Instant dryness spread through Seb’s throat as he looked down at the boy. “What the …?”
“A failed Crimson foot soldier,” Phulp said while he stared at him, zero emotion on his blank face. “It’s what I told you about earlier. If they don’t make the grade or they fail to show convincing devotion, the Countess throws them out of the city … literally.”
When Seb glanced at the rest of his crew, he saw they all watched him with the same shocked expression.
“Come on,” Phulp said as he stepped through an archway built into the bottom of the city. “To get into the elevated part unnoticed, you have to go through the sewers.”
The reek of the smoke had been in Seb’s nostrils until that point. When he stepped forward, he caught a stench worse than any he’d smelled since arriving on Solsans. The streets running through the slums stank, but now they’d come to the source of the sewage, it made his eyes water. “No wonder you can get through here unnoticed.” He pressed the back of his hand against his nose to mask the smell. “Who in their right mind would search this place?”
Darker than any part of the city, the stench of waste hung so thick in the air, Seb could taste it as a stale funk on his tongue. The obsidian walls glistened, damp as if sweating the ammonia reek of the place. Like in the sewers below Aloo, they had thin walkways running next to the vile rivers.
Once they’d traveled about fifty metres into the place, a light flicked on and Seb turned around to see Sparks with her mini-computer in her hand. He nodded and then smiled at her.
“So do all of the Crimson foot soldiers end up living in the slums once they’ve done their service?” Seb asked Phulp.
“The lucky ones do.”
“The lucky ones?”
“Yeah. Sometimes the Countess takes a shine to you. You don’t want that to happen because she’ll employ you as one of her personal guards. There isn’t any getting away from that. Fortunately, because of my size, she barely noticed me.” Phulp stopped dead.
When the others stopped too, Seb heard it: the scratch of feet walking across stone.
Despite speaking in a whisper, Phulp’s voice carried in the enclosed space. “There’s someone down here with us.”
Chapter 35
The group remained both silent and still as they listened to the being approach them. The dry rasp of a foot dragging along stone called at them from the darkness. A slap of a heavy step hitting the ground followed by the dry rasp again.
The hairs on the back of Seb’s neck stood on end and his heart beat faster. Swallowing both the musty taste of the stinking sewers and a mouthful of sticky saliva, he stood tense and waited.
Each step forward brought the being closer to appearing from the shadows. But, as yet, it remained hidden.
A shrill cackle then came from the darkness. It rang out, stuttered and flighty as if the person laughing had zero control over the sound. The sharp mirthful noise echoed through the caves and ran away from them down the many tunnels.
Seb heard the water break next to him as if something had pushed up through the surface, but when he looked down, he saw nothing in the excrement-filled sludge.
The laugh came again. An erratic titillating noise, it turned Seb’s blood cold. At the sound of movement behind him, he spun around to see Gurt and SA step up to his flanks. Both of them had their weapons drawn and both of them stared into the darkness as if ready to attack.
The sides of Seb’s world blurred, and he too fell into a slightly more defensive crouch. If it kicked off, they’d be ready.
Another splash sounded out down to Seb’s left and he looked at the water again. Because Sparks stood at the back of the group, her torch didn’t provide the best light and he couldn’t see what moved in the dirty liquid next to them.
Seb instantly forgot about it when a human emerged from the darkness. So pale she almost glowed, her hair hung from her red, raw scalp in chunks. It looked like large handfuls of the dark locks had been pulled out. Probably by her.
She dragged one lifeless foot behind her as she walked, and she continued to giggle while getting closer to the group.
Seb caught Gurt in his peripheral vision raising his gun, so he pressed on top of the barrel and encouraged the Mandulu to lower it. “She looks crazy,” Seb said, “but she doesn’t look dangerous.”
“You wouldn’t give her a chance if she wasn’t human.”
And maybe Gurt had a point. Maybe coming from the same gene pool as the deranged figure in front of them did make Seb more empathetic.
Before Seb could answer Gurt’s accusation, Phulp said, “Sewer dweller.”
The woman continued forward, completely oblivious to Phulp’s assessment of her.
“They can’t survive in the slums, so they come to the sewers and sift through the waste of the wealthy.”
“There’s something worth scavenging down here, is there?” Gurt asked.
“If not, they’ve been known to resort to eating …”
Before Phulp could finish, the woman got closer and Spark’s torchlight flashed across her face. She had no teeth and her jowls were coated in what looked like dry shit. Seb stepped back a pace.
The woman locked a glassy stare on Seb as she closed in on him. A zombie with an insatiable hunger, she seemed to only care about him at that moment. She giggled again as if the excitement of being in his presence overwhelmed her.
“Looks like you’ve got a fan,” Gurt said.
The woman raised her right arm and pointed a shaking finger at Seb. The water broke next to them again and he glanced down. Something moved in it.
“It’s you,” the woman said, her voice scratchy.
Seb stepped back and said, “Huh?”
“The one! It’s you. I thought it was you, but I had to be sure.”
“What are you talking about?” The water broke again, and Seb looked down quickly enough to see a thick tentacle covered in suckers. As much as he wanted to turn to the others, he couldn’t take his eyes off the crazy woman who’d gotten to within a few metres of him. When he saw that she had all of her teeth, he heaved. She’d appeared toothless because of the amount of shit in her mouth.
She worked her jaw as she chewed on the brown substance and she giggled some more. “Our saviour,” she said, the reek of waste riding her words. “The son of the special one. You have the gift.”
The woman reached forward to touch Seb and he recoiled, heaving at her stench. She hissed at him and snarled. “Let me touch you. I’ve waited my life in these sewers because I knew you would come. Let me—”
Before she could say anything else, a loud splash sounded out next to them and a huge tentacle burst from the water. As thick as Gurt’s thigh, it had suckers along the bottom of it. A lasso, it wrapped around the woman’s ankle and ripped her from her feet.
The woman’s scream disturbed Seb more than her laugh. Pure high-pitched fear, it hurt his ears and he winced to watch her hit the hard ground with a thud and then get dragged toward the water.
“We need to run,” Phulp said. “Now!”
Although Seb heard Phulp’s words, he couldn’t move as he stared at the spot the woman had occupied just seconds ago. The river ran as if nothing had happened. The woman and the tentacle had vanished beneath its surface.
Phulp, Sparks, and SA all sprinted past Seb, yet he still didn’t move. It took for Gurt to grab Seb’s arm and drag him with them before Seb followed the group into the darkness and away from whatever had just pulled the woman under.
Chapter 36
Phulp took off at a sprint, opening a gap between him and the others. He ran so fast he even left Sparks behind.
Seb shook his head. How did creatures so much shorter than him manage to outpace him?
With his lungs still aching from the fire in the hut, Seb sped along the damp and narrow footpath. It looked like it should be slippery, but didn’t feel it … yet.
It seemed that Sparks did her best to hold her torch up, the white light wobbling a
s she ran with it. However, it did little to illuminate the dark tunnels. They’d have to follow their guide. Phulp’s pale skin helped keep him visible and made the short squat creature almost glow in the dark.
Although, when the others—led by Phulp—rounded a sharp turn, Seb completely missed it. As his world slipped into slow motion, he felt his leading foot slip as he tried to step on a piece of the path that didn’t exist. Sparks must have turned his way because her torch lit up the frothy water below, showing him the brown stools floating in it. Some were as long as his leg.
Just before Seb took the plunge, Sparks grabbed his shirt. Not only Sparks, but SA and Gurt held on too, anchoring the small Thrystian woman, therefore anchoring him and pulling him back to safety.
Out of breath and without time to thank them, Seb watched Sparks and the others take off after Phulp again, and he followed directly behind them.
The large river of waste narrowed around the next bend and they saw Phulp as he hopped across to the other side. They all followed him a few seconds later.
The place still stank; Seb only smelled it when he thought about it, but he’d already started to get used to the reek, which somehow disturbed him more than the stench itself.
Several more turns and Seb called ahead for the others to wait, his loud voice echoing through the dark and dank tunnels.
Phulp pulled up, as did Sparks and the others.
“Surely we’ve lost it now?” Seb said. He looked down at the water. “I haven’t seen anything move down there since we started running.”
The silhouette of Phulp moved in some way, but it took for him to step into Sparks’ torch beam for Seb to see him shaking his head. He looked as exhausted as Seb felt, his small chest rising and falling as he gasped for breath. “No,” he finally managed. “It may look …”
Before he could say anything else, the sound of rushing water preceded a huge tentacle rising from the funky river.
It wrapped around Gurt like a constrictor, and although Seb worried for Gurt’s safety, he couldn’t help but cringe at the slimy appearance of the beast.
Solid in his stance, Gurt held his position long enough for SA to pull out one of her larger knives and stab the tentacle.
The beast let go with a scream that shook the walls around them, and it instantly withdrew, the tentacle rushing back to the water so fast it turned into a blur.
Phulp didn’t need to say anything else. When he took off again, they all followed.
Chapter 37
After every laboured breath—his smoke-damaged lungs tight—Seb wanted to call out for the group to stop. The labyrinthine tunnels and rivers seemed to never end and he didn’t have it in him to run forever.
When they came to an open space, Phulp halted. They’d arrived at a square room where the rivers crossed in the middle. A large piece of damp path sat in each corner. “This … seems … like the … best … place to stop and … fight it,” he said between breaths. “We won’t outrun it.”
Seb looked at the others and they all nodded at one another. They took a corner each and Phulp retreated into a dark tunnel.
Seconds later, the rush of water raced into the room, and for a moment everything stilled.
Then—as before—a gushing noise like a large waterfall sounded out as something rose in the middle of them. Somewhere between a squid and an octopus, the monster had thick green skin and a domed head.
Two eyes, each as large as a dinner plate and black like the darkest corner of space, stared at Seb before it stretched open two vast wings. The span—about five metres wide—spread across the entire space. The beast spun on the spot to take in its opponents. Flaps of shredded skin hung down over its mouth like torn fabric. Fleshy and loose, they swayed with the creature’s movement.
Everything had slowed down for Seb and he noticed Sparks in his peripheral vision as she slipped a watch onto her wrist.
The beast locked onto Seb again and opened its wide mouth. Big enough to swallow him whole, the stench of rot and decomposition rode on its breath. When it inhaled, the rush of wind pulled him forward a step before it screamed. The shrill call pierced his eardrums and blew him backwards. The creature shook with the force of its call, the loose flesh in front of its mouth blowing outwards from the release.
Something about the sound rattled Seb’s entire being. It jangled his nerves and implanted the memories of nightmares into his psyche. If he walked away from there today, he’d be taking that sound with him. Like an owl shocks its prey with its screech, he became momentarily paralysed by the aggressive yell of the beast.
Even though Seb looked at it through a slowed-down world, the beast moved as quick as a flash, slamming one of its tentacles next to Sparks. The force with which it hit the ground sent a shockwave rushing away from the impact and shook dust from the ceiling above them.
Sparks dodged out of the way in time and pressed her watch. A bright magnesium glare sprang from her wrist and earthed on the wet tentacle of the beast. Like it did when SA stabbed it, the monster withdrew.
Another loud scream and the creature lifted a tentacle above Gurt. Before it brought it down, Gurt sent several blaster shots into it, again, scaring the beast away. Regardless of its retreat, the shots seemed to have little impact against the large monster’s thick hide.
When Seb saw a tentacle rise in front of him, he felt a spray of sewage come with it. Only a small amount, it still splattered against the skin on his face and he winced at the sensation.
The tentacle crashed down, but Seb’s current state allowed him to see it and dodge to the side.
The beast raised its tentacle again and slammed it down a second time, each slam against the ground a heavy thud like the others had been.
Seb dodged it again and noticed SA sprinting in his direction.
As Seb avoided a third blow from the dark green tentacle, SA leapt across to his square of path. She faced the beast while flying through the air and threw two knives at it. Both of them glinted in what little light they had down in the tunnels, and each one scored a direct hit in each of the beast’s eyes.
The monster screamed so loud it shook the walls. Blinded by SA, it pulled back into the river, disappearing beneath the surface.
Before it got away from them, Sparks ran to the edge of her path and used her watch to fire another magnesium bolt of electricity into the water. The entire tunnel lit up blue and buzzed.
All four of the team gasped for breath as they stared down at the river. A splash, much quieter than before, and the body of the beast floated to the surface. If Sparks hadn’t killed it, she’d certainly knocked it out.
Phulp emerged from his dark bolt-hole, a smile on his squat face. “Well done, guys. I’ve never seen one killed before.” For the next few seconds, he stared down at the beast and shook his head. “Amazing.” With a clap of his hands, he looked back at the four. “And now we need to get out of here. I hate to think what will happen if its mother comes after us.”
“Mother?” Gurt said.
“Yeah, that one was only a baby.”
Chapter 38
The group walked at a much slower pace with Phulp infinitely more relaxed in the lead. They made sure to move with as much stealth as they could manage in the dark. If Phulp had spoken the truth about the monster being a baby, they’d have to keep the noise down and pray they didn’t run into the mother.
Seb walked with SA behind him and Gurt in front. While speaking in a whisper, he turned to SA and said, “Great shot with the monster’s eyes, by the way.”
The assassin’s stare lit up as it always did and she dipped a very slight nod of gratitude.
When Seb saw Gurt turn around with a sneer on his face, he cut him off before he could pass comment. “You look like you’re walking a bit more easily now.”
Gurt stopped and scowled at Seb. “Huh?”
“Earlier, you looked like you had a slight limp, like, I dunno, you’d hurt your right knee maybe.”
It only flashed a
cross Gurt’s eyes for the briefest of moments, but vulnerability crossed the large brute’s features nonetheless. After the moment had passed, Gurt growled at Seb. “What are you talking about, fool?”
Seb stared into the red glare of the Mandulu and flashed him a facetious smile. “I’m not sure, maybe I’m talking nonsense.”
“I’d say so.”
Before Seb could respond, Gurt had turned his back on him and walked off.
The wash of water bubbled along beside them and drips called through the cavernous tunnels. Sparks’ torch did a good job of lighting the way, but it brought the shadows around them to life. The darkness seemed to be waiting for the right moment to completely envelop them, testing them with its probing reach every time they turned their backs on it. Maybe they would bump into another sewer dweller down here. What had the last one been talking about? Did she know something about Seb’s mum? She was clearly crazy, so it probably didn’t bear thinking about.
Seb increased his pace and caught up to Phulp. “So where are we going?”
“There are several long ladders down here that lead straight up to the wealthy part of the city above. We’re heading to one of them. I have to warn you, it’s quite a climb.”
Seb thought about Gurt’s knee and turned to look at him. The large Mandulu glared as if he’d heard his thoughts.
Seb smiled again before he replied to Phulp, “Sounds good to me.”
After about another ten minutes, they came to a large open area. Unlike any other part of the sewer, it seemed to be a cave of some sort. Too dark to be certain, but when Seb looked across the space, he couldn’t see a way out. “Um, Phulp, where’s the ladder?”
But Phulp didn’t respond as he strode forward.
When Seb looked behind at SA, he saw a look of unease on her face that reflected the feeling in his gut. “Phulp?” he said again.
Their tiny guide still didn’t say anything.
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