I didn't expect that this city would have a sewer system. But there I was now, standing, still naked, amidst liquid, bodily waste. When I fell through the floor I fell for about two seconds before hitting the ground. To my surprise, however, I managed to cushion my fall with my two feet and the hand that has been a tremendous help in my survival thus far. Looking at it more closely now, I noticed that the hand was actually a fleshy red in skin colour. Up to this point I always assumed it was someone's blood that covered it but it appeared to have been a shade of skin reminiscent of its hemerite origin. I wondered briefly why my entire body wasn't as red as the hand was but quickly discarded the thought again as I never would find the answer to this question anyway.
I gazed up at the hole in the ceiling, providing just a little light for me to identify my immediate surroundings. The stone that the sewers were made of was just as black as the rest of the city, albeit coated in a slimy film of some substance that made it hard to walk on it barefoot. Where I stood was one of two walkways, to my left was a wide stream of sewage water that was about as broad as I was tall and on the other end was the second walkway. I theorised that at some points they must be connected to each other by some means, perhaps a bridge or a sluice gate. The river of waste ran quietly along and I got the feeling that I would probably have some safer footing inside the water than on the ooze-covered stone, yet I didn't want to expose myself to this reeking mass of thick amalgamation of liquids unless I absolutely had to.
With nowhere else to go, I cautiously inched forward (I tried not to slip) in the direction where there was the most residual light from the hole in the ceiling, bracing the dark tunnel ahead of me. As I pressed on it got significantly darker to the point at which I believed I stood in front of a wall only for it to turn out to be a bend that had me almost fall into the stream below. I stopped there, regaining my balance and letting my eyes adjust to the darkness so that I could actually see where I was going. I was soon able to see further ahead and noticed a few holes in the walls, spread intermittently, with more sewage guzzling out of them every so often. "Where does all this stuff come from?", I wondered. There must have been at least a few active households in the city. An unnerving prospect.
Soon I came close to one of the holes, stopping ad hoc when I heard a curious noise that sounded like some muffled scream emanating from the aperture. Just then, a naked, ooze-covered humanoid was regurgitated by the hole in the wall landing in front of me with a splash. Some of the ooze touched my feet and I involuntarily took a step back. The sorry creature moaned and squirmed to life. On all fours, it looked up at me with a mixture of shock and surprise on its face. I, too, was bewildered at the sight, for the details I spotted were unmistakable. Red eyes, pointy ears, a distinct pallor of the skin. Before me lay a female blood elf of all things! Just how it got there I could not fathom. "Are you… alright?", I asked in an attempt at communicating with her. Her first response was an unintelligible scream. Her second response was a leap to my feet. However, she slipped and fell headfirst into the sewage. She was submerged for a few seconds before sticking her head out of the water a few footsteps away from me, crying as loudly as she probably could. Not knowing how to move, it seemed, she was carried away by the stream.
The peace didn't last for very long, because the noise attracted the attention of other creatures of her ilk. From where I stood I saw several shapes in the distance rise up. Some followed the screaming girl, some advanced towards me. Readying myself, I knew that, this time, there was nowhere I could run. I had to fight my way through what I assumed to be discarded members of society.
My hand morphed into a blade of sinew, muscle and bone and, with some confidence, I walked up to the elves head-on. The first was a tall and lean man who was just as naked and ooze-covered as that other girl. I didn't give him a fighting chance and rushed him, blade pointed towards his chest. In the next moment, his form hung lifeless on my arm, ready to be thrown into the murky waters.
Behind me was another of indiscernible gender, for they crawled quickly towards me on all fours. It grabbed my ankle and caused me to slip and fall, hitting the back of my head on the floor. With me dazed, the slimy elf crawled up my body and I felt some distinctly female features touch me as it did. She rested herself upon me and I felt it again, the urge to give in. But before she could enjoy this forced penetration she has put me through, I sliced her head clean off. I sent it flying into the adjacent sludge but got myself soiled with her arterial blood in return.
Her corpse slid smoothly off my manhood, a sight that killed all previously felt excitement. It was good, for I needed no more distractions. I clumsily stepped over the body and got ready for the next attacker who had just been expunged from one of the holes. This male… something came at me, arms outstretched and mouth wide open. A welcome pose, for it was easy for me to take his left wrist and twist him around, using his arm as leverage. Pressing the arm firmly against his back, I held him captive as a meat shield. The sensation of my skin touching his was repulsive, but I was willing to deal with that in the face of mortal danger. I pressed forward, my hostage writhing but he couldn't escape my superior strength of grip. The next few elves I could defend against using him. That's when I discovered that Aímamer were no strangers to cannibalism either. Several of them would take a bite or two out of my unfortunate captive who cried out in agony as they did. I used the diversion and pushed them off the walkway to clear the path. After the fifth or sixth attacker, my captive died and carrying a heavy corpse as a shield was way too cumbersome, so I threw him, too, off the walkway and into the moving ooze.
Having ditched my reluctant companion, I faced the next few specimens on my own. Quick slashes and stabs made short work of all who came too close for comfort. I soon lost track of how many I killed, but after a while, the onslaught ceased. I moved along quickly since I didn't intend to wait around for more of them being spawned by those ominous holes. Leaving a trail of corpses behind me, I noticed an odd quality about these elves. They weren't like those I had seen in the hamlet. None of them spoke, they only screamed. They also seemed to be thoroughly disoriented and were almost wild and feral in their general behaviour. Only the most basic instincts appeared to function. What all of this meant, I could only guess.
Meanwhile, the stench of the sewers was getting to me. A repugnant mixture of iron, sulphur, bile and other olfactory flavours began to make me sick. I kept moving slowly and found myself in a different kind of area. There were now several branching paths in the walls, some of them leading to ladders. I tried the first ladder I saw and climbed. I arrived beneath some circular stone plate that looked like it could be moved but it wouldn't budge. I retreated, trying the next ladder and the one after that and another one and yet more, all with the same result. I exited the area thereafter, finding myself in a circular chamber with a pillar in the center and a grate underneath my feet. Above me there loomed several more holes and I was already prepared for the worst when suddenly, I was showered in blood and body parts. That explained the grate I was walking on. Torn bits of flesh and even entire extremities and bits of innards rained down from the convex ceiling. The smell was nigh unbearable.
I chose not to linger and walked forward into a long corridor that was completely submerged in sludge. There was no other way to go so I braced the sewage water, not knowing how deep it would become. After a few steps I achieved maximum depth, which meant I was submerged in whatever vile waste it was up to my hips, slowly wading through half rotten bits of viscous biomatter. It became even darker as I went until I could barely see what lay in front of me. The only sound I could hear was the sludge as it passed by my body. I didn't know if that was disconcerting or not.
After a very long time, I do not remember how long, of going along, taking turns and following the stream wherever it led, there was something that finally broke up the black stillness around me. A ray of light, faint, and altogether invisible in normal conditions, shone like a beacon of hope against the dark of the sewers. I was drawn to it. Around me I noticed that there were walkways again. For how long, I wondered, did I needlessly travel among the sludge then? I pulled myself up the ledge and approached the light. There was another ladder. Another false lead, perhaps? I climbed it. I pushed against the hatch at the top. And it opened.
—
My fingers touched some stone flooring again. I crawled out from the hatch, leaving a trail of what ooze was left on my body in my wake. I was conscious in closing the hatch again for it to remain inconspicuous so that no probable pursuer could hazard a guess as to my whereabouts, although they could probably tell from the traces that I had left of myself anyway. I quickly scanned the room I was in, neglectful of finer details in favour of a wooden crate near one of the corners for me to push and place over the hatch so that whomsoever desired to come after me was at the very least slowed down. The crate was quite heavy, too, prompting me to wonder what was inside, yet the smell it gave off deterred me from opening it.
In fact, there appeared to be several such crates all around the rectangular chamber of more black stone - 13 in total, making the one that I sealed the hatch with the fourteenth. These all but tainted the air I breathed and I was quite eager to leave the room. A small flight of stairs carved out from a wall to my right led up, so I quietly snuck towards it and ascended each step with care. Not only were my bare feet slippery, making too much noise had been nothing but impractical for me in the past. I stuck my head out of the open floor above me to confirm the absence of any lifeforms, whatever shape they might take as my journey continued, and found the space blissfully vacant. From what my eyes could gather in the dim light of a single, burning lantern, it appeared to be a very small house with no upstairs area and limited living space. There was one closet, one bed, a basket, a small table and chair as well as a few shelves with novelty items, likely for decorative purposes. But whoever had made their home there was certainly up to no good if the wooden crates and the cellar's direct connection to those sewers were any indication. Moreover, the presence of a burning lantern meant that its tenant might make their return yet and I didn't know if I was equipped to handle an able-bodied person with their wits about them. Mindless sex creatures and what appeared to be infant elves in grown bodies weren't too much of a hurdle. But an intelligent person was a different story.
I stopped dwelling on these implications and instead searched the home for useful items - and found them. At long last, the basket held several cloths that, although not entirely clean by themselves, were of much use to me in order to wipe off any remaining grime and sludge from my body. There was no water to be found anywhere but at the very least I wasn't coated in filth anymore. I remained somewhat itchy, but that was better than wet and sticky. The closet turned out to be a small wardrobe and to my great excitement actually held clothes inside. A roughly sewn, short-sleeved burlap tunic, a pair of padded leggings with some leathery reinforcements to them and a pair of leather boots. There were a few more items inside but those fit my physique the best. The tunic hung a little loose in places, however. Taking the items made me more comfortable and moving around in them wasn't too difficult either. Only the knowledge that their owner will inevitably notice the theft left a bitter taste in my mouth but I'd rather go out dressed than naked again.
Without waiting for the owner of my newly acquired attire to come back, I advanced through the door and out onto the streets. And just like that, I found myself in an entirely alien environment.
How was architecture like that even possible? Was I even inside the city anymore or have I unknowingly stumbled through a portal into another world yet again? None of it was right. It was head-hurting. While standing still, the houses around me looked fairly normal. Some seemed to be levitating a bit off the ground, others appeared to be half-buried in the ground and still others were outright crooked and twisted. But what was most off-putting was that the angles changed shape as soon as I started moving. Whenever I moved, so did the geometry of the buildings. It was as if every building was constructed in such a way as to have different internal dimensions depending on the angle you'd approach it from. As I passed them by, they seemed to turn, rotate, fold in on themselves and out again like paper. What, by the Divines, was I looking at?
They were still constructed from the same material. But as I tried to move around one of them as I touched it, I could feel my hand be drawn into the stone itself? And ejected from it when I moved a bit further as the outside walls shifted continuously? It is almost impossible to describe what I was seeing and feeling. As if reality itself was starting to break apart and this was a symptom of it. However, I found some use in the anomalous properties of the surrounding structures. As I continued my bewildered wanderings, I happened upon a wall that curiously produced a set of sharply cut indentations in regular intervals. A remnant of the former presence of a ladder, perhaps? I found that, if I approached it from a very specific angle, making sure to not stray my path, that those indentations stayed where they were. I used this to my advantage and scaled the wall in an effort to climb to the roof to get an overview of where I was situated. Sure enough, when I reached the top, I was permitted a view of a good portion of the city layout.
At first I questioned my place within reality itself. Those warping houses were one thing, sure. But the rest of the city? So I looked where I believed must have been South and I saw plenty of the angular buildings that I had been chased through earlier. In fact, it appeared to be a large ring of the outermost layer of the city layout that was built from these very buildings. I did even see some of the creatures roam about, looking for me. But then, I turned around.
I gazed at the center of the city. In a feeble attempt to place myself in it and have a point of reference as to where I was. Where I stood was another large ring of these shifting and changing structures and the houses became less and less real the further they were from the city walls. Some force bent the space around them, corrupted them, almost. And in the center…
A giant fortress of black stone, untouched by the corruption. The roads around it curved inward and outward, adjacent houses were floating and crumbled away as they did. Debris was everywhere. And yet, amidst all the chaos, the fortress stood immovable. That must have been where Atebid held Nephethys captive. But there was something else even more worrying. The sun seemed closer, somehow. It was becoming brighter, albeit very slowly. But also, and I have neglected to mention it because I fear my words could not do it justice, but there was… something that descended upon the fortress. The sky was lit, golden rays were cast everywhere, but the sky directly above the fortress was being obstructed by… something I can not fathom the nature of, slowly but surely coming down from the sky. On either side of the fortress, it appeared as if one pillar each, made from a foreign, white material, had come down from the sky. Pillars so large, they dwarfed even the large fortress itself. But from above, there was something else descending upon it. I didn't know what it was until much later.
I knew where I was headed. I made some efforts to climb down the way I came but I made the unconscious mistake of moving back and forth. I lost the correct angle of approach and got trapped on the flat roof of the monolithic tower. To make matters worse, my left foot got stuck inside the stone after having moved around some. And when next I turned, a hole opened underneath me, sucking me into the structure. I fell through a viscous mass of shifting stone. Whenever I turned my head I sunk a little deeper and the stone around me changed. Sometimes it squeezed my ribcage so tightly I could barely breathe, once my right leg got nearly crushed by the constantly changing material. At some point, I got ejected out of what I assumed must have been a window at some point. I fell onto the road outside and before me lay the warping buildings of this accursed city. And the further I looked, the more unpredictable the roads became.
Replies