It was a stark change, from absolute silence of the inside of his head to being awake, eyes snapping open to the rush of water all around them, darkness and the slow tinkle of rock falling across other rock.
Clarke gasped as he snapped away, sucking in enough water to start a coughing fit.
“Finally! God dammit, I've been spitting on you for a while since I couldn't do anything else.”
He had only just grasped Gwen's voice in the total dark when he felt the jabbing pain in his back.
“Good news, I'm not paralyzed. Bad news, I'm laying on a mace that's playing my spine like a xylophone every time I move.”
There was strain in Gwen's voice so he could almost visualize it making her arms shake.
“Worse news, there's water trickling over us and we're buried. I can't move at all or the rest of this is coming down on us. I've been sitting here stuck waiting for someone to come around.”
He could feel the warm spit sliding off the edges of his face from where she'd tried to rouse him. On his right he felt his arm pinned by a soft body, likely, Alouella, and below him was Wade. He struggled, wresting one arm free and feeling around at the jagged rocks surrounding their tiny cave. They shifted easily, breaking out into nothingness. Clarke felt around through the hole he'd made, water on the floor and bits of stone.
He was careful, grabbing for a handhold and finding one at the broken edge of a stone and pulling himself. He strained and sputtered, his single arm unused to pulling his own weight. His head came out of the hole and for the first time in a week he saw a beautiful, gentle glow, a flora luminescence that he could boil down into a disgusting green slop that would keep him from dying but the splash of chilly water on his face brought his attention back to the immediate task. With one arm free he was able to pull the other and, holding tight to his handhold with both hands, pull himself out.
He could have made a sweep of the room and gathered the moss for a source of light but it was far too weak to be of help and it was far quicker to defile his beloved book. It would only be a few pages but it pained him to tear the paper out and find a dry wall. A few swipes of his obsidian knife created sparks, catching the quality paper and setting it to burn.
“Great, you've invented fire. Now invent a way to get us out of here.”
Her eyes sparkled in the fire and he could see she was doing her best not to panic. The side Clarke had crawled from was under a small pile, likely the rest of the group too but Gwen was holding up a veritable floor by herself, crossbeams and stone held back only by the angle of her shoulders and back from falling over the group.
Around them was only rubble and an old table, some other wood that had been something at one point but was now a pile of junk and some mush that was books at one time now lying on the floor. He could only set the burning paper on a dry stone and hope he could finish before it went out.
He quickly got to unearthing the small pile around their heads, shoving larger rocks aside so Wade and Alouella were free and the only thing buried was Gwen in her load bearing state.
“I don't mean to rush you-”
She started, wincing as something shifted above.
“I know, just a moment.”
Clarke took the table, walking it over to her and lifting it up and dropping it legs up. A few kicks tore the legs off and he angled the table up and dropped it on her head.
“Ow!”
“Sorry.”
He wedged the table, working it in a bit at a time to continuous ows from Gwen and more apologies. It stayed still long enough for him to pull the mace free and hammer it in to further pained cries from her.
“What in god's name are you doing!?”
She finally yelled. He tossed the mace down and put his back in the edge sticking out, barely lifting the pile but enough for Gwen to feel the difference. Clarke shook and struggled with the weight despite the principle of leverage.
“Quickly please-!”
She pushed Alouella free, tossing her away from the pile and struggled, her legs pinned still. She grunted and pulled, the rocks shifting until she growled and jerked free, her leg bloody and scratched to hell on shards of stone. She limped as she pulled Wade out and with him came Wormwood, crushed underneath the large man but still alive if alarmingly warm from laying under a giant.
Clarke let the rocks fall, a cascade of them scattering and the mountain of rubble shifting but settling away from them. With a little time to think he laid his coat out like a roadside shop and began setting out potions.
“One for you. Healing potion, drink it slowly.”
He handed it to her and she drank it while he checked the others. They were mostly unhurt save a scrape or two but Wade and Clarke both bled and he could feel the tide turning in his belly.
I had the equipment but no ingredients a day ago. Now I have the ingredients and no equipment.
He finally checked Gwen's leg, the potion of a low level of ingredients and all it could do was jump start the scabbing process. The clot had thickened into a crimson red scab like flash frozen blood.
“So how's it looking?”
“It worked, as much as you can expect. I'm going to have to put in more time on healing potions from now on.”
Clarke twisted the burning paper into a long wick and started a new torch with a fresh page.
“And how is the adventure looking?”
“Well, we lost the way out somewhere up there.”
He flicked his hand at the collapsed ceiling and the landslide where a tunnel used to be.
“And we need more of this anti-mana potion. I don't know how much longer Wade and I will last without it and it's pointless if we don't all take it because the three of you put off or take in the stuff and pass it on to us. So-”
A thought crossed his mind, an admission that brought a pained chill to his heart that may have just been the cold.
I think I've killed us.
She got to her feet, shuddering as the pain of her shifting scab tore and resealed itself.
“Then I'll look for a pot. You watch everyone here.”
Clarke began to stand.
“No, I should go. I know what we-”
She pushed him down.
“I am the most well equipped to fight anything we find here. Plus you've got to be feeling as sick as a dog by now so you hunker down and don't attract any attention. I'll bring back a pot and anything else I can find, okay?”
“What if there are any underwater passages?”
“Then I can come back and fetch you. But for right now just sit your butt down and let me handle this.”
She turned her back on him, taking one of the table legs, relatively dry, and wrapped it round with a strip torn from her shirt, a makeshift torch. It burned poorly but kept a flame and there was a door half revealed in the small light. The door stuck at first but she made it through, slamming it shut behind her, more of a thump of wet wood than a bang.
Clarke looked the others over, for once realizing just how far away from everything they were in the cold and dark. He did the only thing he could do and opened his book.
He only ever wrote the truth, took things down exactly as they were as his mother had taught him, as Twinty had taught him and he didn't know if it was the illness or the fear of not knowing that made his hand shake but he forced himself. He wrote something with no basis in observed fact.
Gwen came back safe. She found an old alchemy station and hurried back with a pot, healthy, potent moss and some old reagents.
Seeing it written made his head hurt, writing against his oath of truthfulness and duty as an adventure scribe so he leaned back in the tiny sphere of light and closed his eyes.
------------------------------------------------
The other side of the door felt instantly less safe. Shadows seemed to grow when alone, flickering and dancing around the very edges of the pool of light as she walked. It was a small hallway very unlike the grand open spaces of the castle above. She'd arbitrarily turned left, listening to the deep silence as she stepped over steps untrod for decades.
She froze when she heard something resound through the castle, a hammering of stone on metal coming from somewhere above and echoing through the halls.
Are they trying to get through that door Alouella mentioned?
The listened harder, straining her ears and the rhythmic attack continued. She didn't have time to waste and hurried ahead as quickly as she dared, careful to mark each turn by making a small pile of the moss that grew everywhere as a guide light to make it back.
She slowed when she saw a bright light shining through the crack of a door, approaching slowly and putting her eye to it. It was a long room, old curtains rotted to shreds, beds laying in ruin one after the other in a semblance of a communal sleeping area. Old bones lay here and there, some in the beds, some laying stretched out in piles whose pose she couldn't decipher.
The door stuttered as it bumped along the ground and she entered, checking the corners for surprise attack. The glow was coming from a large clump of moss, bright as her torch as opposed to its usual dim luminescence, growing over some bones at the back of the room. As she pulled the moss away she saw that below it the bones had turned to dull crystal, a faint glow seeping from deep inside like ink moving through water. The skull was half cracked open but instead of emptiness there was a bizarre network of interconnected lines and bridges in the shape of a brain, all of the same crystal with none of the light left.
She put the moss away in a pouch at her belt and in those few seconds the glow within the bones grew, like ink dripped in water flowing through the crystalline housing. Black became light blue that pulsed through the pathways of the mineral brain.
It began to move.
A twitch, a tap of the fingers. The head rose and the empty sockets looked at Gwen. While tolerant of most peoples she drew the line at skeletons and reared back her fist.
It threw its hand up and fire bellowed from it's skeletal palm, pushing her away as she shielded herself with her gauntlets.
It clawed closer, the clinking of glass on stone as its arms and fingers pulled it over the uneven floor, ribs ticking like disharmonic song. Fire cascaded around her again and she dashed around, stumbling as she came down on her bad leg but gritting her teeth. One more jump and she came at it from the side and brought her fist down, the metal crunching through the brain structure, shards of it flying away as her fist demolished it into the ground.
She didn't let up, fists working the crystal bits into dust until she was satisfied. She stomped on its arm, daring it to try anything else but the glow dulled as quickly as it had come. A little smile brought her to nervous laughter.
“That'll be a good one too tell them back home.”
The brain crystal sparkled in the light of her torch and she rooted in the pieces for one that hadn't been reduced to powder and dropped a good size chunk in with the moss just in case there was some worth in it.
“Now for a pot.”
She quickly searched the room but came up empty on anything useful.
She was more cautious when she left, every glowing patch of moss a cause for worry as she stepped carefully down the hallway. Another door, this one half open as she peered through the crack. She nudged the door and her light spilled inside. Tables filled the room, elaborate coils of piping and bottles filled with strange liquids on each and everyone. Bones lay around many of them, glass vials in their bony clutches.
“What made you guys kill yourselves...?”
She asked, hoping this did not elicit any response. The skulls at her feet mercifully kept their mouths shut.
She plucked a cauldron off a table, brushing a hand off the side to the ground. Some empty vials went in, some cups, some random wood that would make good kindling.
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It was time to hurry back and she stepped out of the room but at the end of the hall was a large set of double doors partially closed. Skeletons lay trampled across the threshold in a pile of mismatched bodies.
The room beyond was enormous and cylindrical, poorly lit by the enormous mass of moss that swept the length and height of the room, a raised dais some thirty feet wide in the center with a massive glass tube raising somewhere upwards of fifty feet into the air. Inside was a collection of stone almost as tall, fire glowing at the chunks and pits in it. It wasn't until she looked at the rock on top, two tiny dots staring out at nothing like it must have been doing since the disaster that erased the kingdom from the map and memory.
A fire elemental...?
She thought but this was quickly supplanted by the dozens and dozens of tiny lights all sitting around it. Some stood, some knelt, some with arms upraised to the light it put off but all were the same as the skeleton from before, a glowing congregation praising the trapped god.
The constant hammering of the scyllites above was louder here, the door visible high above at the top of a stair case that wrapped round and round the room. Wires and tubes and pipes crisscrossed the air, one such brass tube connecting to the glass prison. Crystals were firmly bound to the walls, a faint light flickering inside each of them to provide some light.
Something clicked in her mind, the switch of the old dwarven knack for building. Pieces moved, purpose became clear without full understanding as she took it all apart in the world of her mind.
A brass tube for water...maybe turning water to steam...crystals for...what, energy absorption? It's...it's...
The design was very familiar when she took it all in. Something she'd seen for years, dreamt of and put to paper, brought to glorious life in the world with trial and error so she knew it intimately.
They've been worshiping a coffee pot. A percolator.
She shook her head, flinging aside the mental design and math. She had more important things to do than admire the worlds largest drink dispenser.
Her small guide piles led her back to the room.
Clarke looked up fearfully from his book as she entered but relaxed when she gave him a thumbs up and a smile. He looked like hell, some nastiness dripping form his mouth, his shirt stained in blood.
“Get your writing done?”
She asked, laying out his supplies. He clapped the book shut.
“Yeah. It was the only thing keeping me sane. When you left all I had to do were jump at shadows and throw up.”
He began to brew quickly, using the water cascading down from above, dicing up the moss.
“What was out there?”
She explained quickly everything she'd seen and what was waiting for them. Clarke paled when she told of the things lurking out there and he turned to Alouella, checking her hands.
“I didn't think much of it at first but-”
He showed Gwen the hand and her fingertips had taken on the glossy appearance of glass and a faint glow.
“Oh my god!”
Gwen hissed. They looked at Wormwood too, his hands even further degraded.
“We're all dying just being here, faster than we thought. Wake them up.”
Gwen slapped at them, light taps that jostled their heads, hissing at them.
The soup boiled and Clarke cursed his lack of the proper ingredients. Even as potent of a specimen as he had gotten, the effects would be degraded.
Alouella roused first, sitting bolt upright and lashing out, Gwen catching her hands.
“It's me, stop...stop trying to hit me!”
She held her firm until whatever dream had panicked her so left.
“Gwen?”
“No time for a chat.”
She pushed the elf to Clarke who skimmed some of the soup from the top into an empty bottle and handed it to her.
“Drink!”
“Ow, Clarke, this is boil-”
“If we don't drink we're probably dead.”
They stared at one another and she swished it a few times, blowing over the glass. She sipped, a tiny amount at a time and crying as it burned her tongue.
“I'm sorry, we just don't have the time.”
She nodded and kept drinking. Her fingers faded in glow the more she drank.
“Okay, they're up.”
Gwen said. Wade rubbed his head and took the bottle thrust at him, Wormwood looking a thousand miles from himself as he shook his head and rolled the bottle back and forth in his hands.
Everyone took their turns drinking the potion and wishing for an ice cold chaser as they downed more and more, drinking until the pot was empty.
Wormwood finally re-emerged from his own head.
“Ugh...why do I feel worse than I did when I was poisoned?”
“You feel it too? Like...it felt right?”
Alouella asked.
“I will trade either of you for your race right now.”
Wade breathed out, sweat pouring down his face, a queasy look threatening to spew over the fire.
Alouella shared a look and Wormwood's eyes widened, the constant friendly mask slipping off and true wonder replacing it. Clarke clapped his hands and brought all the attention to hand. He rattled off what they knew quickly and as expected there was little hope in any of the faces around him until Gwen spoke.
“I saw enough of it though. The brass tubing is for water intake but there has to be a drainage too. Either of those will take us outside.”
Wormwood scowled.
“What makes you think that?”
Gwen scowled back.
“Because we're next to the ocean you dimwit. I'd wager they needed massive amounts of water to do whatever they were doing and running it over the elemental generated enough steam or power or heat to do it. I'd also wager whatever energy they generated is what is turning our two elves and, I'd guess only elves, into those...magic zombies.”
Alouella looked down at her hands, tremble setting in to them so she balled them into fists.
Clarke nodded at her. Gwen squeezed her shoulder but it was Alouella who spoke.
“If anyone could do something like this I imagine it's this group.”
Clarke pondered over the escape route.
“So how do we get to the pipe? I don't think the elemental is going to sit quietly while we crawl over it and those things aren't going to let us waltz by.”
“If I had to wager, there's some sort of mechanical system for opening the top. We need to get to the stairs, up to the top and find them.”
“Could we blow the glass apart? I still have some explosives.”
Gwen shrugged.
“We could try but it's so thick and seamless I doubt it would work.”
“I was worried at first but with all this wagering and guesswork I can see I was clearly wrong to doubt this group. Bravo.”
Wormwood clapped slowly until every eye was staring him down but he spoke instead.
“Why not just open the front door? We know the way out there.”
“Because of the freaky fish people, idiot. Did you forget them?”
Wade snapped.
“Alright, everyone shut up. It's all we have and we need to hurry. We'll hold those things off if we have to while Gwen looks at everything.”
Clarke stood, daring anyone to disagree with him. If they did they didn't say it and he headed for the door.
“Then we need to go now.”
Less than enthusiasm, they left with grim determination and anger at their backs, sneaking along the once tread path and arriving at the double doors to the room.
Out there they finally got their first look at the things as they gathered, palms to the glass for who knew how long as they sat, barely moving, only the occasional twitch or sway to show they weren't simply statues.
She wasn't sure if it was the bellyful of hot swamp water or the sight itself but Alouella felt sick looking at them. They didn't seem to notice or pay attention to the constant frantic hammering on the door, wild like unknown drums.
Clarke held a finger to his lips and they began to creep forward, around the edge of the room and towards the stairs. Someone tugged his jacket and Clarke looked where Alouella pointed.
The things were moving. A head turned slowly on its pencil thin neck to show some of them still wearing their original faces, some even with their long ears still attached. Some began to stand and take steps on legs that hadn't moved in years.
The group crept faster but as soon as the things began to move towards them they broke into a sprint, hitting the stairs and leaping up them two and three at a time. Some of the monsters groaned, yelling words that came out garbled.
“What tipped them off? I coulda sworn none of them saw us!”
Gwen yelled. Alouella looked back for a brief glance, the things stumbling and tripping their way after them up the stairs where she saw spells readying and a thought occurred to her.
“If they're made from this weird mana then maybe they can sense it?”
“Less talk, more run!”
Wade yelled. They managed to get ahead of the group but once at the top of the stairs they could see it had only pushed them ahead of death. Stumbling from every door and under piles came the shambling things, fire and lightning spells fired off into the air, magic beginning to crackle. Alouella stood at the top of the stairs and raised her staff, letting loose a stream of lightning into the first group. They reeled back but even as their bones charred from the electricity they pushed forward, some falling back only to be replaced as more and more joined their number.
“It's not working! They're resisting my spells!”
A few bottles flew over her head and bounced down the stairs, the shatter of glass unleashing an explosion that flung the bodies over the edge of the wide stairs and threw them against the wall. A bottle of oil came next, greasing the stairs. Clarke pointed her towards the console that controlled the machine.
“Help Gwen! We'll hold them here!”
The pounding on the door grew stronger as Wade and Wormwood stepped up. Wade swept the lightweight corpses aside in great swings, spells going off around him as he waded into the group. Wormwood picked them off from behind with careful crossbow aim and Clarke throwing whatever bottles he had left.
Alouella!”
Gwen yelled. She pointed frantically at the console where a number of magical formula were scrawled on the exterior the same as the door.
“These instructions are written in non-sense. What does this say?”
Her eyes sped across the writing, sweat dripping down her temple as the wave got closer. The original writing had long since worn away but the priestess had been working here as well and left magical formulae.
“Uhh...let's see...”
“Hurry!”
She wiped the sweat from her brow.
“Water intake and water outtake. Steam release...turbine...oxygen...top load...”
Gwen turned a knob on the console and slammed her fist down on the water intake. Somewhere a rusted grate shrieked open and a trickle of water began to pour into the huge tube taking up most of the room.
“That's not right. I need more time.”
The pair looked at the fight, their friends being beaten back, spells singing their defense. Alouella had a terrible idea.
“We'll make some time.”
She looked at the giant door and felt her way across the battlefield, past the monsters and took hold of the lock, swirling mana through the formulaic channels until the mandala turned on it and it clicked. The door clinked and locks slid away, metal sliders pulling aside and the door began to split in half.
Every one of the monsters stopped and turned to look as the scyllites looked back, shock and awe on their faces at the beauty of the things that stood before them, pulsing with the power they worshiped. The shark looked from the things to the adventurers to Alouella, their eyes connecting. The look she gave Alouella was venom.
“You...”
It was quiet for a moment and Gwen flipped every switch and every knob she came across , committing each one to memory before she slid underneath the console and began tearing into the mechanisms. The trickle of the intake became a gush of water that seemed a signal as the things descended on the scyllites, spells slinging and spears pushing the monsters back.
Wade retreated quickly, backpedaling and striking where he could as the scyllites clashed with the elf things, spells finally focused somewhere other than his chilled, burned, electrocuted, muddy chest.
Over the scene of battle the shark girl launched herself, her water elementals trailing behind her as a living wave as she crashed down on Wade, her teeth digging into his shield. Her weight held him down and from below his half swung strikes with his shield battered into her face. She stepped off of him, her elementals sweeping him up inside themselves where he struggled to swim. She locked eyes with Alouella and charged.
Wormwood's bolts struck her side, ignored as mere pinpricks and watery tendrils spread around her like a shield, catching and tossing aside the bottles Clarke through. She loomed over Alouella, roaring as she brought her jaws down.
“Dirty knife ears! Betrayer! Hated fake priestess!”
Her jaws closed on nothing.
Her lightning jump had let Alouella slide under the shark and she reached out, grasping the tail as electricity pulsed from her palm and through the shark's body to her teeth.
“Gwen, keep working!”
She yelled when she saw the dwarf trying to get up. There was only one way out for all of them and, much as she wanted to be in the fight, she kept working on the console.
The shark girl whipped around and Alouella evaded, her mind applying new formulae to her jumps, pushing her just far enough she didn't fall off the edge of the platform as she whirled. She screeched as the bolts kept hitting her, bottles crashed against her skin and she felt numbness where they sought to poison her.
“Where! Betrayer, tricky thing!”
At the same time Gwen felt the mechanisms click and she made a desperate guess as she scrambled up and hit the button for the water and air.
Some great pump somewhere began to hum and fresh oxygen pumped into the elemental's tube, its flames slowly glowing hotter, blazing, roaring into life it had not know in decades.
“You kill god! Monster! Worst disgusting fool fake wizard! Try to save elf, help, but elf is nasty garbage!”
The shark shrieked and, blinded by the light, ran for Alouella. She pushed out with her staff, the metal ball end thrusting down the shark throat as she fired off a lightning bolt that raced through skin and bones and meat to shock from tooth to tail.
Her body spasmed and shook, her jaws tightening so hard they snapped through the wooden shaft of the wand and she fell back, shaking and jerking until she collapsed in a quivering mass, her skin charred and teeth blackened.
The oxygen streamed in faster until the elemental glowed like a tiny sun, blinding light filling the room.
“What are you DOING!?”
Clarke yelled over the multiple dins.
“I'm not sure!”
Gwen actually laughed and reached up, hitting the button for the water intake again. A grating scrape of unused metal resounded and water poured into the tube flashing into steam instantly but nothing inside pulled it free, nowhere for it to go.
The chamber rattled and for a brief second everything settled, the chamber stopped it's shaking, the room was still and and all those in attendance looked upon the mixing of powers wrought together without any regard for safety.
Then it exploded.
Shards of crystal ricocheted around the central tunnel, the top blew straight up breaking through the ceiling and flipping to crash through several walls until it landed in the treasury and sent gold and jewels flying everywhere like deadly rain at hundreds of degrees. Shrapnel ripped into the monsters, the scyllites, as everyone fled and turned with nowhere to go, the pathway crumbling. The sky now looked in on them, monsoon rain pouring in from above.
The fire elemental splashed and turned circles as the central chamber filled up, the water around it no longer boiling as chilly ocean water continued to spill in, sucked from the deep outside.
“Alouella, can you fly us out?”
Clarke yelled over the noise.
The water rose up from the chamber, cold as the grave with the elf things bobbing on the surface, scyllites thrashing, wounded, in the water.
“Not in any way! We're all soaking wet, we're all in armor and we're five people.”
She yelled.
The elf things were already rising, the few that were left. One was freezing over the top of the water and others flocked to it.
“Looks like we don't have any other choice. If you let me drown I'm haunting you.”
Gwen said. Before any could question her she'd hit a button on the console and a pump kicked on, the sound of sucking suddenly pulling water out of the room.
She pushed Wade and Clarke off the edge, tossed Wormwood after and wrapped Alouella up in a princess carry before hopping off the side herself, the swirling whirlpool below gobbling them up.
The water whirled them at speeds that kept them from up or down, senses scrambled as they were pulled into a pipe in the wall, banging from wall to wall in hard blows. Gwen wrapped Alouella in her arms, protecting the smaller girl as they were rolled like river rocks and air became harsh burning in their lungs.
Everyone shot free into the open ocean, the freeze seeping into bones but the world finally starting to make some sense as directions became themselves once more.
Alouella turned her light up and there were arms grabbing for them, hauling them to the surface as their bodies ached for air.
Air opened up around them in glorious grey sky and they breathed, sucking in great gales that soothed their lungs. Gwen clung to Clarke but dipped below the surface. She abandoned her gauntlets to the deep to lose some weight and everyone crawled to shore, flopping down in the gritty sand where they gasped up life saving breaths like they may never breathe again.
“Does anyone...see any sharks?”
Wade asked.
“I don't care, let them eat us...”
Alouella moaned, her robes and hair flat and floating around her like washed up seaweed.
They were mercifully left alone and lay on the beach, resting their aching bodies.
“I think I see some of those elves floating to shore. We should move.”
Clarke pointed to the sea and the things popping up on the ocean like glowing buoys drifting back towards the city.
They rose, battered and bruised, and trod back to their camp in a long march of dripping and silence. When they finally crested the hill Gwen was the first to make a move other than slow trudging. She turned, a smile on her face and looked at the ruins of the castle, the tiny glowing dots that now wandered the streets of the city.
“Ha ha HA, fuck you castle!”
She took out a jeweled necklace and shook it for the castle to see.
“We all got something and what did you get!? NOTHING! Just ripped a big, new casshole!”
Her madness spread and and laughter began to roll through the party, There was no time to waste as they packed and rolled the cart out, Bartholomew returning to them the moment he saw the movement.
Once many, many miles had been put between them they had a midnight supper that tasted better than anything any of them had ever eaten. Gwen wouldn't stop hugging everyone and her infectious attitude spread as laughter and food filled the night as well as the moss returning as they escaped the limits of the city so they could flush their systems and then chase the taste away with something good.
It had truly been earned and figuratively salted in blood, sweat and pain.