The underground storm-runoff tunnels are entirely dark and light-less, save for the odd, sparse ray that somehow has managed to find its way down to the underground, often shining through a grate or a broken surface above their heads. Other illuminations come from splashes of old potions that have disconcertingly started glowing for reasons unknown. Thankfully, they have the lantern to guide them through the rest of the darkness.
The two of them run through the sewer for a while. To Canta’s great relief, most of it has been constructed with a stone walkway in mind, he supposes for servicing and maintenance. The tunnels, which don’t have any such luxury, they avoid.
The truth is that Canta just doesn’t want to jump into the gross and possibly toxic run-off water of the entire city. But the excuse that he uses is that they can’t go through it because of Alleluia’s metal body. It’s a valid excuse, certainly, but it’s not his primary reasoning.
This goes on for a while — an hour at least. Canta is sure that they’re going the right way, but the passages just seem to keep going and going, and he has the oddest sense of familiarity as he runs down the tunnel with his hand on the pipe. Alleluia is just behind him, the whirring sound of her body accompanying him once again. It’s just like being back down in the dungeon.
Canta stops in his tracks, staring down the dark corner that they’re running past. Something has caught his eye, down between two broken bricks in the wall. Alleluia bumps into him. Canta takes the opportunity and drops to all fours, plunging his hand into the hole.
“Spider!” he cries, grabbing the unfortunate spider and shoveling it into his mouth. There is an audible, unnervingly loud crunch that fills the passage.
Sewer Spider ~100g Calories: 135 Protein: 18.8 g Fat: 5 g *Carbs: 1.2 g Fiber: 2.6 g Sugars: 0.4 g Rich in COPPER
The noise of winding chains is present next to him, as the mechanisms of her body spin and churn. “Uh… eighteen? I don’t remember,” she guesses. “Do the ones you ate in my chamber count?” she asks.
“They don’t,” replies Canta, getting up and wiping his mouth off on his sleeve. “Only ‘outside’ spiders count,” he explains, making up a new rule for their forgotten game.
“Oh, okay,” she agrees, somehow finding that sensible as well. They keep on walking.
Canta waves a hand at her. “And don’t call it a chamber. That makes you sound evil.”
Alleluia walks next to him. “It does?”
“Evil people live in chambers. You had a room.” Canta stops, putting his hand to his chin, as if thinking. “Then again… maybe chamber is the right word for you. Or maybe it was a monster’s lair? A den of evil?”
“Hmpf!” she says, lifting her nose up high as she walks past him, leaving him in the dark as she takes the lantern with her. “I’ll have you know it was our love-nest!” she quips, pointing down to the right while she keeps on walking. “– Nineteen.”
Canta lunges, grabbing the spider that she had chosen for him.
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After that, however, they keep hurrying without any more spider-breaks, much to Canta’s disappointment, but to the relief of the many spiders still left alive down in the sewer. He realizes that Alleluia is right, though, as she tears him away from a web he was approaching so that they can keep running. They can’t afford to waste more time like this.
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They hurry, the sounds of their steps echoing out as they move down tunnel after tunnel, always following the pipe. He hopes that his suspicions are correct, but if the machinery of the city is anything like it was down in the dungeon, it should be.
The light shifts ahead of them as they draw closer to the unknown source. The world, as a whole, slowly becomes brighter and brighter the further they go, until suddenly, they can see the outside through the rows of metal bars that block this end of the tunnel.
“We made it!” chimes Alleluia. Canta sighs in relief, glad that he made a good call.
“It’s like it was with some of the pipes in the dungeon,” he explains. “There’s water in them, so that water has to come from somewhere.” He points out the other side as he slips through the bars to get there.
Alleluia clears her throat, and he looks back at her. “Oh! Sorry, uh…” He scratches his head. She’s clearly not going to fit through the bars. Canta reprimands himself in his mind, biting his tongue in a painful manner, as for the flash of a second, he has the thought of just leaving her here and running away on his own. He’d be free of her and free of the church. New life. New Canta.
But that wouldn’t be new-Canta, would it?
He looks at her. “You’re not strong enough to bend them, are you?”
Alleluia turns her head to the side. “You’d expect a cultured creature such as myself to do such brute work? With my bare hands?”
“Oh, excuse me, princess. You spent the last hour running through a sewer,” quips Canta as he looks around the area.
“Hmpf!” is all that she replies with as she reaches around herself and starts awkwardly trying to wind her crank up again.
There, on his side of the grate, is a stack of metal poles, likely left here from the construction, which happened decades ago. Getting his idea, he runs over to the pile and pulls one out. He realizes that Alleluia is probably strong enough to pry the bars apart with just her hands, but she doesn’t want to risk the damage to her body. In a sense, despite all of her strength, she’s actually very frail, realizes Canta. Another strain like the fall from the window could put her body out of commission for good. Thinking about it, she’s far more mortal than he is.
He pulls the metal rod her way, handing it up to her. “How do you feel about tools, then?” he asks. She takes the pole. “Just wedge it there and use it as a lever,” he explains.
The pipe hits the top of his head. But only lightly. A tap.
She stands there, having gently struck him once on the noggin. Canta stares at her, confused. Usually she’s a lot harsher than that. “That’s what you get for being rude!” she says, staring his way, not blinking.
“Uh… sorry?” he replies. Maybe she’s been learning too.
She jams the metal rod in-between the bars and pushes against it. It bends. But so do the bars. Canta brings her another one; this time he doesn’t get bonked on the head. By the time the third bar is bent through, the gap is big enough for her to squeeze past.
Then they set to work on the second and final row of bars. Canta does his best to help her push against it, but he’s certain that he’s not being very useful, in all honesty.
A minute later, they’re through.
They drop the rod, squeezing through the hole. Shamelessly holding each other’s hands, the two wanted people, on the run, head to the edge of the tunnel and look outside from the drop-off edge.
Warm, ruby daylight fills the air, and its soft, yet intense glow coats the argent-watered sea, which stretches on before them, on and on and on forever. Water crests high up on the surface of the ocean, coming to crash down at the shoreline just below the two of them with constant, rhythmic pulsations, as if it was the heaving chest of the breathing world.
“It’s the ocean,” explains Canta before she can ask. “We’re on the south-side of the city.”
Alleluia, however, doesn’t ask. She doesn’t say anything. She’s just standing there and looking out over the world before them, the world that seems to be covered in the illusion of burning fire — a trick of the dawning autumn-sun. As the winds come to press on by, in a friendly manner, just in a kind of short passing through, Canta finds that he isn’t sharing the same view as her. Instead, his eyes are set upwards and he stares at the strands of silvery hair flowing with the breeze, moving together with the sounds of the ocean, as if she too were a part of the natural way of things.
“Fuck,” mutters Canta quietly to himself as he realizes his peril, finally tearing his eyes away from her face to stare out over the water as well. It might be too late for him now. He’s got it bad.
He doesn’t want to say anything else, as he is enjoying this moment in a way that he can’t quite put to words, as the two of them stare out over the boundlessness of it all. But he has to. Canta looks at her again, expecting her to still be mesmerized by the water. But now, she doesn’t stare at the ocean, but rather at him. He, unsure of what to do anymore, simply stares back at her.
The ocean continues to crash against the world.
“Come on,” says Canta, breaking the spell which had befallen both of them as he pulls on her hand. “We have to keep moving.”
They drop down from the tunnel that was dug into a low-hanging cliff-side above the beach. The sand is thankfully soft and cushioning, but as soon as they get out of it, Canta makes her stop so that he can get all of it out of her.
“Sand is really going to mess you up,” he explains, picking out another few bits of it from her clockwork.
“Thanks, my prince~” she coos. Canta mutters some indistinct mutterings as he keeps on working. “What are we going to do now?” she asks, sitting down on her knees.
He thinks for a moment. “First, we’re going to get as far away from here as we can, as fast as we can.”
“And then?” she asks, her voice chiming.
“And then we’ll find a nice place, one that isn’t full of people who are clearly evil,” he explains.
Alleluia turns her head around, smiling at him. “And then?”
“And then they’ll turn out to be evil, and we’ll have to run again.”
“And then?” she asks, clearly enjoying this new game of theirs.
Canta sighs, moving up to her shoulders. How did she even get any sand up here? They were down there for all of fifteen seconds. “And then we’ll eventually learn that we can’t go near anybody, because everybody is clearly evil.”
She leans her head backwards, laughing a little as she stares up at him from below. “And then?”
He stares down at her face, looking at her pale skin awash in crimson morning-light. Not responding, he leans down, pressing his lips to hers. A little later, he pulls back. “And then we’ll probably have to live in the forest by ourselves forever,” explains Canta, as if nothing had ever happened.
“And then?” she asks, smiling.
Canta thinks for a second. “I guess one of us will die eventually, probably you, and then that’ll be that.”
“That’s sad.”
He shrugs. “It won’t be for the first eighty years or so.”
“Can-ta?” asks Alleluia.
“Yeah, Alleluia?” he replies, noticing that he still has trouble with the name thing.
“Can we just eat the Demon-King instead?”
His stomach growls. The two of them start laughing. He isn’t sure how exactly she plans on eating the Demon-King together with him, but he supposes that it’s a lot nicer to eat with company than alone.
“Sure, let’s do that instead,” says Canta.