Zane's vision was a pinprick of grey, oily light.
The girl's voice sounded distant, like it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel. "...you get me the fuck out of this sewer..."
He was blacking out. The agony of the withdrawal was a physical thing, a black hole imploding in his gut that threatened to swallow him whole.
His UI, burned into the back of his vision, was a screaming, flashing red.
STATUS: WITHDRAWAL (CRITICAL) ESSENCE: 0.05% ...System failure imminent...
"Deal," he rasped. He didn't particularly have a way, but he judged that he had to try something.
And then the world was gone.
He was falling, tumbling into the cold, wet darkness while his heart stuttered like a panicked bird in a cage.
This was it. He'd died of an aneurysm in a cubicle, and now he was going to die of a fucking addiction in a sewer.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," the girl's voice snapped close to his ear. "You're not allowed to die yet, you fucking Stain."
A hard, calloused hand grabbed his jaw and wrenched it open.
A metal vial was shoved between his teeth.
"Drink."
A liquid so foul and acrid it defied description poured down his throat.
It tasted like battery acid mixed with rat piss and pure, distilled static.
Zane gagged, his body convulsing as it tried to reject the poison.
"Swallow it, scum!" the girl ordered, pinching his nose shut.
He swallowed.
It hit his stomach like a lightning strike.
The shredding, tearing agony of the withdrawal didn't fade… it just stopped. It was like a switch had been flipped inside his nervous system.
The cold void vanished, replaced by a jittery, panicked, artificial buzz. His heart stopped stuttering and started hammering like a fist on a tin door.
His UI flickered from red to a sickly, vibrating yellow.
...Emergency Stimulant applied: Scraps-Shine. ...Symptoms PAUSED. ...Estimated Time Remaining: T-minus 1:00:00...
Zane gasped, sucking in a lungful of sewer air as his eyes flew open.
He wasn't strong or high, but he was awake and functional. The pain was gone, replaced by a head-splitting migraine and a violent case of the shakes.
He was lying on a raised stone walkway, about three feet above the rushing sewage.
The girl was crouched in front of him, holding her oily lantern. In the flickering light, he could finally see her properly.
She was maybe twenty, thin as a rail, with a sharp, feral face streaked with grime. Her hair was a short, matted mess of black, and she wore patched leather armour over filthy rags. She looked like a sewer-rat evolved for the dark.
"What... what was that?" Zane gasped, his throat burning from the stimulant.
"Rat-piss and 'Spark-dust'," she said, corking her metal vial. "My own brew. It's not a gift. I now have you on a leash."
She tapped her temple. "It will fade in about one hour. You have one hour to get us to the meal and feed, or you'll crash so hard your heart will stop. No second chances."
Zane stared at her, did she know about his UI?
"I'm Wren," she said, standing up. "My turn. Who are you?"
"Zane."
"Zane," she repeated, testing the word like it was a bad taste. "Fucking stupid name. Sounds soft."
She gestured at his filthy tunic. "You're a Stain. But you're new. You're loud, you're messy, and you don't know your ass from your void."
"You're not a Stain," Zane managed, pushing himself up on shaking arms. "Or a Spark. My skill... it doesn't work on you. No despair."
"Good guess," Wren said, looking impressed. "I'm a Tuner. I can't feed, but I can hear. I can smell the flavour of things. That Blade, Silas? She stinks of copper and panic. You?"
She pointed her rebar spear at him. "You stink of the grave. Of rot, regret, and endings. You're a vulture, Zane-the-Stain. And right now, you're my vulture."
Zane finally got to his feet. His legs were jittery from the Scraps-Shine, but they held his weight.
"The deal," he said, his voice raspy. He didn't care about locking himself to someone. His thought process was that he couldn't survive alone so he'll take whatever at this point, "This 'big meal'. Where is it?"
"Not a 'where'," Wren said, picking up her lantern. "A 'what'. This way."
She started walking, moving deeper into the tunnel with a silent, practiced grace.
Zane stumbled after her, his boots splashing loudly in the filthy water.
"It's the Grave-Warren," she said, her voice echoing in the massive pipe. "Old city catacombs from before the Grinders were built. They flooded most of them to build the Spire's foundations."
"It's a graveyard?" Zane asked. "I can't feed on old bones. I need a death. A fresh one."
"I know what you need, Stain," she snapped. "It's not a graveyard. It's a pit. From the last Great Plague. They didn't bury them; they just dumped them. Thousands of them. And sealed the tunnels."
Zane stopped walking as the implication hit him.
"They're not dead?"
"They're dead," Wren said, her voice dropping. "But they're not gone. They died in the dark, terrified and in agony. And they're all... still there. Trapped. Waiting."
She pointed at the direction where they were.
Zane activated his Whispers and focused at the direction. He had been working on this a bit and here he could have access to a lot of voices in the Sump.
Then he heard it. Faint but still clear.
It was like their dead states had made them louder. Not like the individual, clear thoughts of the Sump.
It was a sound. A distant, psychic screaming. A thousand voices wailing in a chorus of pure, ancient agony.
[...SO COLD... TRAPPED... LET US OUT... LET US... OUT... DARK... DARK... DARK...]
It was a buffet. An ocean of Soul Essence.
"My god," Zane breathed. "It's..."
"Yeah," Wren said, her own voice tight. "It's a feast. Enough to fill your fucking battery for a year."
"So, what's the problem?" Zane asked, his hands shaking from the stimulant. "Let's go."
"The problem," Wren said, stopping at a junction where two massive tunnels met, "is that they have a guardian."
She held up her lantern, illuminating a rotting, half-submerged corpse in the water. It wasn't a Sump-rat; it was a fucking Exterminator. Its silver breastplate was blackened and corroded, and it was torn in half.
"I've seen it," Wren whispered, her tough exterior fading to be replaced by genuine fear. "It's... big. Slimy. All teeth and tentacles. And it's the most miserable fucking thing I've ever sensed. It's like it's... crying. While it eats you."
Zane understood.
"A monster," Zane said. "A physical one."
"And it's leaking despair," Wren confirmed. "It's a walking mountain of misery."
"So that's the deal," Zane said, the pieces clicking into place. "You can't kill it because it's too strong."
"But you can," Wren said, her feral look returning. "You're a Stain. You feed on that shit. You walk in there, you use your demon-magic, and you eat its fucking despair. You weaken it."
"And then you kill it," Zane finished.
"And then I kill it," she corrected, tapping her rebar spear. "I get whatever loot is in its den, and you get to feast on the Grave-Warren uninterrupted. That's the deal."
"And then I get you out of the city," Zane said. "Why? Why are you so desperate to leave Nuln?"
Wren looked away, her jaw tightening, and stayed silent for a long moment.
Zane pushed his Whispers skill, but the Scraps-Shine was making it static-filled. He caught a flicker of something: a feeling.
[...my brother... he's sick... the rot... they say there's a healer in the Wastes... just gotta get him out...]
It was a flash of pure, unfiltered desperation—the only crack in her armour.
"My reasons are my own. Plus, do I need a reason to get the fuck out of this Sump?" she snapped, her tough mask slamming back into place.
She pointed down the dark tunnel. "The Grave-Warren is that way. The Cleaners are behind us. And your timer is ticking."
Zane looked at his internal UI.
T-minus 0:58:12...
"We have a deal, Stain?" Wren asked, her eyes glittering in the lantern light.
Zane looked at the mangled Exterminator corpse and then down the tunnel, where a thousand souls were screaming for him.
"Lead the way, Wren."