The Sun was already setting, sleepily resting on the mountains in the west as people began to return to their homes. All activity was starting to die down in Rennos when Gabrielle and Lucrece walked over to the main sewer entrance: a huge manhole carefully sealed in the City’s east side. They were not alone: Oleg and Hanna were accompanying them both to make sure their investment did not simply run off to the hills at the first opportunity, and with them also came a hunching, whispering man carrying the keys to the manhole’s lock.
The royal keyholder, they called him as a joke, for the lurching man was little more than a glorified janitor when it came to his functions. He sighed, bothered to no end by the tavern owner’s insistence to once again open the sewers and send another pair of idiots to their untimely death… but he was paid for this kind of responsibility, so he couldn’t really refuse.
Both girls had equipped themselves with the “corvid masks” on their faces, each with a filter already set inside their beak. It wasn’t perfect and it smelled heavily like bad booze, but it kept the stench and miasma of the sewers away from their lungs and, ergo, kept them protected from any sicknesses living in the air. Gabrielle had never felt so healthy and protected than when using the mask, but Lucrece told her it was too expensive to buy enough filters to use them on a regular basis.
“Once the antiseptic smell disappears you have to change the filter”, Luci explained, “A bad filter is no good at all.”
With a satisfying click, each of the four locks on the main manhole opened. The royal keyholder sighed and prepared himself before pulling the heavy cast iron out of their way and revealing the pestilent, dark tunnel descending into the innards of the world. Everyone looked at each other for a second, and then back into the hole. None of them could be paid to jump in there, at least none except for Lucrece who dreaded every second getting her closer to the job.
“We will wait for you, but if you don’t return in three days we will consider you dead.” Oleg said with his arms crossed. He wasn’t exactly patient. “Don’t toss away your lives in there: if you are overwhelmed, run.”
“But only then!” Hanna would rather see them die than her investment fully lost. “Remember the reward at stake!”
“And the service to the city…” Mumbled the keyholder. “This could be vital to the city’s livelihood and good image… but whatever…what do I know about things…?”
“Y-Yes. Sorry, sir.” Hanna quickly corrected herself, a little flustered. “Remember you are doing this for the city, you two. So do not fail.”
They all nodded in agreement once again, and without another word Gabrielle ventured onwards into the manhole, her new leather gloves clinging tightly to the metal ladder as she descended. Lucrece needed a few moments to actually psych herself up, and follow the redhead into the depths of Jericho’s soil. She trembled a little when the keyholder sealed up the manhole once again, leaving them in absolute darkness.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Do it for the money…” She whispered to herself, trying to go down the ladder as quickly as possible. “Do it for the money…!”
As soon as her feet touched solid ground, Luci grabbed and lit her torch, illuminating the passage they had been thrust into. A tunnel of dark stone bricks, with very small sections on the sides that allowed people to walk beside the flow of refuse without sinking your feet in it. There were no signs of scratchings or bite marks on the walls, so they were certainly away from the nest. Lucrece sighed, she had been hoping this would be an easy and quick job.
“All right, then. Time to find some rats!” Luci turned to look at the witch. “With some luck, most of them are probably out and about in the city, so sucks to be them.”
Gabrielle was enraptured, staring at her sword shining under the light of Lucrece’s torch. The surface was so beautifully polished, perfectly oiled and sharp enough to cut a hair in twain. The redhead nodded to herself in satisfaction, yes.
“It wasn’t this beautiful even when I got it for the first time.” Gabi admitted, sheathing it slowly. “What a shame.”
“A shame?” The lancer tilted her head.
“It will be ruined in a second with rat guts.”
Both adventurers shared a confident grin before starting the way deeper into the tunnels.
Each step echoed into the darkness around them, their only company was the constant dripping of moisture from the ceiling and the lazy, slow flow of refuse going right beside them. Lucrece was doing her absolute best to keep her eye away from the river of shit, once again cursing every single living being in Rennos, while Gabrielle found herself staring at it with an odd fascination.
After all, it’s not often that you see other people’s shit in the street anymore.
“I never thought people relieved themselves that often, Luci. It’s almost fascinating.”
“It is very much not.”
They would continue on for what felt like hours, walking down through increasingly narrow tunnels of stone brick… until suddenly, the smell of refuse and rotting matter seemed to die down. Gabrielle looked down at the river of shit, marveled when seeing how the disgusting waters had turned clearer and clearer with the passing of time. Confused, she then turned to Lucrece, who just waved a hand dismissively.
“These places sometimes use rivers to push the water around. Don’t take your mask off, there’s still miasma in the air.”
The redhead sighed, a little disappointed with such a rational answer, while Lucrece kept checking the walls on their way. Marks of gnawing and scratching had finally started appearing on the brick walls.
“What is this, now…?”
Bricks were broken down in a section of the wall, revealing the naked rock of the earth beneath… and a huge crack on it all, wide enough for a person to slide in. Listening in, both girls could hear the disgusting squeaking and gnawing deep within the darkness of that tiny cave. They both nodded, already knowing what had to be done.
“This is what I got Serpentine for.” Luci smirked, showing off one of the little sacks hanging from her belt. “We go as far into this crack as we can, we set these on fire and throw them in, and then run like Hell. Understood?”
“Got it.”
Lucrece walked in first, guiding the way through that crack in the wall with her trusty torch and expecting it to become tighter and tighter just like the sewers outside. But instead, the cave only seemed to expand wider and wider. Confused, the blonde started taking slower, more careful steps into the dark, making sure to feel up the floor in front of her.
Until they reached the Pit.
“What in the blazes…?”
An almost perfectly circular pit had been carved on the ground in front of them, a real nest where hundreds (if not thousands) of rats of different sizes writhed, shaked and bit each other in a frenzy… all around the biggest creature either of the adventurers had ever seen before: a rat so fat and massive it couldn’t even be called an animal anymore, it was a monster. A beast of disgustingly black hair with many bald patches here and there around its round, bloaty self… a mysterious purple light emanated from its belly, probably the cause of its great size, or maybe just a symptom of it.
“Do you think the Serpentine will be enough for this…?” Gabrielle asked, gulping loudly.
“No.” The lancer let out a deep sigh, taking her halberd and closing her eyes for a moment. “Get ready. I will throw the explosive sacks first and then, at my sign, we jump in.”