, rocks jutting down dripping water into a little lake on the tiles. Wick looked at all these with her flashlight, but kept them moving east, entering a large arched hall then down six steps and through another pair of doors, entering what looked like the lobby of a library. The dim room had a checkered floor leading across a vaulted room to rows of books in a reading room with blue ghostly lights. Corvayne stopped immediately, seeing the body of a dead gang member with spines sticking out of them in the dark area near the door.
He backed up out of the entrance, then turned to Wick.
“Hell porcupine killed a guy in there.”
“Can you keep the date going?” Wick asked.
He slipped back in and looked. He saw movement as a monster crept from a corner of the room, sniffed the air, then returned to it's hiding spot. Corvayne took his whip out and lightened his gravity, then reached into his storage ring and pulled out one of the glow-stones he had pilfered from the previous Tower. He tossed it onto the floor where it bounced then skidded across the floor, and moments later there was a pop then the clatter of needles hitting it and bouncing off the stone. Corvayne tightened the clasp on his cloak to blur himself then crept along the outside of the shadowy room, slinking along the wall for a minute until he got to the hell porcupine's alcove. He could see the monster's face, and new quills pushing up out of it's back but didn't care to get into a deep dive with biology, instead using [Thrust] to brain the monster. It died with just a little surprised grunt.
It didn't seem anything noticed him, so Corvayne tossed out another glow-stone and listened and waited, but no quills came out.
He returned to Wick. “There might be some monsters spilling out, should we go back and-”
“End this date?” Wick grinned. “I got potions on me. You got a potion in your pocket too... unless you're happy to see me.”
Corvayne gently removed her hand from a side pouch. “I am always prepared AND happy to see you, but I also took my lesson from Seru about engaging in activities that inhibit attention while I'm on a mission.”
“You need to just say 'no sex in dungeons'. Though, you know our first time was kind of hot because of the danger.”
As she spoke Corvayne heard something creak. In the stacks beyond the reading room tables, he spotted what looked like an out of place wall forming a dead end between book shelves. Then the wall moved, revealing it was something scaled and large slipping through the shelves of books.
Corvayne turned and pulled Wick with him, going across the lobby, sweating intensely as he guessed how big that monster would have to be. No. No thank you. Not starting a fight with the giant snake. Wick stopped him when she let go of his hand and pointed to a door with a broken lock, but broken towards the library. “Look, they came IN here from that stairway!”
Corvayne rushed her along, not trusting that the serpent hadn't heard her excited voice. “Wow, someone's in a hurry to get home. Slow down, you know I'd be more likely to put out if we take our time.” Wick tugged her arm free as they reached the dingy stairs down.
“I saw something I'm not interested in fighting in the library.” He started to say what he had seen but Wick nodded and patted his shoulder. She trusted his judgement on these things.
“Ok, so back? or down then?” Wick offered.
Corvayne thought about it, then started down the steps into the first blue landing. The glowing light came from blue fire burning in the cages where usually the electric lights rested. Wick put her hand near one then pulled it back.
“Cold fire.” She grabbed a bit of wood and tried to get it to burn, but the flames seemed to only function as light. “Will have to study it further. Right! That's a good sign though, MAGIC!”
Corvayne was instead concerned with them getting trapped under tons of stone so he checked to make sure the concrete around them looked intact before he and Wick continued down. What he thought of as the back stairs passing floors locked off from the stairs, no hint of the library to be seen in the ominous black voids behind the blue lit wire windows in the doors.
At the bottom of the stairs they found the charred corpse of a Bone Dog, excuse him, Bone Dawg, burned black by something that had scorched a trail across muddy concrete. The origin of the trail was a cleared patch of ground with a circle of dried blood. The burned bodies of chickens nearby suggested that someone had summoned a hell-hound or something else that charred the ground, gotten charged by it, then vanished after killing one person.
There was an exterior door with 'EXIT' above it and another door into the library that looked like it was jammed shut by books and part of a fallen floor, but the Corvayne and Wick both made their way down a hallway with more bodies. All of them showed evidence of something going horribly wrong.
Wick stopped and looked at each of the corpses, using the airfoil rapier to push them aside, commenting when she found out of place objects.
“Should we be here?” Corvayne asked, noting the variety of ways in which the six or so bodies in the hallway had expired.
“They always originate from a circle. Acid trail from this one to this person, but no other damage. Stone spikes with more damage to the wall but they curve until they skewer that guy. Looks like part of the floor got turned into glass here, so maybe lightning?”
Corvayne looked at the grisly scene. “I'm making an official request to be in charge of our next date, whenever you let us have one.”
Wick stopped. “I'd do this a thousand times over mushy crap.”
“If you need bodies Wick, then we'll do a bike ride to a graveyard.”
He stopped talking and listened as he started to move up to the shadow end of the hallway. No, not shadows. It felt like the blue glowing light was growing deeper rather than dimmer.
Rounding the corner there was an ornate chamber, covered in gold-leaf and weird faces and drama masks, lit by gold fires that outlined both the gold details and several faded red banners, all of them arranged to draw attention to a stage at the far end of the room. It looked like the chamber was spliced into the library, boring peeling wallpaper slowly turning into the gold paint or coating of the chamber. A light on the center of the stage showed Corvayne what looked like a shattered jar and the body of a four armed woman in a stained white dress with mummified skin, wearing a three eye mask.
Corvayne walked down the bare concrete then up stairs to the stage, where he could see the woman was huge, perhaps ten feet tall or more if she had been alive and standing. There were other details but Corvayne was focused on the very familiar mask. It looked like there was a bloody hand-print on it, and someone had set up a little shrine around it, with withered flowers and Bone Dog masks as effigies, melted candles coating much of it.
“Hmm. They worshiped her?”
Corvayne shrugged then gestured at the face covering, noticing up close it was cracked. “That's the same mask the Magus wore. If not the same one, the exact design.”
Wick nodded, then clapped her hands and reached down, pulling out a partially burnt tome from a skeleton. “The book of the Long Callings... I bet this is how they got that hell hound!”
Corvayne heard doors open behind them, and he spun and suddenly the gold was gone, the lights were gone, it was just him alone in a dark space, with the only light a faint blue glow seeping in from the door. Wick had vanished, but he didn't have time to panic as he felt something drawing him off the stage, across the hall towards the double doors.
From within he heard the call. “Come, nameless one...” Then he passed the threshold and heard the doors shut behind him.