Perhaps the first sign you were getting a little over your head was the sash. Your honorable partner, Justinia Ater, wearing one of her own, demanded you put it own as soon as you met her.
"It makes them respect you" she intoned seriously. "It" was two giant cast-iron rats, sown into the thick leather strap. In between them, yours said "PROBATIONARY". On hers, more in grandiose purple thread were the words "QUEEN OF THE PITS". She had a crown to match, some beat copper thing inset with varieties of stained glass, but was otherwise dressed relatively practically; a giant green cloak, a bright red tunic, and yellow pantaloons over thick brown boots.
You had no idea why you had been assigned her partner, or has she put it, her "squire", but you had answered the ad, and been given a place a time, and here you were, standing above a levered off sewer grate, below which a ladder stretched into the pitch dark. It stank from up here – of wet and waste but of
Ghur too – heaving wild wind, fur and claw and beast.
"We're going down there?" you inquire, in the hope that this is somehow a misunderstanding.
"Courage, boy! We are and will, and it'll put some hair on your chest!". Then, Justinia hands you what appears to be a trash picker.
You, incredulously gesture to your sword "Are we not meant to be slaying them?
She scoffs, as if you've missed something obvious. "Hurt my subjects? Never! Slaying the innocent is a tawdry crime. No; the Princeps has need of them, bless him. His citizens are hardly much to speak of, aren't they?" She gestures broadly to the city around her. You aren't particularly willing to disagree. "No, they're going in the sack." And she pulls out a tiny bag embroidered with the sign of the Lodge, the 𝓠 of their long-sought Quintessence. It's one of their great inventions; the Thousand-and-One; a gallon big, but able to hold a hundred times that. Small wonder that a ratcatcher has managed to get her hands on one, but nothing compared to the revelation that you've got spend the next few hours of your life at the world's worst petting zoo.
"Onward!" the Queen cries. "Onward to the quest, the glorious quest!". She leaps, and heart leaps, but she catches the ladder with a laugh, and slides into the deeps. You look before you leap, confirm your blade is at your side, and make your way one oily rung at a time into the undercity.
…
You have now been trudging down a sewer thick with waste for an hour. You have seen float by you seventeen pig carcasses, eleven live snakes, and one what you hoped wasn't a human corpse, but hoped further wasn't someone alive, because to swim in that shit was a fate worse than death. You have, by the by, managed to catch zero total rats on your own, while the Queen has managed ninety six. You see one rush in front of you, climbing through some crack in the brick, and reach out with your picker, but by the time you've raised your arm the damn animal has already noticed the threat and buried itself in the nearest hole. You've actually grabbed two. The first hated you enough to rip its own tail off in its hurry to flee from your catch. The second you were so shocked to actually get you released your grip, which lead to the rat falling directly on top of you, resulting in a brief wrestling match that you lost, with the rat, after futilely biting at your sash (apparently actually useful), clambered off and jumped into the sewage.
Compared to your lumbering, the Queen is a panther, strong, stealthy, silent. She is at perfect home in her domain, each step perfect, even without looking. Travelling over wet and rot and god-knows-what she never stumbles or misses a step or even do the indignity of looking down. Her focus is absolute, along the walls and the floor, and she leaps with lighting reflex at what you swear are shadows till she grabs, and squeaking hostages are brought forth from the dark. You must admit, her title does seem rather earned.
So, there you are, an hour in, where you reach an intersection in the sewer pipes rather similar to what you've seen before; two joining into one, which you presume will eventually dump out – actually, you have no idea. You had always presumed the Skavi, with how much it stank, but you've just been going deeper and deeper underground. You recall the endless pit of the Sons of Skavor, and realize you really have never known what goes on beneath the Twin Cities; where all the waste and ruin of the world above goes – just down, down, into – what most assume nothing, but as you walk thrown meticulous, Dwarf-hewn tunnels, is very much something purposeful and exact.
You are therefore rather taken when you see an interesting glimmer from what looks like what might have been a utility closet. The door is slightly hanging open, having been burst through by some weird plant growth, something seemingly all bramble growing in the half-light of the half-assed Brotherhood glow-moss that lights the roof of the sewers. There is something in there, bursting with divine energy, a true and proper holy artifact. Perhaps only a week ago you might have been more suspect of some mysterious religious artefact seemingly lying abandoned in a tunnel, but you finger the sword in its sheath, and have – ironically – faith in your act of potential blasphemy. You reach for it, and just as you do, Justinia turns and yells "STOP!".
But it's too late.
[Risky Flip (Ahalt's Hello):
Tails (Failure)]
As your finger grazes it, the thorns suddenly burst out like tendrils and seize your arms and legs. Before you even realize what's happened, you're suspended in the air, thorns cutting into your wrists and feet. Beside you, the Queen is wrapped up too, swearing up a storm – whether at you or at the bramble it's unclear. The explosion of plant growth keeps growing, filling up more and more of the tunnel – to your horror, you realize it's growing behind you, the way you came, meaning your way back is slowly being blocked off. You struggle, and you think, for a moment, to send a prayer to Morr. But you are struck with a terrible note of doubt. Do not trust the divine – that was the message people died to give you in the Grand Theatre. And what had you done? Gone to the temples – found liars and thieves. Gone underground and reached again towards the "most high" – and now you were being flipped upside down and thrust into an ever-growing thicket, thorns in your arms, pushing into your ribs, an inch away from your left eye.
Your spiral is somewhat interrupted by the arrival of a figure from inside the closet, the thicket itself clearing around him. They are bearing the sickle. Where you might expect a face was just a mass of ever-blooming flowers, visibly budding and blooming and wilting and falling and new flowers blooming anew. The are wearing the ruined tunic of a nobleman, gold thread on stained white, embroidery of little vines and fruits. They tilt their head, as if confused, and with a gesture, halt the thorn. They look you, first, and, after a pause, silently bows. Then they go to the Queen, who still is swearing up a storm. With another gesture, a bloom of leaves gags her, and despite her struggle, he reaches up, and seizes the bag full of rats. They turn again to you, salutes, and without a word, walk back into the closet, and disap-
No.
You refuse to let this bullshit stand. You want answers, Gods be dammed. You want to fucking live – to go outside, and not worry about – whatever, this horrible dreaded thing that had pervaded your life for months and months and seemingly had – though just its shadow – ruined your brothers and killed a half-dozen. You were going to know. No more magic and prophecy, no more fucking secrets! You may be just Xenophon, just an ordinary man, but you have the right not to die in the dark.
Good.
You reach, and your sword comes; the thorns go limp around you, as if they were always ordinary, and there had never been any magic at all. You hear the Queen shout in alarm, as the whole bramble collapses into reality, but you're already off like a shot, into the closet and through the back where someone or something has carved a tunnel and some rudimentary stairs, leading into oblivion. You leap –
Down.
Down.
Down.
…
You land hard, crashing into what seem to be some ancient pile of wood gone soft with moisture and age. You're dazed for half a second, but leap up brushing off you the – glowing green dust? You look around. Above you by maybe ten feet is the end of the stairs. You're in the pile of what must have been some sort of scaffold up to them, long collapsed. The ruins have fallen into a long hall, not of Dwarven make, but very, very old. It's filled to the brim with barrels. Most are open, their wood rotted through. The whole room stinks of mildew, and you can feel the leaking from the ceiling, drip drop – are you under the river?
But you don't have much time for that thought, because you realize what's spilling out of the barrels, and why you feel so suddenly ill. It's not the drop. Out of all of them, spilling onto the floor like sand, is warpstone. Sickly, glowing, green – dark magic manifest, the waste product of high enchantment. There must be thousands in this room alone; years and years worth of waste you'd think from up above. You can feel your soul shuddering trying to get away from it, but you grip your sword and feel – if not reassured, if you can't believe that – at least a little more real.
At the end of the hall, there's a door. You notice it, because you see a shadow slip through it, and slam shut. You give chase. You rush through the hall, shoving barrels aside, spilling more wyrdstone on to the floor. You heave the heavy stone door open, and find a great circular room; there are doors just like the one you emerge from lining all the way around the walls. At the centre, is a staircase that spirals both up and down. You hear someone rushing downward on iron steps. You follow.
You catch sight of your quarry as you round the first circle. Flowers turns back to look at you, and you swear some more of their not-face wilts and the sight. They click their fingers, and suddenly, with a wash of
Ghur, there is no person, but a huge goddam mouse with the bag in its mouth. It then doubles down running away, and you sprint to keep up, a merry chase, circling, circling, circling, deeper and deeper below.
...
You're running down a long stone hall now, a ways past the end of the stairs and through more storage rooms, these full of, sinisterly and inexplicably, animal bones. And something was wrong with them too; of every imaginable species – elephant and squig and dragon, but all fused together, as if something was feeding them, letting them grow beyond death. It had looked like a great many spurs of bone had already been sawn off, and from those holes dripped warpstone sand. But you didn't have time to solve that mystery - you were through, snapping bones that cracked open into glowing green crystal, past door and door and door until you reached a final set, Dwarven again, stone, with countless words in Khazalid. They are grinding shut as you shove through the gap – you've been gaining, but only just – and as you pass, they click fast behind you. You are now in a weird helter-skelter mining tunnel, supported by countless trusses. It's of Dwarven make, you can tell from the make of the supporting beams, but bizarre in composition; no orderly lines as you would associate, the whole floor slanted sideways, the walls bent like the whole place had at some point been melted and then desperately only just kept from total collapse.
It's clearly long abandoned too; there is thick dust on the floor, but thankfully, not warpstone now. But it's easy enough to track your prey, and so you push on, half running, half sliding down the steep, crumbling floor. You eventually reach the edge of a pit. In fact, it looks almost exactly like the pit of the Sons of Skavor. You take a peek down and you pass along the edge, and you see, like a disc of pure diamond, like a plug three hundred feet deep, fused into the pit's walls. It's scratched horribly, but there's not a crack, and you see some attempts to smash around its edges have only resulted in more of the whole caving in. You Look, to try to see through it, and you see another glimmer of divinity, like a lamp at the bottom of the well. You, seeing it, Know That They are Sorry. But as that thought forces its way into your mind, your hand slips on your sword, and you must catch it with your left, nicking that hand with the edge. That brings you out of your reverie, and you continue past the hole, putting it behind you as you run down another deep, dark hall at the bottom of the world.
…
A final turn, and you are panting now, exhausted. You've probably been chasing for the better part of an hour? But you've reached what seems like your ultimate point – a huge cave, lit with everburning torches, in which a small settlement has been established. It's a really proper town – wooden and stone buildings, made of mismatched trash, almost scrape the ceiling. Maybe fifty men, women and children are walking the streets. Some are chatting, some are playing, some are working. All are mutants. One child with three eyes herds a small horde of giant cockroaches, singing to them like a shepherd to their sheep. A man with talons for hands is giving a gift of a scrap-metal necklace to a girl, who smiles with seven rows of sharp teeth. A large mouse is transforming back to a person with flowers for a face, holding your bag in their right hand, and a sickle in their left. Everyone turns at his arrival, and the shouts of greeting are paused when they see you.
The person you've been chasing looks at you, and then dumps the bag upside down. A horde of rats comes out.
You shout "Why?"
The flower-person makes a complicated set of hand gestures. You somehow understand their meaning. They are saying: "Because they have souls too."
But before you can ask what by heaven and hell that means, the fellow plucks a blue blossom from the centre of his head, and blows.
You feel the cool breeze, and the early winter frost.
You collapse.
…
You wake up by the edge of a manhole in the Shambles. You have your sword, you have everything – but the bag.
Was it a dream?
Your hand is still bleeding from the nick you gave yourself – it wasn't.
You report back to the address the original ad told you to go to following your assignment. You are relieved to see the Queen there, a little banged up, but otherwise unharmed. She cries out seeing you and offers you a hung and a ruffle of your hair. When you try to explain what you saw, she puts her fingers to her lips; the room is full of other rat-catchers and a horde of soldiers, including Gnaeus Marius himself, standing on a podium, doling out wages.
"The secrets of the deep should keep to the worthy that the underworld deigns to show." she says and walks off.
You see the catchers line up, each returning their Thousand-and-One Marius assigned them.
You watch as the government of the Twin Cities pays a small fortune to collect thousands of live rats.
You think of a secret city, and warpstone underground, and an inaccessible, apologetic divinity.
You wonder:
What's the value of a soul?
