Chapter 538: Under the Underground

Owyn felt sick. His arms had taken on some kind of weight, despite the blood loss, but he pushed ahead, even arguing down Arc when she said he had to get to the hospital. When Arc confessed that she and Veng didn’t have any sort of backup, it only solidified his resolve to keep helping so that hopefully all of them could get her rescued quickly. Abandoning Raven just felt wrong, and he knew he could still fight.

Veng suggested Owyn should go to the Knights instead, but Arc suddenly insisted it would take too long. Owyn remembered how intimidating Amarena was and how poorly Arc interacted with the demoness. He couldn’t really blame her for wanting to avoid trouble, but it felt unfair that she’d put Raven on the line over her bad relationship with one of her mothers.

Skull, or Steven, rather, was able to identify the way out most likely taken by their quarry, though he knew nothing about the Lodge other than its name. The four of them set off into the tunnels, keeping Steven ahead of them. Even though Owyn just wanted to knock the human out and be done with him, Steven was the only one who knew how to make the obol work, and so they were stuck with him.

The problem was, once he knew he wasn’t in immediate danger, the human just wouldn’t stop talking. From what he gathered, though, Skull was very much trying to depict himself as someone who worked on the shallow end of the shady side of Norneau.

Owyn understood the guy was nervous, but he wasn’t interested in the gang he was running, what other gangs were doing, or anything about the life story of a human who thought "Skull" was a great nickname.

Arc was the first one to snap. "Could you shut up? I’m starting to think you’re trying to let the whole city know we’re coming."

"V-verily, young demoness," he gasped. The silence, with the exception of their pattering footsteps and the slight echo of the concrete halls, lasted all of a minute before he asked, "So Veng... how did you get past the guards?"

"There was just the one at the door," Veng answered.

"Oh... she took them all..."

Arc cast her hands up in the air "Oh my stars-"

"What else can you tell us about her?" Veng interrupted as Steven indicated their turn at the next cross corridor.

"Miss Varcott is a very private woman. I know she was a champion in the arena games, where she lost her hands, but aside from that, I was never deep enough to-"

"Yeah, we get it, you’re a small fry," Arc jabbed. "Why would you even start working in something illegal?"

Steven abruptly tripped, landing hard against the wall before his ankle gave way. Owyn wound up having to stop short to avoid running into him before Arc and Veng slowed and stopped as Owyn helped the injured human up. "I needed the money, okay!" Steven shouted through the pain. He had tears in his eyes. And when he realised everyone’s eyes were on him, he ground his teeth and continued. "It was my dad. After mom died, he just... He got into it bad..."

"Gambling?" Veng asked softly.

Steven nodded his head. "One day, the bastard just disappeared, and suddenly his debt was mine and I just..." He wiped his eyes. "You were gone. This job was the best I could manage. No one would hire someone who got expelled from the Academy... But I didn’t sign up for this."

Owyn felt a little for the guy, especially since he was talking like a normal person for once, but the fact remained that they needed to catch up to Raven’s kidnappers now. He put a heavy hand on his shoulder. "I get that this isn’t easy. But we need to stop these people from hurting someone else." He looked at Arc, "Could your parents maybe do something for him?"

That made Steven turn to her as she raised her hands in protest. "Who are you? They wanted you, not her."

"It’s better if you don’t know," Arc said pointedly, before sighing. "I’ll do what I can if we get her back and we don’t get in trouble." Her voice was a bit shaky, and Owyn got the sense that she was definitely holding back her own panic. Steven chose that moment to confirm his ankle wouldn’t hold his weight, with a yelp of pain. "Fuck, Owyn, I think it would be best if you carried him," Arc stated as she palmed her forehead. "This is the worst. Can we get going already?"

They resumed their jog through the tunnels, with Owyn carrying Steven since he was big enough to handle the weight easily. To Owyn, it felt like he was carrying a sack of chicken bones.

The magic-wrought concrete tunnels all blended together until five minutes later, Steven called out, "Turn right!" only for them to wind up at a wall.

"Ah... shit," Feng said, covering his face with his sleeve.

Owyn looked down and discovered he meant it in the literal sense. A hatch labeled as leading down into the sewers promised worse smells.

Where Feng hesitated, Arc reached down and yanked the hatch open. "Thank the fucking stars these uniforms are self-cleaning," she scowled before jumping down, as if to avoid contact with every surface she could.

Feng followed, taking the ladder, and Owyn dropped Steven into the vampire’s arms before climbing down himself. "Which way?" Arc asked the moment everyone was in, while Owyn resumed carrying Steven.

To Owyn’s surprise, the sewers were as impressively scaled as the rest of Norneau. Walkways large enough for two smallfolk to walk abreast lined both sides of the sewer, with bridges connected across junctions.

Pipes of different sizes ran along the arched roof, with the largest in the center. Some sort of wire ran along the center pipe connecting light sources bolted to the pipe. Despite the smell, the water running through the sewers was remarkably clear. He got the sense that most of the discharge occurred underneath the stone walkways. The only things that really marred the ambiance were the smell and the prevalence of graffiti that covered everything but the numbers painted at every junction.

As they hurriedly walked, Owyn noticed that there were strange shapes in the water. Almost like bubbles that seemed to cling to the bottom of the sewer canals and refused to move in the gentle flow. When he asked what they were, he learned from Veng that the city used the most primitive form of magical life, slimes, to clean the waters. They could break down most organic matter, but that still left plenty of invisible toxins in the water that needed filtering, which was something called a "treatment plant" handled somewhere else in the city.

Barely ten minutes later, the group turned a corner and Steven gasped, "Oh no." He pointed. "We’re in Tunnel Rat territory."

Owyn looked to find Steven pointing at graffiti of a stylized rat holding a pair of needles like swords. It was dressed in a cape and a wide-rimmed helmet, with red eyes over the mostly grey paint. There was so much graffiti surrounding it that he wouldn’t have known to pay attention to it at all if it hadn’t been pointed out.

"Shit," Feng muttered. "I thought we wouldn’t find them outside the fourth ward."

"That means we’re under the fourth ward," Steven said.

""I take it they’re a gang?"" Owyn and Arc guessed at the same time, sharing a look before looking away from each other.

"Not just a gang," Steven said. "They’re runners for the whole Underground."

"Ratkin mostly; very... territorial," Feng added.

"If we go through their tunnels, they’re not going to like that," Steven whined.

"How bad could they be?" Arc asked.

"Let’s just say anyone who crosses them learns to fear their own toilets," Steven answered, before groaning. "And of course, the obol says she’s that way," he pointed past the marker.

"I don’t have her scent anymore," Veng said. "They must have taken a different route."

"We don’t have time to go around!" Arc gestured at Steven, who flinched in Owyn’s arms. "We already lost too much time listening to his sob story."

"Whatever you decide... I shall follow," Veng said.

"Seriously Veng, who the fuck is this girl?" Steven asked.

"I am bound not to say," Veng replied.

"Okay then," Arc ignored the brief side conversation, "I say we stick together and rush through. If we see any Sewer Rats..."

""Tunnel Rats"" Veng and Steven corrected at the same time.

"...Tunnel Rats," Arc turned away to roll her eyes, though Owyn had seen enough of this from her to recognize the gesture, "we apologize and keep going. Any objections?" Her voice was sharp enough to get across that she would not be taking objections.

Everyone shook their heads. The plan decided, the four of them resumed their march through the sewers.