Horan waved down at the receptionist on his way out of his room. “Hey, me and my posse are about to head down. You mind giving me some pointers on what goes on down there?”
Mark poked his head out of Waia’s room. “Hey, we agreed that I ask the questions around here!”
“Well, you weren’t anywhere to be seen!” Horan spread his palms out. “Why are you even in Waia’s room?”
Without showing her face, Waia stuck her hand out of the doorframe, which had a bandage wrapped around the palm. “Hand cuts take a while to stop bleeding, it turns out. Also, I can’t do first aid.”
The receptionist’s beady eyes darted between Mark and Horan and they skittered up onto the railing. “Should I, erm, should I just wait for you all at the bottom?”
“No, no, we’re good,” said Mark. “Just give us the lowdown, we’re not talking about anything.”
Omet stumbled out of their room and fell against the railing. “We talking about the monster underworld? I got tingles.”
Quet emerged after them and helped them properly get to their feet. “Don’t get too excited, now. You might… Okay, I have no idea where I was going with that. That nap was too short.”
Omet chortled. “A reversal of roles, it would seem.”
Salamin looked up at the six from where she was sitting by the fireplace. “Oh, hey, you’re up. Y’all feel like heading down with me? I can tell it all on the way down, there ain’t much that shouldn’t be expected, honestly.”
Horan vaulted over the railing and floated down onto the ground floor. “Sounds good. We’re on a timer, after all.”
Quet leaned over the railing while the others headed down the stairs. “Actually we realized that we can just pay for, like, everything. With blood. We don’t need Salamin to take us anywhere, we can just hire someone.”
Horan and Salamin both looked at Quet. Their hands hit their foreheads almost in unison. Quet chuckled at the response. “Yeah, I’m surprised it took us that long too. I only pieced together an hour ago.”
Mark reached the bottom of the stairs and stood in the middle of the room. “Yeah, we’re all idiots, big surprise. Hey, how do we, y’know, get to Sinkhole?”
“Ah, of course.” The receptionist scuttled vertically down the wall, which sent shivers down the spine of half the room. They stepped over to the fireplace, whose purple flame had not dimmed in the slightest in the past hour. They tapped out a quick, sharp rhythm on the surrounding brickwork and the instantly snuffed itself out, revealing a path to what looked like an uncomfortably moist elevator. “Sinker special.”
Waia stepped through the opening into the elevator, which had a lever seemingly made out of bone built into the corner next to where the door would be. She listened for a moment. “Yup. It’s breathing.”
Horan followed suit. He had to duck to make it through the fireplace, and groaned when he set foot inside. “Ugh, does everything in this city need to be alive?”
Salamin was the next in. The remaining three silently chided the receptionist for making an entrance that could only fit one person at a time. Salamin decided to stand next to the lever, mostly because the elevator was already starting to become light on free space. “Hey, that’s how things work in the DB. We expose unformed souls to what we want more of, and they turn into an alive version of those things. It’s got…” She pulled a corner of her duster away from a slick patch on the wall. “...Drawbacks, but it’s faster than making stuff by hand. Plus, you get to pick up your house and make it walk around like that witch in human stories. And that’s just cool.”
“Something we can agree on,” said Omet, filling up yet more space.
Once everyone was crammed into the unpleasantly damp rectangle, the receptionist repeated the pattern on the bricks and the fire sprang up once again. Salamin pulled the bone lever upward and the entire room began to shudder.
Horan instinctively pulled his arms away from the vibrating walls, which appeared to possess taste buds. “I hate this already.”
In turn, Omet slapped a slightly protuberant patch of wall, which jiggled like a hot water bottle at their touch. They let out a quick chuckle. “I love this already.”
The floor, which was thankfully much less fleshy than the walls, began to descend on four strands of sinew on the corners of the square platform. The six were lowered into what was certainly a large chamber, big enough that the mist present outside of Tragnil was able to obscure everything except for the stone ceiling.
Mark looked around the new space. It was brighter than he expected from an underground cave (as opposed to the skybound variety, he supposed), but with no particular light source visible. Aside from that, there wasn’t much to look at. “So, Salamin, what’s the-”
Salamin held up a hand. “Don’t bother asking. Give it a second, and…”
A whistling noise began to fill the air, with no discernible source. After about half a second, a dim rainbow light started to emerge from the mist a good distance away. Right when the group was starting to process the new information, an indistinct form darted past. The whistling noise crescendoed as it passed with help from the Doppler effect, and the form left a much more distinct version of the rainbow light behind, like the trail of a comet.
“Hm,” noted Quet. “Déjà vu.” As if to confirm her notion, more and more of the shapes rocketed past, only to once again vanish into the mist. With more chances for examination, it became clear that the properly solid forms were monsters hurtling past, engulfed in the classic multicolored radiance of Tragnil magic. Quet maintained her sense of familiarity, but the source of what the whole thing reminded her of shifted back roughly a decade and a half.
Salamin nodded in response to Quet’s comment. “Yup. Wizardly Suburbs are just Sinkhole for people who’d rather avoid this place’s less savory aspects. Way I see it, all this, with the suburbs as well..?”
Dark shapes began to form on opposite sides of the void, taking on the shapes of… porches. Dozens of platforms built from wood, brick, concrete and dozens of other materials jutted out from the two vast, uneven walls of entrances to tiny, multicolored stucco buildings, like the façade of every single house in some third-world city had been stolen, shrunk down to a completely random size and glued to the walls of the cavern.
There were no visible means of accessing the porches, either. No stairs, no ladders, no ropes, nothing. Instead, when one of the flying monsters that were now streaming past the elevator like a school of fish decided to stop off at one of the properties, they simply pulled themselves out of the soup of air traffic and landed on the porch. The flickering light enveloping them faded, and they went inside.
Waia noticed a vaguely bovine monster the size of a Dobermann step out of one of the buildings, stomp their feet and get immediately enveloped in a cloud of the same kaleidoscopic magic. Within seconds, they had joined the stream of monsters flying past. Waia’s eyes widened at the sight. “So this city really is just gonna keep throwing stuff at us, huh? I’m game.”
Salamin stomped. “Oh, c’mon! Y’all were supposed to be so enraptured by the sight that I could get away with a really long pause before I said that this is the real Tragnil!”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Waia shrugged before grabbing one of the disturbingly stretchy tendons and leaning out to get a better view. “Eh. I’m starting to build up a tolerance to weird stuff.”
“Y’all are no fun.”
Omet held Quet close while she squeezed her eyes shut and tapped one of the bags on her belt. “Hey, is this what Sinkhole is like the whole time? It’s like we’re being force-fed a blended-up laser tag arena through our eyes.”
“Oh, no, no worries there.” Salamin looked down over the platform. She couldn’t even see the ground, the air was so thick with passing monsters. “We should be coming through any second now.”
Sure enough, right when the swarm of lights and sounds reached their crescendo, they gave way to reveal a street not too much unlike one back in Tragnil proper. The platform lowered itself the last twenty feet to ground level and, once all six passengers had gotten off, retracted back into the ‘sky’, which bathed the entire ground in an ocean of light. It looked like someone had filled a dozen disco balls with toxic waste and then attached every single one of those balls to a plane propeller. It hurt somewhat to even keep one’s eyes open.
Quet opened her eyes. “So.” She looked around at the surrounding street, where dozens of monsters ranging from almost coming up to her neck to a few inches tall bustled past. The cloud of glowing monsters whizzing past was less loud and bright now that it was fifteen feet away, but still quite bothersome. Quet’s own voice was slightly indistinct to her. “I hate this place already.”
“Join the club, dude.” Horan raised his hand to receive a high five, which Quet immediately provided.
Salamin stepped away from the other five. “Okay, y’all can keep doing this Sisyphus thing you’ve got going, I gotta go check on my stuff.”
Omet raised a hand. “That’s cool, but how exactly do we leave?”
Salamin nonchalantly pointed up at the aurora-esque view above her. “Haven’t y’all seen the manholes? Folks use Sinkhole to get around quick all the time, how else would so many people be up there at once?”
Quet cringed at the thought. “We need to go back into that?”
Salamin shrugged. “Guess so. Welp, I’m out.” She seemed to have wanted to vanish into the crowd, but everyone else in Sinkhole was so short that she was still easily visible for the next several minutes.
Omet watched the group’s former chauffeur leave. “So, Mark. You have ideas sometimes, right?”
“Very occasionally,” said Mark.
“Okay then.” Omet looked around. “Now what?”
“Oh yeah, I figured something out a while ago. So, this place looks seedy. Some form of mob structure is basically inevitable, yeah? I’m sure we can find someone rich who we can work with.”
Horan’s hand clutched his heart. “I can’t believe it. You’re finally going to sell me!” He feigned wiping a tear away from his eyepatch. “I always knew you had it in you.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Mark started walking - no, wading - through the crowd of diminutive monsters. “Yang moved in earlier today. Odds are, someone down here is still trying to throw their hat in the ring. If four Primoi volun- and also me, I guess- volunteer to help out, especially ones who just proved what they’re capable of topside, whoever we get in contact with can definitely be persuaded to take Yang’s place.”
“Actually,” said Waia, “I’m the only one who did any proving today. You guys all sucked.”
“Y-” Mark held back a sigh. “Yeah, okay, my point stands. Even if that isn’t enough to tide anyone over, we can just buy our way into their good graces. Honestly, this whole trip would’ve been a lot less stressful if we just remembered that all of you are walking bank vaults.”
Horan leaned over to Omet. “He remembers and forgets that purely on the basis of what inconveniences me specifically the most,” he whispered. Omet snickered.
“Yeah, har har. You won’t be laughing when I get us all into that castle.”
“By selling me?” Horan barely managed to contain a laugh.
“Wow, you are not gonna let that go.”
“I forget it when you forget Antioch.”
Mark groaned.
Waia noticed something that numerous monsters were watching on a street corner. “Hey, I hate to interrupt your old-married-couple routine, but I think those guys are watching a hologram of that guy I killed.”
Everyone else looked at where Waia was pointing. A few feet away, half a dozen glyphs floated in a vaguely cylindrical pattern of rings formed by their paths. In the middle of the formation, a knee-high, fuzzy image of Salazar was forming out of the ambient magic. Not a single sign of the damage he had incurred during their previous encounter was visible.
Horan walked over and tapped the top of one of the lamp-shaped monsters watching the image. “Hey, dude, what’s going on there?”
The monster waved at the image with one sandpapery tentacle. “Live feed, right from the castle. Porcupine done interrupted the game.”
Waia leaned in over the monster. “No way, that can’t be live. I turned that guy into pulp and served him for breakfast, he’s dead eight ways from Sunday.”
The monster rotated in place and angled three eyestalks up to look at Waia. “Oh yeah, that was you. Well, he’s alive now. And stop crowding, these glyphs are mine.”
The tiny Salazar seemingly looked around at the glyphs surrounding him and began to speak. “Okay, um…” He was handed a sheet of paper by someone outside the bounds of what was being broadcasted. “This is an official announcement directed at all citizens of Tragnil regarding the fugitives Mark… Hor-in?” He heard someone say something indistinct. “Horan, okay… Y’know, we really should’ve planned this out beforehand, now you have to hand me notes and everything.
Anyway, the five individuals involved in the failed arrest earlier today have now had a generous but negotiable bounty…” He visibly winced. “...Offered for information regarding their location, or for the fugitives themselves. In addition, anyone caught offering outbound travel services or assisting in hiding the individuals will now be considered to be affiliated with their numerous crimes against the regime. All outbound transports will be subjected to inspection before departure. More information can be provided at any guard station citywide.”
Salazar looked up from the paper. “Aside from that news, this is me, Captain Salazar, formally resigning from any government work, so don’t come to me askin’ for help. I’m not part of that anymore.”
The five were already a good distance away by the time anyone watching the broadcast connected the dots. Mark wound up to slap himself in the face again, but was restrained by Horan. “Figures. Figures that the moment we relax the tiniest bit, that guy gets brought back from the dead to make things that much harder for us. Like that’s even possible.”
Quet looked at the patches of floating glyphs all over the sides of the street begin falling to the ground. “Back to the Salamin plan? I doubt anyone else is gonna let us out of the city.”
Waia nodded in agreement. “Even if we kick Yang out, plenty of people here might still feel entitled to a reward. And by ‘crimes against the regime’, I assume that was a reference to how you made her look like a clown back in Greece?”
“Even if they’re all totally okay with us once we get rid of her, we should still work fast,” said Mark. “More time in this nightmare of a city means more time for it to sucker-punch us with Murphy’s law. Also, we should really figure out where we’re actually going. Horan, you’re up.”
Horan shifted into his human form, just to be safe, and tapped a somewhat unnerving two-headed baby-esque monster with fishlike faces. “Hey, you’ve got a mob down here, right?”
The head on the left looked unimpressed. “Why’re you assuming that? Because we’re poor?”
Horan gave no response. The head on the right sighed. “If coming down here didn’t make that eye hurt, the King’s joint will.” They pointed down the single street with their stubby little claws.
“Thanks, dude.” Horan turned to the rest of his companions. “The King? Really?”
Mark shrugged as he walked past. “Either the title refers to political power, criminal influence.”
“Or, if we’re especially unlucky, musical talent.”
Mark ignored Horan’s comment. “Either one should hopefully be useful for our purposes. Except the music one, but that’s just poor communication.”
“You’d be surprised by how likely that is, dude.”
Quet watched another Sinker’s elevator emerge through the flickering ceiling of passing monsters and deposit new monsters into the crowd. “...So. This day really took a turn, huh? I didn’t think we’d be endorsing the overthrow of a nascent dictatorship by a local criminal syndicate while I reheated leftovers for breakfast.”
“Well,” said Horan, “It’s what we gotta do. Besides, Yang sucks enough that breaking the law is worth it if we get to stick it to her twice.”
“Oh, that’s not what I’m worried about,” replied Quet. “The gold in our veins is liquid at forty degrees celsius. I always thought it was weird that we should care about the laws of the land when we don’t even care about the laws of thermodynamics.”
Waia chuckled. “I can get behind that. Valid fugitive status it is.”