Labyrinth

Seth listened to the sewer. Covered in grime, smelling of filth, he stood in a small tunnel junction somewhere beneath the streets of Ashworld. A low hum echoed down the halls, changing in pitch with the soft breaths of the passages. For hours now, the hum had been an ethereal companion in the darkness, but Seth could see no sign of its source. Something told him it was significant, but it could have been just wind moving through the many grates and pipes.

“Do you have any bloody idea what I’m standing in?” came a rough voice from below.

He looked down the ladder to see Roland still standing at the watery base of the shaft they had just finished exploring. The green glow of Seth’s phosphor lamp did little to hide the green look on Roland’s face. “No one ordered you to come along, soldier,” said Seth.

“You barge into my house on my day’s leave and announce this scheme of yours to catch a bird, and expect me to tag along! What do you call that?” The clatter of Roland’s boots announced his ascent up the ladder.

“That was a request, not an order. You can go back any time you please.” Seth gave Roland a hand up, and the lieutenant cleared the top of the shaft and stepped out into the chamber.

“I have half a mind to,” said Roland as he tried in vain to brush the grime from his trouser legs. “But if you get yourself lost or drowned, I don’t intend to be dragged in front of a squad of Exemplar keen to know where their precious princess went. Ah, Hells, where are we?”

“Dock district, near the outlets, I think. The water’s a little clearer here.”

Roland snorted. The distinction seemed to elude him. “You’ve got until the one o’clock chimes, then we’re going up if I have to haul you to a ladder myself. Assuming we even hear them down here.”

Seth nodded. Aside from the mysterious sound, this expedition had yielded little. He chose an easterly passage and started down it. His boots made unpleasant squishing sounds that he tried not to contemplate.

They came to a wide flooded tunnel with slick walls, and were forced to wade into the grimy water. The submerged floor dropped away as they progressed, until the water was above Seth’s waist. He held his gauntlet and lamp high as they made their way down the passage. On the far end, the floor rose again to a wide circular chamber where the water was only ankle-deep. Seth shined his lamp into the grand hall that opened up outside the tunnel. Roland swore again at the filth, and Seth tried to suppress his humor at the lieutenant’s ire.

A bestial roar thundered up in a noisome splash behind Seth, and he turned to see Roland dragged down, arms and legs flailing, into a mighty torrent of water at the deepest point of the tunnel. Two blasts from the lieutenant’s cartridge pistol lit the water in orange fire, but struck only stony walls. In those angry flashes Seth could see Roland grapple with a slick black shape twice his size.

Seth dashed toward his friend as fast as he could slog through the roiling water. From the mass of reptilian claws and loud cursing that splashed in front of him swung a huge scaly appendage. It caught him square in the chest, knocking him against the stone wall. He staggered back into shallow water.

“Roland!” Seth shouted.

The sewer did not answer. Small swirling eddies marked where the lieutenant went down into the blackness.

“Rol!” Seth rushed back to the edge of the basin and plunged his free hand into the water. He grasped around, but all sign of Roland was gone. He was just about to dive fully into the tunnel when he heard the sound of soft splashing footsteps behind him. He turned again to the shallow chamber.

Three figures approached. They wore tightly wrapped rags bundled against the cold and tied off by whipcord around the waist, wrists and ankles. Smaller than average, lean and wiry, they walked with a predatory gait. As they came within range of Seth’s lamp, he could see the large pointed ears and hairy snout of the Kait. Their eyes sparkled yellow in the glow.

“You are trespassing in the domain of the Whistler,” one of them hissed. He was lanky and long-limbed, with black and grey pepper markings on his face. “Trespassers must pay a fine, which we will happily collect from your hide.”

Seth recalled the old myth of the Whistler – the immortal lord of the Tarsian underworld that supposedly every criminal in the city tithed to. Strange that these Kait would invoke the name. Seth felt a swell of angry imperial authority well up inside him. “I don’t know that name or recognize his command. This is the Emperor’s city and the Emperor’s sewers,” he said.

“Pity the Emperor is not around to argue his claim.”

Seth had just enough warning to drop into a defensive stance as the first Kait on his left rushed him. With surprising speed, the small figure lashed out at him with slashing claws in an open-palm technique. It took all of Seth’s training to block the rapid maneuvers, deflecting each swipe with his gauntlet or wrist. Even though the creature could not land a direct blow, Seth felt tiny nicks and cuts flay open on his arms during the exchange. He quickly swapped the small lamp to his left hand and used it as a bludgeon, cracking the Kait’s skull with a swift strike that left him howling.

The Kait stepped back. Seth looked up to realize that the other two had circled around him in a triangular formation. He crouched low, looked at each of them, and recalled the tactics for multiple opponents that had won him accolades in the academy games. If these cats believed they could take down the five-time trial champion, Seth was only too happy to prove them wrong.

The first strike came from the Kait Seth had just clubbed. He feinted forward with a direct strike, intending to draw the technologist away from his companion on the other side. Seth saw the deception easily and swung around on the lunging second Kait with a roundhouse kick to the chest. He then continued his spin, catching the first with a chop to the back and a hooking kick to the ankle that drove him hard to the ground. Seth rounded on the salt-and-pepper Kait just in time to catch a series of attacks with his gauntlet. The metal clockwork, though delicate in appearance, was sturdy enough to dissuade the attacker from landing too many bare-handed blows on its sharp surface.

The four combatants danced together in the dark watery chamber, grunts, hisses and the wet slap of fists on flesh marking the cadence of the fight. In just two moves, Seth had all three of his opponents on one side of him. He deflected them easily as they were forced to engage one at a time, but he knew that attrition would eventually get the best of him if he did not find a way to even the battle.

Another flash of claws and fists, and this time the cats landed a series of hits. Fire poured across Seth’s side as a gutting slash raked his ribs. Another landed a glancing blow to the head, and the third caught his left arm in an awkward charge. Seth lost his grip on the lamp, and it spun away into the darkness of the tunnel. He stumbled back through the foul water, slipping on submerged stones in an attempt to regain his balance. His opponents squared off against him.

As the lamp quickly sank, its fading glow disappearing into the murky depths, Seth saw the Kaits’ eyes glittering yellow in the growing shadow. Even as their forms disappeared from sight, their clear, disembodied eyes marched toward him, until even that dim glow faded, and there was only darkness. The low growl of one of the creatures filled the chamber.

“Your eyes are not made for darkness, human. How will you fight us now?”

With that, all was silence, save the gentle lapping of water on stone. Quiet ripples marked the passage of the predators closing on their blind prey.

Then came a click, and the distinct hiss of ether canisters ejecting their volatile contents into a technologist’s machinery. Cracks of electricity echoed off the stone walls as flashes of white hot energy. The Kait, shaken and pale in the unnatural light, stepped back as the Exemplar Aspirant appeared from the darkness wreathed in a dire aura. Seth stood bathed in the flickering blue glow of his gauntlet as arcs of harnessed lightning leapt across his arm.

“I’ll find a way,” he said.