Chương 16: Sewers Lead to Hell Too

The alley narrowed further as they walked, the buildings pressing in until the walls were so close that they had to slide forward sideways. Then the smell hit. Ophila stopped walking.

"No," she said. Ahead of them, set into the base of the wall where two buildings met, was a grate. It was made of iron, dark with rust and age, and it was folded back on its hinges to reveal a circular opening about three feet across. From inside was the source of the awful, putrid smell.

"Yes," Lio said.

"Absolutely not." Ophila took a step back, shaking her head.

"In case you don't know, that is a sewer."

"It opens up into Ghenna's entrance, so it passes the logging checkpoint entirely. Besides, you wanted less proof of you being here right?" Ophila stared long at the opening. Then at him. Then back at the opening.

"I will go stand in that line," she said.

"I will stand in that line for however long it takes. In fact, I will grow old and die in that line."

"It'll just take two minutes to get through."

"Two minutes is a very long time to be inside a sewer."

"You've survived delving down into Floor 7 alone," Lio said.

"You even stabbed a man with his own knife. So what's wrong with this?"

"That man didn't smell like this." Lio crouched down beside the grate opening and looked up at her.

"The line will take around an hour. Every minute we spend up here is a minute we're not putting distance between ourselves and the people looking for you." Ophila frowned at that, the disgust slowly retreating past her eyes. She looked at the sewer entrance again.

"How…how deep is the water?" she gingerly asked.

"It isn't water." Her face went through several distinct stages of grief, anger, and revulsion.

"Don't say," she muttered, "anything like that to me again." She pulled her braid up over her shoulder and tucked it inside her collar. Then she crouched down in front of the opening, peered inside with a repulsed expression, and exhaled slowly through her mouth.

"I hate you." She gave him one final look of profound displeasure, then climbed in. Lio followed quickly, pulling the grate shut behind them. The darkness enveloped them immediately, and up ahead, Ophila unclipped her lamp from her harness and turned it on.

"Two minutes right?" she asked, her voice echoing off the tunnel walls.

"Two minutes," Lio confirmed.

"I'll be counting." As they continued on, the smell only got even worse. The ceiling was low enough that they moved in crouch, enough for even the calmest of people to feel claustrophobic. The floor was uneven and slick, and the lamp Ophila held threw lurching shadows across the curved walls with every careful step she took. She was handling it with impressive composure, all things considered. She hadn't said anything in about thirty seconds, though it was probably her valiant attempt not to puke on the spot.

Then after around a minute of this, Lio heard something in the distance. Footsteps. They were coming from the branching tunnel ahead, sounding rather unhurried and accompanied by the bobbing glow of a separate light source. He put a hand out, touching Ophila's shoulder to slow her. She went still immediately, her hand moving toward her pack. If Lio remembered correctly, she was reaching for the pocket where the 'items she needed for her rune' was stored. But he'd already recognized who it was.

That particular uneven rhythm on the left foot from the old injury was impossible to mistake. He relaxed.

"Poluo," he called out.

"Fancy seeing you here." The footsteps stopped for a heartbeat. Then they continued, and a figure rounded the bend holding a lamp. The light caught the man's disheveled beard, sharp eyes, and very complicated expression. Poluo glanced at Ophila, then looked back at Lio. He raised his eyebrows.

"The Delver's apprentice," he said in a careful tone.

"In my tunnel into Ghenna." His eyes moved to Ophila briefly.

"So you found the girl, huh?"

"I needed to get past the checkpoint without a long wait," Lio said.

"What are you doing?" He shrugged.

"I just dropped someone off at the other end. A merchant's son. The guy needed to get into Ghenna without his father knowing. Paid very well." That was Poluo's other business, the side one he did alongside the information brokering. The tunnel had been his discovery about twelve years ago, having stumbled onto a section of the old drainage system that connected directly to the main platform of Ghenna. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Most people would have reported it to the Union, or to the city guards, or simply forgotten about it. Poluo had done none of these things. Instead, he'd started charging people to use it.

"Business is good then," Lio said.

"Business is always good," Poluo replied coolly.

"There's no shortage of people in this city who want to get into Ghenna without anyone knowing they went there." Lio nodded.

"That's nice. Now, let's talk while we move…" But Poluo didn't budge.

"No. You're not going anywhere." Lio sighed. Why was he even here? Poluo was never supposed to enter this tunnel today. A merchant's son? How many anomalies to the loop were there?

"Poluo—""I never told you about this tunnel." His voice had lost its usual easy quality, now sounding almost mad.

"Not once." He pointed at the ground beneath their feet.

"So how are you standing here right now?" Lio said nothing.

"And her—" Poluo pointed directly at Ophila.

"You spent all of yesterday hunting her down. And now I've got you both heading into Ghenna before sunrise through my private tunnel" He snarled.

"You're a Delver's apprentice. That part's fine, that makes sense. But this—" he gestured between Lio and Ophila "—this doesn't. So I'm asking you straight. What are you doing, kid? Because if you've gotten yourself tangled up in something serious, I need to—""Poluo." Something imbued into the tone of that single word stopped the other man's outburst cold. Lio looked up at him, and let a fraction of his mask melt away. He stared coldly at him.

"Remember Rion? You have no right to care for me." The effect was immediate. Every bit of anger left Poluo's face at once, like it had never been there. His mouth stayed open mid-sentence, his eyes bulging. He stared at Lio with a horrified look on his face. His mouth closed. Then it opened again. Yet nothing came out. Then, without a word, without meeting Lio's eyes again, Poluo turned and walked back the way he'd come.

His uneven footsteps receded into the dark, the bobbing light shrinking around the bend until it disappeared entirely. Lio watched the place where he'd gone for a long moment. Then he turned and kept walking. ◈◈◈◈ The walk was full of silence. The tunnel curved gradually leftward, the ceiling dropping lower and lower until Lio had to duck his head completely. The lamp threw its narrow beam across the slick walls, and their footsteps made soft and wet sounds against the polluted floor.

Ophila hadn't said a word since Poluo left. But Lio could feel her working up to something. It took a few more seconds before her curiosity overtook her caution.

"Rion," she said finally, her voice coming out smaller than usual and careful in a way that suggested she'd been turning over the word in her head for a while.

"Is that..." She hesitated.

"Are you talking about Rion Branwen, the Delver with the nickname of 'Sword Sage'?" There was a long silence. Then Lio snorted in laughter.

"Rion Branwen?" he asked with faint amusement.

"Of course not. You think I know a guy as famous as him?"

"Oh." Ophila sounded embarrassed.

"Sorry, I just…the name Rion isn't very common, so I assumed—""I know someone named Rion," Lio said.

"He's just not that Rion."

"Right. Obviously." There was a pause.

"Sorry."

"It's fine." They walked further, uncomfortably silent.

"It's just that you said it so seriously," Ophila continued.

"And that man's face went so pale, so I thought maybe—""Poluo grew up in the same place I did," Lio said casually.

"The name brought back memories. That's all."

"Oh," Ophila said again, quieter this time. At least she seemed to understand instinctively that this particular topic had been closed, and didn't try to open it up again. They walked the rest of the tunnel in silence, until a faint grey light began appearing ahead. Then the tunnel opened up, and they stepped out onto dry ground. Ophila immediately looked down at herself. A dark smear ran along the outer edge of her left leg, having soaked into the fabric just above the knee.

She looked at it for a long moment with an unreadable expression.

"Nononono…" she groaned.

"That's on my stitching."

"Very unfortunate."

"That really doesn't help." She tilted her leg to examine the full extent of the damage, wincing.

"You know what, I'm not going to think about it. It'll come out with water anyway." She straightened up, and exhaled through her nose.

"Okay. Fine. I'm fine." But Lio wasn't quite listening, instead looking around at his surroundings. Enormous curved walls of dark stone rose on all sides, their surfaces pitted and scarred by centuries of weather. It was an incomplete dome, built so long ago the original intent had all been lost to the jaws of ancient history. The walls curved inward as they climbed, narrowing toward the top but never closing.

The opening at the very top was uneven and irregular, a ragged gap in the ancient stonework through which a pale strip of early morning sky was barely visible. It was through this gap that most of the light entered, falling in a single wide column that struck the center of the platform and scattered outward, illuminating the space in a muted grey light.

"I always forget how big it is," Ophila said quietly, looking up as well. Lio said nothing. Right now, they were on top of a small upper ledge, above the actual main platform where the other Delvers were. Not wanting to attract attention, he gestured for Ophila to follow him. They walked down the ramp. The main platform opened up beneath them as they descended. The enormous stone floor stretched outward in every direction, the far edges of the platform fading into the everpresent haze.

Delvers were everywhere, the noise almost unbearably loud. They were all talking over one another, shouting just to be heard. Ophila stuck close to his side as they moved through it, making sure not to get lost. Lio moved without any hesitation, fighting through the crowds. After a minute of pushing and shoving, they finally reached the railing. It was a thick iron barrier, running the entire length of the platform's far edge.

It was around chest-height, and the metal was dark and old, worn smooth at the top from the countless hands that had gripped it over the years. Lio and Ophila stepped up to it, and looked over into Ghenna. The pit was so wide that the opposite side wasn't visible, swallowed by a distance so vast. Looking across it felt less like looking down a hole and more like standing at the edge of a continent and looking out at the open ocean. And it went down a long, long way.

Ophila's hands found the railing and gripped it tightly. She didn't say anything for a long moment. Her earlier brightness had gone quiet, replaced by an almost melancholic expression.

"Well this is nice," she said finally. Lio nodded simply.

"Yes."

"We're going to Floor 15, huh?" She glanced at him.

"That's a long way to go."

"Yes." She exhaled.

"Good. That's good." She looked back down into the dark one more time, her gold-ringed eyes tracking the nothing below with an fascinated expression. Then she straightened up, adjusted her pack straps, and turned to face the stairs. But Lio stayed at the railing one moment longer. He looked out at the dark of Ghenna. Into the vast and lightless nothing that dropped away beneath him into depths that he alone, of any person alive or dead, probably had any real understanding of.

He had been down there a thousand times. He had died down there a thousand times. And every single time, without exception, he had gone back down. Always for that one sole reason. Rion…