Bauxe Week One
It never takes them long to find me after I’ve set up. Everytime I return, I set up my shop in the merchant quarter and everytime the guild manages to find me within the first day. Their network must be extremely efficient but I’ve never had the pleasure, nor should I want it, of seeing the workings of the merchant guild from the inside. Instead, I nod politely as the lieutenant’s men approach my stall and hand over a message from their master. The young messenger or officer, I can’t be sure, stands with a stoic face and waits for me to open the message.
“Miss, I’m to wait for your response,” he says matter-of-factly as I begin to open the letter. He’s much more attentive than the messengers I’m used to, or at least more attentive to his job, than to me. Looking at him, over the letter as I unfold it, I can see that he was warned to keep his eyes down, and he struggles to do as he was told, while I make him wait.
It’s marked with the lieutentant’s hand, and the seal of the Mercantile Guild at the bottom to vouch for the contents within. It must have been written this morning, and I can’t help but wonder how long they’ve known that I was returning to the city. How long have they been waiting to send for me.
You will meet a Captain Tesseleck beneath the entrance to the Temple of the Three Gods precisely at five o’clock this evening. Should you fail to be present, another messenger will be sent to your tent within the Nomad camp outside the city to retrieve you. I wish you good profit this afternoon.
“Tell your Lieutentant that I will be there,” I say keeping my voice as level as possible. The young messenger nods his blonde head and turns to leave. “I know what I owe,” I mumble as he starts away from my booth. After a few steps, I see him turn to give a quick glance back in my direction. I smile at him brightly, not caring if he overheard me. He blushes and runs into the crowd, and I assume, back to his lieutentant.
The rest of the morning and afternoon pass more slowly than I would like, with nothing but the odd meeting this evening to look forward to. And it’s nothing to actually be looking towards, but looking against. I try and picture the temple in my head, the statues in the courtyard outside, and the steps that lead to it from the temple where I assume I’m to meet this Captain. I do have some good sales in the afternoon, quite a few customers that have wandered to look at my weaving, leave with much of what I’ve set up for the day. It’s not much, since I haven’t been out of the city long enough to have made much this time around. But it’s enough to help me get supplied again before my Nomadic brethren head back out into the wilderness.
The other merchants stay clear of my stall the entire day, and I wonder how much my involvement with the guild affects their choice to stay away. As I collect my remaining wares, and my collected profit I try and watch around the quarter at the other merchants preparing to shut down for the evening. One can never be sure how many men, how many guild men watch the quarter while we sell, and clean, and take-down at the end of a day. But giving the area a steady glance I can see that there are those among the crowd that are more alert than the rest, and I think that I see guild markings on the jackets of some of them.
It doesn’t take long to clean-up, and when I’m finished I can hear the four o’clock bell ringing at the temple.
I take everything back to my tent outside the city walls, although it takes a good deal of time to do so at this time in the evening. Everything gets locked away in a large chest I keep in my tent. It’s safe in a Nomadic camp, we tend to share, and watch alike over one another. Most residents of Bauxe stay inside the city after hours anyhow, for fear of not being able to return. Without a lot of time left before the fifth evening bell, I forgo having dinner at the main tent, and instead walk back inside the city walls and begin towards the temple. The guards at the gate give me an unsteady look, but keep their tongues as I cross into Bauxe’s ….district….
The city bustles in the evening, people going for dinner, for shows, for companionship. I keep the hood on my cloak pulled up to hide my face as I cross through the merchants quarter again, and onward to the city’s center and the Temple of the Three Gods. The temple courtyard is mostly empty with just a few patrons crossing and heading up the steps to the front doors. I find a bench near a collection of statues, and sit, lowering the cowl of my cloak to better watch passersby.
As the fifth evening bell strikes, I hear loud footsteps behind me. I rise from the bench and turn to see two men, human men dressed in the officers uniform of the merchant guild. The older of the two, obvious because of his graying hair and wrinkled face extends his hand towards me as he approaches.
“Morgana of the wandering Nomads, I assume.”
“Lieutenant? I did not presume to think that you would come in person.” I take his hand, and he shakes it with a sharp, steady grip. He gives me a hard look, dark eyes staring down at me and I take a step back as he drops my hand. “And…this is the Captain? Tesseleck?” I ask quickly, hoping that I don’t sound too shaken.
The younger and somewhat sturdier Captain extends his hand in greeting. His grip is much more relaxed and he smiles at me, a smile that crosses his entire face, and lights up his green eyes. And while I rarely find myself attracted to human men, I know that this young Captain is going to be trouble. The Lieutentant catches the smile on Tesseleck’s face and sends a harsh look in his direction and then turns to frown deeply at me.
“Do not use your beauty to coerce my Captain, miss Morgana,” he says gruffly, still frowning at me. “I’m sending the two of you on a small retrieval mission. I believe that the talents the two of you possess will help you bring this case to a close more swiftly than most of my men.” He motions slightly to the both of us as he speaks, and then turns as if getting ready to walk away as he finishes. “Both of you follow me.” He starts off at a long stride, and the captain and I fall into step behind him as he crosses the courtyard.
Once we cross out of the courtyard and the shadow of the temple, the Lieutentant directs us down a set of abandoned alleys, and into a downtrodden neighborhood. We’re ignored by the few people that we pass as we cross out from the alleys, and into the main roadway in front of a row of apartment houses. They’re not extremly well kept, but I imagine that they looked beautiful when they were built after a moment of glancing at their construction. It’s a short walk from the temple grounds, and if I gauge correctly for our distance I imagine that some of these houses were built for temple residents before it was expanded to include it’s own set of rooms and apartments.
The Lieutentant stops abruptly in front of the longest set of buildings and gestures to an alley that runs behind the buildings. “You’ll enter through here.”
“Enter what?” The Captain asks.
“The tunnel entrance to the sewers below this area of Bauxe, Captain.” He gives the Captain a look to stifle any further questions, at least for the moment. “You see, last week, several carts of merchandise that were on their way to the temple from our offices went missing. There was a great deal of food, along with many things utilized by the temple in their weekly services to the community surrounding it. The carts were eventually found near this alley way, however none of the things we sent inside the carts was recovered. We believe that it’s been taken down into the sewer system, and we’d like to find the perpetrators. That is your job.” He gives a disdainful look down the alley as he finishes and looks back to the Captain and I. “Questions?”
“Food won’t be recovered sir, are there wares that we should be looking for specifically?” I can almost see the investigative gears turning inside Tesselecks mind, as he asks the Lieutentant this question. His eyes take on a distinct focused look, that I definitely find intriguing, if not attractive.
“No, I doubt that anything you could recover from these tunnels would be of use to us anymore. It’s the perpetrators of this crime that we are interested in now. Most specifically, how they came to be living here, and how they transported everything into the sewers. There really shouldn’t be enough room for anyone, let alone the amount of wares they stole.”
The Captain nods, as he accepts this answer and looks over at me. “And why sir, couldn’t I have used my own men for this expedition? She looks like she shouldn’t be traversing through sewers under the dark of night, Sir.”
“And she’s standing here, Captain, I can speak for myself.” Ha! Doesn’t want to get the girl dirty, and it would make me laugh, if I wasn’t somewhat offended that he doesn’t think I’m up for such a task.
“Sorry miss, just think we don’t need to involve merchants, this is guild duty.”
“Captain Tesseleck, our Nomadic friend here may not be a ranked member of our guild, but she’s just a right to be here. As for why I’ve asked her to accompany you, I’m sure you’ll find her value once you’re inside.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, grimacing instead at speaking of my right as a member of their guild. “Now, I’ll leave the two of you to your job. I expect a full report Captain upon your return.” Without giving another moment for protest, or question, he steps past the Captain and out into the road, and through the alley.
The Captain watches him fade into the alley, not speaking, not moving and once the Lieutentant is out of site, he turns back face me, a questioning look on his face. “Talents, eh? I suppose you’ve been through the mages college then? Spellcaster?”
“Something like that…” I mumble, smiling at him, and walking into the alleyway.
He follows behind me chuckling softly.
The alleyway is dark, as most alleys tend to be, but it’s pretty quiet. The remnants of the stolen carts rest discarded and in pieces strewn throughout the alley. The Captain stops several times to investigate the wreckage, with what seems to be a good deal of intellegence, after lighting a torch to brighten the alley. The alley doesn’t appear to be heavily travelled, aside from the obvious recent deluge of stolen goods. However, Tesseleck stops several time to focus on what appear to be tracks of unknown origin. After a while, I grow tired of standing in the alley, peering down over his shoulder in the near-darkness.
“Are we ever going to go inside?”
He sighs heavily, disrupting the layer of dirt and dust on the cart he’s investigating. He looks up at me, annoyed at my impatience, and motions down the alley with the torch in his off-hand.
“Help yourself, Morgana.”
“So, I will.” Striding down the remainder of the alley, I look for the entrance to the tunnels to the sewers. Before I can reach the end, I trip nearly tumbling over a collection of rubble on the ground.
A closer look at the wall I use to steady myself reveals a broken door, and a covered entryway. I pull on the door, to no avail - it’s jammed in place, stuck in the frame. The rubble on the ground is broken stone, likely from the wall around the door. It looks old, dirty and oddly, unused.
“Captain? Care to come take a look at this door?” I call down the alley as I try to stand and steady myself against the wall.
“A door?” He stands up, torch in hand and looks down the corridor at me. “Does it work?”
“No.”
It takes him a few minutes to clear the rest of the alley, as he stops every few paces to examine the ground before he passes over it. He clears the fallen stones with dexterous ease as he steps face-to-face with me. In the torchlight, his focused features are exaggerated and appear very tense. He examines the wall behind me, and then the entryway with the jammed and broken door. He passes his hand over what parts of the door are not hidden by fallen stone, as if looking for any etchings or marks in it’s finish. When he finds nothing, he looks back to me.
“I suppose we’ll have to break in here. I’m pretty sure someone has been through here…I’m just not sure how.” He places his free hand on his chin in a movement of introspection and stares at the entrance.
Moving away from the wall, I stand at his side and join him in looking at the doorway. In the torchlight, it’s easier to see that there is a room beyond the door. I can see it through the broken wall, and through parts of the door that have buckled under the weight of the broken frame above it.
“Sewers? You really think we can get to the sewer tunnels from here?”
He shrugs before turning to look at me, “Only one way to find out. Here, help me move some of the rocks.”
Without responding, I step in front of him, placing myself directly in front of the broken entryway. It takes me only a second to gather my strength, before I punch out at the door. My fist slides swiftly through the air, and I can feel my knuckles impact with the buckled door. With the force of my punch, the door easily slides out of it’s frame and backwards into the room behind it. With a few small kicks, I knock back much of the rubble collected at the base of the entryway before making my way inside the room.
There is a loud “hrrumph” behind me as the Captain strides into the room, looking at the displaced stones as he walks through the empty door frame. For a space we’re both quiet, both inspecting the room. He takes to it much more studiously, examining the walls, the other side of the door frame, and the layers of dirt and dust that has collected on the floor. I move quickly through the room, spotting a hole in the floor on the other side. A ladder sits bolted in the hole, with enough surround space for a average size human to climb down. I can’t see the next level down from here at the top, but not wanting to light a second torch, I wait for my investigative companion to finish what he’s doing.
Finally, he strides over to the far end of the room, where I have decided to not so patiently wait for him to complete his inspection of the room. He mumbles to himself as he crosses through the room. I only catch snippets of his conversation with himself, something about dirt, and crawling. When he gets to the me and the hole with the ladder, he finally looks back at me, as if remembering I am still in the room with him.
“Talents, eh?” He says with a smirk on his lips.
I nod, and smile back. “Are you finished in here, then?”
“I think so. It’s weird. I would expect footprints to the tunnel, even though the door has obviously gone so unused. But, I don’t see any disturbance in here. If they came through the alley, which I think they did given the state of the alley and the broken carts, then they should’ve come in through this entrance.”
He turns slowly around the room, silently, giving it another once-over. When he returns facing me, he gives me a questioning look. “Spellcaster? Can you see if any magic was used here? Maybe they came through the wall a different way?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it. But, I suppose I could give it a look.” I cross back the length of the room, to the broken entryway and stand trying to concentrate on the Aethric energies.
It should be an easy task to most persons that have the gift to be able to open their site to the energies of magic. In my travel, I use them very infrequently as not to interrupt the flow of the wild energies outside Bauxe. As I stand in front of the doorway, I close my eyes and concentrate. I can feel the soft pinpricks on my skin that tell me that something is working. I open my eyes as I concentrate on that feeling, and almost instantly my vision is assaulted with a spectrum of colors I’m unaccustomed to seeing. The Aethric whips around me in a rushing wind, and I can feel my hair lifted from my shoulders as the wind picks up it’s decent through the walls and floor of the room. As I try and focus my vision I have to push back longer strands of my dark red hair and tuck them behind my ears.
“I see something,” I say trying not to look at him in the Aethric. “But I feel much more than I can see. There is a lot of energy running through this place, through the walls and underneath us. There’s a bright spot on the other side of the entry. Maybe they used some magic there. I don’t think I could tell you what kind though.”
The longer I stand there letting the wind of the Aethric flow me, the stronger I feel the pull through the floor beneath me. The colors are muted, and I cannot tell what created the energy, or to what purpose it’s being used. One of the many reasons I never made it through lessons at Mendel’s College, the school for magic users. As my hair and cloak whips around me, I close my eyes again, shutting out all the Aethric energies I can. Eventually, through several minutes of concentration, I can feel the wind die down. When I open my eyes, the room is dark and dirty again, colors normal and muted in the dying torchlight.
“You’ll need a new one soon,” I say pointing to the torch as I cross the room to stand by the Captain.
He nods slowly, eyeing me carefully. “So you feel the magic? But can’t see it? That’s not how it normally works when I talk to wizards from the college.”
“Well, I’m not college wizard.”
“Didn’t go to the school then? I thought all Bauxe’s magic users went to that school. Are you a student of the Prisidum then? Temple of the Three Gods, is that why we met there today?”
“No. I went to Mendel’s. Just didn’t finish courses. And I don’t know why we met at the temple this evening.” I incline my head gesturing at his torch again.
He nods and lowers it down to the ladder tunnel and drops it in. “We’ll have to hurry down the ladder before it goes out,” he says as he moves to climb down.
He climbs down the ladder, and hops off after just a few seconds of climbing down. The tunnel opens up at the bottom, and he stands and motions for me to climb down as well. Once I’m on the ladder, he walks out of my site, and what I can only assume is further into the room below. The climb is short, and I’m off the ladder and standing in a worn down mostly square room. The light of the torch fades out after I step out into the room. I can hear the Captain fumble around for a few moments and before my eyes have a chance to adjust to the darkness he lights a second torch.
I give my eyes a moment to re-adjust to the torchlight before venturing into the center of the room. The stone work down here is older, and the walls are much darker than in the room above. The smell is the most overwhelming part of the room, and although I cannot see any water, or sewage the smell filters into every part of the room. As I look around the room, I can see that some places in the wall are darker than others, and even in the low torchlight, they shine as if covered in some water.
The Captain has found his way to the other side of the room from the ladder we descended and is examining the far wall. He has his head inclined towards the wall and looks back at me as he asks, “Do you hear that? That…rushing sound?”
I cross the room quickly, and place my head close to the wall and concentrate on listening intently. After a few seconds of silence in our room and of concentration on the outer wall, I can make out a sound. A soft noise, but it is like a rushing sound, like the movement of water.
“I imagine we’ve found the sewer,” I whisper, looking at the Captain and stepping back from the wall. “Now, we just need to find out how to get out of this room.”
He nods, and also steps away from the wall. He turns around, looking at each of the walls for a moment. “Do you see any odd stones, a catch or a lever maybe that would move a wall?”
“No, I’ll start here, let’s look at the walls more closely,” I say, stepping closer to the wall and trying to see between the stones.
“Lets both look here, you’ll need light.”
“Alright.”
The both of us start in the center of the far wall from the ladder and carefully examine the stone work for breaks or catches. As we move outward from the center, it’s obvious how much different the stone is from the previous room we were in. The stones are smooth, no doubt from years of water coming through them from the sewer. They’re better made, cleaner cut from the others we’ve seen, and I remark on this as we make our way to the next wall. The Captain nods thoughtfully as we examine the side wall, but doesn’t respond.
The side wall is similarly made, and almost identical to the far wall. We both examine the wall for several moments before I realize the difference in the two. As I look at the wall, and concentrate on the connections of the stones to each other, I realize that I cannot feel the same movement, or hear the same soft movement of water that I could against the other wall. Holding my hand against the wall, and then moving back to the far wall, I can tell there’s a difference in the temperature of the wall also.
“Captain? I think this is the wall we need,” I say motioning to the far wall. “I cannot hear the movement of water from this side wall, and it’s colder over hear. The stones are colder.”
I move to the opposite side of the room, and examine that wall for a moment, and the Captain follows.
“You can call me Tesseleck, miss. We may be down here a while, and I don’t think we’ll need to rely on any such formalities.” He follows my lead in examining the walls with his empty hand, and then checks the wall behind the ladder for any outward signs. “I think you’re right though. This far wall seems to be the way through.”
I nod and join him against the far wall, looking at the corners and where it contacts the ceiling for any clues to how it might open. We both stand there in silence for a few moments, each of us examining the wall as best we’re able. He stoops down to the ground, and balances on the balls of his feet to examine the floor beneath us.
“Do you think, it could be a magic door, Morgana?” He asks looking up at me.
I shrug. “It’s possible I suppose, I’m not sure why you’d need a magic door to guard the sewers though. However, I did get the sense when we were up in the other room that a good deal of Aetheric moves through here.”
I stand back from the wall, and make sure that I’m not too close to the Captain…Tesseleck, as I close my eyes again to concentrate. The Aetheric sight comes to me more quickly this time, from recent use, and within seconds I can feel the rush of the energy on my skin. The air around us is tinged with lights of Aethic, when I open my eyes, and the same wind passes from the upstairs room, and through the walls of this room. I can almost feel that they move in through the wall that is ahead of us. As I turn to face him, with my Sight still active, I can see what looks like burned floor below him. The colors of the Aethric are dark and look charred on the floor under where he’s standing.
“Captain. Move please,” I ask stepping closer to the spot.
He swiftly steps a few paces back towards the ladder as I close-in on the burned spot. Stepping onto the spot, a tingle raises through my body, pricking my skin with bumps and a rush of warm air. I close my eyes again, and lower the Sight. I wait for the feel of the energetic wind to die down around me before opening my eyes once more.
“What did you see?” He asks as I stoop down in a similar gesture to his previous one to be closer to the floor.
The floor looks normal below me, and I cannot sense any of the same burned markings as I did with the Aetheric. “The floor, was burned here. Somehow, I think someone used this recently. I’m not sure for what. But it may be related to how someone could pass through this room without a door.”
“So what do we do?”
“I think, the wall may need a bit of persuasion,” I say stepping away from the center of the room. “Stand back a bit.”
He doesn’t move any closer as he holds the torch out in front of him. He gives me an odd look that makes his angular face seem gaunt in the dim lighting.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “It’ll only hurt the wall.”
It takes me only a second to gather enough energy in my hands. Opening myself to the Aethric that is rushing through the room, I use the direction of the flowing energy to direct my attack. I take a few steps back to the center of the room, and steady myself before running forward. Using the flow, I propel myself forward faster than I could normally run, and with my fist held outright it greets the wall with a loud crack. The stonework crumbles slightly, buckling where I hit it. But, I did not hit it hard enough in one attack to break out any of the stones. Using the same flowing energy, I pull back, and strike the wall a second time. This time, where my fist lands, a few of the stones fall back out of the wall. Using my hands and the small force I have left in the Aethric flow, I continue to push stones out of the wall, and into the next area. I hear the stones clatter done on what sounds like a stone floor.
“Wow!” I hear from behind me as the Captain steps forward and uses his free hand to help push stones out of the wall.
I smile at the Captain and with a few kicks manage to dislocate the last few stones necessary so that we can crawl through the wall.
“I can definitely see your usefulness,” he says following behind me through the wall. “Although…” he stops walking as he pauses and I look back to find him giving me an admiring look, “I’m sure there’s plenty more of you that is more than useful.”
“Very clever, Captain,” I remark with an emphasis on his title. “Now, if you’re quite done? Your torch…” I gesture ahead of me into the darkness and wait for him to step in front of me.
Looking only a little uncomfortable, he steps forward and passed me into the darkness. In the torchlight, it looks to be a tunnel ahead of us, and after a few feet into the tunnel, a channel is cut in the stone floor. Through the channel, murky water flows in from one side of the tunnel, under the wall, and out through the other. It’s not move very swiftly, but as the torchlight reflects off of the surface, it’s obvious that it is in fact, moving.
“It almost looks like we’ve entered from the wrong angle…” He pauses and looks back at me as he reaches the channel of water. “We’ll have to cross this somehow.”
I step up next to him at the edge of the channel, and watch the dark water flow from one side to the other. The corridor is wide enough for the both of us to stand side by side with quite a bit of room left on either side. And I guess that the channel is almost as wide as the corridor. Making the possibility of crossing it easily somewhat of a challenge.
Both of us stood in the torchlight, watching the channel of water flow through the tunnel. After a few moments of no sound but the soft movement of water, I step back from the channels edge to examine one of the corridor walls. The Captain following my lead, joins me at the wall forming the left side of the tunnel. The walls are dark stone work, and shiny as they were in the previous room from the water flow around them. With the sewage flowing through the tunnel, even for the short space of the corridor it covers, it’s impossible to escape the smell. I had thought I was getting used to the smell in the previous room, after a few minutes it was easy to ignore. But here, in the tunnel it’s overwhelming. While the Captain continues to examine the wall I pull my cloak around my neck and mouth to help mute the smell.
“Well, I think we have two options,” the Captain says after a few moments of inspection. “We could either find a way to cross that channel of sewage,” he gestures with the torch towards the dark waters creating a host of twitching shadows on the walls around us, “or you could try and get us through this wall.” He turns to look at me, as if sizing me up and judging my capabilities to destroy a second wall.
I nod at him, trying to look disapproving of his glance at the same time. “Why this wall?”
“Because of the flow of water. I imagine that the channel goes further into the system in the direction the water is flowing. Usually there’s several rooms in that area, and if someone is camping out down here, I would be willing to bet it would be there in the center of the system. Besides,” he says “it looks like there’s light on the other side of that wall.”
He points at a few of the dryer stones in the center of the wall, and motions for me to look through. As I step closer to the wall, he moves back from it, taking the torch light away from the wall. I look back at him, to ask if I can have the torch to examine the wall.
“You’ll be able to see it better if it’s darker over there,” he says responding to my questioning glance.
“Ah.” I say and look back at the wall.
It takes me a few moments of close inspection, trying to look in between the stones, but I find a few stones that are further away from each other than the rest. Between them, I can make out a faint light, and small bit of cold air travelling through the wall.
“I see it.” I say turning back to him, and pulling my cloak tighter around my face.
“So, through the wall?”
“I think so, although these stones are much sturdier than I’d imagine for such an old sewer system. I’m just not sure how well all the walls will continue to hold up if I keep busting them open so we can make our way through. That may make it hard for us to find the culprits, if we’re running for our lives out of the ruins of a sewer,” I say smiling at him.
He grimaces momentarily. “But you’ll do it? I don’t want to spend my entire night in a sewer. This is quicker.”
“Yes, yes. It’s easy.”
Taking a deep breath of the less pungent air wrapped in my cloak, I step back from the wall a few paces. “Just stay back there,” I say without glancing back at him.
Each use of the Aethric in a specific place can make a person better attuned to using it. And after opening myself to that energy several times already, it’s only a quick moment before I can feel my body surging with the power necessary to bust the wall. I use it to manipulate the air around me, making my trip to the wall more swift, and the punch through the wall, more accurate, as my fist connects. The stones give instantaneously upon contact, and within a few seconds there is a loud clattering sound of stones hitting stones on the other side of the wall. Before hitting the wall a second time, to expand the hole, I gesture behind me to the Captain to step forward.
He steps foward quickly, and sticks the torch through the hole I created. I give him enough space to look around the torchlight, and into the next room. He turns the torch several times trying to see as much as he can before stepping away from the hole.
“It’s a room. The channel goes through it, but I cannot see for how far. There is light in there however.”
“Alright, let me clear some room then,” I say stepping towards him. I spend a minute or so moving the rest of the stones in the wall, kicking the ones at the bottom so we can step through easily.
Once the hole is large enough, I step through, not waiting for him or the torch to go ahead of me. Before he can step through behind me, there’s a noise down the length of the room, and I strain my eyes in the flickering light to see what or where I can. It’s difficult to tell where the existing light in the room is, or is coming from as the Captain steps through with the torch. But, it’s obvious that there is a second point of light as I scan the room for the source of the noise. The shadows are no longer as deep, and the room is much smaller without the darkness obscuring it all. Across the room, which is only slightly larger than the one we descended from, I make out two small pricks of red light in the shadows.
“There, Captain…what is that?” I try straining my head forward and let my eyes adjust to the odd lighting to make it out.
He steps up next to me, and follows my glance out across the room. With the torch directly in front of us, it’s difficult to make out much in the length of the room, and we both take a step forward, closer to the pricks of light. They move, and we hear a skitter across the floor. About five paces off from the first sighting the lights reflect the torch again, and shine back at us.
“Rat?” He waves the torch slowly around the room, turning his gaze with it to look for others.
“Wonderful. Hopefully, just the one.” Beside me, I can see him shudder almost involuntarily.
“Let’s just keep moving, please?”
I nod, and we both slowly cross the room, staying on the lookout for more small rodents. The air in the room is colder than the previous places inside the sewer, and just as pungent as the rest. The room is not as dark, and it’s easy to make out that it’s made of the same stone work we’re accustomed to so far. The Captian stops near the center of the room, holding his torch out to each side for a moment. He stoops down to the floor, examining it with the same intense gaze as when we were still in the alley.
“Find something, Captain?” I look down over his shoulder at the stone work floor beneath us. There is not as much dirt and dust as in some of the other rooms, and though the channel flows nearby, the stones do not show as much water or wear as the walls.
“Tracks. Not from any rats, either.”
He looks up at me for a moment, letting the torch hang down at his side and gives me a questioning look. I glance around the room, as another skittering noise sounds from the far end. The noise echoes slightly in the expanse of the stone room, and the Captain and I exchange another look. I can feel another presence here, or at lease something larger than a rat, as I step away from Tesseleck and further towards the far wall. The channel of sewer water in this room is far narrower in the middle than it was in the tunnel, and stepping over is simple enough. I take a large step over the flowing water, and quickly step towards the darkest corner where the torchlight has not yet reached. In an instant, without even closing my eyes my Aetheric Sight settles in, and the room lights up for me.
A large void in the colors of the Aether immenate from the corner as I take the final steps towards it. Another scurrying noise nearby makes me stop and look down. A rat, almost the size of my own foot stands nearby on his hind legs. I hear the Captain moving on the other side of the room, and the rat hears it too and lands on all fours before scurrying into the darkness. The darkness is overwhelming in the Aethric because I’m so unaccustomed to seeing no reponse, no color, no movement at all. It takes me a few deep breaths to gather my courage to step forward again, and in that time the Captain is at my side with the torch. The torchlight dims the colors of the Aethric slightly, but help instead to penetrate the cloud of darkness in the corner.
With light from the torch to show my way, I step into the corner and examine the stones. My boots scuff agains straw and then there is a clinking noise against the stone as I try and push it out of the way with my foot. The Captain hears it too, and bends down with the torch to find the source of the sound, as I step back to give him some room with the torch. With my Sight, I take a quick glance around the room, and spend a moment trying to feel the course of the Aethric. For some reason, the wind I felt in the previous places does not penetrate this room, and I can’t help but think it has something to do with the void of the energies in the far corner.
The rest of the room is quiet, and looks however normal it can in the Aethric. It is, after all, a sewer. I’m suprised by both the void of energy in one place, and the presence of the mostly common energies elsewhere, it seems unfitting for there to be some much Aethric activity in the sewer.
Gesturing towards the corner with the torch, the Captain looks back at me. “Coin. Bauxe stamped, probably from the carts, although there’s only one that I can see. Wonder what it’s doing all the way in here, over in this corner…. Straw…nest perhaps?”
“Probably. But, a nest for what?”
“Let hope it’s just the rats,” he says looking back towards the corner. “Just curious rats that managed to find a dropped coin and carry it back to this room.”
“Or maybe,” I let the Sight drop and the room returns to it’s hard shadows and torchlight, “the coin was dropped in here, when whoever took it came through. Let’s cross back over and look for a door on that other wall.”
We both turn away from the corner and I give it another glance before stepping back and over the channel. The opposite wall, does indeed have a door, and both the Captain and I head for it straightaway. I can hear him breathe a sigh of some relief as we close in on the door, and it seems in working order at first glance. He reaches it first, and gives a turn of the knob, and it the knob turns, and the door opens with little resistance.
“Wonderful!”
He turns back to me, a smile on his lips. He waits for me to join him and then makes his way through the door. There’s a large commotion as he enters the room. A loud scrabbling and a screech of something against stone sounds from somewhere inside. He stops just on the other side of the door, and motions for me to move forward slowly. He takes a small step to the side to make room for me to enter the room.
In the center of the room is a mound of straw, and everywhere else is covered with rats. Rats larger than the one we saw in the other room. Each rat has started scrabbling in the disruption of their darkness. While several small rats crawl back into the mound of straw, the majority of them are making a move away from the light and to the far side of the room. As both the Captain and I stare at the commotion, our attention is drawn to the back of the room, where several larger rats have gathered behind one giantic rat creature. It’s red eyes stare back at us, unblinking as we look on. The rat is larger than anything I’ve ever seen before, and by the Captain’s dropped jaw, I assume larger than anything he’s seen either. Even from across the room, it looks as though that the back of the creature might reach my knees.
It emits a screeching sound, and the rest of the rats around it clamor to be closer to it. Next to me, I sense the Captain using his free hand to reach for the sword strapped at his hip.
“Do you have a weapon?” he asks in a whisper.
“Just me.”
He turns his head slightly to give me a dispproving look while trying to keep his eye on the collection of rats on the other side of the room. “Then you’ll stay here. Hold this.”
He hands the torch over to me slowly, and takes a step forward. With a small motion of my free hand, I gather enough energy to wrap around him. I form it to make him faster, swifter and his sword arm more accurate. I don’t think that he notices the change, he continues to walk forward slow enough not to startle the rats. The large one continues to watch, unmoving, and thankfully without anymore screeching.
When the Captain is only a few paces from the group, the large rat hisses and quickly turns and scurries through the rats behind him. Most of them move aside and let it pass, but do not follow. Some of the ones in the back of the group also hiss or screech and turn to follow it. I can see Tesseleck take a deep breath before he leaps forward to charge the group. He makes an incoherant noise as his sword cleaves through several rats in one swipe. The rats flee quickly from him following the direction the large one took. From where I’m standing, it’s hard to see the back wall, however I can no longer see the large rat and I assume he found some hole to crawl though.
“Morgana…” he says slowly, softly, not taking his eyes off of the moving commotion going around his feet. “Did you do something to me?”
“Just a little helping hand. Made you faster…a bit.”
“Right, a bit.” He slices downward flinging a few more rats out of his reach, and clearing the area surrounding him. “There’s a hole here, we might be able to follow them.”
“Follow, the rats? Are you insane Captain Tesseleck?” I take a few steps back, and lean myself against the wall behind me. “I am not going through some tiny hole just to follow an overgrown rat.”
“Well then,” he says moving away from the last retreating rats and back towards me, “what do you propose we do? I don’t see a door, and I don’t know how else we’re going to find where the merchandise is being held. They’re obviously collecting from somewhere…” he kicks at the straw mound disturbing a few clumps of straw and cloth, and a few tiny rats.
“What makes you think they’re going to lead us to anything?”
“That rat was not normal sized. Now, I’m no spellcaster, but I’m guessing that there’s some sort of magic that can be done to make rats that large. Something magical has done that.” He nods to emphasize his point, and sheathes his sword before stepping closer to me. “Unless, you think there’s an easier way?”
I shrug. “Why don’t we check out the rest of this room before we go talking about shimmying down a rat hole. Besides, you’re the one that didn’t want to be in here with the rats all evening.”
“You’re right. I don’t.” He gives me a forceful look and then turns to inspect the wall to his left.
After a few calm breaths, I bury my pride and take a few long strides to the opposite side of the room where the rats fled out. There certainly is a hole, and a large one, at least large enough for myself to get through. I’m not certain about how well the Captain might fit, and I smile to myself trying to imagine it. It’s good for a moment of cheering myself up, might as well get some enjoyment out of this trip into the sewer.
The rest of the back wall is covered in stone, and it appears that the hole was not randomly created. It looks planned, and as much a part of the room as anything else, save the straw mound and the rats. The edges are smooth, but I can’t see very far into the hole without some light, so I move on to the other rest of the wall. After a few minutes the Captain finishes his inspection of the one side wall, and moves to the other, not glancing back at me across the room.
“Are you finding anything Captain?”
“No, just stone walls. No breaks, no water, no light.”
“This hole seems planned. Formed as a part of the room. Perhaps as a way to cut down time travelling from one part of the sewers to another, but I’m not sure where it would lead. If we follow it, I think we’ll be further away from the channel of water than we intead to be.”
He nods, I think in agreement with me.
“So, what do you think of the straw mound, the nest?” I gesture to the center of the room and the nest.
He takes a few steps away from the wall, and towards the center. “Is it possible, you think, for there to be a ladder under there? Or trap-door of some kind? I don’t want to waste time checking for nothing.” He gives the nest a disgusted look.
“Well, it’s either that, or I go through that hole alone…I…don’t think you’ll fit, Captain.”
“Oh. Really, it looked rather good sized.” He frowns, and then looks thoughtfully at me. “Could you help me through, make me smaller or something?”
“No. Sorry, that’s not really something I do.”
“Oh.” He frowns again and then looks back at the nest. “I suppose it’s worth a try to see whats under there,” he pulls his sword from his sheath with his free hand, and then pokes at the mound, “or in there.”
I circle around the mound of straw and reach up to take the torch from him. “Stand back Captain.”
“Why?”
Relunctantly he lets me take the torch from him, and then realization dawns on his face. “Can you keep it contained?” he asks as he takes a few steps back from me.
“That, I can do.”
It doesn’t take long once the torch touches the straw. It goes up quickly, and I step back for fear of getting caught in a draft. I step back to where the Captain is standing before opening my Aethric Sight to watch the fire. I work swiftly, taking as much air as I can around the far, and keeping it in check so that it cannot feed the fire more so than necessary. After almost five minutes of work, I’m drained and smother the fire completely. Not everything burns in the mound, it was too large for all of it to have burned and there are bits that were less susceptible to the fire than others. When the last licks of fire have dwindled, I crouch to the floor and sit down crossing my legs and closing my eyes. I can hear the Captain move to the middle of the room to examine the leftover contents of the nest, but while he studies, I rest.
“How long do you need?” I hear from somewhere above me several minutes later. It startles me slightly after the long stretch of silence.
I shrug slightly and open my eyes to look up at the Captain. “Just needed to recover a little, fire is hard work, and that’s not really what I do.”
He holds a hand out to me, and I see he’s carrying a new torch in his other hand. I take his offered hand and he helps me stand to my feet. I sway for a moment, trying to recover myself and look out into the room as I gather my wits. The remnants of the nest and the fire are scattered across the back side of the room, and in the center of the stone floor, a wooden door is propped open.
“You were right,” he says as I step towards the door. “Hidden door, sort of. There’s a ladder we can use, and there’s more light down there.”
I peer down through the door, there is a small rung ladder like there was when we first came down into the sewer system. However, this time, we won’t have to drop the torch down first. I can see the stone floor at the bottom of the ladder, there’s quite a bit of light coming up through the tunnel.
“You first then Captain.” I gesture to the ladder and give him a small smile.
He nods his head, and drops the torch down the tunnel. “Hopefully we won’t need another one soon,” he says as it rolls out of view. “I don’t like carrying them around.”
He lowers himself down onto the ladder and proceeds down the hole. He moves out of sight after reaching the bottom, giving me plenty of room to climb down. The hole is pretty narrow, wide enough for a normal person on the ladder and nothing else. It’s a short climb down, and I’m down on the next stone floor after less than a minute of climbing. The Captain greets me as I step off the ladder without a torch in hand. The one he had thrown down the tunnel has gone out and is resting against a wall. Flanking the hole with the ladder that we’ve emerged from are two wall sconce torches. The Captain gestures towards them after noticing the direction of my gaze.
“Those aren’t on fire,” he announces as he walks up to one. “Well, they are, but they’re not hot, they don’t burn.”
“Wizard Torches then?”
He nods and takes a few steps out in front of me. We’ve decended into another room, however this one is vastly different from the ones we’ve seen so far this evening. The Captain walks into the room and over to a small desk in the corner. There is another Wizard Torch hanging from the wall above the desk, making the whole room very well lit. Stepping out into the room, I turn around a few times, taking in all the pieces. There’s a small bed or cot with some very dusty and worn blankets on top. The small desk has a hard wooden chair in front of it, and there’s nothing on top of the desk save an old inkwell that is also covered in a fine layer of dust. The floor is the same stone we’ve seen everywhere else so far, however there is no trace of the water or sewage that we’d seen in other rooms. And once I concentrate on it, I realize that while musty the air doesn’t smell quite as foul as it did. I unwrap my cloak and take a few deep breaths of the clearer air. It’s full of dust, but there’s almost no trace of the pungent sewage I’d gotten used to upstairs. The Captain nods at me as if agreeing with my unspoken sentiment.
“Who would keep a room down here?” I say running my hand over the top of the desk. My fingers come up with a bit of dust, but not nearly as much as I’d expected after looking at the rest of the room.
“Wizard?” He shrugs.
“I suppose it’s possible. But I think they tend to like classier places, at least something better than a room in some abandoned sewer system.”
“Which leads to Bad Wizard?” He chuckles and looks over at me with a questioning glance.
“I don’t know. I told you; took the classes, didn’t make it through.”
“So, Morgana of the Nomads…what is it that you do?” He moves away from the desk and takes a step forward giving only inches of air between our faces. He stares me down, waiting for an answer.
I can’t think of one. There is plenty that I do. I weave, I travel, I collect - the first and the last often while I’m travelling. But I never considered myself much of a spellcaster, and I’m not really part of this guild that seems to need my help so often. He doesn’t break his gaze, and I try and hold up against him. It’s the best look I’ve gotten at him all evening, so close to so much Wizard light. And his green eyes are steady, watching my face trying to suss out my worth in this place, it’s uncomfortable at best. I can imagine that he makes a great interregator for the Guild.
“Well, they call it the Gift - doing magic…”
“Yeah, that I know,” he interrupts impatiently and turns away from me in a huff. “What I want to know is how you can be so beautiful, and delicate looking and yet manage to smash through walls. It took you no effort. You have trouble seeing the Aethric, which from my limited knowledge is one of the most common things among anyone with a gift…”
I try to interrupt, I open my mouth at least to form words when he turns back around to face me. He’s grown a little red in the face and he gives me a look that scares me just a little as he raises his hand to point at me.
“…BUT just a little effort with some fire, and you had to sit down. It’s not what you do.” He finishes with a grand gesture that indicates complasence.
“It’s not.”
“Then why am I in a sewer, with you and your…lovely self…tracking down rats?”
“Thank you.” I give a small smile at him and he seems to relax just slightly.
“I’m sorry, it’s just I don’t understand this job at all. My lieutentant drags me away from my command and sends me down here with some beautiful woman to chase after missing cargo. I don’t get it. I don’t get you. I don’t get him.”
“Thank you.” I chuckle at his second half-hearted compliment amid the ranting.
He shrugs. “And I don’t get this odd room,” he finishes.
He takes a few steps over and sits down on the small bed behind him. It creaks under his weight and the long time of neglect. A poof of dust jumps from the blankets and swirls in the air around him. He chuckles and leans his arms down over his knees.
“It’s weird right? Being called in for something like this?”
“I think so. But that seems to be the type of things I get called in for. Breaking down doors and walls, pretty normal when the Guild finds me and sends me somewhere.”
“Oh.” He gives me a strange look and then hops off of the bed and turns around to look at it.
He rips off the blanket and throws it behind him where it lands in a heap of dirt and dust. It’s a small wooden frame beneath a very old very musty looking feather mattress. He overturns it and leans it up against the wall as feathers drift down from it. He coughs a few times but doesn’t stop tearing the bed away from the floor and wall. I step over the blankets and come up beside him as he finishes dragging it away from the wall. He looks up at me, breathing heavily from his frantic fit of rearranging.
“I thought…” he stops to catch his breath.
“Wizards, treasure?” I smile at the thought.
“Worth. A. Try.” He says leaning one arm against the wall. “Didn’t see you doing anything.”
“No, the whole sudden need to rearrange furniture didn’t strike me.” He flashes a bright smile at my small joke on his behalf.
We both stand in silence for a few minutes - he catches his breath and examines the area where the bed once was, and I walk the rest of the room examing everything else. There really isn’t much to see aside from the small pieces of furniture. I pull out the three drawers down the side of the desk, which reveal nothing, not even false bottoms. He still looks lost in thought in the corner of the room when I’m done with my second once over the room. I take a few steps back and lean against the wall opposite him and open up my Sight. The room glitters in the colors of the Aethric showing lots of energetic remnants from the time someone - probably a wizard - spent in this room. I don’t feel the wind anymore, I think we’ve passed through whatever flow we had been walking towards. This part of the system, this room even, feels older than the rest of it despite what may have been somewhat recently used.
“Morgana?” The Captains concerned voice manages to shake me out of my concentration on the Aethric.
I let my Sight drop, returning the room to it’s torchlit state of dirt and dust. Tesseleck is looking at me questioningly and piling all the pieces of the bed back together.
“Did you see something?” He ask taking a few steps towards me.
“Not really. I think that a Wizard did stay here at some point, but not recently. The Aethric is full of left over pieces of magic.”
“So, what do you suggest?” He sticks his hands on his hips, striking a commanding pose.
“Back up the ladder…perhaps. Did you check all of the walls thoroughly?”
“Not really…” he pauses. He takes a few steps in a circle looking around the room, everywhere but at the corner with the bed he just accosted. “Do you think…”
I follow his gaze to the empty wall behind me and step away from it to get a better look. It’s the only wall in the room that doesn’t house some piece of leftover furniture, or any of the three torches. The Captain steps up to it, uses his eyes and his hands to examine the length of the wall. Neither of us speak for several minutes while we both investigate the wall, until finally the Captain reaches up and gives a heavy whack to a group of stones.
“What are you doing?” I walk over to him, and look at the area he’s looking at.
“Door. Wizards like secret doors, right?”
“I suppose…” I reply hesitantly, but he seems insistant on the group of stones under his hand.
“So, I think there’s one here. On this wall. And I think, that these stones…” he pushes on them again “are the key”.
“Ah. And you think that…”
“Because they’re different. Everywhere we’ve been the stones are the same color, same shape, same pattern of wear after years of sitting here doing nothing.” He looks at me, his face full of determination, eyes sparkling with the challenge. “These stones are worn down here on the side, like they’ve been ground against something. And, the floor here,” he gestures to the floor upon which I’m standing and shoos me over, “here - is worn a little the same. Like something has been scraped across it.”
“Well, I must commend your logic Captain…let’s hope it gets us out of this room. Otherwise, it’s back the way we came.”
“And that’s the other thing…” he takes a step back and points over at the ladder before continuing. “those rats upstairs - they had to go somewhere right? That hole?”
I nod and wait for him to continue.
“That room was above this one, but the ladders off to the side of this room, and that tunnel…should go right about here,” he gives the wall a poke with his finger in exaggerated excitement. “So, the tunnel probably lets out on the other side…or somewhere close by, because I don’t hear rats over there…”
We both step back up to the wall in question, and the area he suspects must open somehow. We push and poke at the stones individually and together and give several of them a good tug. But, nothing happens. It takes us several minutes of deciphering the stones, but eventually we both step back and shrug.
“It was a good idea,” I say to break the long silence between us.
He nods. “Did you not see anything when you…you know?” He gestures at me and points to his eyes, and I understand that he’s asking about my Aethric Sight.
“No, not really. Or at least not on this wall. We must be missing something obvious, like a lever of some sort.”
“I know that. But what?”
Again, there’s a long silence as we both stand looking at the wall. At different times we both make several revolutions as we look at different parts of the room, searching for anything we may have missed. In my head I try to retrace all our steps through the room, and the examination of all of the furniture. And I think it dawns on me the same time it does him. Before I can say anything he gives a sharp exclamation and crosses the room quickly to the desk. He gives a quick tug on the wall sconce above the desk, and it bends sidesways against the wall. Behind me, there’s a loud scraping noise of stone on stone as a piece of the wall opens inward to reveal a passage.
He gives me a brilliant smile and strides over to join me at the door to the dark tunnel. His smile melts as we stare out into the darkness and he gives a sigh of frustration. I walk over to the ladder and grab one of the Wizard Torches out of it’s sconce. He nods and reaches to take it from me.
I shrug. “I’ll carry it for a while. You, keep your sword ready.” He nods and takes his sword from it’s sheath and holds it out into the darkness.
“So I guess those stones are just the ones that stick furthest out into the wall,” he says as we pass through the doorway.
It’s not a very large passageway, and I follow closely behind the Captain as two of us won’t fit in the width of it. He keeps his sword ready and stalks through the darkness moving slowly forward. Looking up, the ceiling of the passage is almost just above us, making me think that Wizard that used this room, and this passage couldn’t have been much taller than us.
“He must’ve been human,” I whisper as we move through the corridor.
“Who?”
“The Wizard that kept that room. This passage isn’t very tall, he must’ve been human.”
The Captain stops and turns slowly around to face me, keeping his sword behind him. “You seem to fit alright,” he says judging the distance between me and the ceiling.
I nod. “Sure, but most Nomadic men are taller than the women. Besides most of us wouldn’t choose living quarters underground. Not even temporary ones.”
“What about the Slights? Slights are quite often human sized, and many of them fancy themselves Wizards or spellcasters of some variety or another.”
“True…” I try and picture the few Slights I’ve met in travelling through the wild outside of Bauxe. Small, thin creatures, very pointy features and a slightly exaggerated sense of importance. I can’t imagine that one would choose to live in a small dingy room in an abandoned sewer system. “If a slight did take up residence down here,” I continue, “I’d rather expect to see a bit more decoration, importance…they’d made it more like home. Tapestries or banners to decorate the walls with. They’d at least cover up their secret door.”
“I guess so. Anything else would be too tall - or too wide - to feel very comfortable down here. That’s doesn’t mean he was or is human,” he turns back around to face the passage. “But, I agree that it’s the most likely choice.”
We carry ourselves onward down the corridor in relative silence. We both stop occassionally to inspect the walls or the floor, there’s almost no layer of dust down here, whether from recent use or cleaning or poor ventilation through the tunnel, we cannot be certain. Eventually, the darkness receeds into a large room with several more Wizard Torches on the walls. I think we both stand a little straighter as we emerge out of the small tunnel into the room.
However, we’re both struck still and silent again as we stare out across the room and lock eyes once more with the giant rat. Quickly, I open my eyes with my Sight and am somewhat surprised as I look across the room, and see little touches of the Aethric. The rat is covered with remnants of past energy, but nothing current. The draft I’d felt as we entered the sewer has returned and somehow coalesces in this room, filling it with a cold air that tingles my skin. I drop the Sight as quickly as I’d turned it on, and in time to see the Captain making slow strides to the center of the room.
The giant rat is no longer surrounded by his smaller brethren, instead he stands in front of several large piles of cloth bolts, barrels of food or drink, and myriad supplies that were surely part of the missing cargo from the carts in the alley far above us. At the Captains movements, the rats lets out a hellish screech and scurries behind the pile of goods. From my vantage point I can see him lower himself into a tunnel carved in the floor. After a few moments he’s vanished from my site, and I take quick strides to join the Captain.
“It’s gone Captain, another tunnel in the floor.”
“And it looks like we’ve found all the missing cargo for the Guild,” he nods.
He sheathes his sword and looks over the pile of goods while I take a quick look around the rest of the room. There’s not much else to see, despite the fact that it’s the largest room we’ve been in so far. I look over the tunnel near the back of the room; it decends into the floor from a small hole, and I doubt it’s small enough for either of us to crawl into it. After looking down at it for a few moments, I’m a little curious about how the rat made it in at all.