Rats and rags: part two
Ex-High Overseer Campbell shuffled aimlessly along cold stone. He could feel the plague at the corner of his mind. His arms had gone numb already, though they still could move, and the brand on his cheek itched incessantly. He refused to scratch it tough. Wandering hands…Repeating the strictures had only done so much to keep him sane. Especially here, in the great sprawling sewers of Dunwall, where rats would eat you or be your only meal, depending on how many there were at once. With a jolt, a hand reached up from the disgusting water running through the canal and grasped the stone edge. The hand was starkly lit by the large white spotlight resting in the corner and illuminating this part of the sewer. Campbell barely paid it any mind. Either it was a weeper, and it would ignore him, or it was a healthy person, in which case it would also ignore him. The stone cracked under the harsh grip of the small hand, then, with a loud splash, it's owner thrust itself from the water with surprising force and landed on its arms and knees. It retched up sewer water. "Outsider's eyes, my kingdom for Emily's dress right now…" It spluttered out.
Emily? The name registered through the fog in Campbell's mind, and he turned to the figure. His eyes widened. "You!" His voice was raspier than he remembered, and a little blood spat out. The boy turned and saw him, then startled, jumping to his feet. "You?" He echoed. "What are you…oh boy what are you?" Campbell glared at the street rat, arms twitching involuntarily. Well, look at that. I can feel them again. He walked forward. "You little runt. You ruined me. I had everything, and I have nothing now and it's the fault of you and your damned witch empress!"
The boy was taking in ragged breaths. "Nothing, huh? Welcome to the club." Campbell lunged towards him, but Thomas swatted at him irritably. The strike actually forced him backwards a few steps. "Don't bother. I guess I do have something, and it puts me above you." The boy shrugged off a sopping jacket, then began unwinding bandages from about his midriff. "Not much point stopping the damn thing getting infected, I guess…" He mumbled to himself. He threw the saturated, off-white fabrics away, revealing-
Campbell stepped back. "What…What is-"
Pus was oozing from the wound in a steady stream now. Black veins spread from the area up his chest and down his legs, while the whole surrounding area was a horrid green. The boy wrung out the brown jacket with muscles that were entirely disproportionate to a child his age.
"Yeah. It's bad. Remedies can't make it any better than this now. I couldn't bring myself to show it to Emily." He looked over to Campbell. "Don't suppose you've seen her? We got split up when we hit the river. Really should have learned to swim."
"Mother's mercy what happened to you boy?" Campbell exclaimed. He got a laugh in response.
"Waaaay too much. You started this, you son of a hagfish, but you've been punished enough. The rest was Granny Bloody Rags."
Campbell let out a gasp, and the boy looked at him inquisitively, putting his sleeves back through the slightly-less-wet jacket. "You know her?"
Campbell gulped. "She…" He looked around furtively. "She owns these sewers."
._.
Emily kneeled by the pothole, looking up doubtfully at the lord protector. "How exactly do you know about all these?"
She and Corvo had come to a tentative agreement. As much as the idea of her getting into any danger registered to him as Not Allowed, (And her pointing out that she had technically beaten him did nothing to sway him on that matter) he had agreed that leaving her in the flooded district was similarly inconceivable, and that she would only be safe enough to stay in one place when she was Empress. Meaning that they were going back to the Hound Pits pub.
"It's my job." he replied simply. He looked around, then jumped down the pothole, and looked around again, before gesturing her to follow him. Having confirmed for herself using her black eyes that there was no one nearby, she followed him down into the sewer. "So, what's the plan?"
Corvo walked up to her and covered one of her ears protectively. She smiled up at the gesture, glad that even in situations like this, he was able to reassure her.
He frowned, then grabbed her hand and put it on her other ear. Then he pulled out a pistol and fired it at a wooden palisade in the corner. She squeaked a little, and felt somewhat silly. Corvo moved towards the hole in the floor the wood had been covering, looking at the rushing water beneath it, then back at her. "We're going to need to swim."
._.
Thomas came to a stop in front of a large chamber. Flickering lights lit the sewer behind him, but ahead it was dark, too dark for him to see anything at all without his magic and he wasn't making his wound any worse. "Hello?" He called out. The call echoed throughout the chamber. There was some whimpering, then smacking footsteps. A girl, far older than Emily but still hardly a woman, appeared out of the dark, clothes tattered. She staggered to a stop when she saw him. "Please. Please, you have to save me! She wants to-Granny wants to-"
Another voice cut through the darkness, cracked and high pitched. "Ooh, look at this! Her majesty's little friend has come back for a check-up! Come now, let me have a look at you!"
Spotlights throughout the room slammed on. Thomas saw the carcass of a whale high above him, a dirty bathtub, and-
His breath caught in his throat. He staggered backwards, falling to the floor as rats; dozens, hundreds of them came skittering towards him over the dirt floor. Screams echoed throughout the chamber.
well it looks like its going to be down to my own discipline from now on, because i'm all caught up with these chapters