Chương 7: VI.

VI.

Veks thundered over the rooftops of Market West, aiming for the one part where the terrace of one of the big merchants' residences overhung the wide sewage river, three stories below. It was a shortcut he had taken many times before, so he cleared the five-metre gap with ease, landing in a tucked roll, scattering the tiles of the tall building within Uptown West just next to the river.

He continued his mad dash from roof-to-roof, then leapt to an alley two stories down and quickly vaulted the stone railing into the sewage river below, landing flawlessly atop one of the wooden measuring stakes planted solidly in the middle of the river. From there he leapt to the grime-coated wall of the next district over, scrabbling for purchase before managing to climb up-and-over, the bridge guards none-the-wiser to his illegal passing.

From Breadbasket, he went north, snagging lunch from an unattended cart, then crossed the unguarded bridge into the Crafting District, north again from there to Smogtown, then west through Westgate, where he gave the namesake gate out of Helmsgarten a wide berth, before he reached the bridge-gate that led to the Mage Quarter. The bridge was massive compared to the bridge from the Slum to the Residential District and similar to the ones that linked Smogtown and the Crafting District with Westgate.

Esoteric and strange materials were constantly carted back-and-forth across the bridge into the Mage Quarter, but the guards there looked quite vigilant, so Veks doubted he could sneak a ride on one of the carts. Looking at the river, it also seemed to be a suicidal way to cross, so he resorted to a shortcut he did not like to use, for obvious reasons.

Just like the sewage river was omnipresent throughout Helmsgarten, so too were the tunnels that flowed into it, depositing their waste and water from the buildings within each district. These tunnels were not guarded, though some had locks and grates, but it was considered impossible for anyone to use these to cross districts. Veks knew the truth of it, however. It was not impossible to use the sewer tunnels to move between districts, after all, the smugglers in Helmsgarten made their living this way.

The issue was with what thrived and endured in the muck and effluvia. He had only ever used the tunnels once, and he still had the scar on his calf to remember it by. Rumours abounded of monstrosities, and he had not given such stories credence until he had seen one such creature himself. A giant rat with six legs and three tails, as well as a hugely distorted and overgrown skull, had flown at him, breaking his right forearm and carving a deep channel into his calf.

He had only escaped alive thanks to a fellow thief, who had lost his life to protect him. He thanked the Eight Saint for the miracle that his injuries had not become infected and had healed well. Veks took a deep breath as he removed the heavy lid to the maintenance manhole and the smell of waste and noxious gasses vented out into the air. Then he quickly descended the primitive ladder, leaving the cover ajar so a tiny beam of light would guide his way down.

As his bare feet dipped into the warm current, he shuddered with disgust. But he quickly steeled himself and started wading towards the river ahead, following the eager flow as it washed over his legs, at times swelling up to his waist.

"I should've just run…" he said to himself. But he knew he was too committed now, and the distant promise of hundreds of Novarins was too much to let go of, so he continued onward, keeping his ears open to any sounds of the tunnel denizens. Where the tunnel poured its contents into the river below, a large grate covered its façade, perhaps to prevent birds from entering, or, more chillingly, to prevent something from leaving. To emphasise this latter fear, gouges were visible on the thick iron bars.

Veks stared out through the large holes: below, where the effluvia gleefully rushed between his legs and fell into the filth river; and beyond, where a twin grate and tunnel stared back at him. Even without the grates, no human possessed the ability to leap from one side to the next, as it spanned more than seven carriages in length. Besides, even if he had possessed such supernatural agility, the threat of the rapidly-flowing river below seemed too daunting for him to even make the attempt.

Reaffirmed that he had to go the path he least wanted to travel, Veks turned around and made the arduous return back to the manhole shaft, the rush of brown water trying its damnedest to push him back. When he returned to his place of ingress, he continued upstream for several more metres, until a side-tunnel presented itself.

Veks had no clue why these additional tunnels had been built, as clearly the majority of the sewage travelled into the river, which itself flowed down to the Slums, where it was filtered into the sea beyond by kilometres of labyrinthine tunnels. Regardless, such side-tunnels presented the opportunity for the daring to traverse below the filth river and cross districts unnoticed.

With his heartrate climbing, he followed the rapidly-darkening tunnel, where the effluvia seemed hesitant to flow, despite a large channel carved in the floor to encourage it. After only a few steps, he came across another grate, which, to his building dismay, was bent so aggressively to the side that it seemed as though a team of four had brought sledgehammers to it.

"Maybe smugglers did this…" he muttered to himself, unconvincingly. He climbed through the gap and continued along, until the tunnel bent again and started leading down. Rather than wait to be found by whatever lurked within these foul halls, Veks upped his pace and quickly descended the filth-slick ramp, steading himself against the curving wall to avoid falling. At the foot of the ramp, dim lights came from a handful of small fungus sprouts in the floor near the channel.

With the scarce illumination, he saw that, rather than another ramp leading up to the Mage Quarter tunnels, they bent again and led even deeper. A shuddering breath left his lips, but he followed the new ramp deeper into the bowels of the sewers. As Veks descended deeper, the fungus lights grew exponentially, and, at one point, carpeted a corner of the floor and curving wall, letting off enough light that he could see all the way to the other end of the tunnel where two paths presented themselves.

Near the fungus patch a third path also lay, situated perfectly in the middle of the tunnel and leading even deeper. What troubled him was not the many options, as he knew the Mage Quarter sewers mostly mirrored those of Westgate, rather, it was the fog of spores the fungus lights emanated. With a hand over his mouth, he ran to the other side, his feet slapping against the stone and causing overlapping echoes that seemed to radiate outward through the entire tunnel complex, however far it stretched.

Just when he reached the ramp that led up, a distant rumble caused him to slip and land painfully on his elbows. Following immediately after was a distant scurrying, as though a hundred clawed feet were coming closer. A long string of expletives flowed from Veks as he scrambled up the ramp, digging his nails into the narrow gaps between the stones in the wall to avoid slipping. With his ascent, the fungus lights once again retreated, until he reached the second ramp and could hardly see the stones underfoot.

But the distant sounds spurred him on, making him throw caution to the wind. His nails chipped on the stones as he hurried upwards to where the noise of the sewage stream called him. After what seemed a long time, but were only just a panicked few minutes, he reached the top of the second ramp. His celebration was cut short however, as, before him, an intact grate stood. With bleeding and filthy fingers, he grabbed hold of the iron bars, shaking the whole thing with all his might.

And though it seemed loose in its grip on the wall, it hardly moved. The panic reached an all-time peak, as now sounds of shuffling feet came from beyond the grate, while the distant clamour of scratching claws below grew louder with every passing moment. Slamming his shoulder into the bars, Veks kept trying to dislodge the barrier, but to no avail. Then, a figure emerged into view, the dim light from the tunnel beyond backlighting the person.

"Help me get this open!" Veks yelled to what he assumed was one of the sewers many vagrants. The figure shuffled closer, but did not seem to be in any sort of rush.

"Hurry!" When only a few handspans separated them, Veks finally got a good look at the man before him, and a chill shot through him, seizing the air in his lungs. He took a few steps back, suddenly finding the grate before him a saving grace rather than an obstacle. The vagrant huddled even closer to the grate, his one good eye staring right at Veks. The left half of his face was hugely distended and malformed, as though moulded like clay by an amateur's hands.

The left eye had no eyelid and a yellow-green pus ringed its blood-coloured and unseeing form. Blocky and square teeth filled the creature's mouth, and its left leg and arm were strangely bulked and elongated, while what seemed like scales rippled across every visible section of skin. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. As slobber fell from the being's jaws, it scented the air with its twisted and broken nose.

It gurgled and slobbered some more, as it said to him, "You have met h-h-him, h-h-haven't you? The Divine Offspring of the One Who Rules Below?" Before Veks could reply, the malformed vagrant seized the grate in its bulked-out over-long three-fingered pincer-like hand, and with a simple pull tore it loose from the wall, the metal screeching loudly in protest as it was bent in on itself.

Veks eyed the opening suspiciously for a moment, when suddenly-way-too-close sounds of things ascending the ramp behind him made him rush forward and leap through the opening in the grate, landing deftly on the slick stones and not sparing a moment as he rushed for the nearest manhole shaft out of the hellish sewers.

Veks did spare a single glance back over his shoulder, and saw that the monstrous vagrant was climbing through the opening in the grate to face whatever evils Veks himself had brought up from the depths. With his back on the uncomfortable fired-clay tiles of a four-storey, Veks let the sun bake the filth that covered him from head-to-toe, while he forced his heartrate to stabilise. He pondered the vagrant's cryptic words, and wondered if perhaps his encounter with the strange boy was what the creature had sensed.

He quickly shook the thoughts from his mind though.

"There's no way," he mumbled to himself. Besides, the One Who Rules Below, known more commonly as the Underking, was just a rumour. A bedtime horror-story told to children who misbehaved. Scores-upon-scores of adventurer parties had ventured into the bowels of Helmsgarten, and none had ever found as much as a scrap of evidence suggesting such a being existed. It made far more sense to attribute the monstrosities of the sewer kingdom to the vile influence of filth on the local wildlife and wayward vagrants.

After all, the Eight Saint himself was attested as saying that filth corroded the soul of those it touched. It did not escape Veks' notice that he himself was likely in the position he was in, because he had grown up in the Slums, while all those high and holy lived where the filth river was unseen in the highest districts of the metropolis. Although, he would be lying to himself if his encounter with the strange Boy did not spark some fear in him that the Underking could be more than just an urban legend.

After all, his Bodyguard was a being of disturbing strength and terrifying visage, while the Boy himself was covered in what Veks had correctly assumed to be robes of human flesh. And if that did not convince him, the Boy had a tail! A tail! Though Thief by trade, Veks considered himself as pious as it was possible for someone in his situation to be, so he was wary of the corrupting influence the strange Boy might possess. But then again, if he was truly pious, he would exorcise such an evil. But first, the job.

It would be easier to deal with the Boy if he was considered an ally. And then, he could contact the local church and be rewarded for his devotion to the Saint of Purity. Besides, the money he would get from this job could not hurt. After pinning a servant against a wall with a knife to his throat, Veks discovered that the Mage Quarter had a resident Demonologist, and if anyone was to possess Demon's Blood, surely it would be one who studied Demons.

When the servant ran out the alley, Veks headed towards the house that he had indicated: a towering seven-storey building near the heart of the Mage Quarter. It stood like a strange edifice to architecture, as it was the rare few buildings that survived being built to such a height. The building was one of the more peculiar in the district, which already made itself distinct from all the other places he had seen in the metropolis thus far.

It had the appearance of an uneven stack of books, as each floor was shifted slightly off-centre from the ones below, forming an almost-spiral, if not for two central floors that broke the pattern by being stacked perfectly atop one another. It seemed odd to Veks that a building standing seven stories tall was even allowed, given its obvious associations to the Septet Sinners.

The Unholy Septology, the shame of Helmsgarten and the eternal enemies to morality and the ideal of purity incarnate in Olemn, the Eight Saint, whose worship was omnipresent throughout the entire metropolis and who served now as the Patron Deity of the Royal Family. He suddenly did not find it so difficult to justify his robbery of a place that profaned the city upon whose soil it was built. This would just be yet another addition to his inculpation of the strange Boy and his slave-men.

Veks already could imagine the praise gifted upon him by the church clergy and how handsome his reward for piety would be. A loaded smile sat on his lips as he stalked nearer the tower of sin, within which he would find the Demonologist and the strange Boy's sought-after material.

Given the bizarre construction of the seven-storey tower, it had been quite simple for Veks to scale the first three floors from the outside, and, using his trained grip, he even climbed up the fourth and fifth floors, which deviated from the strange pattern of the first floors. As he scaled up the sixth floor, he finally found the entryway into the edifice that he had been seeking: an open window. Veks climbed through in a hurry and fell into a crouch as he took in his surroundings.

It seemed to be a sort of library perhaps, and, surprisingly, it was connected to the seventh floor, although the mismatched floor placements meant that strangely-placed ladders were necessary to ascend to the above bookshelves within the seventh floor. While looking through the area nearest his ingress, he distantly wondered if the other floors were linked in similar ways.

It seemed an almost otherworldly way to construct a place of study and experimentation, but then again, a Demonologist lived within these walls, so perhaps it was not so farfetched an idea to believe such man touched. Stranger still were the floating orbs that cast a strange purple-and-red light across every section of the interior. He treated them with caution, making sure to stay as far away from them as possible, while they flitted about on their own predetermined paths through the tall library.

He quickly found his way to a strange stone pedestal upon which sat a book draped in blood-red rags, as though to stem the bleeding from within its pages. The thought made him shiver, but he took it nonetheless, sticking it into a satchel bag he had found discarded on a chair. He spotted another pedestal on the opposite side of the floor, as well as one above, accessibly only after climbing two rickety-looking ladders propped up by twine alone.

The second pedestal held a book that shared an uncomfortable similarity with the Boy's robes of flesh, but worse yet was the fact that a man's face was visible on its front, and a child's face on the back, as though it had been bound with the skin from the faces of a man and his offspring. Veks gritted his teeth in disgust and anger, but put the book into the bag nonetheless. Such strange trinkets might fancy the boy and make him add even more coins as a reward. Else, he could sell them.

Market West had no shortage of disturbing baubles for the profane dwellers in Helmsgarten's underbelly, so a book of human skin would fetch a good price, regardless of its contents. As he was about to ascend to the pedestal above, he spotted a shelf on the back of a row of bookcases, which held various dried meat, skin and hides, herbs, indescribable tools, and a stack of half-metre-tall clay amphorae. The latter immediately caught his attention and he went to work trying to identify what liquids they held.

Two seemed to have a sort of odourless oil; one had rose-blonde wine; another foul-smelling alcohol that seemed to evaporate into gas as soon as he opened the stopper; and finally two full of a thick tar-like substance that flowed like honey. The latter two amphorae gave off a strange scent, like wet soil, burnt hair, and astringent copper combined.

Veks carefully dipped a finger in one and when he withdrew it, it did look like what the strange bodyguard had described: black, thick, pungent, and emanating a strange buzzing when touched. Stranger yet, as it coated one of the fingers where he had chipped and ripped his nail earlier, the pain lingering in the tip faded and was replaced with a strange soothing feeling.

He quickly wiped the demon's blood on his trouser leg and capped the amphorae, then stuffed both of them into the satchel bag, which was now almost impossible to clasp shut. His task complete, he was ready to leave before his intrusion was discovered. However, he was inexplicably drawn to the third pedestal above. He left the satchel bag on the floor and quickly scaled the shaky ladders that were linked together and held to the floor above by twine and string.

The air burning in his lungs, he collapsed onto the floor in front of the pedestal, but quickly composed himself to see what kind of book it held. However, it held no book at all, rather, it held a peculiar shortsword, the shape of which was chiselled into the stone top of the pedestal, allowing it to be fully recessed into the stone. With some difficulty, Veks dug out the blade, leaving behind the hollow imprint of the weapon. While holding the sword reverently in his hands, he let out a contented sigh.

Such a beautiful work it was: a straight blade like polished silver, reflecting his image perfectly; an S-shaped crossguard; and hand-and-a-half long handle, wrapped in the softest silk he had ever felt, and yet providing a sturdy grip; and finally, the pommel, which was shaped like a serpent with its jaws agape, two glinting jewel fangs in its upper mouth. The odd buzzing, which the demon's blood had filled his head with when he touched it, returned to him again as he held the sword.

It was followed with a feeling of joy and anticipation, flowing like an ocean wave through his body, wiping away his worries and his pain. Distantly, he heard something like a muted whisper, but before he could concentrate on it, a door burst open below and a man in crimson robes emerged onto the sixth floor below. Veks leaned over the railing next to the pedestal and tall shelves of books that lined the entire wall on this floor. The newcomer stared right back at him, the strap of the satchel bag in his left hand.

"What do you think you're doing here!" the man yelled, then he raised a palm towards Veks. Shifting the blade to his left hand, he grabbed the handle of the railing and made to vault it and leap for the man below, but just as his hand had gripped the wood, a beam of concentrated light shot through his right hand and the railing, continuing through the wall above and leaving behind a hole that shone with the light of the sun outside.

It took Veks a moment to realise that where his index finger and thumb should be, remained nothing but charred flesh now. As though he could not feel this disturbing wound, he continued vaulting over the railing, and as he leapt, from the seventh floor to the sixth below, mirror-polished blade held aloft in his left fist, the second light-beam went wide and a third never came.

An awful crunch sounded as Veks landed, blade spearing the forehead of the robed man, but he heeded not the broken toes and fractured shinbone, and instead quickly stole the satchel bag back and made to leave. Before he vaulted out of the window however, he stole the man's crimson robe too. One of the Mage Quarter's high-and-mighty strode over the vast bridge leading to Westgate, and the guards dutifully cleared the way for the man to pass, his blood-red hood dipping curtly in thanks.

Before the robed figure had made it halfway across though, one of the guards called out to him.

"You're bleeding, sir! Sir!" He had spotted the trail of blood left in the passing of the shuffling Magister. Then he turned to his fellow and they came to a quick decision, but, before they could give chase, a runaway oxen rampaged towards them and all chaos broke loose. When order was restored, no trace remained of the red-robed Magister, save for a few drops of blood on the cobblestones.