Necropolis

The first time I saw the ghouls, I thought them the most terrifying things this new, alien world had to offer. They were mutated, abominations and mockeries of mankind. But the underground still had worse in store for me, things that to this day I still cannot explain...

"So, there's lots more people like you, where you're from?" Piper asked. She was holding the flame of her small metal box, her lighter, to a roll of old, block-printed paper, wrapped around a piece of timber. When it lit, the makeshift torch quickly added its own, warmer glow to the pale light of the magelight spell; "Like, the stuff you can do is pretty much nothing new?"

"Something like that," Martin nodded, eyes peeled against the other end of the platform.

Chiswick station, though he'd gotten over the awe of first seeing it, remained a sizable, man made cavern. The fact that it had once, apparently, been beautifully clad in multicolor tiles and lit with lights as bright as any lantern, that still ravaged his mind. It was at least fifty yards in width, and he'd no notion of how long, its ceiling an arch born aloft by pillars of marble. Marble. Such a desolate place, and yet they decorated it with marble. How rich had not this city been, back before the humans of this realm annihilated themselves with weapons he could barely comprehend?

"Sounds crazy," she whistled, the sharp sound quickly dissipating against the stone. Something scurried along the ground as she walked, a few paces to his right, keeping itself just beyond the reach of her torchlight; "I mean, people don't just throw fire, or heal wounds with magic lights, you know?"

"Why not?"

"Well..." her expression, lit by fire, turned a frown, before she resumed her rummaging through the clutter of long-dead people's belongings, most of it and its owners strewn about as if scattered by the wind; "They just don't. Can't. It's not a thing. Maybe a synth with an inbuilt flamer or... some sort of thingy-magick dispenser could do it, but... Ah! Bingo."

"What?" He meant it more as to, what did bingo mean, than anything else. Piper stood from her search, holding aloft a flask of some sort of liquid, black to his eyes; "Alcohol?"

"Better," She struck the top of the flask against the iron railing where the platform ended, breaking off the red-painted top. He was amazed to see the glass flask remained unscathed; "Nuka-Cola. Pre-war gold"

"I see."

He did not. Piper barely even waited for the seal to stop bouncing along the tiles before she took the flask to her lips. Watching her drink was a strange sight, mostly because she didn't seem to do it out of thirst. Halfway done, from the looks of it, she wiped her mouth and handed him the flask, its black liquids still sloshing about within. She grinned.

"Here. You'll wanna taste."

"Didn't you say war was two centuries back?" He took the flask with some hesitation, sniffing at the opening; "How can this be safe drink? It's not wine."

"Nuka-Cola doesn't go bad, pretty much no matter what you do with it, unless you open it, of course. Cap's screwed tight on, and the drink's got enough fizzy to last a few more centuries." She laughed, a bubbling sound that echoed weirdly off the walls. It was still a strange sound in these catacombs-like tunnels, but... he didn't dislike it. "Go on, try it. Rest is yours, I'll find the cap meanwhile."

Why she wanted that red thing, he didn't understand. Still, he did gather the courage to taste the odd, ancient potion Piper already had - trying not to think of where the opening had just been - steeling himself as the first gulp of black, buzzing liquid splashed into his mouth.

In the years of his study, naturally he'd frequented the nearby alehouses, on occasion. The strongest he'd ever tried, and regretted afterwards, was some Nibenese Whiskey, with a name he couldn't ever recall. Nor could he, for that matter, recall barely anything beyond the point of said whiskey. It had been strong, far too strong for him.

This...this was like that, and yet... entirely, incomprehensibly different. He lacked for all of his trying, any and all words that could even come close to describing the taste, so alien and yet so very, very right. Like, life itself, bottled.

Before he even knew it, the flask was empty, no matter how fiercely he held it upside down, dangling over an awaiting tongue. The taste lingered in his mouth, clinging to every surface. His tongue felt as if it had caught fire, yet there was naught but pleasure, tingling and as if he'd touched lightning, while his heart galloped away, in exhilaration and delight in equal measure.

"Holy shit, you okay?" Piper's voice only at first registered as something in the background, like something not as important as the bottle in his hands. Suddenly it sounded closer, or maybe not but still, and when he turned to look for her, the movement was so fast he felt his muscles ache from it.

Piper stood a meter away, though actually, now that he looked closer, she was crouching, and yet still at his height. Only then did he realize, he was on his rear, slumped on the cold tiles like a passed-out drunk. Realization dawned with withdrawal, and the bottle rolled from his hand, clinking as it bounced intact on the stone. Piper whistled lowly, an interested smile on her face.

"Damn," she said; "Never seen anyone react like that. You good?"

"I... yes," He was, and yet he wasn't, now that the wonderful sensations brought by the drink were gone; "What... what was that? What's in drink?"

"An absolute shit-load of sugar, my guess," she grinned, offering a hand. He took it; "Reason they last this long, and got so popular. Once you've had one, you'll want another. And another. Better than chems though."

"I've...never tasted anything like it," he admitted, feeling somewhat foolish now for having ended up on the floor. Sugar and addictions made the drink sound more like Skooma, though he'd never wanted to try such substances. But... Piper seemed to be fine, and if nothing else her judgement had seem them this far.

"There's gonna be a lot of firsts when we get out of here."

"All of them like that?"

"Probably. Maybe?" she shrugged, kicking over a skeleton nestled against the wall. This one still wore clothes, and scraps of tissue still clung to yellowed bone. Down here, in the darkness, of course bone would not bleach from the sunlight, but would instead darken with rot; "Sorry ol' timer, don't need that no more."

Martin shook off the last of the rush, still feeling the buzzing sensation in the tips of his fingers. People had actually ingested this on the regular, before they ruined their world? It seemed to him too much like skooma indeed, and...maybe that was why? Had they all been drugged senseless when destroying their world, high on Nuka Cola?

"Martin," Piper's voice echoed down the hall as she beckoned him over. There was a skip to his step as he approached her, watching as she lifted some strange device off the skeleton. It struck him first that she'd found a tool of some sort, obviously, but as to what it was... one half was wood, and reminded him of the stock to a crossbow. The rest, however, was a single, metallic tube. A cylinder of what looked like iron, clasped tightly against the wood with bands of more metal; "Lookie here."

"What?" If she expected him to recognize whatever it was, she was going to be sorely disappointed. Maybe she was too, for the grin mellowed out when he said nothing else. Piper struck the alien contraption over her knee, breaking it open; "You...destroyed it. Huzzah?"

"I didn't destroy it, doofus," she scoffed, yanking the thing again. It snapped back together again, a discreet metallic click that somehow sounded right. He didn't know why, though; "It's a shotgun. Pretty good condition too. Still got a shell in the chamber, means this poor fella didn't even get a chance to defend himself."

Martin watched her handle the weapon with apparent familiarity, aiming down the tube as if it was a cannon. Of course, no cannon he'd ever heard of was this small, or packed "shells" rather than balls. But, maybe it was the same thing? Though he couldn't quite tell how it worked, it seemed a good bet these people had somehow managed such a feat of engineering.

"It's some sort of cannon then?" he wagered. Piper looked up from her inspection, pausing for a moment before she nodded; "I understand its purpose then. That's a "gun", a cannon scaled down to fit in the hands?"

"Pretty much," she shrugged; "'course, most people don't call it a cannon unless it's a big ol' six-shooter or that kind of stuff. This one looks more like one of Bunker Hill's pieces... yeah, see that mark there?"

She gestured to a small pattern of notches made into the iron barrel. It vaguely resembled an 'S', though heavily stylized. Piper ran her fingers over the barrel again, as if it was a precious object. In fairness, with the dangers of this world, a cannon you could fire from your hands would indeed be quite the find.

"There's a trader out of Bunker Hill, Stockton." she explained, putting the weapon on the ground, opening aimed away from them both, before setting upon a backpack discarded next to the skeleton. He noticed there was still some hair left on the scalp, clinging to decayed skin. Body wasn't more than a week old, but the lack of rotting tissue and organs meant something had eaten him. Bone structure definitely confirmed the gender; "He's got a whole operation set up across the Commonwealth, selling arms and armor to settlers and settlements, mercenaries, the works. Makes the guns himself too, or his people do anyway. Pricey, but... heh, better than being robbed and dropped, you feel me?"

"Pretty much," he nodded, familiar with the concept. He knew the Legions had the same kind of arrangement going with the great forges in Anvil. He'd never seen their weapons up close though, so he didn't know if they had marks too. Too late to inquire now, anyway; "What killed him, you think? I don't see fractures, no dislocations or torn-off limbs. Can't be more than week old, but body's nearly picked clean."

"Radroaches, probably," she muttered, taking things out of the bag. Extra clothes, a roll of gauze, a small pile of the same kind of bottle caps she'd taken from the Nuka Cola, two metal cylinders with pictures of beans on faded, yellow paper, a headband of some sort with a glass disk... and shells, as she called them. Fifteen in total there were, of uniform size and shame, with a red exterior topped by what looked like a brass or copper alloy, neatly packed into tiny boxes of colored paper-like material, with depictions of deer-skulls on the front. One had eight shells, the other only seven.

Finally, she stood, and looked over the finds with a strangely satisfied grin on her lips.

"Oh man... Gotta be the best scavenge I've ever been on, and didn't even plan on it," she exclaimed, then looked to him with a more contemplative expression; "Right. We'll take his stuff. Not like he's gonna need it now anyways, and better us than raiders or supers, right?"

Looting the dead was not a dilemma he'd ever had to deal with before. Mostly because he'd never had to deal with dead people before, and practice dummies did not have much in the way of personal possessions. The more civilized, sheltered part of him wanted to argue against it, that they were robbing the dead. Luckily, his more rational side won out.

By quite the wide margin too.

"What are Radroaches?" he asked instead. Piper actually jerked a little at his question, then seemed to catch herself before saying something.

"...oh… yeah, I guess you don't know what those are," she stood, hefting the pack on her shoulders. It seemed to fit her well. She chuckled; "Right, sorry. It's just you could ask a three-year-old anywhere and they'd know. I'm not used to people not knowing."

"Not a local," he reminded her, tapping his forehead with a faint, hesitant smile. It wasn't surprising that she'd think something like some kind of animal was supposed to be well known to all. She started walking, leaving him to follow. Soon enough they'd reached the end of the platform, where once again the tracks ran off into the gaping, black maw of the tunnel.

"You know cockroaches, right? Bugs. Well, take a bug, then turn it big as..." she tailed off, pausing before the tiled walls turned back into ribbed concrete. She spread her hands out; "...like, this big. One of them's not much trouble, you could make a meal out of it if you've got a big stick. Sometimes they come in swarms though, and then it's all about running fast as you can."

"Disgusting," he frowned, trying to imagine a roach the size of that. It was almost a dog, and he found the notion unsettling. Then again, he knew spiders sometimes grew even larger, and a sudden fear took him; "You...don't have giant spiders too?"

"Jesus, I hope not," she scoffed; "Small ones are bad enough, with all those eyes..." she eyed him for a moment, her expression hard to read in the weak light; "...why, you have some super creepy sort of spider back at your home?"

"Sometimes," he shrugged. Piper, he noticed, had put the headband on, and was picking at the small glass disk. It looked a lot like a window, or maybe an attempt at jewelry forging. Before he could ask what exactly by Zenithar it was, she seemed to find whatever her fingers sought. A weak, pale light erupted from the disk, brilliantly bright against the darkness, and nearly made him jump. It quickly grew in intensity until it would rival his own magelight; "-I thought you knew nothing of magic?"

"Flashlight's not magick, it's just a tiny lamp inside." she tapped a finger against the glass, and the light flickered; "Usually I've got my own. Had to drop everything when Mr. Big-Green-and-Ugly tried to gut me though. Come on, there's a tunnel to be braved."

Though he did nod, and walked along, Martin's mind was entirely lost within that tiny, light-filled disk. They had no magic, these people, but yet they had wrought such contraptions? How could it even work? He'd only ever heard of anything approaching this kind of scientific advancement with the Dwemer, but even then there was a degree of understanding, of how their artifacts worked.

Here, he had no idea.

"A tiny lamp?" he tried hard to keep his eyes on hers, not the flashlight, when he asked; "How does it work? How do you keep it fueled?"

"There's a battery inside, tiny thing. Pre-war, of course, but nothing's new around here anyway," she shrugged, walking slightly ahead. The shotgun rested in her hands, aimed at the ground; "It's electricity running through those little wires, making a string of...something, glow. Not sure what, could probably find out when we're back in the city. Glass then amplifies the light and bingo, flashlight."

He wanted to say he fully understood, but he didn't entirely. At the same time, she'd explained it in such simple terms that asking again... he'd feel like a fool if he did. So, he merely nodded, keeping instead his eyes on the tunnel ahead.

Piper halted them when they got to the first few sandbags, well before they could even see any actual sign of the next station.

She didn't seem at all in a good mood anymore. Rather, it was as if a ghost had appeared, or some terrible memory. Kicking a sandbag, she opened the shotgun and ran a finger along the brass top of the shell within. She was nervous.

"Uh, look there's... probably a good idea I fill you in, before we get to Sutherland..." she finally said, snapping the barrel back in place. Her voice had taken on a quieter mood, as if watchful that the tunnel itself might be listening in, alert for being smeared by its own occupants; "Kinda postponed it, sorry..."

"The station, you mean?"

"Yeah, it's..." she trailed off again, like she had at the tunnel's entrance. But this seemed different, a far more tense air about her; "...look, do you believe in ghosts, like the superna...yeah, okay I mean you have magic, but...ghosts, like dead people's spirits hanging about? The real spooky shit?"

"Ghosts?" He'd never seen one himself, but knew of them; "Yes, I know what they are. More or less."

"You...do?" she seemed surprised, enough for him to understand that maybe that kind of thing wasn't common here. Or, known at all. This was a strange world; "'course, magicks and all. Okay so it's... Sutherland's one of those stations where people holed up after the bombs dropped and... lived there for a few years while the surface was hot enough to boil an egg. But people tell stories of it, like scary as shit stories. Story goes, after a few years underground there was some kind of... dunno, maybe an underground flooding or something, but all of a sudden rats just started swarming out of every hole and grate and... yeah it's basically one of those scary stories you don't want to remember when underground."

He could guess at the outcome, even if she hadn't finished the story. One rat might bite your finger, but it would run away. Swarms of rats, on the other hand... he understood well enough what that would do, if they suddenly flooded up into a small space with people. Endless masses of muscle and teeth, gnawing and biting and tearing apart whatever they found edible. Whomever they found.

"I suppose... people didn't live there anymore, after that."

"Yeah, no one was really keen on resettling a station after everyone that'd lived there got eaten alive..." Piper muttered darkly; "Not the most attractive real estate…"

"Yeah..." he nodded, not knowing whatever else he could say. It was a revolting thought, entire communities eaten alive by so many rats it might as well have been a flood. How big were those rats then? Like the ones he'd already seen, or had they like roaches grown, more like Skeevers; "...they're not flame retardant, right?"

"Nope, and I thank God for thát small mercy," Piper started forward again, the beam from her headband illuminating the tunnel as well as his own spell had. Shell casings, the same kind they'd found at the entrance to Chiswick, littered the floor, rusted beyond recovery. The air felt damper too, than it had at Chiswick. Had they moved downwards, or maybe they were near underground reservoirs? The tunnel itself gave nothing away, revealing only the concrete walls and cast-iron tracks. Only their own breathing broke the silence, oppressive as it was, and echoed through the light-forsaken place.

It wasn't long before they found the first skeletons, gnawed bones strewn from where rats had dragged them around. There was barely anything left of the clothes they'd once worn, and the skull was a few feet from where the last of the spinal column ended. Even so, it was easy to tell the poor bastard had been trying to leave, headed for Chiswick. Someone or something had stopped him.

"Get used to the sight." Piper muttered, her mood having visibly soured by the meter since they crossed the sandbag boundary; "Rats don't like fire. Any chance your magicks can make that?"

"They can," Martin replied, flexing his fingers. He'd never actually tried using his magic for combat before, but... it had worked out well enough with the super mutant, hadn't it? If he was just prepared, he could do it; "I've never done it before, used magic to kill."

"You killed the Super Mutant."

"I did." he nodded, stepping around the bones of new skeletons, all bearing the same marks of decades or more of gnawing. Ribs were broken open by countless marks of teeth, thigh bones gnawed apart in the hunt for marrow. Rats. He was already starting to hate them; "I can."

"Great." he could see her tightening her grasp of the gun, and loathed himself a little for it. He wasn't useless, he knew it. But, he was starting to feel like a child led around, sheltered and pampered. He'd never been in this kind of danger before, never even been mugged. Piper...seemed to have grown up in it; "I'll keep this handy though, just in case..."

Strangely, once they made it into the actual station itself, the skeletons had disappeared. Where before they had had to sidestep the decayed bones, suddenly they had stopped appearing at the edge of the light. The humidity had gotten worse, though, and it was colder too. With his robes in tatters, he felt the discomfort directly on his skin, and liked the place even less.

Piper, if she felt anything, did not say it.

Sutherland Station seemed to have been constructed from the same template as Chiswick. It bore the same colors, marks and had the same amount of columns supporting a similarly sized, cavernous ceiling. It could have been Chiswick, too, if not for the smell.

Part of studying for a healer's journeyman papers was a degree of familiarity with rats, being by far the most common spreader of plagues and disease in general. Skeevers mostly spread infections, though, while the common rat bore fleas and could enter homes, shops, granaries and stores. The smell of their droppings had been one he never quite forgot.

The memory was made all the more vivid as that same, rank stench struck him with full force as they entered the station. Piper made a disgusted sound, holding an arm to her nose. He did the same thing, trying to breathe through his mouth only. Even then the stench permeated everything, every breath of air tasting like centuries of vermin and filth.

There was, usually, a trick to rats. On their own they were not much of a threat, even to novices and the untrained. A brown rat would rather flee than pose any sort of danger.

Strangely, what he couldn't identify at all within the unlit chasm of the station, was rats. Piper's story had him on his toes, ears open for the faintest sound of rats. Yet, there was no squeaking in the darkness, no eyes reflecting the flashlight's beam when Piper looked around.

"...I don't hear anything," he said, voice low, barely more than a whisper. She didn't respond at first, though he noticed her head turning slightly left and right, as if to pick up sounds otherwise unheard.

"Doesn't mean they're not around," she muttered, finally; "Rats don't stay where there's no food. But ghouls wander in here sometimes, I bet. And people know of the place, how it was abandoned. There's tons of things down here that could set a scaver up for life... or end it, more like."

Two hundred years was a long time for a skeleton to remain intact, even remotely, and especially in a place infested with rats. But, if visitors were regular enough... those bones back there, at the sandbags, they might not have been as old as he'd first thought.

It did not help his opinion of the place. It was a discomforting notion how a civilization grand enough to have wrought the metropolis above, could be reduced to the point of hiding away in tunnels such as these. It brought his thoughts to home, to the shining city of the Imperial capital. Resplendent, gleaming, it was a beacon of humanity and the Empire's glorious triumphs. It was, foremost, a symbol of culture, science and the exchange of ideas. Commerce, trade, prosperity. The Empire was all this, and so much more.

But had this place been so as well, back in its day? It had seemed so, from what little he glimpsed of the necropolis earlier, its ruins still towering over the landscape like archean titans. Each and every house he'd seen was wrought in brick or steel, and there'd been not a single scrap of thatch in sight. How resplendent had this place been then, back then? Back before this world came to an end, however temporarily so it might have been, this 'Boston' might have even rivalled the Imperial City itself in wealth and power. How many people had lived there? He'd already forgotten Piper's words on it, if she had indeed mentioned a number, but it had no doubt been in the hundreds of thousands. That alone was more than the province of Skyrim, though hardly a tall bar to beat, he knew. Even then, the Imperial City numbered around four hundred thousand within its walls. How many here?

How many lives had been lost when the world ended? Piper spoke of how many had been saved, in their tens of thousands, she'd claimed. Tens of thousands, was that ten thousand people or ninety thousand? Souls beyond comprehension snuffed out in moments, or sentenced to decades of languishing underground, in the darkness beneath what had once been their home? The Subway, Piper called it, the vein-like network of tunnels stretching out beneath the city like arteries beneath the skin, concrete tubes and tunnels, corridors that probably stretched out further than any who lived now even knew. How many of them were in absolute darkness, empty of life beyond what vermin crawled through? How many people had been able to survive down here, in the sunless decades, surviving on...what, exactly? Rats? Mushrooms?

The thought of such an existence made him want to scream, to be confined for life within these tunnels, never seeing the sun unless you risked death from poisoned air. And even then, these blackened hallways were not the safe haven those who escaped the world's end might have hoped, teeming with rats and ghouls and... and whatever else eventually made it down here, validating all those sandbags and weapons. People had even fought people, humans against humans when there was nothing worth fighting for left anyway. Places like Sutherland or Chiswick, where people had once lived, now remained as mausoleums.

"We should get out of here."

"Yeah..." he muttered, agreeing. The place was giving him the actual creeps.

"What?" Piper asked, turning her head just enough that she could see him. She didn't seem to have expected him to respond.

"I agree, we should," he said, rubbing at his neck. This place was damp, and cold. It felt like the temperature was dropping for every step he took. The hairs stood on his neck, when he saw Piper's breath, turning into vapor as it passed through her light; "I don't like it either."

Small feet padded along the tiles somewhere, deeper inside the station. Small, but not small enough to be a rat. It would be close enough to see if he peered over the platform, probably, but… he didn't want to.

"Should what?" Piper slowed her pace now, face turned fully towards him, a frown on her face that was not just irritation; "Hmm?"

"Leave," he clarified, feeling...odd. Like the toils of the day were only now catching up to him. Tired, worn down. So tired; "We should."

"Dad?"

"Mmm..." she nodded, though keeping her eyes on him. Martin blinked, trying to figure out if he'd actually just...heard her wrong, maybe; "You...okay, Martin? Not looking too great."

"What's that sound?"

"Tired," he muttered, wiping at his face; "I'm...not exactly used to all these things. I'm good, worry not. Let's just leave this place."

"Feeling it too, huh?" Piper looked about, though she kept her light from actually penetrating onto the platform. As if doing so would prevent something from leaving, and joining them on the tracks; "Smart people don't end up having to do this kind of shit... place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"In the walls, they're…"

"How much further?" Till they were back in the tunnel, he left unsaid. But Piper understood, he could tell.

"…hear? Like scratching, what…"

"Dozen meters, maybe."

"Mum? Mum?!"

Something nagged at the back of his mind, like a presence within the station. Something more than rats, but...also nothing he could put to words. Echoes of small, padding feet against the stone floor came and went, like a barefooted child. They ran along the edge of the platform, so close his skin crawled whenever they came close, so close he could have reached out and touched whatever made them. Rats, must be rats. Ghouls would have just attacked. I'm tired, it's exhaustion affecting my… just need to get some rest, somewhere.

"Run! RUN!"

But the padding feet were awfully close... and Piper's words returned to him, of the stories people told... all of a sudden, rats just started swarming out of every hole and grate. The image it conjured was more akin to a flood than anything living. He couldn't even imagine the sound. But there was something, in the back of his mind, like it was dancing about the edge of his senses…

"Rats! They're-"

"Do you... hear something?" he swallowed and asked, afraid what the answer might be. He did not know if he would prefer a yes or a no. The cold, clammy air of the station was sending his skin crawling, and every hair upon it stood like a stake. In his bones, he felt something was wrong. Like something was going on that he couldn't explain. It was like putting your ear to a seashell and trying to make out the sounds.

Piper stopped, bringing them both to an unwanted halt. She stood there, for what felt like hours. And the padding feet never stopped. They closed and they departed, changing directions within the station itself, it seemed. Like a child was running about, silent and mum but never stopping. Never slowing.

"Don't you fucking try and scare me, you know?" she scoffed after a while, hoisting the gun again; "There's nothing. Rats, sure. But... nothing more, right?."

Her words did not reassure him. For a moment, right then and there, he wanted to grab her shoulder and shake her, make her listen, make her hear those padding feet, the whispers by his ears. But more than anything else, he wanted to leave, and if he started making a fuss... if he tried to make her hear, it might take longer before they were away from this place.

"You said this place was haunted." he pointed out, edging further from the platform. The echo his voice made, for a moment, sounded as if dozens of voices muttered among each other, only to fade and disappear. Hundreds of them, it had sounded like, men and women both, indistinguishable and inhuman.

"I said people said it was haunted, Jesus..." she growled, but her pace quickened. Only bit left now; "I didn't expect you'd start... what...freaking out?"

Her voice cast itself amongst the unseen pillars and walls, splitting into whispers again, as if they'd just waited for a chance, anything to latch onto that could feed them. One sounded so close the mouth would have been by his ear, and Martin snapped about, flame boiling in his palm, ready to strike at...at nothing...

There was nothing but darkness, and against the bright flame dancing in his hand, even blacker than before. Piper had stopped where she was, watching him with clear surprise etched into her face. He snuffed the flame, already feeling like he'd erred by acting up when...when there was nothing.

Except the whispers lingered, longer than any echo should. Not a strand of hair on his body wasn't standing now, ice running fingers down his spine. He swallowed, forcing his breaths to come in steadier, calmer. It did not help on his mounting dread of this place.

"You... really don't hear anything?" cold sweat ran down his forehead, irritating his eyes as he scanned Piper's for... for anything, any sign that she was picking something up. There was nothing.

"...No, I don't," she shook her head, the light from her forehead dancing across the platform. It briefly, for a moment, skipped into the station itself, and the shadows danced and fled and came where it went. Some of them seemed... his gaze averted when Piper grabbed him by the arm; "But you're not looking great. Come on, we're nearly out."

This place was wrong. Martin fought the urge to run the last meters as Piper's light illuminated the entrance to the tunnel. It waited there, open and inviting, a promise of relative safety from whatever haunted this ungodly place. Every step of the way he uttered silent prayers to Arkay and Akatosh both, not certain of what god would be more helpful here.

He passed the concrete ring.

Almost as quickly as they had come, the whispers were gone, as were the feet running on stone. Suddenly, there was silence again but for the rats in the corners and the darkness, an almost comforting sound now because it was...natural, familiar.

The temperature was picking up again, it felt like, and no longer was Piper's breath visible before her. Had she even noticed it before?

"Still hearing things?" she asked, now gently, the irritation from before vanished from her tone.

He shook his head, breathing in the stale, humid air of the tunnel. Meter by meter, they were putting the cursed station behind them. Whatever ghosts haunted its halls, he wanted nothing to do with them, and was content in leaving them where they were. A bead of cold, salty sweat rolled into his eye.

How could this place even be haunted if Piper was telling the truth? If there was no magic here, ghosts should not be able to linger at all, right? Had he misunderstood his basics on the arcane fingerprints of souls? That, more than anything, was what truly terrified him of that place.

If it wasn't ghosts, or spirits, then what was it? No one lived in that place but the rats, and yet... he'd heard them, the voices. He'd heard running feet, small enough to be a child's. But there had been nothing when he put fire forth to see them, and Piper's flashlight had revealed...nothing but shadows.

"It has stopped," he said at last, his mouth dry as parchment; "But…"

"I didn't hear a damn thing..." Piper muttered, though there was no disbelief in her voice, at least; "Rats, sure, but... nothing else. What'd you hear?"

He did not know what to answer exactly, and for a few moments only the sound of their steps through the ancient gravel filled the tunnel. What exactly should he say that he'd heard? Ghosts? He didn't even know himself if it was, or something else entirely. No rats were they, he knew that much at least. No rats could make those sounds, no matter how big or how many.

"People," he said, though the word came out only with some hesitation. It sounded...dumb, to say that when clearly no one but the rats still lived there; "I think. I heard them speak first, We should get out of here, they said. I thought it was you..."

"Jesus..." Piper whispered, casting a glance back through the tunnel. The opening to Sutherland was already out of the light's range. It was infinitely far away and yet infinitely close. Too close; "...that's when you said..."

"Yeah..."

"Oh man..."

"I didn't think there could be ghosts here, if there is no magic..." he tried, the explanation sounding weak and almost as an excuse to himself; "But those sounds, they... I can't explain it otherwise."

"Well..." she sighed, though it turned into a deeper breath, and paused before exhaling again; "...we got through it. We're alive, spooky shit stopped being spooky when we got to the tunnel. Whatever the Hell it was, we're done with it now. People did say that place was messed up..."

"That's..." he stopped himself before insulting her. She hadn't heard or felt the things he had, it was no wonder she could be this calm about it. He breathed, waiting for it to no longer bear panic, before he spoke again; "...optimistic perspective."

He would admit to being...somewhat taken aback by her recovery from the station. But, again, she'd not heard it, or felt it. The echoes of the dead, or maybe it was all in his head, a product of her stories about the place.

No, no he'd definitely heard the voices, and the footsteps. They had been real, he knew that. What exactly they had been, however, was an entirely different thing, and one he loathed to consider. If this place knew nothing of magic, did that mean it didn't exist here at all? No, again he had to dismiss it. Magic was as universal and omnipresent as air and dirt. It was here, or he'd have no power himself to cast even the smallest flickering flame.

Then, these people had simply not discovered magic? Or, rather, perhaps it was the more reasonable assumption that the destruction of their world had sent the very concept of magic into Oblivion? Had all those with the aptitude for it died out, leaving only the ungifted? Even then, there had to be magicka all around, he could feel it with every breath, even if... it felt fainter, weaker than at home.

Maybe this world was further from Magnus than Nirn? The very idea was alien and difficult to process, senseless beyond comprehension. There were no other worlds but Nirn, for the celestial bodies were the Aedra. This was no theory, but simple, inarguable fact.

But then, how could there be spirits here, if there was no Magnus, no sun at all? How could he have magic, if there was no flow of magicka from the god of magic? Did not Oblivion surround this world just as it did Nirn, a starry scape of spirits fleeing creation? Spirits, or maybe even Daedra, what manner of entities he'd just encountered did not count amongst the mortal realm, he knew. The terror invoked in him at their presence was otherworldly.

"Hey, I'm a reporter. I deal with spooky shit, and bad stuff all around, to get the stories," she shrugged, and Martin blinked as she spoke, realizing he'd almost forgotten she was there; "Speaking of which, gotta find a way of adding this to a new headline." She spread out her hands; 'Tunnel Terrors' or 'Dreaded Darkness' maybe?"

"...people would read that?" he asked, trying to clear his mind. If they had been spirits, the voices he'd heard, it had to mean they were bound to the place of death. Necrology had never been his field of study, nor had Necromancy, but he understood the basics. A horrible death, mass slaughter and massacre fit well the requirements for hauntings.

"Hell yeah they would," Piper grinned, though it faltered somewhat after a few moments; "Well, some of them will. Diamond City's got a school but, just because people can read doesn't mean they really bother. Last time I had a real ripper of a story, I... do you hear something?"

He did.

A sound he couldn't place echoed through the tunnel, a strange sound that didn't seem to resemble anything he'd ever heard before. Ahead was absolute darkness, but the sounds that came made it feel as if the tunnel was coming to a stop... and yet, there was a familiarity to the sounds, something he should recognize.

"I do," he said after a moment's thought, coming up empty of ideas. Still the sense nagged him, that he should know.

"Oh great, I thought it was my turn to hear voices there for a moment." Piper chuckled.

It was something simple, something obvious. And it was still getting more and more humid with every minute that passed, each step they took churning gravel increasingly soft and... wet?

"Wait." He stopped, and so did she. With a wave of his hand, a magelight appeared and floated before him. Another gesture sent the sphere ahead, dancing through the air as if born on unfelt winds. Suddenly the ground mirrored the spell, reflecting the light it cast; "Is that... water?"

Ah, it is good to be back at it again. Finals are - hopefully - over. Hopefully, because of the way our grading system is delayed so you never really know if you've passed or not until a month after. Yay for our system.