At the next crossing a dull gleam tugged at the corner of my vision. Annalise caught it too as she held up the lantern guiding its light over stone that seemed too smooth to be old. There it was, near the far wall, pressed flat into a smear of glassy sheen. A copper coin, the face on it stretched and thinned as if the stamp had been pulled like taffy.
"The boy said Shantok keeps her coin down here," I murmured, the echo of his small voice returning to me from the street above. "At least we found something down her to prove she came this far."
Nox had already drifted to the iron gate on our right, her barbed tail flicking as she tested the bars with care. Beyond, the passage narrowed, its walls covered with a slick skin that caught the lanternlight and cast it back with warning.
A fine sound moved, a whisper that was not speech or water. A soft dragging whisper of something wet sliding across a surface. I gestured to Annalise who raised the lantern in return. SA soft hiss responded as several small orange shapes that clung to the stone above seemed to cower from the light itself.
"Hold your fire," I whispered out, "see if they pass."
"Yes boss," Velyan breathed, and there was a smile hidden in it that she did not bother to show.
"Roger, roger." Annalise echoed and gave a very serious nod that fooled no one.
Nox lifted two fingers in a salute, her face empty of expression. I can't stand these guys. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and we waited, every breath measured. The orange pyramids slowly slid away, moving in a slow procession deeper into the side passage. The sound of them faded until the tunnel swallowed them whole.
"We should tell Helena," Annalise said in a low voice, "If the city keeps maps of these tunnels, there will be a way past these gates. Trying to search every grate will take us a week."
"I agree." Nox replied, "The job says investigate the disturbance. We have a disturbance. That's more than enough to report."
"We promised the boy we would find his friend." Annalise protested.
"She's probably dead." Nox answered, not unkind but without apology. "All we have found is a coin that was half eaten by acid. That is not a hopeful sign."
"A promise is a promise." I said, "We told him we would try to find the kid. Let's find her, no use in arguing."
Velyan's eyes traced the dark past the bars. "We should double back. A child hiding coins would not travel this far into the maze. There are other paths we did not take."
"Good idea," I said. "Let's head that way."
We turned, following the marks Velyan had left. As time stretched on, fewer and fewer smears on the ceiling interceded out path. It seemed their nest was to our back, and the area before us was clear of their infestation.
"What do we tell them," Annalise asked suddenly, and Nox startled just enough to look annoyed at herself, "Sorry. But, like, do we just say: 'I know we promised to find your friend, but we couldn't and just left them down there in the endless dark maze never to return.'"
"Well, no matter what, we aren't phrasing it that way." Velyan emphasized.
"What's the difference?" I asked, voice even. "Might as well tell them the truth. If the girl is dead, they should hear it without a ribbon tied around it."
There is a cruelty in false kindness. The world teaches the lesson anyway, and it grows harsher with every year you delay it.
"We do not need to completely destroy them. They probably already lost their parents, why tear away more of their hope." Annalise replied, her voice carrying a fierce gentleness.
The corridor opened before us into a broad chamber and every word died of its own will. The space was a basin carved in a perfect circle, the water within it was clearer than glass. Eight corridors entered the chamber at even intervals, though the far mouth sat lower than the rest, as if the floor was tilted in that direction. In the very center rose a low dais of stone. Upon the cold disc, partially submerged, lay a small mostly intact skeleton. The skull faced us, missing a single tooth. A scatter of copper and silver lay about it like a forlorn crown.
"We are adults, we are meant to." Annalise began, and then her voice fell to a whisper swallowed by the room. "Gods."
"We were too late." Velyan said. There was no edge in it, only a simple dullness.
"We did what we could." Nox said, arms folded tight. "The bones are clean, she has been dead for a while."
"The least we can do is give her a proper burial." Annalise said, and she brushed past me, the lantern's light sliding across the clear surface of the basin.
I kept my eyes on the room. The arrangement bothered me. It bothered me more with each breath. Seven leading in, one leading out, as if this basin was filtering the water and pushing it out. The clean nature of the sewers. The lack of smaller slimes in the area. The fact that that the girl died two days ago and now her skeleton was picked clean in the water.
"Water," I said, the thought finally clicking into place. "Annalise, wait."
Her boot touched the water. There was a moment of stubborn stillness. Her heel did not break the surface, it rested on it. Then the entire basin moved.
Annalise threw herself backward into a roll as the water before her twisted and rose, the stone wall replaced with one of gel and ooze. Its size was only outpaced by its speed, as its sudden shift cracked the stone beneath as the mass slammed into the ground with a surprising force. Its form flashed behind my eyes from long ago, a lake surrounded by dark tangled trees. What was a slime from beyond the wall doing here?
Before I could consider how one made it this far, Nox stepped into its path with a burst of black fire flung from her palm. The flame struck and the surface boiled, steam twisting upward. That small bolt wasn't enough, I knew it well. You needed a continuous jet of flame or one large burst. We were just making it angry.
Just as I predicted the body surged forward like a wave moving swiftly towards Nox who readied her sword. I rushed forward with my morningstar as Velyan yelled from behind, "No!"
As the wave met Nox's sword a shriek erupted from behind us, rattling through my skull. The sound bounced off the chamber and echoed louder still. The wave of acid stopped and reversed, folding in on itself as if flinching from the noise. In the next heartbeat it fled, sluicing toward the far, lower corridor. A familiar bolt whistled past my ear punching a hole through the membrane of the skin causing an outpour of acid before the transparent shell reformed.
Nox darted forward after it, sword in one hand, fire in the other. Damn it, don't chase it into its nest. Annalise, lantern swinging and violin in hand sprinted after them both, Velyan not two steps behind her. I followed, cursing my own slow caution as they were now all in front of me.
We drove into the low corridor and stopped as one. A blank stone wall waited where there should have been a way through. No slime. Only a sheet of water hardly deep enough to wet a boot covered the ground. I dropped the head of my morningstar into it for a reaction. Nothing stirred in response. But there were vents alongside the edges, each taking in the outflow of water. The slits were so small even the goblin from before could only fit his hand inside.
"Damn," I said simply, "We lost it."
We stood and listened to our own panting and the hiss of the vents. Nothing abnormal, save the swaying light of the lantern.
"What were you thinking?" Velyan asked, the words came as hard as flint.
"I was going to get the skeleton." Annalise said, chin raised. "It needed a burial. How should I have known there would be a slime that large?"
"You didn't think it might be a trap?" Velyan said, the anger held on a tight rein, "You didn't stop and think why the bones were on a pretty disc at the very heart of a perfect room with water that looked like polished glass? Is the area between your ears for show? All you thought was, 'Oh, look there, let me walk across the only clear water in the dirty sewer towards a pile of bones.'"
"How could I have known?"
"By thinking before you move. By imagining what waits a step ahead."
"I would have been fine," Annalise said, though her voice shook, "You saw how I moved. I was clear before it struck, faster than both the fighters."
"If you had acted a single breath later with that music, you or someone else would have died." Velyan had a dark look, "Do you know what happens when you are engulfed by a slime?"
So, the shriek was no shriek at all, rather a magic enhanced cry of bow on strong. Annalise pressed her lips together, her silence ringing as loudly as her violin.
"I'll tell you what happens. All sound gets cut off as the slime holds you in place. It feels like every part of you is weighed down by stones. But you don't focus on being stuck. You focus on the fact that every crevice, joint, section of skin begins to melt away from you."
Velyan's eyes weren't focused on Annalise, rather staring at something invisible. Something nobody else could see.
"The first to go is your eyes and ears, they melt away. You can't hear, you can't see, and you can't move. All you can do is scream. And when you try to scream, you begin to burn from the inside as well. When, no. If you find the strength to scramble for purchase, you will find none as you float in the acid. The only part of you left after a mere minute is your skeleton."
The color had drained from Annalise's face. She nodded once, not in surrender, but in understanding that hurt.
I stepped in before the silence cut deeper. "I think she understands V. She made a mistake. We all do. But what matters is learning from them and moving forward. Annalise was right about one thing, we should put the girl to rest. Then we can leave."
We turned back toward the central basin. The chamber received us as if we had never left. The water was no longer clear. A shade of murky brown infringing upon the basin, a suggestion of color where there had been none. The dais waited with its small burden, the coins quiet around it.
A sharp hiss lanced from the tunnel to our right. We all turned as the sound rode the walls and lept into the open. The slime burst out a second time, no longer a sheet but a pillar that filled the space from floor to ceiling. It rolled forward with the speed of a sprinting soldier, a wave of acid undeterred.
"Ready yourselves!" I roared, stepping forward, wishing with every fiber of me for the weight of a shield on my arm.