Broken Lands

“...frolicked in the autumn…” Sophia’s probably not entirely on key singing trailed off as she saw light in the distance. Yellow light, not the bluish light of all of the artificial ceiling lights they’d passed as they traveled up the waterway. She was more than ready to leave the tunnels. “Is that the outside?”

“Could be,” Dav answered. He was dragging the sled once again; he seemed to want to pull it as much as he could and Sophia wasn’t about to get between him and that task. He sounded less eager to get outside than Sophia was. “I just hope it’s an easy exit.”

Sophia had to admit that that was fair. She hoped so too, but she wasn’t betting on it. If this was a sewer system, it was clearly built on a gigantic scale, either for floodwater as a storm sewer or for inspections and maintenance, but that didn’t mean the entrances were equally large. There would definitely be a way for people to get in and out but it was just as likely that it was through manholes you had to climb into as through an entrance you could just walk through.

Once they were a little closer it was clear it was, in fact, not an easy exit. The top of the tunnel had fallen in at some point in the past. It was long enough ago that all of the small rubble must have been washed away, because there wasn’t anything left of the collapse that was smaller than a softball, fairly similar in size to the rocks they’d been seeing as they traveled. They were small enough and rare enough that the sled could simply push them out of the way, but that wasn’t the case here; here, those were the small rocks and the big ones were larger than Sophia and Dav combined.

The collapse was only about twenty feet long and the tunnel very clearly continued after the collapse. They had a choice: somehow figure out a way to jump up to the ceiling and get out, leaving the sled behind, or continue on down the tunnel. They couldn’t see much of the outside world, other than the sunlight and some tree roots and vines that fell from the sides of the opening, but that and the warm air was enough to know that the outside wasn’t hostile.

It was also enough to know that they weren’t inside a city as they’d hoped. The sounds around them were the sounds of nature, not the sounds of people. They might be near farms but they definitely weren’t even close to well-used city streets.

“We can get the sled over that rock, can’t we?” Dav pointed at an inclined slab of rock that was larger than average but mostly flat, almost level, and tilted away from them. “I think we can get past most of this rubble if we get it up there, slide it along the rock, then lift it down at the other side.”

It was a plan, and after moving a few of the larger rocks that were in the way, it was a plan that worked. It took them more than half an hour and a lot of heavy work to get past that short distance, but it could be done.

The confirmation that they were near the surface but couldn’t get out there was almost more of a blow than a help to Sophia. It completely broke her happy mood. They continued in near silence for the next hour, until the passageway curved to the left, followed by a surprise: a tunnel off to the right that was significantly smaller than the one they were in branched off to the right, almost in the direction they’d been heading.

“I don’t think the sled will fit through there.” Dav nodded towards the opening.

“Not easily,” Sophia agreed. The sled was wider than the passageway. It wasn’t wide enough for two people to walk side by side, though it was still easily both wide enough and tall enough for a single human. “I think we should check it out anyway. If this really is a sewer system, wouldn’t a smaller line mean we’re closer to an exit?”

“Does it matter? The point of dragging the sled is to get it out too.” Dav dropped the rope on the sled and glanced at the ground, then back at Sophia. “It would let us see if we’re near people, I guess. If we are, maybe we can drag it through there if it’s close and there’s a big enough exit.”

That was enough of an agreement for Sophia. She turned and headed down the tributary tunnel, with Dav not far behind her. Before long, they saw an old rusty ladder. Sophia gave it a quick check for anything magical or obviously dangerous before she started climbing, testing each rung as she went.

The third rung from the bottom gave when she pushed on it with her leg. Fortunately, she had a good grip on the ladder and her weight was on the solid second rung.

It made her even more cautious.

There were several more bad rungs, but there were enough good ones that Sophia made it to the top of the fifteen foot ladder without falling or hurting herself. Above her was a metal grate. When she pushed on it, it groaned unhappily then lifted out of place.

Sophia climbed the rest of the way out of what was now clearly a storm sewer through the grate and found herself in a courtyard or maybe a plaza. It looked old but not quite abandoned; while water pooled on broken or lifted stones in the plaza itself and greenery grew on the arches, the walls themselves were clear of growth and seemed intact. There were even several bridges visible through the fog that looked to be in good condition.

The one thing she didn’t see or hear was people. It was eerily, even creepily, empty.

“Well, we’ve definitely reached somewhere. Any guesses on which way to go to find a hot meal and a bed?” Dav startled Sophia out of her introspection; she’d looked around for more than long enough for Dav to follow her up the ladder.

Sophia took a look at the bridges, then shrugged. “The one close to us is in the worst shape, I think, so probably that way. Do you want to leave the sled behind and come back for it later?”

“Not really,” Dav admitted, “But maybe if we find people, we’ll find someone who knows where a bigger entrance to the waterway is. That might be faster than trying to find it ourselves.”

Sophia nodded. It might or might not be true, but she was just as happy to not have to take her turn at hauling the sled. “Maybe we’ll even be able to get warm.”

Sophia turned around and set the grate back into place. It didn’t fit perfectly, but that was probably for the best; she was confident she’d want to go through it again later. With no clue of which way to go, other than that further was probably better, Sophia headed to the first archway on the left. She could try the others in sequence without that much extra walking.

There was a small covered area inside the archway before it was closed off with a door. Sophia couldn’t tell what the covered area was used for, other than a roof to protect against rain, since it was empty other than mud and a few opportunistic plants.

The door looked simple. It was flat and painted red, though the paint was clearly flaking. The handle was a simple half-oval with no sign of a lock nearby.

When Sophia touched the handle, there was a loud CRACK and she felt a slight but unpleasant buzzing sensation in her hand until she let go of the handle. Had someone electrified the door handle? If so, why? Also, why hadn’t it hurt more than that?

“What was that?” Dav looked around. “Where did that come from?”

“The door handle,” Sophia told him. “It stung me. Not too - wait a moment.” There absolutely was a reason that a deadly attack here might feel like a painful buzz. Sophia pulled up her Status and checked. Her Shield was at 7/10. It had long since recharged to full after the moss monster, so it was clear the handle had hit it enough to hurt but not enough to kill anyone with a Shield. “I think it was a trap, but why?”

“To make noise,” a high-pitched voice called from behind her. “This isn’t a nice safe village; it’s not even an outpost. We have to do what we can to keep ourselves safe.”

Sophia spun around, cursing internally that she’d allowed the shock to distract herself from keeping an eye out. That was probably the point, but she knew better than that! She’d just lowered her guard because they weren’t in a dungeon, they were in a city, and cities were generally safe.

Well, safe enough. There were definitely places where you could get mugged, but a delver of even relatively low Tier was generally dangerous enough that people picked easier targets. Most people couldn’t tell Tier at a glance anyway, so Sophia’s armor and weapons meant people didn’t bother her. More than that, she never went into the bad parts alone and rarely went there at all; the only time there was a need was when she was headed to a dungeon.

The voice came from a very short woman standing on the low bridge that separated the archway Sophia was at and the flat stone wall behind her from the other archways she’d seen in the fog. She had hair that was so yellow it wasn’t blond but was instead more like sunflower yellow and eyes that glowed slightly in the dim air. “It also deters creepums and does a number on Devouring Moss; that stuff’s too dumb to let go. Destroys the moss, unfortunately, but that’s better than waking up with a moss blanket. Or not waking up, as the case may be. Anyway, you two aren’t creepums or moss; you look like a pair of lost youth. I don’t recognize your Warps; you must be newly outcast. Why don’t you come in, have a rest, and tell me about yourselves?”

Sophia glanced at Dav. “Should we …?”

He shrugged. “We wanted a meal and a warm place. Seems like the best way to get it.”

It was a bit of a jump up to the bridge, but both Dav and Sophia made it without a problem.

Now that they were close enough, Sophia could see that the woman was not only just as short as she’d seemed from a distance, barely half Dav’s height, but that she had a pair of bright yellow furry cat ears peeking out of her too-yellow-to-be-blond hair. She was also dressed very similarly to Sophia, armed with a crossbow and wearing light but functional armor. Sophia got the feeling that if they had turned out to be creepums, whatever that was, they’d have noticed the woman after they met the business end of a crossbow bolt rather than her voice.

The woman turned and led the way along a narrow walkway to the second archway. It didn’t have much of a covered entrance; instead, it was a platform at the same height as the bridge and the walkway with a door set immediately behind the outer row of stone blocks of the arch. As she put her hand on the door handle, before she even opened the door, she intoned, “Welcome to Fallen Kestii.”

The name Kestii sounded familiar.

Dav was faster than Sophia to recognize the connection. “Wait. Kestii? Wasn’t that the name of the Shard?”