Warsinger - Chapter 23

I’d seen chihuahuas smaller than the fat, mangy, hissing [Stranged Rats] surging toward us. There were dozens of them, writhing over and around each other as they boiled toward the corpse Karalti had pulled down off the catwalk. Without thinking, I caught her hand and pulled her away just before the rats fell on it, ravenously stripping cloth and flesh. But as more and more of them piled on, their pointed muzzled turned toward us. Ignoring the corpse that had been drained by the wraith, the rats hissed and bounded forward, swarming the tunnel with nine inches of filthy teeth, fur, and naked flopping tails. I stepped in front of Karalti, spun the Spear around, and let a surge of dark power build through my body.

"Raagh!" When they were close enough, I rammed the Spear down toward the ground. Black energy bloomed through it and burst out into an explosive, frigid cloud. Rats squealed as they froze and burst, shattering as they struck the walls. Umbra Burst cleared enough of a path that we could run through, rats nipping at our heels. Individually, they weren't a threat. But fifty, sixty, a hundred, five hundred... the ones that had been skeletonizing the corpses down the hall were running to join the frenzy now.

Karalti snarled as one jumped up and latched onto her hand. Others were climbing my legs, squeaking and slipping on my armor. Teeth bored into the leather of my boots as I kicked and sent three or four of them flying. I dropped the Spear and pulled a knife, stabbing at them as we broke through the mass and into open air.

[You have killed Plague Rat! 10 EXP!]

[You have killed Plague Rat! 10 EXP]

"EUURGH!" Karalti stomped a rat and then pulled one off my back, hissing when it bit her. The rat squealed as it got a mouthful of mana and fell, sizzling, to the floor of the sewer. We held the line there, stabbing and struggling. When we had enough distance, I called the Spear to my hand. A second Umbra Burst sent the horde scattering, the live rats seizing the dead ones and devouring them like furry piranha.

"Let's go!" Karalti grasped my forearm, her hands still leaking bright blue liquid, and pulled me off into the darkness.

We sprinted around the corner, leaving behind the sounds of ripping flesh and furious rodents behind us.

"Hey, not bad EXP," I panted. "Ten points here and there adds up, you know?"

"If you wanna go back there and level up, be my guest." She wrinkled her nose. "They got some disease they tried to give me. 'Filth Fever'."

My corner of my eye twitched. "Are you sick?"

"I'm immune to silly human diseases," she replied. "But you're not, and you get freaked out when you get a cold. Come on. There's something big that squished these people in here, and we need to sort it out. Besides: what would looters be doing down HERE? There's nothing but rats and poop. You'd think they'd go to the market to loot stuff."

"Good question." I'd been wondering the same thing, but... "It sounded like they weren't angling for the sewers, as such. There was something there in the quest description about entering the catacombs."

A dead, humid stillness settled over us. There was only the roar of the torch and our footsteps on the slick stone, squelching on centuries of built up slime and algae. Every time Karalti shifted the arcane torch and a shadow flickered, I felt my heart jump a little. After ten minutes or so of battling running eyes and sniffly noses, we found a slippery flight of stairs leading down, The ceiling and walls hung with ropes of jelly-like colonies of bacteria, which we pushed aside to step out onto a rusted metal catwalk.

We had reached Fol Alugut: a long, straight, barrel-vaulted tunnel that was large enough to drive a pair of wagons through. The canal that usually carried waste water was still and sludgy, the contents bubbling like simmering mud. A dull green mist hung over everything, rising from the rotting waste that stewed without water to flush it away. The smell was indescribable, like a million unscooped kitty litter boxes compressed into the space of a truck tray. It made my eyes water and seared the nerves of my nose raw. It was impossible to breathe. 

[Warning: Toxic Gas]

[You are being poisoned!]

I retreated after only a couple of seconds, coughing violently.

“Fuck. We can’t go in there.” I gasped. “Shit’s nasty, yo.”

“What do we do, then?” Karalti hung back anxiously, the pistol clutched in her hands.

“We go back up to those grates the map talked about,” I said. “And we go around. These looters seemed to know something about the place we don’t. What did the map say again?”

“Hang a left at the third grate to get around the sewer line,” Karalti said. “Up the stairs, maybe?”

We backtracked, and after a few minutes, we found what we were looking for: a series of grates at knee-height. The third on the left had been sawn through, then carefully put back into place. We pulled it out and crawled in, freezing when a chittering whisper passed through the stairwell behind us.

“We’re being followed,” Karalti said. 

“Yeah. Let's get this the fuck over with. I don’t want to have to fight a wraith in here.”

A couple of weeks ago, I had crawled about a thousand feet through a narrow ventilation shaft. At the time, I’d been pretty sure that had been the worst claustrophobic experience of my life, but the entry to Lahati’s Tomb hadn’t included mold, slime, and rat droppings, all of which were in abundance here. The only thing this experience had going for it was that it was relatively short. After about five hundred feet, we dragged ourselves out into what had to be the cistern: a towering, cylindrical chamber that had definitely seen better days. There were four doors and several tunnels leading off from it, all of them sealed off with rough, clumpy plugs of broken rocks, congealed sewerage, and trash. A pale beam of sunlight fell from the center of the ceiling onto a buzzing, heaped pile of refuse at least twelve feet tall. It took up about a third of the room. There were craters all around it, big potholes where the shale pavers had been smashed and chewed up. No skeletons that I could see. No obvious monstery presence... and yet, some instinct was tingling at the back of the ol' lizard brain. Maybe it was the brown spatter stain on the floor about twenty feet to my right. Maybe it was the old bouncer’s instinct to look for threats and map escape routes in any confined environment. But almost one hundred percent of the time, when the instinct to check my quickbar and find cover was triggered in a game, it usually meant one thing.

"This feels like a boss arena," I muttered.

"Maybe." Karalti sniffed uncertainly. "That blood over there is human. And I smell mana coming from somewhere, but it’s spoiled."

I turned around, looking for signs of the undead. Other than some hissing and whispering, we hadn’t seen any sign of wraith activity. “Mana can spoil?” 

“Yeah. It takes a really, really long time for mana to go bad, but it can. Especially in places with a lot of pollution.” 

“How much mana are we talking, here?”

"A little? I'm not sure. It's hard to tell. A little bit smells the same as a lot, because of how it diffuses in the air."

"Hmm." After a couple of minutes, my eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I was able to get a proper look at the compost pile. “Hand me that pistol.”

Karalti passed it over. I checked it over, cocked the hammer back, and aimed it at the refuse heap.

"You think it's alive?" Karalti said.

"Not taking any chances." I sighted down and fired.

There was a deafening bang, and I glimpsed the glowing blue round before it blew into and through Shit Mountain like it wasn't there, flew out the back of it, and vanished into the wall. The mound didn't moan, shamble, or in any other way indicate it was anything other than a big pile of mud and garbage. Satisfied, I grunted, reloaded and rearmed the pistol, then tucked it into my belt.

“No wraiths in there,” I said. “Not unless they’re real squirrelly. Okay… let’s take a look at these doors.”

All four of the doors were plugged up – but the one on the right still had a small opening that looked ominously like something’s butthole. There was an omnious groan from deep underneath us, like the sound of metal being stretched to its limits, and I found myself thinking back to the sandworms as Karalti held the torch up.

There was something moving inside the hole that was about the size of a basketball. I raised the Spear like a harpoon while Karalti maneuvered the torch inside to get a better look. It was a giant beetle, like a dung beetle, but made of a weird brassy metal. An artifact. The machine was patiently rolling a massed ball of dirt and feces into position at the end of the tunnel, manipulating it with its back feet, its head facing toward us. It had a pair of fierce-looking mandibles, but other than clacking them at us, it showed no sign of aggression.

I scratched my chin. "Huh. Maybe it got out of the university? It looks like someone's science project. Not exactly what I was expecting, but I guess it could explain why we're all clogged up."

"There’s no way one little beetle could do all this, right?" Karalti turned, casting light on the other doors.

"If it was working non-stop for a month, then maybe?" I angled the Spear into the hole, lined myself up, then thrust it forward.

The blade plunged in between the plates that acted as the beetle's shell, scattering blue-white sparks everywhere. It made a shrill whirring sound and collapsed - but before it expired, it emitted an ear-splitting ultrasonic pulse that made my eardrums throb.

[You killed Tomb Worker Drone! You gain-]

I felt the earth tremble before I heard it, and Shadow Danced along the curve of the wall on pure instinct as a colossal fist smashed into the floor where I had been standing.