The Lilliad Part 3

Lilli was hustled into some sort of soft leather shoes and nearly out the door, her new scaly friend gesticulating their impatience. 

“I need to pay, right?” She asked. A warm breeze swept past her face, and suddenly a soft hand brushed against her arm. 

She turned in the arm’s direction and found the woman from before. She was smiling even as her hand returned to her hip. 

“Took what I needed out of your pouch, miss.” The woman winked impishly, with a knowing look towards what Lilli now recognized as her pile of belongings. “Taking the liberty of burning most of your old things, and replaced them. Unless you want your old poisonous rags back?”

“Uhhh…. No, that’s all right.” Lilli stammered. Was she not going to call the guards? Or was she reading this incorrectly? Life was a nightmare. She was suddenly slightly less thankful that they’d managed to save her life.To be saved to end up in the prisons…. Death would have been kinder. 

The witch leaned to swipe Lilli’s things off of the floor and into Lilli’s chest. Lilli’s arms moved up to catch them by reflex. Her belt nearly fell to the ground before she caught it, dagger sheaths dangling from it like night lamps.

“Come back when you’re done.” The woman said to her, and leaned back to the twitchy wizard by the door. “And you as well, Elathor. Tuul knows I can’t have you up and disappearing on me.”

“Yes, yes, Pelu.” The now-named Elathor said, tapping their feet. “But this is important! You know it is.”

The woman hummed, flicking Lilli’s long, sea-foam hair back behind her ears. “Of course. Can’t let the whole country die. So get going!” 

She shooed them out, practically scooping Lilli up and outside the threshold, into the burning sun. 

It was daytime? Odd. Lilli looked back to the storefront. It was impossible to tell from the inside what time of day it was. Was that magic or just a preference for really bad lighting?

She turned back and realized that Elathor was disappearing into the crowd. She rushed to catch up, grasping at their robes. 

Luckily Elathor turned back, looking confused. “Oh, there you are! So slow. Where are we going?”

This guy was…. Very odd. Lilli shook it off. 

“The water tunnels, under the city. This way.” She directed, taking the lead. She really did not want to do this at all, but if those monsters really could start plagues… she should at least direct the weird wizard to one of their corpses. Then she could hopefully go back to her horrible previous life, if that witch didn’t call the guards to have her arrested. 

They went down into the tunnels. Lilli felt so much more comfortable once she was out of the sight of people and into somewhere less crowded. 

Then she remembered that there was a good possibility that it had more monster-ridden corpses in it. 

Her shoulders shrunk in on themselves and she felt her body language shift back into a defensive posture. A noise behind her made her whip around, ready to fight- but it was just Elathor. 

They looked confused, their eyes then looked down to her hips. 

Hers followed, and that was when she realized her hands were wrapped around the grips of her daggers. 

She opened her grip slowly and raised her hands, then continued back down the path. She shook her head as if to shake off the nerves. 

As they neared the spot, she could feel her heart start to beat faster. Her hands were sweating, and her mouth felt dry. Just another couple of turns, and the Thing would be there. What had Elathor called it? A ktharyis. Somehow, that didn’t seem any less scary. 

They turned around a corner, and she tried to wet her mouth with her tongue. It felt like sandpaper. 

“This is so exciting,” Elathor whispered behind her, to themselves. She twitched. 

She kept forgetting that they were there. And she certainly didn’t share the sentiment. 

The last turn was up ahead. Lilli took a deep breath. 

She turned, hand upon her dagger. If that Ktharyis or whatever was up and ready to fight, she would be, too. 

But there was only the same mound of rotting flesh she’d left behind. The stench was unbelievable from up close. It felt like it settled right back behind her nostrils and up in her mind. 

How had they not smelled it before they got so close? She would have thought that it would permeate the air throughout the tunnels. Odd. Either that was due to the running water, or possibly magic. She hoped it was just the water. All this magic stuff was far too much for her. 

The Kthing was lying there, looking altogether flatter. Elathor made some sort of squawking noise and rushed forward, pulling a quill and parchment out of an improbably small bag. 

Liili hung back, watching it all with an uneasing tension. She couldn’t help but feel that the Ktharyis would get back up again and finish the job. 

Elathor murmured some numbers, as they lifted wings and counted lengths. Lilli felt her whole spine shiver when they covered the horrible clawed hands and face with a soft clay to take impressions. It was all so very clinical. Sketches, measurements, and impressions were all made with scholarly precision. 

Lilli felt slightly inadequate and now wholly superfluous. 

“Do you need me to hold anything?” She asked, feeling foolish even as she said it. She dug her toes into the ground, noting how different it felt when she had some shoes on. She could get used to a life with shoes. 

They hummed, and then held something back for her to grab. She took it without thinking, and then made the mistake of looking down. 

The Kthing’s head stared back at her from its cloth wrappings. She choked down the vomit that that inspired, and wrapped the the cloth around it more tightly. 

“Any idea how long this will take?” She asked, feeling a bit faint. She guessed that taking the Kthing out of the water supply for the city was good, but couldn’t summon any real good feelings about having to carry it out of here. She just wanted it to disappear.

She wanted to disappear.

Blessedly Elathor was fast at this, however lackluster they might be as a coworker. They made quick work of the rest of the Kthing’s body, leaving only the mutilated corpse of the laborer behind. They stood up and looked at the corpse with an introspective mien.

“We should… probably report that to the guards.” Elathor said, waving their talons at the former person. 

Lilli wholeheartedly disagreed. While removing the body was a good idea, in her brief life experience she had learned that the guards were never on her side. 

“They would want to know why we were down here.” She pointed out, “And technically it’s a crime to be in these tunnels.” 

Trespassing, maybe? Why was it illegal? Maybe there was a possibility that the city was worried people would sabotage their sewer system. 

“Is it?” Elathor looked startled. “I didn’t know we were committing a crime, coming down here…. Are we in trouble, do you think?”

“Only if you say something.” Lilli said, staring at the corpse and feeling a tremendous weight of guilt. It was horrible that she had to leave him here. Horrible that she couldn’t report it. But he was already dead. There was no saving him, and therefore nothing to really be gained from going to the guards and ending up in prison. He was already out of the water, so hopefully no one downstream would get sick. It was all they could do. 

The eyeless face seemed to be accusing her. 

She turned away. 

“This Ktharyis was different than I had expected. Evolved.” Elathor said, voice full of wonder. “That shouldn’t have happened without multiple generations. There must be other bodies.”

Bodies like the one they were going to leave to rot away in the tunnel. This was too much. It was wrong, it was sick. Lilli didn’t want to find any more bodies. 

But maybe they needed to. This couldn’t keep happening. It was too horrible.

“So you think that someone has been doing this on purpose?” She felt cold horror slide over her skin.

“It’s possible, yes,” Elathor agreed. “It would be hard for sufficient numbers of Ktharyis to breed in isolation. They don’t tend to stay contained by chance. I would have expected to see problems long before this amount of evolution was possible. That likely means that they were truly contained in isolation somehow for some purpose, or that they have been causing trouble that we haven’t heard of. And I certainly would have heard of it, unless it was deliberately being concealed!” 

“We should go, now.” Lilli started walking, and listened for Elathor. Their feet stumbled, but quickly followed her down the tunnels. 

She did not look back down into the bundle in her hands. 

She took the first exit available, and they emerged back onto the busy streets. From there, Lilli followed Elathor’s sure footsteps up through the Groum district and back towards Drieptail. 

The bundle in her hands moved. Lilli’s heart dropped. She honed in on the Kthing head in her arms, drowning out the rest of the world and whatever Elathor was saying. Had it really just fucking moved?

She waited, letting Elathor steer her by their cloak. Nothing happened. 

But she could swear that she felt *something* radiating from it. It resonated with something deep in her blood. Her chest hurt. 

Then she looked up. She very carefully swallowed the expletive that threatened to fall out of her mouth.

She had never been to this place before and that had been the way she liked things. Unfortunate. It was thoroughly cold and unwelcoming. It was also full of uniformed officers of the law. The closest one was a burly man with salt-pepper hair who gave them a distinctly unimpressed look the instant that they stepped into the room. 

“Hello, lawful men!” Elathor chirped. “I would like to show you something fascinating and rare that I brought from the sewers underneath this fine city.”

Oh, that was a great start. 

The man at the reception desk looked horrified. He lurched forward but couldn’t stop her from putting the bundle of cloth on the desk. She let it fall with a wet smack, eager to be as far as possible from the palpable evil that might not actually be dead. 

“We don’t want your sewer treasures-”

His face changed when the cloth fell open. There was a second of tense, loaded silence. And then- “That is an ugly beastie.” He went to prod it, and then thought better. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. You found it like this?”

He was lying.

She had seen it on his face. She had seen not just revulsion, but tired recognition. 

Downplay. Divert. Don’t look remarkable. 

“It was dying when we found it. Elathor saved us. It’s bizarre, isn’t it?” Lillith said, feeling that something was going very wrong. Her instincts were telling her to step carefully. 

“You found it in the sewer, you said?” The guard leaned forward a bit, over the dead monster on his desk. “What were you doing down there?” 

God, Elathor, why had he said that? Her heart raced.

The answer was crime. She had been doing crime. ...Or, escaping the scene of crime.

‘Elathor already said we were down there… maybe I should tell them about the body.’

She thought that, and then for some reason she didn’t. Her nerves were screaming caution. “I heard something moving around,” she said. “I thought maybe a kid or animal fell in. I was worried.” 

‘I’m a good citizen. Look the other way.’ 

“Luckily, Elathor was nearby and jumped down with me.” She was shaking.

‘I can’t let them know that I’m the one who killed it. It was weak already, and it’s plausible that magic could do something.’  

“Oh, that’s not true at all!” Elathor sputtered, sounding charmed and confused. 

‘Can’t let them find that body. They’ll look at it. Who knows how much they know about these things? They might realize that the monster was safely inside that corpse when I got there.’ 

“Lillith?” Elathor said, finally seemed a bit wary. 

“I really appreciate you,” she assured, trying to cover their conversation to sound normal. 

People were looking. She felt tension in the guard room rising, but the wizard seemed to be mostly oblivious. He had clearly registered that she wasn’t acting as he’d expect, but he didn’t read the air well enough to know why-

“Right,” the guard said. His tone was flat. “Is that all?”

Elathor shook his head, breathless with excitement. He held up his left hand and stuck his right hand into the bag- the bag that had all his tools and the careful records-

Lillith made a split second decision and stepped forward. “That’s all,” she said, ducking her head subserviently. “We don’t want to trouble you any more.” She brushed against Elathor’s side as she passed him, hoping he’d cotton on and follow her lead.

He didn’t say anything. He gave her a confused look, but it quickly subsided into blankness. 

The guard was still sneering ever so slightly, but he sat back down in his chair. “I see. Thank you for bringing this to us. We will investigate it.”

Maybe. Maybe they would. But they definitely wouldn’t share the information with two random, dirty people. Maybe if Elathor had gone in clean, fine clothes, to a more affluent area of town, guards would have been amenable. But in this situation-

When she and Elathor made it back outside, she didn’t talk until they were a significant distance away. She was sure no one was following them. She was good at that type of thing.

“Elathor,” Lillith said quietly. “I’m going to double back and see if I can find where they’re storing the bodies. I didn’t want you to tell them what we need to know, because they weren’t going to help us.” 

“Oh,” Elathor said, sounding delighted. “How lovely!”