Children of the Apocalypse

"We left the ruined city behind, descending into the Boston underground. I wasn't yet sure what to think of my new companion, but I wish she'd warned me that the tunnels were no less deadly than the ruins above..."

"That...that's a Radstorm..." Though she'd not yet released his arm, Piper's voice still made him jump where he stood, coming as if from everywhere at once; "It's radioactive shit, coming up from the Glowing Sea. It's... you really don't know what that was?"

He hadn't.

"I've seen storms before..." he heaved for air, though in truth the Heartland received little that could measure up to the sheer malice he'd felt from that...phenomenon. He would not call it weather "Nothing like that. Cyrodiil isn't...We're used to calmer...Divines..."

A metallic, scratching noise suddenly broke the darkness, as did a small shower of sparks, just enough to illuminate briefly a tiny...something, in Piper''s hand. She seemed to do something to it again, and once more sparks flew. Again, she struck it, but now along with the sparks came a candlelight, tiny and flickering. All the same, it was enough to cast a warm glow about them, and reveal their new surroundings.

Shattered, ceramic tiles and ruined shops, rotten chairs and rusted metal fences, strewn about or left as if just vacated. Yet still, compared to the world he'd just left, this seemed almost pristine. But he still had no idea what its purpose was, if indeed it had one.

"What is this place?"

"Subways," Piper muttered, her voice both muffled and rebounding off the stonework walls; "Used to be people came down here to catch trains, get all over Boston in minutes, instead of hours. Been a long while since anybody's been down here but the ghouls though...wish I had a bit more light..."

"Ghouls?" As he asked, Martin drew out a candlelight of his own, though his was of the arcane sort, and bright enough to shine like a small star in the otherwise absolute blackness. Piper was now in for a wince, as she recoiled from the sharp illumination; "Sorry."

"No it's... Jesus, Martin, at least warn me before you drag another bunny out your hat?" It was a metaphor, had to be, though he didn't know it. Still, the meaning was...more or less clear? Still shielding her eyes with one hand, the fingerless glove covering it torn in places, he could see she was watching the sphere. Silent, but for an almost inaudible hum, it hovered a meter above ground, bopping ever so lightly. Like a jellyfish in the College's Aquarium; "This is real weird, you know that?"

"Much of today has been..." he nodded, agreeing though not with her exact point; "Beyond the name of this city, and country, I not even know where I am. Lest I be dreaming, then I cannot explain presence here..."

"Well, I'm not complaining," Piper grinned. Her voice sounded like she herself was still stuck in something like disbelieving euphoria. Wasn't he supposed to be the confused one? Tangling with Nirnroot, whilst a pioneering field, shouldn't have caused something like this. He was beyond the Empire, that much he had started recognizing. Piper's accent was entirely foreign to him - though at least she spoke Common - and she knew nothing of magic, despite possessing items that defied his own understanding of the more mundane sciences; "As for where we are..."

A plaque of rusted iron bore letters that seemed as if they'd been hammered into the still-hot metal. They might once have been painted, too, but now only varying shades of brown remained, its dull gleam contrasted by the bright spell. While he could read the letters, they made no sense to him. His...companion, however, seemed to make some sense of it.

"Chestnut Hill Avenue..." she muttered, a tinge of irritation in her words; "Shit. I knew I'd come far out from Diamond City, but..." In the light of the Candlelight, her features seemed only ever more weary as she cast a glance against the black wall of unknown before them, beyond the reach of his spell; "Well, there's good news and bad news."

Martin said nothing, not really knowing what to say if he'd wanted to.

"Good news is, tunnel's pretty much intact from here to St. Paul street. Means no rads from the storm coming down to fry us like mole rats in a cooker. Bad news is, tunnel's collapsed after that, and we'll have to get on the surface, unless you've got a tunnel-clearing magick spell in your sleeves?"

"Cannot say I do, no," Even if he'd ever taken an interest in telekinesis, clearing something like a tunnel sounded like the work of a dedicated specialist, not some novice researcher; "These...rad storms, how long do they usually last?"

"Minutes?" Piper's laugh lacked any mirth; "Hours. Days. Come every summer for the past centuries, no one's found a pattern yet. Just duck down deep as you can behind the thickest walls you've got. Diamond City's case, that'd be the arena underbelly."

"I don't think I like this place very much..." he muttered, in the quiet darkness sounding like he'd shouted aloud; "I mean no offense."

"Find me someone who likes the Commonwealth, and I'll show you a tame Deathclaw," she cracked, squinting into the shadows; "Think you could light up the rest too? I'd love to not walk right into a pack of ghouls."

Another Candlelight whooshed into being, and he let it float ahead, bringing illumination to the creeping darkness. The first one disappeared just the same, leaving the entrance only dimly lit.

"You know..." Piper hummed, starting down the corridor. He followed, keenly aware that without her he'd be even more lost than before. Piper at least seemed a reliable - and friendly - source of information about this new, foreign land. And, just in case that this was no dream, he'd rather have her around; "I'm...not really sure what to do, when I get back home. I'd planned on doing an article on whatever I found out here, maybe something with the Institute, or the Children of Atom, but...I find you, you know?"

"Doing an article?" He'd no notion on what she meant.

"Like...a headline?" she paused in her step, looking back at him over her shoulder. It struck him then that she seemed younger than he'd first thought. But then, his first thoughts had been about keeping her from dying. Patient then...friend, now? It was difficult to discern, made none the easier by her own seemingly misunderstanding attitude; "You don't know what an article is?"

"I'm not fool," He muttered, taken aback at her tone. If in this land they only spoke Common, many likely would think him such all the same, for his lacking vocabulary; "I've just...not heard the word before. You didn't know what a Healer was, either."

"Fair."

She said nothing more for a while, and he found some comfort in the silence, and once more took in his surroundings as she led them down a flight of stonework stairs, the same crumbling concrete and masonry that seemed to dominate this underground network of tunnels. Red tiles lined the walls all the way down, shattered against the floor in countless places, glazing gleaming from the light of his spell, as it hovered above his head.

He was not prepared for the sight that met him, upon emerging into the subways proper. Underground tunnel systems in no way was a foreign concept to him, as the College had its own cellars and storage vaults. But...still, he was taken aback at the sight that greeted him. A vast, cavernous hall that seemed to stretch out into the infinite darkness both to his left and right, with what seemed like canals dug through the center, until...until he saw the rails.

He'd never been to the mines himself, because of course what reason would he have for such expeditions. But, he knew these were the very same kinds of rails that bore mining carts through the tunnels, laden with precious ore. Was the case here similar, only that they ferried people? Such was his pondering that he'd not noticed Piper stopping, and nearly walked into her where she stood.

Was she...praying?

"Is this a shrine?" He asked, quietly, once she seemed to have finished it. He'd not heard her call upon any gods, or even spirits. Still, the gesture was unmistakably one of reverence. Again, rather than an immediate answer, his increasingly enigmatic companion merely hummed.

She did, at least, answer him as she hopped the platform, and started walking down the rails.

"Notice how the city's not exactly bustling with people upstairs?"

"It did seem...vacant," Martin said, trying to find a description that wouldn't offend. So far, he was doing rather well, probably. At least she hadn't told him to sod off yet; "Natural disaster? Great Plague?"

"Man-made," Piper muttered; "Two hundred years ago, all the big, important heads decided to throw their nukes at each other. The whole world basically went up in flames."

"Oblivion..." Martin whispered, aghast. He made the sign of Arkay for their souls, little though it would likely matter; "Kraj na svetot..."

"Pretty much, yeah," she shrugged; "Not a whole lot survived, I think. Most who did were either in the Vaults, or down here in the underground when the bombs dropped. First thirty years after, no one could survive on top for more than a day or two, with full protection too. The subways basically became mankind's last refuge, outside the Vaults..."

"Two hundred years?" the Candlelight was dimming, but he'd almost forgotten about it, staring instead transfixed on Piper's back as she walked ahead, trying to wrap his mind around such an apocalypse. Indeed, this was not Tamriel, nor was it probably even Nirn. It was only when he almost couldn't see where he put his feet that he remembered to rekindle the spell; "And the world is still ruins? Why have you not rebuilt?"

Crunch

"Well, you already met part of the reason, back there. Super Mutants, they kinda put a stick in the whole "rebuilding" with all their 'me kill you!' show," she snorted, a sound that cast echoes against the concrete walls, round like a massive, stone tube. Each step crunched gravel, and a heavy smell of stagnation permeated the air; "Then there's the ghouls, raiders, the Gunners, various, mutated wildlife... oh, and the Rad storms."

Crunch

True, he'd already felt it himself, the malice of those green winds. Though he still did not understand their nature, he could see how such climate would make any rebuilding of civilisation...somewhat hazardous. With the Candlelight floating ahead now, dancing about like a wisp of its own will, he could no longer see where he set his feet.

Crunch

"Oh, and...don't look down," Piper said, her tone quieting; "People did live down here for thirty years. Died down here too."

"Oh, so..." the words dried in his mouth as what felt more like a branch, snapped under the leather of his boot. Revulsion and a mounting sense of fright filled him, and his eyes sought a ground they thankfully could not see. But each step still brought a fresh crunch echoing down the black tunnels. Piper too, walked the same path, each of her lighter steps bringing the same unsettling noise; "...how long does this go on?"

Crunch.

"Just a few hundred meters," she said, not turning to face him. She hadn't since they started this walk.

Crunch.

"All...like this?" Arkay's mercy, how many bodies were lain to rest here, for there to still be so many bones? "How many?"

Crunch.

"Well..." Piper's voice was almost wistful, as if she thought it an amusing or strange question. It struck him then, that it was simply her complete detachment from the horrors they trod upon. This was no transit tunnel; it was a tomb; "Thirty years, no one could go upstairs. Plenty people upstairs survived the bomb though, long enough to get down here. And die here. Most of the bones are from then."

"That's why they're..." what word could he use? They stepped on bones already reduced to fragments, gravel-sized pieces of human remains, cushioned in the dust of what had already rotted away. Some were fresher though, sounding wetter when breaking; "Like this."

Crunch.

"Yeah," somewhere to his right, hidden away in the dancing shadows, a rat squeaked in indignation. More answered the sound; "Not afraid of rats, are you?"

"I've dissected many," the memory, in contrast to his current situation, did make him smile; "What's on outside isn't so disturbing once you've plucked out their organs with bare fingers."

"Ew" but she laughed, all the same. It was a better sound now than before, with actual humor; "Hey, that ball of light you've got there..."

"Candlelight?"

"That. Can you stick it to a surface?" as she spoke, Piper neared something on the left side of the tunnel, raised above the ground on some sort of metal walkway. Piper walked over to it, picking up what turned out to be an old lantern, or at least the shell of one. There was no candle within, instead a broken piece of glass in the shape of a pear; "Like, to this?"

"I could," he nodded, trying to block out the sound of fragmented bone, breaking further beneath his boots. They were out of the worst now, but still barely two steps were made without something cracking like an eggshell.

That the spell was then, technically, referred to as a 'Magelight', he did not bother mentioning. It was a distinction made up by commoners with authority to impose naming on things they did not understand. For now, too, he would not ask why she wanted the spell stuck within that old piece of scrap. The sphere was dimming now anyway, so when the next came into being, it appeared in the broken shell of glass inside the lantern. In the darkness before, it was not been visible, but now he could see what looked like mirrors within the lantern. Though before the ethereal light had been blinding to look at, now it was even more so, and shone with all its ferocity in a single direction.

"That's definitely an improvement," Piper grinned, hefting the old metal. Martin was almost surprised the hinge did not break; "No offense, but your...magic, was kinda blinding me."

"Apologies," he murmured; "I am used to working in study, not...traversing tombs."

"First time for everything," she nodded, as if it was been a question; "So, we're okay? I should probably, you know, thank you again, for before..." it sounded like he was meant to reply, though...what could he say? That it was nothing? Fortunately, Piper continued before he had the chance; "I can't say I...understand, what you are, where you're from. But your magic, it means you're not mad. I think."

"That's nice," he wasn't sure why it came out like it did, dry and sardonic, but at least his companion seemed to find it funny; "If helps, I can't say I understand where you are from either. Not yet, at least...this place is strange, dead but not? The surface air turns poisonous and your share world with čudovišta, with... beasts?...and down here, you have made tunnels for transit, then filled them with skeletons."

"Yeah, the Commonwealth's a fucked up place, gotta agree with you there," Piper snorted; "But, hey, at least it's never boring. Look, when we get to Diamond City, you can crash at my place. Least I could do, you know, for getting me off the proverbial meat-hook. Then, you...can find your feet, I guess? Won't go unemployed with your magic hands, that's for damn sure."

"Thank you," The notion was not unappealing, but came instead with new, unexpected worries; "Your family would not mind intrusion?"

"Only family I've got is Nat," she said, turning back against the darkness. He did not know what a Nat was, but assumed it a name; "So, anyway. Commonwealth one-oh-one, I guess. This lovely, dank, dark and creepy underground system of tunnels is the Boston Subways...specifically the Green Line. Once, before everything went to heck in a handbasket, used to be people rode trains down here, to quickly get across the city. Then the bombs dropped and pretty much everything upstairs died. Now people don't really use the tunnels anymore, save the caravans."

"Trains, they are carts for people, yes?"

"That's...yeah, you could say that," she mused; "We'll run into one sooner or later down here, or what remains of them. Thirty years in the same tunnels is a lot of time for a lot of people to scrap everything that can be scrapped. Some stations are even still inhabited, because, you know, why not? Super Mutants don't really come down here, and ghouls you can shoot."

"Ghouls are monsters as well?" she'd mentioned them before, but never explained them; "We have such things, where I come from, I think. Undead that roam, eating the dead. Are these the same things?"

"Ugh, sounds about right," Piper made a sound of disgust; "Ghouls are people who got too much radiation, but didn't die. Most are...okay, just...don't stare. The ferals though, they'll eat your brain like a bowl of noodles. Apparently all ghouls eventually turn feral, so not a lot of people like having them around, even if they're perfectly normal."

Up ahead, something like a pulsating light broke the darkness. Piper didn't immediately seem to acknowledge it, but Martin watched it curiously as they neared, the sounds of breaking bone growing rarer by the footstep.

"Mushrooms?" It was unexpected, to find fungi as the source of illumination. All the same, not beyond reason. Subterranean fungi often acquired such properties, though whether it was by magical means or purely biological, he'd never found out.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't recommend eating them," his companion snorted, amused, but did not stop walking; "We use them for medicine, but apparently eating them right off the stalk at best gives you a glow-in-the-dark toilet. Might give you cancer, too. So, just don't eat them. Wasteland survival advice, and all that."

"You use them for alchemy?"

When she'd said the world was a ruin, he'd not expected the alchemical sciences to have survived. Piper paused, giving him a look he couldn't discern in the uneven lighting. A moment later, she snorted again, not unkindly.

"Sure, wizards and magic, why not alchemy?" she said, giving his arm a light pat; "Be ready for a lot of people to understand very little of what you're talking about. I still don't know what the Hell you are, where you're from, but... hey, I've seen enough weird shit out here in the Wasteland to keep an open mind."

"I...appreciate that, Piper,"

"Of course I'm usually armed too." she gestured at her side, opening her torn coat to reveal leather straps, formed around a sheath too small for even one of the Legion's short-swords. It was empty, but the leather seemed well used, yet cared for; "Then I ran into the Mutant, shot everything I had at him then threw the gun. Shame too, was a borderline antique that thing."

"Gun?" For some reason, somewhere in the back of his mind, the word did register. Consciously he had no idea what it meant, but...something was there, alright; "You shot him, is it like a bow?"

No, wait, that sheath could never hold a bow, not even a small crossbow. Then, what was it? What was this gun she referred to, like a life-saving weapon, of such tiny size?

"Wha-" Piper started, rubbing at her face with the free hand. Something stirred up ahead, ; "No, a gun..." she stopped then, stock-still and eyes hard against the darkening distance. The tunnel was a black, gaping maw, from within which came the sounds of shuffling. Something was moving. When next she spoke, it was a whisper; "...would be real useful right now."

"What is it?" he quietly asked, squinting at the darkness. The Candlelight only illuminated a dozen yards ahead, then it was like drawing a line of darkness as its limit. The shuffling came from beyond it, and even without touching her, Matin could sense Piper tensing.

Then he saw them, the sickly glowing, yellow dots, like torchbugs against the darkness. Nothing else was visible, not even a silhouette, and they almost looked to be floating in the air.

"Ghouls," she hissed, crouched down as if that would hide her, with a lit lantern in hand; "At least one, but there's always more than one. I hoped they'd get drawn upstairs by the storm. Fuck."

"What now?" he muttered.

"Depends..." she turned her eyes from the yellow spots, watching him instead; "That thing you did-"

The first ghoul emerged from the darkness then, snarling and with outstretched arms. Martin recoiled at the sight, from disgust and fright both, as he saw what had once been human. He'd never seen the ghouls of Tamriel for himself, not even a picture. This was worse than anything he'd ever dreamt up for lack of knowing. There were at least ten yards between them and it when it came into sight, but the beast moved with such speed it might as well have been no distance at all, crashing into Piper's still rising form.

She barreled over, backwards, legs pressed between them as a salivating jaw snapped against the lantern's iron frame. Martin stabbed an open palm at the creature, fighting down his fear to conjure up spellfire against it. Before he'd even had the chance, a new set of hungry jaws emerged from beyond his sight, sinking decaying gums and loose teeth into his outstretched arm.

Strangely, he didn't scream as much as he'd thought he would. The pain was nauseating, but he didn't scream. Instead his legs buckled, and he fell to the ground with the creature on top of him, dirty, claw-like hands ripping away at his robes.

With his free hand he started beating away at the creature's head, its jaws still locked around his arm, rotten teeth sinking through skin and flesh. The entire sleeve was already soaked through with blood, the rational, pushed-away parts of his brain filing it under a torn artery. Still he couldn't muster the air to scream, only to pathetically beat against the creature's head, his feet kicking to get its body away from his.

He wasn't entirely conscious of how, or when, but a piece of broken concrete found its way into his hand as he struck the ghoul, and the blow caved in the side of its skull. Its body went limp, though the jaws remained locked around his arm, even as he still struck it again, and again, fear and rage driving his muscles more than any single thought. It was only when Piper screamed that he faltered, seeking her out in the sudden, absolutely suffocating darkness.

His spell had extinguished, and there was nothing but blackness. Blind, he struggled to stand, only to lose all balance as the shock and blood loss struck him like a hammer, and he sunk to his knees. Mere meters away, he could hear her scream, a deafening, pained sound that burrowed into his mind. He moved forward, still clutching the rock, barely even conscious of his own actions beyond a primitive drive. He struck something that wasn't the tunnel wall, and pushed against the ground with what little strength was left in his legs, shoving the wriggling, clawing form off its victim. Doing this blind, he had no idea where he struck, only that he did so hard, scraping the already broken flesh of his knuckles against skin that felt like shark.

But he had not the strength, and his legs gave way beneath him then. The ghoul threw him off, already coming against him with a force he could not match. It rose above him, yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

He finally had the air to scream then, a choking sound that cut short as a heavy, metallic frame crashed against the monster's head with the force of an iron flail, shattering both itself and the creature. At least, such was his guess, considering he could see nothing but the sudden jerking of the glowing eyes, and the crash of metal. Then, the sound of a body hitting the ground, moving no more.

"Martin, you... are you alive?" Piper's voice came from somewhere above him, though he couldn't even make out a silhouette. He coughed, mostly just to make a sound without risking screaming again, overwhelmed by the agony of his left arm; "I can't... see a damn...wait..."

The sound of metal sliding against metal, the same telltale sparks as before. A tiny flame sprung up, dancing in the darkness, though it did illuminate enough that he could make out Piper's silhouette, as well parts of her face. Something was smeared across it, but he couldn't tell if it was dirt of blood.

"Down...here..." his arm felt as if it had been lit on fire, pulsating and pumping with a searing agony entirely foreign to him. When he tried to sit, neither arm really wanted to work as it should, and he ended up collapsing on the ground again; "...fuck"

"You're hurt," He almost asked how she could tell, in the weak light of the tiny flame, but held his tongue. He'd screamed, hadn't he? Like a wounded animal, he'd looked death's sickly glowing, yellow light in the eyes. Had it not been for Piper... "How...shit, that stings... how bad?"

"Give me..." he breathed, harder, struggling to keep nausea from spilling his last meal over himself. Though bruised and probably bleeding, his right hand was all he could still move, and he weakly raised it, pushing his mind and force throughout it. A pathetic, but still illuminating candlelight came into being, overwhelming their immediate surroundings with a pale, unnatural light. At the sight, he could barely muster a groan; "...that's bad."

Though he'd known his left arm was a mess, for the pain numbed nearly all other sensations of his body, it was only now that he understood what the creature had done to him. Beneath the shredded and torn remnants of his robe's sleeve, his arm was awash with blood, pumping out of mangled, weeping flesh. Piper hissed at the sight;

"Shit!"

Though her voice felt oddly...muffled, somehow. He heard her, but at the same time it was as if she wasn't speaking to him, or was behind a pane of glass. He felt colder now, than before. This... this was what it felt like, almost losing your life?

"Can you...fix that too?" her voice was smaller, but more insistent than before. Martin was still on his back, though he only really noticed once Piper knelt down next to him, waving her tiny flame along his body. If it wasn't for the pain, he'd have laughed at it. *Had this been some practice tissue in the laboratories, he could have, quite easily too; "Can I do something?"

"Yes," To both, in truth, but... He knew how to fix this, of course. It was just, that like Piper was his first actual patient, and now he was the patient; "Move a bit away. I can't see well."

Martin swallowed, blood and anxiety heavy on his tongue, before placing his free hand on the wound. On part of it, rather, for it went all along his forearm, and he could not heal such a wound with ease. If he'd been faster... if he'd not lacked focus, when he needed it, he could have killed the creature before it ripped him open. He did not even dare think of what infections it had carried.

There was no sense of time down here, in the darkness of the tunnels, and even less so for the agony, stretching seconds into eons. Where his hand moved, the wounds might heal, to a degree, but left behind the angrily red marks of tooth and claw, where what had once been human had locked its jaws against his flesh. He was left, after what felt like hours, with raw, scarred skin along the entirety of his forearm's length, and exhausted in body and soul both for all the good it had done.

But the bleeding had stopped.

"Are you...?" he felt shame, as a practiced healer, over not having prioritized his companion over himself. But the feeling was squashed beneath rationality, that if he'd put any wounds Piper might have had over his own, he might have lost consciousness from the bloodloss.

"Fine," he could tell she was not; "I kept the lantern between me and...and him, so it didn't get me. Tore my jacket a bit, but... I'm fine."

"...what in Oblivion was that? Those creatures?" he whispered, his thoughts now on the hopefully dead ghouls close by. The lights had vanished, or maybe they had merely dimmed so much that against the spell-light, they were as well as extinguished. His hands still trembled, clutched around a rock no longer there, cold-sweat running his skin; "They... were people?"

"...yeah," Piper nodded, leaning against the tunnel wall with her legs drawn in, arms around them. Her attention was not on him, far as he could tell, but the direction the ghouls had come from. The direction they were going. With trembling fingers, she dug out some sort of small package from within her ruined jacket; "Once. Now they're monsters, I... dunno, people say they sometimes look like there's still...something left in there, but..."

A thin, white stick was rattled out from the package, clasped with familiarity between two fingers, as her free hand once more flipped and slid the metal box, sparking flame. Martin, having righted himself on one of the crossboards of the rails, watched her, attention split between her words, actions and the darkness. What if more ghouls were waiting for them?

"How are you doing?" he asked, watching her fumble with the small, white twig. For a moment, it seemed like she'd not heard him, and he wondered if because of everything that had just happened, he hadn't actually spoken those words aloud? "Wounds, I mean."

Piper bit down on the white stick, its end aglow the dying embers of a celebratory sparkler, and started breathing in, then out again. Quickly at first, then slowly her shakings seemed to lessen, and her breathing calmed.

"Fine. I'm good, you know?" she muttered through the smoking stick; "Nh..not the first time the Commonwealth's nearly killed me. Only ripped my jacket, so... yeah, I'm good."

She sucked in air through the stick again, and the heavy, mind-numbing scent of tobacco and...something else, wafted through the stale air. Though he was aware of the damage such plants caused the lungs of those who partook in it, he said nothing on it.

"I'm sorry," he said instead, when the silence became too much. He was, in truth, not even sure if he'd said anything until Piper looked up at him, her expression invisible in the dancing shadows.

"For?"

What for, actually? The apology had simply emerged on its own, and he wasn't sure what to follow it up with. What was he sorry for? That he was a terrible combatant, who shied from violence more out of fright than principles? That he'd waited with asking about her injuries until his own were mended? What if she'd had an artery torn, or suffered a concussion?

"We're alive," Piper interrupted his thoughts, her voice bearing the same, forced calm again; "And you got that sucker off of me. Nothing to be sorry for, you know?"

Maybe. Still, his guts were against it. Against the notion that he couldn't have done better. Piper, seemingly oblivious, or simply not yet ready to care about his frustrations, resumed her smoking.

Compared to everything else, tobacco seemed practically harmless. After what seemed like an eternity in the silence of recuperation, Piper took a longer drag than usually, the end of her stick glowing a bright orange. She then offered it to him, wordlessly held between the same two fingers as before.

He did not know what it was, this strange stick. That it was akin to a pipe, he could understand, at least. Piper wasn't speaking, only watching him intently until he accepted the stick - it was some sort of soft fabric - holding it up for study against the dimming light of his spell.

"...you're supposed to put it in your mouth," it was the first time she'd spoken in several minutes, at least, and sounded almost amused at him, like watching a child; "It'll go out otherwise... helps on the shakes."

He did, placing it like had it been a pipe. At first he tasted nothing, but with the first drag of air he nearly choked, having to restrain himself from spitting the stick out. Had he been of a calmer mind, he might have wondered at the gesture, that she would share such a thing with him, in this way.

Currently, his mind was still on the two ghouls, and their nature and the cruelty of a world that could produce such things. If there was no magic here, as Piper claimed... how could they be, then? With each drag of air, he could feel the corrupting smoke filling, then leaving his lungs, but it seemed like his stress and anxiety was leaving with it. His fingers, still clenching and unclenching when he'd first breathed in, now slackened and relaxed.

Nothing in this place made any sense to him, or rather, it made sense in a very twisted, cruel sort of way. The world, this world, was a ruin, its skies turning toxic and monstrous beings stalked the corpse of what seemed to have once been a great metropolis, maybe rivaling even the Imperial City in scale. To think such catastrophe had been brought about by human hand, and without the use of magic at all, boggled and defied what he thought possible. That people then could still live here, when for all intents and purposes it looked akin to the tales of Daedric realms, only further confounded him.

People like Piper, he pondered, if she was indeed the norm. They seemed like himself, like any normal person. She wore shoes, dressed herself to stay warm, and went armed to fend off what creatures and evolution-defying monstrosities might lie in wait. But at the same time, there was a harshness behind the exterior, a resistance to the horrors of this world, of which he'd no doubt only seen a fraction of what was on offer.

He handed the stick back, and like that they remained until it seemed right.

He could not entirely discern what it was, but at some point they both agreed, without a word spoken, that there was no more danger, that the threat had passed and they were, for all intents and purposes, safe.

They walked beneath the dancing light of his spell, casting its just as lively shadows on the rounded, concrete walls. Old, rusty boxes and cords of metal and red dotted the walls, though he'd no clue as to their purpose. The crunching beneath his feet no longer stemmed from the cracking of human remains, but from small pebbles, no-doubt deliberately poured by those who had laid the tracks in the first place, just like at home. Rust had eaten away at most of the rails here, leaving only few spots where the dull, grey of steel could still be seen underneath the red. And then, only when their light passed over, devoid as the tunnel was of anything else that could have served to illuminate.

Though, in some places, he saw what looked like old, broken lanterns, strung together on strings along the vaulted ceiling, or nailed to the tunnel walls. None of them shone, of course, and had likely not done so since the days Piper spoke of, when people had sheltered in these tunnels, as the world ended up above. Occasionally, a skeleton rested against the walls, or was simply laid out on the ground, frozen in its last spasms of death. Their clothes still clung to some of them, eaten thin by time and vermin, skulls opened in silent laughs of missing, eroded teeth.

Piper would turn one over once in a while, completely oblivious to his initial revulsion. Whatever she sought, none of the dead possessed it. He did not ask what, though his mind was abuzz with ideas, guesses and doubts. Coin? It wouldn't be out of the question, and the dead no longer needed what valuables they once owned. Had he been a priest, he'd perhaps have tried orchestrating sermons, for Arkay to take their souls. Even then, it was probably a bit late for such. They seemed to have been dead for quite a while.

A rat crawled out from inside one of them, when Piper moved to turn the skeleton over, squeaking with indignant irritation before vanishing off into the black guts of the tunnels. Martin watched it disappear, and wondered if now, when people no longer seemed to live down here, it had now become the realm of the rats? He'd grown up playing games with his friends, where they would pretend-play at being great heroes of legend, and swat at the cellar rats with sticks and stones. Back then, the underground and the sewers had been the 'realm of the rats' too. Not that there had been much in the way of sewers out in the countryside.

He shook the thoughts off, nodding as Piper gestured them onwards. They walked in silence, ears and eyes straining for signs of ghouls ahead and behind them. Who knew how many side-tunnels and hidden passages there might be, and he wanted to be sure the next monsters crawling out of the deep darkness would not find him unprepared.

Fighting...was never something he'd been good at. As a mage, his magicka recovery was below average, and even had it been better, his concentration under duress was...less than impressive. He worked well enough in laboratories, but ghouls... the terror that creature had instilled in him had entirely crushed any chance of bringing enough focus to bear to kill it with a spell.

And so he remained watchful, eyes pressed against the retreating darkness. He even walked on the rails, just to make less noise that he might better hear the shuffling of feet ahead.

But there was nothing. Only the echoes of their steps against the concrete walls, and the squeaking of rats disturbed by their presence. The monotony of the tunnels started making his mind wander, though he tried his hardest that it should remain focused, and found himself watching his companion as she went slightly ahead of him.

What kind of life did she live? What was her family like, this 'Nat'? Where did they even live? Questions like those, and many others, filled his mind and brought him back, only when something new appeared in the tunnel, something worthy of attention.

In one place, bags of sand lay piled in what seemed like mockeries of walls, or like they'd been left by uncaring workers long dead. Sharp bits of iron protruded from these piles like the quills on a hedgehog, forming makeshift barricades against whatever might come from down the tunnel. Piper said people came down here, but wouldn't all kinds of creatures also try their luck? The lumbering, green brute he'd killed was called a 'Super Mutant'. She'd spoken of it as a whole race, and he could easily imagine such monsters storming down these tunnels, baying for the blood of mankind's last few survivors.

Scattered around these piles of bags, he found small, brass cylinders, hollow and strewn about with generous hand. He picked one up, causing Piper to halt in her steps, as the light was following him, not her.

"Bullet casings," she told him, as he held it against the light, and it gleamed in muted resplendence; "Big ones. We're close to Chiswick station."

"How can you tell?" he wondered, eyes wandering between the "buh-let-casing" and her; "You have been this way before?"

"No," She shook her head, picking up a brass cylinder of her own; "You need a heavy machine gun to shoot these. Back when people had to live in the tunnels, eventually they started trying to kill each other, once it seemed like the world outside had stopped mattering, probably. That or the food just ran out, or the clean water... and you'd be surprised how fast things started mutating upstairs, trying to get down where they could eat people."

She tossed the finger-sized bit of metal aside with a shrug; "Either way, people needed something to defend themselves with. Was a lot of military in Boston before the bombs dropped, tanks too. Not sure how, but the survivors got back upstairs, plucked the machine-guns right off the tanks and brought them back down, ammo and all."

Martin nodded, understanding what she meant even if he had no notion at all as to words such as "tank" or "machine-gun". They were entirely alien to him, lacking even the most basic point of reference.

"And they protected themselves with these," He meant to hide the small cylinder away in his robes - as a curiosity - only to then be reminded of their ruined state. Every pocket he'd had at the front was ripped out; "Only close to where they lived?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Piper shrugged; "Turns out tunnels are real practical if you've got a few machine guns aimed down range. Chiswick's not too far now, usually you only see machine guns around half a mile out from the stations. 'Least, that's how it is at the ones people still live in. North Station's probably the biggest one still inhabited."

"Chiswick isn't one of places where people still live?" Martin asked, squinting ahead. Nothing could be seen ahead, fingers still playing with the small piece of brass; "How many are?"

"No idea, really," she muttered, pushing over an old skeleton leaning against the wall. Once more, her findings proved lackluster; "I know North Station's inhabited, because all the caravans that don't wanna risk going through Cambridge on the way north go through there. Once you get past Kenmore, most of them are, more or less," disappointed with her findings, Piper walked on, path illuminated by the dancing lights of his spell; "Red Line, that's the main caravan route north and south. Stockton's people have a railcar caravan service there too, if you've got the caps. It goes by Diamond City too."

"You keep mentioning Diamond City," the name spoke of some bejeweled metropolis, but all he'd seen so far was ruin and decay. What splendor awaited him? "But you call the ruined city here "Boston". I don't understand, is it a station?"

"Eh, nope," Piper chuckled, kicking gravel as she walked. Around them the black concrete was starting to come away, replaced piecemeal with fading, yellow tiles and red-painted walls. There was no light ahead, but then again, she'd said this wasn't one of the inhabited places. No reason there should be light; "It's like this old, pre-war arena. It's got some solid walls though, so people started settling there once the surface stopped killing you by default. We call it Diamond City... I think it's because the arena is shaped like one, you know? Sorry, if you expected something gleaming or, I dunno, shiny, 'cause it ain't."

"Noted."

She seemed to find that funny, though he couldn't himself see the amusing in it. Martin instead kept his eyes forward, pressed against the choking darkness of the tunnel, and ears stiff for the slightest sound that wasn't caused by them.

Nothing, just the repetitive crunching of gravel, and the indignant squeaks of rats. Piper, far from any other woman he'd ever met, found them reassuring.

"Ghouls eat rats. Everything does, really," she explained when, somehow, she sensed his curiosity; "That means, where there's rats, there's usually nothing else."

The logic was sound, though he found the notion repulsive. Ghouls had been humans once, so the thought of them eating rats only added to his disgust for them. It removed them further from what he understood as people. Hopefully, it would make them easier to kill, too.

"How many people live there, at Diamond City?" he asked, hoping to divert his thoughts from the creations of this world's apparent demise. Diamond City sounded promising, if strange. How big had the arenas of this world been, that you could place another city within one?

"Bit over two thousand people, plus minus the loose, you know?" Piper hummed in contemplating tones; "It's basically the Commonwealth's capital settlement, but I think just as many live outside the walls. Wasteland's littered with smaller settlements, usually farms or landfill-mines. Caravans bring the produce to Diamond City, and Diamond City brings the good stuff to the settlements in turn, right?"

A sensible system, he supposed. Half of Cyrodiil was farmland dedicated to feeding the Imperial City, after all. He wondered though, what kind of farmers could raise crops when monsters stalked the surface and the clouds spat poison. The dark thoughts accompanies a darkening tunnel, and he refreshed the Magelight before it would start blinking. He hated the blinking, it felt like he'd have a seizure.

"The good stuff?"

"You know, like guns, tools, education, the works..." Piper explained, her tone lighter than before; "You'll see when we get there. For now, welcome to Chiswick station, and mind the gap."

The mod "Tunnel Runner" is excellent when you're imagining them walking through the tunnels. Personally, I am going for a more Metro-like vibe when underground. I like to think the two games can be merged without taking away from the lore of Fallout, even without me introducing any supernatural stuff (like the ghosts in Metro). The intro quote was a product of a friend of mine, and made me realize Martin's voice was a given from the very start.

This is proving a tricky story to write (because of only two characters, and Piper is difficult to write well, but easier than Martin, at least) but at the same time it is quite entertaining. I do also have the next chapter of Talia in the works, worry not :3