Chapter 1: The Sewer Says Hi
Mathal peered around the corner of the lightless, muggy sewer tunnel and received a noseful of wet rubble dust, wet decay, and wetter refuse. She jerked back, flat against the damp, sweating wall, and yanked the wooden clothespin off her snub nose. She flung the useless precaution into the slow, volatile thickness below. It sank into the clumpy sludge without a sound.
Mathal shut her eyes allowed herself a single, violent shudder of unadulterated disgust. The bedhead tangles of her shoulder-length, seal brown hair thwacked her sand-colored face and the small, fat turtle familiar on her shoulder. Chelon's head retracted into a disapproving mass of wrinkles under his pitch black shell. She gave his shell an apologetic rub with a gentle scratch from her long black nails, closer to a snapping turtle's claws than Chelon's would ever be.
A faint, high-pitched yap of Goblin echoed from around the corner and down their tunnel. The upper half of Mathal's head popped over the edge of the wall. Her hazel, demi monolid eyes pierced through the darkness.
The tunnel both fed into a gurgling cesspit to the south and channeled its filth past the cesspit under a rudimentary bridge of large wooden planks down three exits, two running north and one running south. Three goblins occupied the bridge. Each pointed down a different tunnel, precariously stomping and yapping with increasing force.
Unlike them, Mathal was not lost. Her target tunnel ran north out of the city of Westcrown toward the Hellknight stronghold at Citadel Rivad. She could either cross over or under the bridge, effectively a single option. Hopefully the goblins's plight rendered them non-hostile because she didn't have a crowd-dispersing spell to waste.
Mathal stepped out from behind the corner in full view of any darkness-piercing eyes. The goblins stopped yapping. She raised her empty hands to shoulder height alongside Chelon, who remained cautiously entombed in his shell. The three stood stockstill. She took one step forward. Another.
"Morning," she called out in Goblin. "Just passing through."
Each drew two little, curved swords drilled through with holes to reduce weight.
She cursed in Aklo.
They charged.
Small but fast, the goblins would clear the thirty feet between them in under six seconds-plenty of time. Mathal bent her knees into a lower-than-usual ready stance.
They came for blood with a high-pitched roar. Mathal's black nails tore the red from the throats on her left and her right. The third goblin aimed both blades at her crossed arms. They never made it into striking range.
Mathal's bedhead tangles surged ten feet out from her scalp. The witchlocks slammed into the goblin with the force of Mathal's own magic. The goblin and their swords went flying into the rank sludge of the cesspit. They sank without a sound. Mathal gagged.
Her hair shrank back just over her shoulders. Her arms fell back to her sides. She straightened up between the fallen goblins and stepped over the blood pooling under her boots. Chelon's head relaxed out of his shell only to radiate more disapproval.
She could, conceivably, have tried harder not to kill the goblins.
"I won't kill the next one," she promised her familiar in Taldane, Westcrown's Common tongue.
Although, the chances of encountering anyone else in the sewers at four thirty in the morning were slim to none, which was exactly why they were here instead of braving the city streets and their nightly patrols of shadow beasts.
Mathal crossed the bridge over to the two tunnels that ran north. She pointed at the wall between them and reverted back to Aklo.
"Just checking."
Between the motion and the words, magic flowed from the cold, silver coin in her chest and spread out in a sixty foot arc in front of her. Down the first tunnel, a chain of six numbers across one foot of stone block appeared in a pale yellow glow. 0-5-6-4-8-2, one of the marks used by boot-tier members the Orphanage like herself.
She ended the spell with a shift of thought, ninety minutes until dawn. The numbers faded back to invisibility.
The tunnel continued north. At each junction with a westward tunnel, Mathal checked for another mark. She was disappointed every time. She continued straight ahead long enough that she began to suspect that she'd missed her turn several junctions ago.
She dragged the nails of her left hand against the near wall. Grime piled up under them until the wet crud to broke under its own weight and fell in pieces.
Chelon raised his head to the level of her nose. She stopped. Metal clanked on stone in the distance, from the west.
The wall fractured under her fingernails. Mathal jumped back into a crouch, nails and tangles at the ready. A stone sheet no more than one inch thick shattered in a massive cloud of dust where she'd stood only seconds before. A willowy half-elf with shoulder-length, platinum hair and skin like faded brass shielded their face with their forearm in the false door's doorway.
They coughed lowered their forearm in the clearing dust. Despite the darkness, typically impenetrable to half-elves, their silvery blue eyes spotted Mathal. They screamed.
Mathal launched herself in a flying tackle through the doorway into a narrow tunnel. Her witchlocks shot from her scalp. The tangles from her bangs wrapped around the half-elf's mouth. The rest braced against the wall and absorbed the shock to keep from cracking any spines. She straightened off the half-elf but left the cage of hair around the two of them.
"You scream, you die, and not by me," she growled in Elven too low to echo.
The distinct clanks of three pairs of armored boots rang down the main hall. The only ones who'd come down into the sewers in full armor were Hellknights. The sewer's muggy darkness lightened from pitch black to smoky gray. Of course they had lights-only humans could afford to become Hellknights.
Mathal cursed in Aklo but pulled her hair back to her shoulders. She flumped flat against the wall between the half-elf and the opened doorway. The half-elf leaned off the wall, one pointed ear cocked toward the doorway.
Strains of drunken conversation in Common accompanied the growing nimbus of light. She could run or she could fight, but the Orphanage's mission demanded that she check the west-running tunnel ahead.
"May I cast a spell?" the half-elf asked in polished Elven.
Mathal threw up her arms and shook her head with violent apathy, her thoughts preoccupied by the impending murders. Chelon disapproved from her shoulder. The half-elf flicked their palm at the door.
"Hole-be-gone," they whispered.
A silent image filled the doorway, an exact, illusory replica of the sewer walls on either side of the hole.
The furthest shards of the false, fallen door crunched under an armored foot. Chelon's head disappeared into a mass of wrinkles. Mathal's witchlocks yanked the half-elf flat against the wall beside her.
All three Hellknights had stopped. Their armored shadows flickered in the torchlight inches from Mathal's own feet.
"Look at this shit-these Hell-damned sewers collapsing on us?"
"Nah. That's Westcrown, man, part of that urban-poor charm."
"I never thought I'd be saying this, but when are getting back to Rivad?"
They laughed. Then they kicked the stone shards into the channel of stinking filth and moved on south. The sewers faded back to their familiar darkness.
Mathal slumped off the wall and released the half-elf. They staggered to their feet but didn't back away from Mathal. Instead, they waited in quiet conversational distance while her hair retracted. They must've been lost.
"No," said Mathal.
"I didn't say-"
"You're still here. No, I can't help you. I'm working."
The half-elf inhaled up to their full height, only four inches over Mathal's five-foot-seven.
"I saved you and your turtle's lives."
They just had to drag Chelon into it. Her familiar's head popped out from his shell as he caught the drift of the conversation. She'd never feel the end of it if she abandoned the half-elf now. She exhaled every last cubic inch of air in her lungs.
"Mathal. The turtle's Chelon."
"Oh thank the Dark."
The genderless half-elf's name was 'Moris.' It sounded fake when he said it, but she didn't care enough to press him. She should've given him a fake name too, not that Chelon appeared to have any problem with him or the fact that he was a tag-along on her super secret mission. Fortunately, the Hellknights's tunnel was the one she'd been looking for. That, and Moris didn't question her either.
They followed the tunnel west until a final turn north. The tunnel made a pair of alternating turns, a zigzag constructed to avoid undermining one of the heavy guard towers along the city's northwestern wall. The zagwall sported a wooden door set in a well-built brick frame, most likely a utility closet.
Mathal walked right by it to the grate, locked, at the end of the sewer tunnel. She crouched by the lock and pulled a slim, waterproof leather case from her backpack. She selected two of the sturdier but blunter masterwork picks and tucked the case under her arm.
"There might be a crowbar in there," said Moris.
"We're almost out of here-just hold onto your low profile for ninety more seconds."
He'd already disappeared into the utility closet. Which meant its door hadn't been locked. Chelon's head retreated into his shell. Mathal lowered her picks and pivoted away from the grate, coiling tighter in her squat.
"Uh, Mathal? There's an, ah-"
She dropped the picks and the case. She sprinted to through door before they hit the ground.
The utility closet was larger than expected, containing a dust-covered desk, chair, and a mold-encrusted sleeping pallet along with racks and shelves of rusting, rotting equipment. The cloying reek of rot and mold combined with the wet, raw burn of sewage to physically assault Mathal's nose. She would've screamed if not for the creature that hung from the ceiling between her and Moris.
They called it a shadowgarm, an amorphous beast of black, oily shadow that favored a cross between snakes and insects in its manifestations. It should've been up on the city streets with the rest of the nightwatch, attacking criminals and pedestrians indiscriminately. Instead, its three, jointed claws stabbed at Moris.
He screamed and staggered back. Tools clattered off the shelves.
The three razor-sharp prongs chipped wood and stone a hair's breadth from his head.
Mathal raked through its carapace. Black oil slicked to the floor off her nails. She slammed with her witchlocks, but the creature's shadowy form blended with the darkness, and they passed straight through.
Her fingers went numb.
"Light!"
She dropped to the floor, paralyzed.
The shadowgarm's claws clicked at the joints and stabbed again. Their three prongs clanged off a wickedly curved blade in Moris's hands. The sword arced through the dark and shadow.
The lower/upper half of the shadowgarm flew over Mathal. The other half dropped to the floor. Its black, paralyzing oil splattered everywhere.
Moris dropped the sword and cursed in a language she'd never heard. A tiny flame sparked from his fingertip. He fell, arms stretched toward the monster's corpse.
Light filled the room as a fan of flames bloomed across the oily body. The light alone burned away the shadowbeast oil on Mathal's fingers.
She pushed up onto her hands and feet. Her tangled witchlocks writhed across the floor and plucked up the fallen, fully entombed Chelon. They set him over her shoulder.
"So, no crowbar," said Moris sheepishly.
"Shocker."
He inspected both sides of his blade for any sign of the shadowbeast oil, but the light of the corpse pyre had burned all of it off. He returned it to a sheath on his back.
Chelon's squat little limbs lowered and fixed on either side of Mathal's collarbone. She grinned and gave his shell a triumphant rub.