Even in the near complete darkness, Seb saw the onyx dome of the creature’s head. Its shining black eyes, each as large as a tractor tyre.
It raised one of its huge tentacles and screamed again. The rush of its breath blew Seb’s hair back and nearly suffocated him with the metallic reek of spilled blood.
But the booming call also shook the walls. It ran enough of a vibration through them to free Seb up and help him slip through into the dark cave beyond.
Seb fell to the ground the second he broke free, a deep sting in his kneecaps from where he crashed down. He then reached back through the gap for his bag.
At full stretch, Seb pressed his face against the cold and damp rock, the jagged surface cutting into his cheek like it had done his chest and shoulder blades. Because he had to reach through at full stretch, he turned his face away, blind to the location of his bag.
The hot breath of the creature pressed against his hand as he patted the moist ground, desperately searching for one of the straps.
Another rush of water on the other side of the wall. It sounded like the large beast lifting a tentacle from the river.
Seb felt the bag’s strap with his fingertips, flicked it in towards him, and yanked it through a second before the loud whack of a tentacle slammed down where his hand had been. The blow seemed to shake the entire planet.
The beast screamed again as Seb pulled back into the cave and remained on the ground, cuddling his bag to his throbbing chest. His hands shook as he undid the zip and removed the torch. It took him a second to get a strong enough grip on the light to flick it on.
When he saw the cave beyond, Seb froze. “What the …?” he said, blinking against the change in light as he took the place in. Suddenly, the other side of the wall seemed much more appealing.
Chapter 20
Seb remained sitting on the ground, his back pressed against the wall next to the crack he’d just slipped through. Repeated whacks from the monster beat against the other side of the wall. A rhythmic and heavy boom, the sound made his ears ring and shook through his body. Although, at present, it seemed like the best place to be. As long as it avoided him going any farther into the cave.
Another loud scream from the creature behind him and Seb heard a glacial crack pop through the rock when it whacked it again. The entire wall would come down at some point. Were it not for the dog-leg in the crevice he’d slipped through, then he might have been able to send a few blaster shots back at the monster to scare it off, but from his current position, he couldn’t get a clear line of sight on it. Sooner or later, he’d have to delve deeper into the strange little space he found himself in, regardless of what he’d seen when he shone the torch down there.
Another blow against the wall shook through Seb’s body and wobbled his torch’s beam.
He’d have to do it eventually, so Seb moved away from the vibrating wall and got to his feet. His legs shook to step towards what looked like a ritual sacrifice, but the creature seemed to be dead. Surely it couldn’t harm him any more than the thing behind him. As if to remind him of its power, the monster in the river whacked the wall again, sending a stinging shower of small rocks from the ceiling down on top of his head.
A few steps closer and Seb cast his torch over the dead animal. A circle of burned-out candles framed the scene. In the middle of them lay a creature of some sort, pinned to the hard ground. About the same size as a small dog, each of its four limbs and head had been tacked down. Its stomach had been cut open and its entrails dragged out of it. They seemed to have been consciously arranged, delicately placed as if the exact layout mattered.
A strange buzz ran through Seb’s hands, much like the one he’d felt when leaning over Phulp’s corpse. For some bizarre reason, he had a mind to reach down and touch it. Then he caught the sharp reek of its rotten intestines. It reminded him of the time he’d opened the fridge in one of his kitchen jobs on Danu to find a tray of rotten schtoo livers. A shake of his head and he pulled back from the pinned corpse.
Now considerably closer than before, Seb saw markings around the creature. They’d been carved into the ground as small trenches, all about an inch deep. The grooves glistened from where the animal’s blood had run through them recently. But how recently?
Seb had seen the large circle of candles around the sacrifice from a distance. They’d been allowed to burn down and sat as no more than piles of molten wax. But now he’d stepped closer, he saw the huge carved ring that framed everything. The candles, the creature, and the patterns were all within the ring.
The sacrifice lay in the centre of a five-pointed star. The five tips of the shape met the outer ring framing everything. Each of the creature’s pinned limbs followed one of the points. The head pointed up, its legs running along with the other four. Pitchforks had been carved into the spaces between the star and the circle. Winged creatures were also emblazoned on the rock, crude in their depiction, but clearly something demonic.
The large ring framing everything took up most of the width of the floor in the narrow cave. Seb had to press his back against the wall to pass it so he didn’t step in it. The tentacled beast continued to thrash against the other side as if it could beat it down, and the vibrations ran through his stinging shoulder blades when he rubbed them along the wall.
Once he’d passed the strange ritual, Seb shone his torch up ahead into the narrow space. It seemed clear. Hopefully he wouldn’t come across anything else. Or at least anything worse than what he’d already dealt with. But where were the creatures who did this? The thought of it snapped a chill through him.
When he’d moved far enough away from both the strange ritual and the gap in the wall, Seb found a dark corner and sat down.
Regardless of the horrible surroundings—the beast sloshing in the river outside the cave as it lay in wait for him, and the dead carcass spread out on the floor as if it had been used in a ritual to drag up the denizens of hell—Seb’s eyes grew heavy. He’d been awake for far too long already. Several laboured blinks and his eyelids closed a little more each time.
Just before he drifted off, Seb pulled his bag around, slipped his torch in and pulled his blaster out. He then re-shouldered his bag. If anyone wanted it, they’d have to wake him up to get it.
Seb leaned against the hard, damp, and cold wall, held the blaster in his lap, and closed his eyes as sleep dragged him under.
Chapter 21
A sharp pain clamped onto Seb’s ankles, forcing him awake. He opened his eyes and looked up, but he couldn’t see much. Still groggy from sleep and with the surroundings too dark to make anything out, he didn’t have a clue what had a hold of him.
Whatever it was, it suddenly dragged Seb away from the wall. Were it not for his backpack, the sores on his shoulder blades would have screamed from the friction of the rough ground. He twisted and turned but couldn’t get to his torch in his bag. If he slipped his pack from his shoulders, he’d lose it for sure.
The whoosh of his flight suit against the rough ground called out and Seb tried to find his blaster. He couldn’t. He’d either dropped it or whatever had a hold of him had taken it. Either way he had nothing.
The world finally slowed down, Seb’s gift waking up as the lethargy of sleep left him. Several silhouettes walked ahead of him. A range of shapes and sizes, he counted eight of them. They all moved as one. Not that he could make out much beyond that. All of them seemed more concerned with getting to where they were headed rather than checking on the well-being of their prisoner.
It had seemed pretty obvious who had him, but Seb didn’t want to assume. Now he smelled the reek of shit stronger than ever, he shouted, “Sewer dwellers!”
The one dragging Seb stopped, spun around, and lurched towards him. He flinched to see scars where its eyes should have been. It loosed a scream and the fury of its primitive call seemed to shake the walls and echoed away from them in several directions. Not only did the sewers have a network of rivers, but the caves within the sewers seem
ed to have their own network too. It made sense. Otherwise, how would the dwellers survive with the creatures in the rivers so close by? Those beasts were the top of the food chain down here.
Utterly helpless to fight them on his back, even with his world slowed down, Seb did his best to twist and move to ease the pain of being dragged when they set off again.
In almost complete darkness and more focused on relieving his pain than anything else, Seb didn’t have a clue where they were heading. He yelled at them, “Oi, you horrible rats, where are you taking me?”
They didn’t respond, and if anything, they sped up, his lower back in agony now from being dragged over the unforgiving ground. Although not the way Seb had wanted it, he had intended to find the sewer dwellers. When he’d been there last, the woman they’d encountered left him needing answers.
Seb tried to get their attention again and shouted louder. “Oi!”
This time the group stopped and Seb expected the one holding his legs to scream at him again. Instead, another one—the largest of the lot and easily twice the size of Seb—walked over to him, yelled, and drove a punch straight into the centre of Seb’s face.
An explosion of light coupled with a blink of nauseating pain and Seb’s world went dark as the metallic taste of his own blood flooded his mouth.
Chapter 22
Seb’s pulse ran through his head like a kick drum and his vision blurred when he opened his eyes again. He squinted at the light coming from what looked to be a fire as it flickered a few metres away from him. A sharp pain bit into his ankles and wrists. The rope had been so tightly bound it gave him pins and needles in both his hands and feet.
When Seb looked up the length of his body, he saw he’d been hung upside down from the ceiling from a large metal hook. A shake of his head did little to clear the fog in his mind. The swell of gathering blood added to his headache and turned his pulse into a wet throb in his ears.
The fire had made the room so hot it felt like a sauna, and sweat ran down Seb’s face into his hair. His tan flight suit clung to his damp body and his skin itched. In all the spots he’d grazed himself—his shoulder blades, his chest, his lower back—the sweat ran into his wounds and burned. Not that he could do anything about it with his hands bound behind his back.
A crew of maybe twenty sewer dwellers gathered around the fire. The constantly shifting light gave motion to their shadows. When the flames surged, Seb saw more of the dark space. Although it didn’t show him enough to get a clear understanding of where they had him or what he could do to escape.
Like most groups on Solsans, the sewer dwellers were made up from a mixed bunch of species. Some of them looked to be no larger than rodents while others stood as tall as Seb. Two giants hunched against a far wall. One of them must have been the one responsible for knocking him out. If they took his ropes off and let him stand toe to toe with the brute, he’d show it how to punch. A gulp and he tasted his own blood again.
When Seb looked to his left, he saw something strung up by its feet like him. It looked like the minotaur he’d encountered in the slums. Similar at least, this one had red fur and bright green eyes. Its panicked stare seemed to glow in the darkness.
As Seb looked at it for longer, he saw its muzzle had been bound tight with rope. It breathed through its nose and shook its head as it thrashed against its restraints. It kept glancing at the fire.
When Seb looked over at the source of light and heat again, he saw the spit above it.
Despite the mismatched band of sewer dwellers, they all had one thing in common: they were all coated in excrement like they’d bathed in it. It matted the hair of those that had any, and formed a cracked coating over the skin of the balder ones. Some of them had their maws covered in the stuff and they gnashed their teeth as if still chewing it. Maybe living off a diet of waste had sent them mad. Maybe they were mad before. Whatever the reason, the way they sat around—some rocking, some with their heads tilted at an awkward angle, some of them examining their own arsehole—it looked like none of them were of sound mind. And they now had Seb as their prisoner. If only he’d stayed out of the sewers.
One of the group—a smaller rodent-looking creature—jumped to its feet and shot its arms out to the sides as if riding a surfboard. The rest looked at it. It smiled a wide grin before facing the ceiling and releasing a high-pitched, tongue-rolling scream.
The others mimicked it as they jumped to their feet. Some roared, some cackled, one sounded like a human baby crying. The noise swirled through the space and hurt Seb’s ears.
Once they’d all got to their feet, the small ratty one at the front led the way toward the minotaur-like creature hanging from the ceiling. It moved with a shuffling, stilted dance like a reanimated corpse, and it continued screaming as it went.
The others copied its movements as they all descended on the beast.
They formed a semicircle around their prisoner, and whether they did it on purpose or not, they left a space so Seb could still see. The prisoner kicked and shook. It twisted and squirmed against its restraints.
Seb’s stomach lurched to watch its panic. Surely he’d be in line for the same fate at some point.
When the small creature who’d led the others produced a knife from the back of its trousers, the rest of the group fell silent. Blood coated most of the blade already, and the small amount of silver still visible glinted from where the glare of the fire caught it.
The leader looked up at the ceiling again and released the same shrill, tongue-rolling scream of only a few moments ago. Now much closer to Seb, the high-pitched sound made his ears ring. The others remained silent this time.
A slash of the blade through the air as if to practice its swing and the lead creature stepped close to the strung-up prisoner. It walked on tiptoes and leaned in just centimetres from the creature’s face. Despite the prisoner being strung upside down, its head only a metre from the ground, the little rat only just came up to eye level with it.
Seb watched the creature’s panic. Its chest moved with its rapid breaths and its eyes spread wide. It tried to pull away from the lead sewer dweller, but exhaustion seemed to have taken over. A couple of token kicks against its restraint but nothing more.
A shit-eating grin spread across the small sewer dweller’s face before it screamed at its captive. Seb flinched when it pulled its blade up and tore it across the creature’s throat. The prisoner turned instantly limp as a rush of blood hit the hard ground with a splash.
Woozy from being hung upside down, Seb followed the trail of the dripping blood and saw the markings carved into the ground. A similar design to the one he’d seen with the pinned sacrifice earlier. The grooves filled with blood as they were clearly supposed to, making the circle and the five-pointed star glisten with the essence of their sacrifice.
Because he hung upside down, Seb hadn’t looked at the ground directly beneath him. When he craned his neck, his head spun from the angle and he saw the same starred design.
As if to confirm the obvious, Seb looked back at the sewer dwellers. They all stared at him. Some remained perfectly still. Some swayed from side to side as if the motion gave them a distraction from their restless minds. The small one at the front, while bat-shit crazy, seemed the most sane of them all. It grinned at Seb. In that one simple gesture, it told him what he already knew. He’d be next.
Chapter 23
Seb’s vision hadn’t improved with time, his eyes watering, sending tears streaming down his forehead into his hair. The swell in his brain felt heavier with every minute he remained upside down. His pulse now throbbed through the front of his face.
When Seb looked over at the fire, he saw the beast had already been skinned and placed on the spit over it. He must have blacked out for a time because he’d missed the entire process. The hiss of the flames against the creature’s damp skin whispered through the cave and the fire grew brighter as it cooked it.
The stoked fire lifted the temperature of the place a
nd Seb sweated more than ever. Unable to tell if sweat or tears clouded his vision, he blinked against the sting and continued to look around the place. As well as the burning buzz on his grazes, a low-level bite also nipped at his ankles and wrists. The ropes were clearly cutting into him.
Seb’s hunger got the better of him and his stomach rumbled to smell the cooking meat. When his mouth watered, he shook his head and tried to remember the beast being slaughtered. It pushed his hunger down a little.
It looked like all the sewer dwellers were gathered around the fire, but with so many dark corners in the cave, Seb couldn’t be sure. At any point, one of them could approach him from any angle. Although, with the beast still far from cooked, they seemed more focused on that at present.
A sharp headache forced Seb to squint as he watched his surroundings. The rush of blood to his head felt like it had turned his face pulpy, his cheeks stinging from their engorgement.
He’d been so disorientated, it took until that moment for Seb to truly hear the sound and understand where it came from. It droned as a long and drawn-out note. He’d assumed it to be a product of his addled mind, but now he understood the truth of it. It came from the group.
A long and continuous monotone, the sound swelled from each humming dweller. It continued without a break, giving the illusion that none of the dwellers breathed. And maybe they didn’t. A didjeridoo note, the dizzying sound bounced off the walls of the cave and came at Seb from every angle.
Other than the one turning the spit, none of the dwellers moved. They simply sat there, staring at the flames and humming.
At that moment, the small one who’d led the sacrifice of the other creature turned to Seb as if it knew he’d just regained consciousness. It glared at him through orange eyes in its fish-like face. They glowed like the flames next to it. A Mona Lisa smile sat on its thin lips.
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