This story was originally posted to AO3 and tumblr. It's based on/inspired by an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer of the same name. Later chapters will include some scenes of violence and gore. Will be updated semi-regularly.
Valkyrie grimaced as Skulduggery pried open the manhole cover. He set it to one side, next to a large black duffel bag he had brought with him.
"Please tell me we are not actually going to down there" she said. He glanced towards her, "Of course we are! Where did you think we were going when I said 'we're going monster hunting in the sewers tonight'?"
"I thought it was a joke! I didn't really think we were going to be swimming in a sewer. We're not exactly dressed for the occasion".
"Where's your sense of adventure?" he said before picking up the bag, taking one large step and letting himself fall into the hole and into the darkness below.
"Says the man with no sense of smell," she muttered under her breathe before sighing. She stepped over to the manhole and looked down. It was late at night and there was no moon out, but the streetlights above her illuminated the first few feet of the shaft. She could see the grey stone and the first few rungs of a ladder, but after that there was just darkness. It was narrow and dank and she had no idea how deep it was, "You know I'm claustrophobic" she called down.
"You'll be fine, it's rather spacious once you reach the bottom" his voice wafted back up. He didn't sound too far away, so that was something at least. She sighed once more and lowered herself into the hole. Her feet dangled in the air for a moment before they found the ladder's rungs. She shifted her weight so her hands could grip the ladder as well. The metal was cold and slimy against her skin. She balked at the feeling and, wanting to minimise the time she spent touching the metal, she let herself drop the rest of the way. She used her magic to cushion her fall, it wasn't hard, she'd had plenty of practice jumping out of her bedroom window by now.
It was dark and damp down the hole, but at least the smell was not quite as bad as she had been expecting.
"Skulduggery?" she called out, she couldn't see him but she could hear him rummaging around for something.
"Just a minute…ah, here we go," at that a bright light lit up the tunnel. Valkyrie's eyes took a moment to adjust but once they did she could see that the light was coming from a hardhat with a built in flashlight. Skulduggery handed it to her, "Put this on, if we find this monster you're going to need your hands free."
She put the hat on then nodded, causing it to slip forward over her eyes. She adjusted the hat, making a mental note to avoid moving her head too much.
Now that she could see, she noticed that they were standing on a small platform raised a few centimetres above a filthy stream. Skulduggery bent back over the bag for a moment before pulling out two fluorescent orange jumpsuits.
She scowled at him, "I am not wearing that. It's hideous, it's orange. Orange, Skulduggery! I don't wear orange, I wear cool black clothes and you wear stylish tailored suits, that's our thing. We shouldn't change our thing."
She could tell from the way he tilted his head the he was amused by her reaction. "I'm not going to force you to wear it, but you should think about where we are before you say no,"
Valkyrie looked back down at the filthy water, and then back up at the slimy walls. She snatched one of the suits from his grasp, "I hate you so much,"
"For packing orange jumpsuits?"
"For dragging me down this stinking hole. Next time we're going somewhere fun, like the cinema or, I don't know, an amusement park or something."
"Well, if I hear of any monsters attacking mortals at an amusement park, I'll be sure to let you know."
She turned her back to him and slipped on the jumpsuit over the clothes Ghastly had made her. The suit was made from a thick material, possibly Kevlar. But she didn't know a lot about the monster they were hunting tonight, so she left her protective clothes on underneath.
Like the hat, the clothing was too big for her. The material was elasticated at the wrists and ankles, but the rest of it hung loosely off her frame. She zipped up the suit as high as she could get it and then looked down at her unprotected hands, "I don't suppose you have any gloves in that bag? Or boots?"
"Ah, yes. Now that you mention it bringing those would have been a good idea."
She turned around to berate him again, but stopped short at the sight of him standing there in the matching jumpsuit. She couldn't help herself from laughing, "You look ridiculous."
"Well if it makes you feel any better, so do you,"
"Why would that make me feel better?"
"I thought seeing someone you admire so much looking ridiculous might upset you. So I thought if you knew how ridiculous you looked you wouldn't feel so bad about it."
Her brow furrowed, "You are so weird. Why do I even hangout with you?"
He shrugged, "Who else would take you on an adventure though Dublin's sewerage system?" and with that he stepped off the platform and into the water below."
Against her better judgment, she followed him. The water was thinker than it should have been and full of debris but it wasn't deep. It didn't even reach her knees, and the clothing kept her dry and safe from whatever diseases lurked in sewage. She tried hard not to think about what she was wading through, failed, and muttered "This is by far, the grossest thing I have ever done."
Skulduggery didn't hear her, or at least pretend not to. They'd come to a junction in the sewer and he was busy looking at a map. She caught up with him and glanced at the page, "We are here," he sad pointing at the map. Then he pointed to a red X, "here is where the sewage maintenance worker says he and his colleague were attacked." He traced a path from the red X to their location, "this is the path they took to get there. We're going to retrace their steps, and hope we find some trace of the missing worker,"
"Wait, missing worker? I thought you said we were looking for a monster."
"We are. When the mortals were attacked, they split up and tried to run. The monster chased after one of them and the other got away. I'm hoping if we find the missing man, or what's left of him, it'll lead us to the monster." He glanced at her, like he was surprised she didn't know this, "Did you even read the briefing Ravel gave you?"
"What briefing?"
He looked at her incredulously, which was pretty impressive for someone with no face, "The one he handed you this morning"
She thought back to this morning and vaguely remembered Ravel handing her a large file full of papers. She remembered he'd given them to her early in the morning, before she'd had her morning coffee. She'd been too grumpy to read them, so she'd tossed them in her to-do pile, before getting up and going to find some caffeine.
"Oh right...that briefing. I uh, definitely meant to read it, and you know what they say: it's the thought that counts, right?
"I don't think anyone says that."
She shrugged, "Right well, whatever. So what do we know about this monster?"
"Not a whole lot. The man who escaped wasn't exactly clear on the details. He just said something big and scary jumped out at them and attacked, it threw him across the tunnel and he hit his head against the wall. His colleague ran off and the monster followed him."
"So we pretty much have no idea what were up against."
"No, but I like to think that only adds to the adventure."
They walked in a comfortable silence for a while, Skulduggery consulting the map every time they reached a junction. They had been walking for about twenty minutes, when a sudden thought struck Valkyrie, "Do you think it's a mutant?" she blurted out, "Like a human sized mutant turtle or a rat, that knows ninjutsu"
He stopped and stared at her again with those big empty eye sockets, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You know, teenage mutant ninja turtles?"
"I don't know what that is, but I'm going to assume it's safe to say that's not what we'll be fighting today."
"Oh," she said feeling a little disappointed. They continued on in silence again, until they reached the place marked with an 'X' on the map, "Here we are," Skulduggery said.
Valkyrie looked around. This tunnel was much the same as the others, except the water was a little deeper and a little faster. There was another junction up ahead, presumably that was where the monster had jumped out from. She glanced at Skulduggery, he was staring at the wall. She followed his gaze and her helmet light illuminated a patch of dried blood.
"This is where the guy who was thrown across the room landed?"
"Yes, I think so. The monster must have come from that direction," Skulduggery said nodding towards the junction on the left, "for the maintenance worker to be thrown against this wall."
"Right, so which way did the other guy go?"
"My bet? Back the way we came. If the monster was as big as the briefing suggested, he wouldn't have wanted to try and squeeze past it." Skulduggery turned on his heels, and set off back down the tunnel. Valkyrie's shoulders sagged, "But we just walked that way."
"Which is precisely why it is back the way we came. Come on."
She followed him, this time keeping a closer eye on her surroundings, looking for any sign of a struggle, but she didn't see any. They didn't walk far this time - only until they reached another junction they had passed earlier. If the man had been chased down here this would have been his first opportunity to try and loose his pursuer, Valkyrie realised.
"Do you think he turned here?" she asked, peering down one tunnel and then the other.
Skulduggery nodded, "There's a glove-print on the wall of the tunnel on the right. I saw it the first time we passed. He probably turned the corner too sharply and had to use his hands to steady himself."
Valkyrie looked back down the right-hand tunnel. It took her a moment to spot what Skulduggery had noticed. There was a small bit of the wall, roughly the shape and size of an adult human hand, that was cleaner than the rest. The dirt must have come off the wall when the man's gloved hand touched it.
They started down the tunnel, walking slowly, so as to inspect the walls for further clues. Valkyrie didn't bother to search the floor though, the stream would have washed away any clues which had fallen into it. Plus, the whole sewage thing was still grossing her out. They reached yet another junction without seeing anything of interest.
"Which way now?"
Skulduggery hesitated, Valkyrie could tell he wasn't sure himself. After looking around, and finding nothing, he instead opened up the map.
"There's an old maintenance hatch about 800 meters down the tunnel on the left. It's not used now but if the man knew about it, it's possible he might have tried to escape that way."
They took the left-hand tunnel until they reached the hatch Skulduggery had mentioned. There was a ladder there like the one they had come down. Valkyrie climbed it and tried opening the hatch from the inside, it didn't budge, she could see it had been welded shut.
"He didn't get out this way," she said, jumping down. "Do you think he would have tried the hatch and then kept running when he realised he couldn't open it?"
Skulduggery shook his head, "If he tried to open it the monster would have caught up with him. But there's no sign of a struggle here, and I don't think he would have ran past it either. No, I think he didn't know about this hatch. I doubt he even came down this tunnel".
"So, we're going back the way we came?"
"We are," Skulduggery confirmed, setting off again.
Valkyrie followed, trying to ignore her sore legs. It wasn't easy walking through water the texture of a chunky soup in over-sized overalls.
When they reached the previous junction they stopped again.
"Which one do we try now?" she asked.
Skulduggery paused and peered down one of the tunnels they hadn't yet entered, and then the other.
"I'm not sure, he could have gone either way. There are more junctions ahead whichever way we choose and it'll be difficult to tell which ones he would have taken or how far he got,"
"We could split up," she suggested half-heartedly.
"That's not a good idea. We don't know what were facing and there's only one map between us".
She nodded, a little relived. She knew that without Skulduggery and his map she would have no idea how to get back to the surface. And, she didn't particularly fancy getting lost down here, or fighting an unknown danger without him.
She looked down one tunnel and then the other. "It'll take forever to search these tunnels if we do't find any clues. Maybe we're missing something."
He didn't respond but she could tell he was searching for something that might give a clue as to where the missing mortal had gone. She followed his lead, and went back to staring at the walls, seeing if there was anything they had overlooked. She focused on the tunnel straight ahead of her, taking a few steps into it. The light on her hat gave her a good look at the first couple of hundred metres in front of her, but everything beyond that fell into a murky darkness. She knew Skulduggery would be able to see a little bit further than her, as he didn't need light to see. But from his lack of reaction she doubted there was anything interesting up ahead.
She walked another few metres down the tunnel and spent another ten minutes, staring at the slimy walls and ceiling. She was bored now and tired. She wondered what time it was. She wondered how long they'd been down here. An hour? Two? She wondered how much longer they'd spend down here.
Skulduggery was looking at the water now, using his magic to move it around and get a better look at the floor underneath. She didn't know what he expected to find and she didn't bother asking. She left him to it, and wandered into the other tunnel, the only one they hadn't been down. There was nothing of interest to see here either. She took a few steps down the tunnel, but her hardhat illuminated nothing new. She was starting to feel sorry for herself now, it was so boring down here. Her feet hurt, she was tired, and her clothes were uncomfortable. She could have sworn the smell was getting worse, it was starting to make her feel nauseous...and...
It's colder down here, the voice in her head said, specifically your ring is colder. She jumped, then swore under her breathe for letting Darquesse surprise her. She pushed the voice back down again, but she couldn't ignore what it had said. Her ring was ever so slightly colder. She could feel the presence of death down these tunnels. She reached out with her necromancy and felt the path ahead of her.
"Skulduggery," she called out and within moments he was by her side, "There's a dead body down this way."