I had never before been put in a position where I needed to consider how I felt about cramped spaces, and now that I was, I didn’t like it very much. The darkness helped, but I still knew there wasn’t much space to move between the stone wall and the sounds of rushing water.
I unhooked the lamp from my vest and shook it to bathe my surroundings in its green light. The water was inside a clay pipe big enough for me to crawl in, heading off towards multiple enchantment fields in the opposite direction I needed to go. The solid stone around me, which had been dug into rather than placed, curved up to an arch at head height so I didn’t have to worry about bending down as I walked.
The map didn’t need me to turn anytime soon, which meant I could take my time keeping my footing on the damp rock.
I came up to the first landmark, located under the inner wall that extended down to the sewers. A door and enchantment were already open and deactivated for me, as Faraya said they’d be. The outer wall was the same, except the clay pipe turned and carried on through the stone wall while the path changed into a square tunnel wide enough for one.
“Eep”
A hissing cockroach bigger than my boot went dawdling past while I flattened against the wall. In defence of my brief shriek, I knew it was there; I’d just assumed it would be cute and regular-sized, not a lumbering behemoth covered in pointy chitin.
The tunnel ended in another inactive enchantment that marked the return of the arched ceiling and water, this time unencumbered by a clay pipe. Instead, it was inside a wide channel at the edge of my path. The lack of railings between my thin pathway and the drop into water that would come up to my chest was a little unnerving.
The smell also started seeping through the scented sponge, but I pressed ahead.
I kept a palm pressed to the stone to help secure me, more for comfort than purpose. Something I should have been practising more often came to mind, and I sent out a mana pulse down the tunnel. I braced for the return, which I was worried about for nothing since all I got was the mental image of smooth stone walls and the water's rough surface.
A few critters interrupted that monotony, but overall, it was a welcomed change from the last few times I’d been overwhelmed when using it.
When I got closer, I found a few more hiding underwater. I tried to shine some light onto what I thought were giant slugs, but all I got was a blurry reflection and the disconcerting feeling of a creature that could only experience touch.
These critters seemed purposefully placed since their mana was acting similarly to that in Caypa’s stomach, cleaning the water to make less work for the enchantments.
Different types of rodents were also more frequently running between my legs and over my boots. The opossums were adorable, carrying their babies around on their backs, but they had no interest in interacting with me beyond a few hisses if I got too close to their young. The rats were more intelligent, able to let me know that they hadn’t seen any of the humans I was trying to find in this part of the sewers.
A more enthusiastic and younger rat scurried off to relay my question to other colonies nearby.
My latest imitation of the flying foxes’ mana pulse found a person in a direction veering off of my small map. It was too early to find anyone, and I didn’t think the rats would lie to me, though I still decided to investigate.
The eerie whistling echoing down the tunnel sent me scrambling for the lamp handle, plunging me into darkness once again. I hooked it back onto my vest, rested a hand over a dagger’s handle, and crouch-walked to the next corner.
At the end of the next tunnel was an intersection where one of the three options to turn had light shining out against the far wall from around curtains protruding over a small alcove. A wooden plank had been placed to bridge the channel gap towards it, and I pushed down onto it with my foot before stepping across.
The alcove existed because the stone blocks making up the foundations of a building above disrupted the wall. I crept over and slowly moved aside the tattered curtain to reveal a pile of blankets and someone with long, messy hair almost melding into them. They faced away from me and held a book above them with outstretched arms, flicking through the pages faster than I could have read through them.
It was especially impressive when their only lighting was from a small lamp like mine.
Since this wasn’t a mage and definitely wasn’t one of the people I was trying to find, I pulled back the curtains and stepped into the doorway. “Excuse me?”
“Hmm?” he said, turning to reveal a tangled beard in a similar state as his hair. “A polite assassin with a speech impediment? We certainly have an interesting imagination today, though I wouldn’t complain about bringing back the sexy privateer.”
He shifted back to his book, licked his thumb, and turned the page with the other hand.
I swallowed down a retort about my speech, the characterisation that I was an assassin, and the questions I had on what a ‘sexy privateer looked like. “Have you, ah, seen other people down here recently?”
He looked back at me with a raised eyebrow and held onto the edge of the book while he flapped it about. “We’re really going to waste our time like this? Right when we’re getting to our favourite part?”
“Sorry?”
“Fine,” he sighed, standing and taking the single step needed to close the distance. I kept track of the slow-moving finger he used to poke me in the forehead. “Huh, we made you feel real this time.”
“I am real?”
“Yeah, sure, and we’re the King of Werl,” he said, twirling around with a flourish. “Tell us a fact that we wouldn’t know then. Bet we can’t do that one.”
“Oh, umm, ah,” I stammered, trying to think of why I needed to find something like that. “There’s a rat under your blankets?”
“Really? That’s the best we got? Where else would Bucky be sleeping but his favourite spot.”
I blew out a long breath, went for something completely different, and told him the exact recipe for a tincture to soothe burns. “Better?”
He poked my forehead again and studied me. “We’re not nearly that creative to come up with so many weird names, so I crown thee a temporarily honorary persona. Congratulations! Now, what brings you to my abode?”
I ignored the change from ‘we’ to ‘I’ and pressed on with my original question despite having so many more. “I’m looking for a group of people who’ve been coming down here lately.”
He rubbed his fingers together. “In exchange for?”
I hummed and looked down at the book in his hand. “I’ll bring you books? Not now, but maybe tomorrow?”
“Sold, take a left and then…”
I quickly brought out and unfolded my map to see if it matched what he said. It didn’t, but I managed to memorise most of his ramblings.
When he wanted me to go left three times in a row and warned me not to go between Rat’s Crack and the whirlpool to avoid the spikey turtle, I stopped trying so hard to remember and just nodded until he finished speaking.
“Thanks…I’ll bring your books tomorrow?”
“If you still exist, it would be nice to get more variety,” he said, falling back into the pile of blankets.
I backed out of the curtain and checked behind me to ensure I wasn’t walking off the ledge. “Mhm. Bye.”
My map would be far more reliable than walking in circles and directions that may not exist, so I stuck to it and went back to my path.
Even in my thoughts, it sounded mean to refer to the man I realised I hadn’t bothered to learn the name of as out of his mind. He’d seemed to think I was a figment of his imagination, and even after only a few minutes down here, I could understand why.
Every echoing clang and splash froze me in my tracks as I strained my ears to decide what was making the noise and where. The pulses and my senses told me there was nothing beyond each turn, yet I still peered around into the darkness that my lamp barely chased away to confirm what I already knew.
Did he know if the sun was out above ground? What did he eat down here? Why was he there to begin with?
I walked past a staircase with a locked door at the top leading to a basement and rats gnawing on scraps of food, the latter hopefully not offering an answer to one of my questions.
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Another pulse told me there were more rats up ahead, including the one who’d gone out to check on the other colonies for me. The floor was carpeted in them, and I slowly stepped into small areas they vacated, careful not to catch any tails under my boots.
My new friend was in the midst of it all and wanted me to carry him around so he could avoid it. As much as I liked the twitch of his nose, the soft brown fur, and the way his ears rounded, there was no chance those grubby little paws were getting anywhere beyond my boots.
Bitsy, keeping with the ‘B’ theme, settled down and held onto my laces as I exited the gathering. From a trail of information that involved too many rats to be comfortable with the veracity of the claims, Bitsy started to relay what he knew.
A distant colony had to leave their nest because the ground constantly shifted and cracked the ceiling, causing it to collapse on them. Many new faces had also been showing up in that area, throwing mana, sharpened objects, and fire at them. It was confusing since the people left the bodies behind, and they couldn’t understand why other rats had died if not to feed a predator.
All of this happened after a turn-off, not on my map, and quickly approaching. If I found nothing and had to go back and be faced with the decision of lying or telling them a rat had fed me bad information, I was lying every time.
However, Bitsy and his kin had a better idea of where to look since they had been closer than the group of watch that got chased off.
“Hmm?” I stopped and looked away from my map, down to an anxious Bitsy.
Up ahead was an intersection with a notable difference from others I’d passed. Due to the clashing currents trying to cross each other, there was a swirl in the centre.
Bitsy lept off my foot and hurried off in the direction we’d come from, disappearing into a crack in the wall soon after. In his thoughts were worries about the jaws of a snake closing around him, and no amount of reassurance that I could protect him got him to come out.
I was left alone between a crack in the wall that a rat had just escaped through and a whirlpool.
When nothing bad happened and no spiked turtles showed up, I began breathing normally again. I scolded myself for getting worked up over the emotions of a rat and the words of someone who crowned me an honorary person.
Then, the water flowing into the intersection from one of the passages started to subside. The whirlpool faded, and the water churned and sloshed with the changing tides.
Every creature was always on the lookout for their next source of food, an undercurrent of hunger ever present in the back of their minds driving most of their actions. One slightly different creature was approaching. Their hunger had melded in with all the other sewer inhabitants, but they started to salivate now that they’d smelt something they enjoyed sinking their teeth into.
My mouth went dry, and I took a few steps back before stopping. They weren’t being purposefully starved by people, and I’d dealt with hungry creatures before. There was no reason I couldn’t talk myself out of this.
“Maybe just a few reasons,” I mumbled.
They turned the corner before the intersection, letting through a wave of water that crashed into the other streams again. The whirlpool tried to reform for a moment before being cut off again.
They were slow to make their way through the channel. I tried to parse through its senses to get an idea of what it was, but the only one it used was smell to track me.
My lamp’s green light barely reached to give me the outline of the long serpentine head that came around the bend. Whiskers trailed along their scaled cheek, and finned spikes lined the ridge of their neck.
Most of the body was hidden under the water line while their shelled back rose above with barbed quills occupying it. They weren’t the comical critter I’d imagined when warned about a spiky turtle. While it was nowhere near an apt description for a peluda, I did admit it was my fault for dismissing it without asking more questions.
These creatures were supposed to live in rivers and wetlands. To fit in the restrictive channel of the sewers, it was either an adolescent or severely malnourished. From the hunger
clouding their mind and the glint in their eyes, I guessed the latter.
Only the mouth of this creature was even vaguely snake-like. It hung open to reveal mana-tainted saliva that promised to paralyse anything the peluda sunk its hooked fangs into.
Eyes reflecting the light of my lamp tracked me as the body carried on straight ahead. I almost sighed, relieved I didn’t have to test my convictions when they started turning. A clawed foot broke the water’s surface and latched onto the ledge, tilting their body to the side to allow the restrictive shell to turn into my channel.
The barbed shell now faced me as their body blocked most of the water.
I conceded to the Alisa in my head. She was right, and I was wrong. So very wrong. It didn’t care about anything beyond how good I tasted; it knew from extensive experience what to expect.
I turned to run, confident in my ability to get away long before I had to worry about the fangs. My confidence faded as the peluda didn’t care its prey was escaping.
Its overwhelming need to gnaw on my body stopped me from noticing why. Quills shot out of its back to spray the area I was in.
Without time to do anything else besides dive into the channel, I carried on running.
“Arg!”
The pain erupting from my back was manageable, but the quill digging into my calf sent me stumbling to my knees. The lamp clattered out of my hands and shattered before rolling into the shallow water, glowing green liquid dripping down after it.
The venom coating the quills hit me as I tried to stand. I leaned into the wall beside me for support as my vision blurred. I knew it was closing in, confident in landing the next blow. All I could do to avoid the mouth striking towards me was fall to the side.
It hissed in pain from ramming into the stone wall, somehow angering it less than missing its prey. I’d fallen towards its body and looked up just as more quills erupted from its back. I closed my eyes and rolled to flatten against the stone ledge, smacking the back of my head and forcing the quills protruding from me to snap under my weight.
Even with panic and venom-muddled thoughts, I’d at least brought up stone to cover my body.
I opened my eyes again to find rows of quills stuck in the wall above me, some failing to stick and raining down.
Rolling to my stomach took more effort than it should have, and I crawled away from the head, coming in for another strike. Its jaws snapped shut a hair’s length from my boots. The frustration and hatred it held for me, denying its first real meal in ages, multiplied. That was expressed in the form of a tail thrashing out of the damned water behind it.
It crashed into the ledge where my hand had been moments before, the spiked end still catching my smallest finger and almost slicing clean through it and the glove. With a wide-open jaw hissing to one side and a thrashing tail to the other, I got to my feet, breaking through the quills stuck above me, and took the only option left.
I stepped onto the wall I’d made, then onto its back. Quills cracked under my footing and stuck into my pants as I stumbled on the next step across the thrashing creature. My third step landed on solid ground, my momentum sending me crashing into the wall. I hobbled off in the direction of its head since it had almost tied itself into a knot trying to reach me on its back.
Jaws clamped around air as my limp brought me out of reach.
The remaining light from my broken lamp faded as I rounded the corner, away from the hissing and sloshing water.
I kept going despite my leg screaming to stop until I couldn’t feel its hunger anymore.
“Arg…fuck.” My shoulder hit the wall, and I slumped down to my knees. I felt around my calf for the remainder of the quill still embedded in me and tried to tug it out.
My gloves, slick with blood, found no purchase on the small barbed spike and slipped off.
A small whimper left my lips as it didn’t budge. The venom wasn’t as potent as a bite would have been, but my mind was still foggy. I pulled off my right glove and bit onto the other, getting a view of my nearly detached finger, and tugged the quill again. It ripped through my leg and then needed to be wiggled about after it caught on my clothes.
I thrashed against the wall and vowed never to do that again. The ones in my back could stay there.
I’d been warned by Alisa, the man in the sewer, Bitsy, and the monster itself. It was extremely frustrating that it was no one else's fault but my own that I was in so much pain. A memory of Mother telling me something similar wormed its way into my mind. That it was my fault, she needed to punish me.
I hadn’t thought of her in a while and that jarring lie helped me grit my teeth and get to my feet with a groan. I twisted my leg about, and without the barb shifting around inside, it wasn’t that terrible to walk. My back was still in complete agony so much so that I couldn’t even tell how many had hit me.
I stomped my foot into the ground as I manoeuvred and held my sliced finger in a way that would hopefully allow it to heal properly.
Without a single mote of light, I sent out a pulse every moment I could to travel by. That didn’t help with seeing the map, but I slowly made my way back to where I’d encountered the peluda. It took a lot of convincing to get myself to even think about going back, but I did so by promising I’d turn around the moment I felt its hunger again.
The only creature in the area was Bitsy, who was still in the crack. He watched me from the other side of the trench as I raised stone pillars out of the water to step across.
The stone had been scarred by claw marks, quills, and the passage of the oversized creature. I thought back to the one-sided thrashing I’d gotten to see if there was anything I could have done to put up a fight.
It was embarrassing that I hadn’t thrown mana at it or even drew my blades. But what good would have any of that done me?
Beyond attempting to bring down the ceiling on both of us, ruining the days of all those above. I didn’t think there was a way to come out on top beyond not being there to begin with.
I let Bitsy climb up my pants and shirt to sit in the crook of my elbow since he was afraid to walk across the ledge. He didn’t have a way to tell that the predator was long gone, and me telling him such wasn’t any reassurance.
It barely worked for me.
I couldn’t see the map, which would lead me to more places I was told to avoid. So, I followed the man’s directions from before the Rat’s Crack all the way to light and voices.
Bitsy was somewhat sure this was near the area of the now displaced colony and destroyed nest as well. He had spent the journey snuggled inside the remaining pocket I had meant for another blade.
My finger still didn’t work, and the barbs shifted in my back, but my leg was only mildly sore.
Focusing only on pulses to get around was a great way to learn. Something that I wished I’d thought of doing in a safer environment.
The voices faded as they turned another corner, and I followed behind as I’d been doing for a while. From what they’d been talking about, these were people returning from a supply run for the main group. The next turn had the voices cutting off almost entirely, the next mana pulse not finding them either.
I caught up to find an area of the stone replaced with what reminded me of the living trees back in Tamil. This one was hollowed out to act as a way down, further than I could sense through the rock below.