Two hours passed like slow blood through a clogged vein.

Gael dabbed the final smear of antiseptic across the last Repossessor's burned collarbone, then tied off the bandage with a neat tug of his fingers and a little hum under his breath. The man wheezed, half-conscious, his chest rising in short shudders like a bellows out of rhythm.

"Put your hand on your chest and exhale as loudly as you can for the next four hours," Gael chirped, giving the man a pat on the head. "Do that, and I guarantee you live."

He stood with a groan and stretched, his vertebrae cracking down his spine like popping seeds. Then, with a sudden hop, he landed square on Maeve's shoulders, his coat fluttering behind him like the wings of some tattered priest-moth. The Exorcist gave a grunt and most definitely tried to fling him off, but he immediately sat on her shoulders and curled his legs around her neck, making sure she'd be going down with him if she tried anything funny.

I learn, Exorcist.

While Maeve struggled to get him off, he spread both arms and hollered at the Repossessors across the vast chamber:

"Gentlefolk! Crooked bones and boiling blisters! Congratulations on not dying yet!" His voice echoed off the pipe-veined ceiling, and the Repossessors across the chamber—mostly beneath his elevated metal platform—all turned to stare up at him. "Drag yourselves up to my little pesthole of a clinic and find my older sister! She'll give you something strong for the pain, and something even stronger to knock you out cold! You'll wake up tomorrow feeling like you swallowed a bomb and wrestled a saint, but you'll be healthy enough to start running through these pipes again!"

But even before the last syllable left his tongue, he felt the doubt rippling through the wounded like a contagious rash.

Murmurs.

Low voices beneath gas masks.

"…but Lorcawn said…"

"…we're not supposed to leave…"

"…orders were clear…"

Gael swayed around on Maeve's shoulders and let the moment hang for just a beat too long—and then he made a big show of sighing aloud, scratching the back of his head.

"Oh, I see how it is," he said calmly. "But these are the doctor's orders. If you stay down here, you'll die. If you go up, you'll live. My patients happen to still have a hundred percent recovery rate, so if you're all so unkind as to refuse to listen to me and lower that number, maybe I'll just break my contract as your 'Doctor' and go 'Plagueplain Doctor' on you. You guys must have fresh and harvestable organs for how many limbs you've stolen from other people, hm?"

There were no murmurs now. Just silence. Tense, greasy silence.

Then, from behind him, a voice cut through like a scalpel through moldy gauze.

"That's enough," Fergal announced as he trudged towards Gael, eight hands in his coat. Around him, his five goons waited in a loose semicircle, watching. "You all heard the doctor. Healthy men, get the wounded topside to the clinic. And bring the dead with you. As the Finger of Division Two, I'll take responsibility and keep searching for the Gulchers."

And that worked.

The Repossessors began to move, slow and begrudging as bruised dogs, and Gael watched them form clusters as they limped and shuffled through the pipes—dragging their own, cradling the bodies of friends and strangers alike—until the chamber thinned of life.

When the last of them went, the chamber grew still. 'Still', save for the occasional hiss of steam and the slow trickle of sewage water whispering beneath the grates.

It was just the eight of them now: him, Maeve, Fergal, and the five leather-clad goons standing behind their boss. Nobody said anything for a moment. The silence was thick enough to cut.

Then Fergal turned.

He didn't bark a command or make some grand gesture. The Finger simply began walking towards a far tunnel, bootsteps heavy on the metal slats, and his five goons followed him at once, automatic as clockwork.

"We'll keep on moving with just the eight of us," Fergal called over his shoulder. "Lorcawn wants us to look for the central command chamber."

Gael was still perched on Maeve's shoulders when he was about to speak up, so it wasn't particularly surprising when she finally managed to fling him off, making him topple backwards with a muffled yelp. She didn't even glance down at him in pity as she walked past him to follow Fergal.

"How rude," he muttered, picking himself up and dusting off the back of his coat. "No appreciation for classical shoulder-riding etiquette these days."

Then he jogged after her, catching up with a loose, hopping gait. The seven of them were already moving ahead, lantern light swaying from their belts, and together, they passed into the next pipe.

As they stepped into the new tunnel, though, Maeve slowed. She turned once—just once—and looked back into the empty chamber.

Gael followed her gaze for a moment. The corpses of Gulchers lay like discarded dolls across the floors and dirty streams, limbs twisted, mouths open. A few had crumbled slingshots still clutched in their burned hands. Smoke still rose faintly from the vents.

He glanced sideways at Maeve again.

Her face was stiff. Her mouth a line. There was that little twitch near her temple again, so while she didn't speak, he felt she didn't need to to get her point across.

She still hadn't gotten used to the value of human life down in the pipes.

…

So he sighed, long and slow, and stepped ahead to walk beside Fergal as they slipped deeper into the dark.

The deeper pipes weaved like gutwork: bronzed sinew and rusted cartilage spiraling endlessly into the bowels of Blightmarch. Each bend felt like a dead end pretending not to be. Each drip of sewage from the joints overhead struck Gael's wide-brimmed mask with the same monotonous rhythm that made him feel like he was being counted down by a patient executioner, but at least now, he had the reassurance that it wasn't just him who sucked at reading maps.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Right… turn?" muttered the fully-bandaged, skinless goon with the map. The big man—'Flay', if Gael recalled correctly—held the piece of paper upside down for a second too long before correcting it.

Gael watched the Repossessors try to navigate through the pipes with fond disdain. The paper in Flay's hands was curled, oil-stained, and marked in someone's blood. It looked almost identical to the one he'd bought from Juno, with its jagged red arrows and scribbled Xs in every corner like a child's idea of treasure, which meant it was probably just as unreliable as his.

Given they were probably going to be down here for a while, Gael ducked under a pipe that looked suspiciously like a giant ribcage and walked abreast with Fergal.

"So, Finger," he began casually, "a man of your noble wrist count and tactical finesse… you can work for just about anyone anywhere, especially up in Vharnveil, so why work for the Repossessors when you so evidently resist Lorcawn's dispositions?"

Fergal was quiet.

Flay pointed left with the map, then squinted, then rotated the page like he was reading a holy scripture upside down. Their group twisted through a corroded pipe that stank like melted boots and old bile before Gloam, the blind man, snatched the map from Flay—and then Aether, the noseless boy, snatched it from Gloam, the five goons bickering about how best to read their map.

It was only as they began descending a crooked spill-ladder into a broader channel that Fergal finally spoke.

"It didn't used to be like this, you know?"

His voice echoed low and solid, as if the pipework itself had finally decided to confess.

"Blightmarch's gangs burn fast. Always have," he continued. "But, historically speaking, two big gangs have always survived whatever Bharncair threw at them: the Rot Merchants, currently headed by Juno, and the Gulchers, currently headed by whoever lives like a king down here. They are the only two gangs that can be considered mainstays for how long they've persisted."

Gael scoffed as he shimmied down the ladder alongside Maeve. "You say that like the Repossessors are a 'new' gang. You've been cutting off fingers since I was a poor little boy."

"Then you must remember that the old Repossessors weren't this violent."

Their boots scraped as they landed at the base. The pipe here opened into a small platform studded with broken crates and mildew—almost like they were close to finding a new, vast underground chamber—so they didn't stop moving.

"The Old Palm merely ran a loaning business back then," Fergal said. "We ran it under the Rot Merchants. The Repossessors were a quiet sub-gang with clean books and mostly clean hands.

Gael snorted. "Ah yes. The good old days, when the 'Repossessors' only repossessed your wallet, not your femur."

Maeve looked over sharply. Her stare was cold steel, and Gael, being both a gentleman and a coward, cleared his throat and shut up.

Fergal pressed on.

"A year ago, Lorcawn killed the Old Palm. Slit his throat during a warehouse audit," he said. "Lorcawn was the old man's right hand. He knew the business and the muscle, but he was never satisfied with what we had. He'd always had… a hunger for power under his skin. And he hid it well until he took over."

They walked past a ribbed bulkhead. Something scratched from the other side.

"In the span of a single year, he built the Repossessors into Blightmarch's third pillar. He picked fights with every smaller gang in the ward until he'd slaughtered them all. He obtained enough firepower to rival the Gulchers. Networks to bargain with Juno. Now he wants control of the Gulch Pipelines all across his territories so he can control access to the rejuvenating water."

They turned another bend. The path ahead ended in a bricked-off terminus, the wall patched with a newer cement seal. A dead end.

Maeve's voice came gently, but clearly.

"You don't like what Lorcawn's doing, then?"

"No," Fergal answered plainly. "Violence in excess isn't good for business or living, and Lorcawn's the most bloodthirsty Palm I've ever had the displeasure of meeting."

"So why do you still work for them?"

Fergal didn't respond to that. He merely glanced at his wrist—and only then did Gael notice he was wearing a rusty old watch.

A watch with cute, floral pattern etchings.

"... It's getting dark," he muttered. "We should get out of the pipes before it's too late and resume our search tomorrow."

Maeve looked around them. "It's always dark down here."

"Not this kind of dark," he said. "It's getting late on the surface, and there's a reason the Gulchers rule the deep. Their Symbiotic Systems and Arts are tuned for what comes out after curfew in the Gulch Pipelines, and ours aren't. There's a reason why even Lorcawn ordered us to run down as many Gulchers as we can before nightfall."

With that, Fergal turned. His five goons pivoted like trained limbs as well, boots thudding back the way they came.

"Men aren't stupid, feral beasts. They should only pick fights they can win, and those things can't be beaten down here," the Finger called out, waving a hand over his shoulder. "Since Lorcawn told us to work together to look for the central command chamber, I'll come meet the two of you in the clinic tomorrow morning with the rest of the boys. Lucky us, am I right?"

As the six gangsters vanished into the pipework, their footsteps fading into the metal groan of the infrastructure as they threatened to leave Gael and Maeve behind—something else crept in.

A low howl.

Not a scream. Not quite. More like the wind trying to remember how to speak. It slithered through the pipes and grates, through holes no larger than a coin, and carried with it a pressure that made even Gael's breath hitch before he caught himself.

It really is getting late, huh?

He'd somewhat expected the sound sooner or later, given how long they'd spent down in the pipes already, but Maeve froze. Her umbrella was gripped tight in both her hands before she even seemed to register it, and it was held low like she was on a dueling floor.

She stepped backwards until her spine nearly touched his.

"Plagueplain Doctor," she said, her voice barely audible behind her mask. "What did you say lives down here again?"

Before he could answer, a sewer grate to their left hissed inward like something exhaling. Then—clang—it blew out, skittering across the metal walkway they were standing on with a sharp clatter of rusted teeth. A sour wind surged through the pipe behind it.

They both whirled, and their visions flared red at the same time.

"... Welp," he said, casual as a butcher closing shop as he scratched his chin "That's our exit cue. If the Repossessors are leaving, then so are we."

He pivoted and started strolling the way they came, hands in his coat, hurried and slightly anxious—but Maeve didn't follow.

In fact, he almost tripped over himself as she jerked their ankle chain, forcing him to stay.

"If it's a Myrmur," she said darkly, "we should kill it, if not only to save the Host being—"

"There's no Host down here," he grumbled, jerking their ankle chain back his way. "It's like what happened in the Fogspire Forest. Let's just get the fuck outta here. I don't think the two of us combined have the firepower to take it down right now anyways."

She blinked. "What does that even mean?"

Then came the slither: a wet sound, like old flesh sliding free from bone. Something viscous pushed itself out of the narrow pipe on their left, spilling over the edge like it had no bones to break, no skin to split—and it hit the ground with a slop, thick and black-green, the color of oil and decomposing meat.

Both of them stared at the sludge that'd just popped out of the pipe.

The sludge didn't stop moving. It quivered. Twitched. Bubbled. It didn't have limbs. It didn't have a face, but it wanted to rise. It wanted to become something.

Maeve stepped back with a nervous twitch of a brow now, umbrella poised to strike, while Gael sighed and unsheathed his bladed cane reluctantly.

"Fine," he mumbled. "We may as well try to take it down."

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