Jane picked Erick up like he was a sack of potatoes. She spent two whole seconds eyeing the cylindrical path that Bacci had made down through the dark water, then she leapt. With Erick in her arms. Erick had a few things to say about that, including, but not limited to:

“Glad to know that if all your friends jumped off bridges, you would too.”

“At least you looked before you leapt.”

“Let’s pretend that dampness is water. On an unrelated note: Who wants a [Cleanse]?”

“How the FUCK are you so strong!”

Erick clung to his daughter for dear life. He was not used to this sort of thing. He should probably get used to this sort of thing before this sort of thing killed him. Maybe he should run more. His heart was likely beating too fast to be healthy. Do they have heart attacks on Veird? They must have, right?

Hit for 32 HP!

Jane had held him all the way down to the bottom of the torrent, cradling his head as they landed, but the impact of landing was there. There was no splash. All around them was a ripping, silent darkness, just beyond the purple sphere-edge of a [Ward]. Jane groaned in pain, then glinted white as a heal washed over her. She was still holding Erick.

Bacci whisper-shouted over the roar of the river, “Move!” as she pulled them to the side.

Savral landed right where Erick and Jane had been.

A white light ebbed from Jane as she tried to set Erick to his feet. He did not collapse, but he did find himself sitting on wet stone.

Healed for 25!

Healed for 25!

The [Rejuvenation] light kept ticking off a heal every second. No one said anything. Erick doubted that anything could be heard over the rush of the river above them.

And then Bacci made it worse. She waved her hand above them, dismissing the first ward. Dark water resumed its course, plunging Erick, Savral, Jane, and Bacci into total darkness.

Somehow, it was quieter now. The ever present roar of the sewerhouse thrummed through the stone at their feet, but it was not the same sound as from the surface. The yellow-white light from above had changed, too, replaced by midnight waters all around and barely visible lights above, like distant stars. There was at least twenty feet of water above them. Maybe more. Erick imagined that if enough time passed and his eyes adjusted to the light, it might not actually be so bad down here at the bottom of the river.

But only about 5 seconds had passed since Bacci erased the upward tunnel. More than 5 seconds would have to pass for Erick to feel better about this whole situation.

Jane grabbed his shoulder and he almost screamed. He turned. There was a tunnel leading off into the rock of the riverbed. It was big enough for an orcol and it was dry, because Bacci had put another water ward up, completely voiding the tunnel of water. Savral was already walking inside.

Erick casually stood up and stayed up thanks to Jane, then followed Savral through the tunnel. Jane kept behind him. Bacci took one more look up, and after stepping into the tunnel, dismissed the second purple ward. The river retook its basin with little chagrin, the air bubble that was the warded space annihilated into bubbles like it was never there. The tunnel ward ended right at the river.

Further in the damp tunnel there was a room that had probably always been ‘dry’, but after a small orb of yellow light floated into the air above Bacci, Erick could tell that this room had not seen use in a long while. Bacci threw a [Cleanse] into the space. Green molds and fuzzy growths withered. The space cleared in a second. Even the air smelled cleaner, which shouldn’t have been surprising, but the room smelled fresh. Like a mountain breeze.

Savral said, “We’ll go back out when they’re gone.”

Sudden relief! Erick collapsed to the ground near the wall of the room, his ass hitting hard, wet stone. He said, “I was not expecting this sort of strategy. I thought we’d be dying to fireballs.”

Bacci breathed out. She gasped out a short cry, and then it was over.

“It’s okay, Bacci.” Savral moved to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She leaned into him. “We’re safe as can be down here.”

“I never thought we’d have to actually use this place!” She shouted, “I thought! …I don’t know what I thought. I’m worried for your father. Both him and Mog, though? They should be okay. I hope.”

Savral said, “They’ll be okay. Even if they’re walking into an ambush, or if the story of the dead rookies is true… Either way, Dad and Guildmaster Mog together are more than a match for… For most anyone.”

Now that he was a bit calmer, Erick could feel the stone vibrate with the force of the nearby river. It was the same reverberation that had always been in the Sewerhouse, though it was certainly closer, now. Erick was… Not used to it, not really.

Which brought up another concern.

Erick said, “I thought there were monsters in the water.”

“There are.” Savral said, “Slimes.”

Bacci pulled away from Savral to sit in the back of the room. Erick felt the ambient mana shift as she began to meditate. After the initial shock was over, she wasn’t worried about anything was she?

Erick stared at the darkness, then started laughing.

Something clicked through the stone. Like a god striking the earth from the heavens, the room shook, but it did not move. Erick’s laugh turned into a small ‘eep’. Jane stood by her father, her hand tense on his shoulder, her nails digging into his skin.

Savral laughed. Bacci giggled. Erick and Jane were dead silent.

Jane regained her voice. “What— What was that?”

“They opened the big door!” Savral laughed out. “They didn’t check for traps?”

So… They weren’t worried. They were laughing. They were okay with this series of events. These facts, half formed in Erick’s mind, caused him to reevaluate his world. The first thing he noticed was that the tempo of the river had changed since the large click. Savral eyed the water down the tunnel, grinning. Erick and Jane eyed the water too. There wasn’t much to see, but…

Water definitely rushed in a different direction than usual. Erick couldn’t see it from here, but he could hear it, as the right-to-left torrent combined with the sounds of… left-to-front, maybe? And something like a waterfall? There was already a smaller waterfall in the river room, but now the waterfall sounded bigger and was audible through the stone all around them.

Bacci breathed out in relief. “Give me a bit, then we can go reset the system. It should be over soon.” She closed her eyes. “Everyone thinks we have a lot of money here, but we never carry that much yellow. I'm glad our emergency training sessions weren’t a waste of time, but I would have preferred to never use this place.”

Savral said, “Honestly. Assholes come in to my house and try to rob and kill us? Serves ‘em right.”

Erick still didn’t know what exactly had happened, but Savral and Bacci looked calmer. Jane was holding it together but she was obviously unhappy, from the tension in her shoulders to the glare in her eyes, to the way her nails pierced the skin of Erick’s shoulder.

Squeezed for 1!

Jane instantly let go, mouthing ‘sorry.’

Erick asked, “How long can we stay here before the air runs out?”

“Runs out?” Savral asked, “Why would it run out?”

“This room is vented?”

“No. That’d be a terrible design. Someone could send an attack through the vent. If the air gets bad enough for you, use a [Cleanse].”

“… Right. Because [Cleanse] obviously restores oxygen to the air. Silly me.”

“Oxygen?”

“… Never mind.”

After a minute of nothing else happening, Jane, arms crossed, said, “I’ve never been down past the river door. I didn’t know there was a river here. Of course I could hear it, but seeing it and then jumping in was...”

Erick nodded. Yeah. That was terrifying.

“Sorry about that, Jane.” Bacci said, “This river freaked me out for the first three years, too. Still does, sometimes. I used to swear there were slithery things in the water, but Al put a grate across the whole river one day just to prove there wasn’t. For three months, the only things we ever caught were slimes.”

Savral said, “The only monsters in these waters are slimes… And probably oozes, now that I think about it. But primarily slimes, and only the ones that climb up into the beginning parts of the sewers. The river here moves too fast and the intake miles below is protected by a meter-thick grate with fist-sized holes. On the other side of that grate is a much larger river; there’s nothing on that side that would want to come through to this side.”

Miles below? Meter-thick grate? Things on the other side? If that was supposed to make Erick feel better about monsters in the water, it did not.

Bacci laughed once, then said, “Because fear is based on logic. How I forget sometimes.”

Savral huffed in annoyance, then leaned on the wall next to Bacci.

He said, “If you went out and killed some monsters maybe you wouldn’t be so—”

Bacci glared at him. Like a smart man, he shut up.

That looked like the beginnings of an old argument where neither person gave any ground but the ground was already so tread it was hard to get truly upset over the whole sordid affair. Erick looked toward Jane. She was calmer now. They had had similar arguments over the years. They were in the middle of one of those arguments right now, about killing monsters.

Erick knew he was wrong in the vast majority of cases. He also knew that—

“Why didn’t we fight?” Jane asked, “How do you know the attackers up top would want to kill us?”

Savral smiled. “I would have liked to have fought them too, but Bacci doesn’t fight and your father doesn’t either. Decisions were made years ago regarding what we’d do in case of an attack and we stuck to those decisions.”

Bacci said, “There are only two historically recorded outcomes to an attack on the sewerhouse. Either everyone who works here dies, or all the attackers do. There is no middleground. That’s why the pay is so good. Us hiding like this is a version of the second outcome.” She stressed. “You might not understand this yet since you’re not from Veird…” She looked at Jane. “Or maybe you’re very familiar with the concept. It’s called the ‘Illusion of Levels’. It’s a famous essay written at the start of the Script that’s still relevant to this day, but you’re already experienced with this, I think. When you were taking down level 25s in the training rings, at what? Level 5?”

“Yeah. Levels 5 through 8.”

Bacci said, “There are no easy fights; levels are an illusion. People die through critical hits all the time, no matter their HP or other defenses. The most likely outcome of a fight was Savral and you surviving. In the very best case, Erick —you’re a great guy— but you would hesitate when it came to killing a killer, and—”

A green glow came from the tunnel.

Bacci reacted first. A purple haze filled the air. Savral reacted second. Gleaming black, he moved in front of the tunnel right as a green dot floated into sight, smashing right into Savral. Cloying green mist flowed across black armor, filling the air of the small room. Almost all of Bacci’s purple ward faded as a small blue box scrolled across Erick’s eyes.

147 absorbed!

And then another.

Decay! 21 absorbed!

Decay! 4 damage!

“Erick! [Ward]!” Bacci shouted. “As strong as you can!”

Before she could tell him to make it as strong as he could, he was already casting. Erick dumped 450 mana into a [Ward]. White glitters filled the air.

Decay! 25 absorbed!

Almost a quarter of Erick’s [Ward] faded as everyone in the room took decay damage.

Savral waved his hand through the air. Five drops of light appeared, hovering, quivering. Waiting for something. Two more decay messages came and went. Almost all of Erick’s [Ward] was gone. Sweat broke out across his back and neck as a stab of fear crawled into his mind. The next decay message did not come.

Bacci said, “That was an expensive attack. Tracking, Decay, force bomb base spell. Almost 250 damage to each of us. Didn’t blow up when it touched the water. Maybe 300 mana. 400, badly cast.”

A green glow appeared far down the tunnel, in the water of the river. Two of Savral’s light drops whipped out from their hovering positions, racing down the tunnel to crash into two green flickers. Green explosions of light rocked the dark river, one right after the other.

Erick and Jane tensed.

Bacci calmly said, “900 mana gone. If it’s a Will-Mage we might not need to worry. If it’s a Focus-Mage then we need a different plan.”

Jane muttered, “I’m completely outclassed.”

“Me too,” Erick said. “I need to do better. If we survive.”

“… Yeah.” Jane nodded. “Yeah.” She asked Bacci, “What can I do? I’ve got 530 mana and [Ward] 6.”

Bacci said, “Put a 500 point Ward on top of Savral and both of you start meditating.”

The air blinked white. Erick and Jane both pulled mana into their bodies as they forced themselves into a Rest state, transforming their mana per day recovery into mana per hour.

“Done,” Jane said. “Meditating.”

Bacci stood. “I’ll run out part 2 of the trap.”

Savral stepped aside as Bacci walked forward. Another two of Savral’s light drops shot forward to intercept two more green glows, exploding them inside of the river. Erick guessed that the green mist still appeared, but was instantly washed away. Savral waved his hand again, setting five more light drops into the air, to wait for another attack.

Bacci stood in direct sight of the river, darkness rushing past the edge of her purple water ward four feet away. She raised her arms. Purple light flooded forward, taking shape into a wedge.

Half of the entire dark torrent shifted upward as Bacci’s purple light flickered, then broke, and the river washed down again, back into its basin. Bacci did it again. And then a third time, each repetition lasting a little longer than the one before. After the fifth repetition, she left her ward active for a full minute.

Erick felt the world shake under him, like an earthquake, every time Bacci redirected the flow of the river. With every repetition he felt a little bit smaller.

Bacci lowered her hands. She said, “Two kills. Both after the second ramp. 2% participation for 58000 experience apiece, meaning level 20s. Maybe exactly level 20s?”

“I think you’re right.” Savral sighed, “Young idiots.”

All four of them waited for something more to happen.

- - - -

Twenty minutes passed.

Savral said, “They’re gone.”

Bacci agreed, “One way or the other.”

Erick asked, “How do we get out of here?”

“Easily.” Bacci said, “But there’s a chain of events that happens when a place like the sewerhouse is attacked.” She turned to Savral. “What would your father want us to do?”

“Preserve the secrecy of the trap. We go out and chase away any guards that might be snooping.”

“Right. Okay.” Bacci rolled her shoulders, then raised her arms towards the river. “Follow the path, walk up the stairs. I’ll go last.” Purple glitter extended into the water, pushing it aside as the [Ward] made a path to the left. She lowered her arms and stepped into the tunnel through the water. “Should be good.”

Savral took point. He was weaponless, just as he had been at the start of all this, but he had his claws and his armor. Bacci waved Erick and Jane forward into the tunnel with her. Jane walked forward. Erick almost had to be pulled inside, but a pointed glare from Jane set him to rights.

They walked in the darkness, forward through the river. The [Ward] tunnel ended in an upward path. Most of the river rushed to the side, but a lot of it rushed up that path, until Bacci created another [Ward], completely encapsulating the space. Up they went, hands slightly out so they didn’t slip on the stone and fall back down.

The upward path took them through winding tunnels, up, down, then through another twist, finally ending in a great opening with a familiar light on the other side. A huge vault door hung open at the end of the tunnel, into a familiar space beyond. Bacci had to reapply her [Ward] a few times for them to get here, the river hugging the back of the last [Ward] all the way to this point; the main room of the four settling pools. The four smaller metal doors in the room were also open, but two of them had been battered inward hard enough to twist the metal into the frame.

Savral hopped into the main room and cast those five drops of light again before moving off to the side, to the nearest settling room. He looked in the room. He cast some sort of spell, blinking black light into the air that rolled outward, touching walls and continuing to bounce, but seeming to do nothing.

“I don’t see or sense anyone.” Savral frowned. “The Mage Guild isn’t going to be happy.”

“Check the other rooms, Savral.” Bacci stepped into the main room and threw a massive [Cleanse] into the center. She smiled as the air cleared. “That’s a bit better.” She turned around and gestured for Jane and Erick to come forward. “Pop a damage absorbing ward if it looks like we have trouble, Jane.”

Both of them stepped down into the room. The three of them, together, watched Savral move from room to room, closing the doors as he went. When he came to a broken door, he cast [Mend]. Metal untwisted, popping the metal door back into a proper configuration. Savral then closed those doors, too. When all four settling room doors were closed, he moved back to the large vault door. Bacci made a smaller, more localized purple ward over the space that the vault door would occupy when closed. Savral closed the vault door, locking it tight, then [Mended] the whole thing three times. The vault metal moved slighty after the first [Mend], then slightly again after the second. The third [Mend] did nothing.

Bacci dismissed the tunnel [Ward], waited a second, then dismissed the [Ward] over the vault door.

A tap of water hit the other side of the vault door. There were no leaks.

The rest of the night passed in a slowly unwinding terror as no other dangers appeared. The city guards appeared, of course, but Savral was the one charged with giving the official report. Erick and Jane, as they were both guests and new in town, were side-eyed by the guards, but they were not officially questioned. Savral even stepped in when two guards tried to ask unofficial questions, on two different occasions. Bacci resumed her guise of a scared girl.

The city guard took it upon itself to guard the Sewerhouse for the remainder of the night, but they were not allowed inside. Apparently, Jane and Erick’s jaunt into the inner workings of the Sewerhouse was quite an anomaly, and both Savral and Bacci told them so on multiple occasions.

Besides the guards doing their guarding duty, Bacci asked Erick to help her [Cleanse] and [Mend] the various broken parts of the Sewerhouse. The river had gone all the way up out onto the street, though the guards took care of that specific cleanup. During the interior cleanup, it became apparent that Al’s office and the three Rest rooms were ruined by more than just the river. Burn marks decorated a lot of the space. Why the intruders would have bothered fireballing this space, no one had any idea.

While Erick and Bacci cleaned and repaired, Jane and Savral made dinner. When they finished, it was a late dinner, but it was good. They were all alive, and the danger had passed.

The investigators would be out tomorrow to [Scry] and [Witness] Savral’s story for themselves, but for now, it was over.

Al showed up at midnight, angry as a rabid dragon when he saw the city guards standing guard, but his anger quickly dwindled as Savral stepped into view, safe. Al broke into tears, rushing his son and almost crushing the large dragonkin in his orcol arms. It was good that Bacci, Erick, and Jane were alive, too, but none of them mattered to Al as much as Savral mattered.

Al’s anger at seeing what remained of his office, though, that would stick around for a while.

- - - -