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<blockquote data-quote="Feir Fireb" data-source="post: 4849859" data-attributes="member: 14074"><p><strong>An excerpt from "The Unscholarly Journals of Darren the Senalline": City of Shrouds</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>IT IS CLEAR</strong> now from attempting to recreate the route we had taken that we had most likely been directly under the Square of Wonders. Certainly that would explain the magical influences on the fungi and waters, though it would not have explained why Atrix was adversely affected by his presence there and I was not. In any event, once we had left that cave well behind us, Atrix became as convivial and spry as a viciously wounded, blood-soaked, sewage-drenched, mostly naked escaped slave who hasn't eaten or drunk for an indeterminate amount of time in an Ii-forsaken place which does not see the sun and who fears deeply for his beloved cousin's life could possibly be. His hair was even still in place, of all things, not that I was about to volunteer that information.</p><p></p><p>The water continued to drift gently down the sewer passage. But I had spent enough time with dwarrow as a youth to suspect that we continued a slow descent even without aid of water or amulet. This was a good sign. As far as I knew, only the dwarrow designed underground waterways that did not eventually flow into some open body of water.</p><p></p><p>We pressed on through the water and muck, fearing for the state of our wounds and attempting to keep them above the filthy water. After some time, long-rotten doors and windows began to dot the sides of the tunnels, hanging from holes in the brick that otherwise walled us in. All along the way we passed what must have been abandoned shops and houses full of mildew and decay, the ruins of a Tziwan long-gone and forgotten, forgotten and not missed as Tziwan itself lives on as much as it ever had. I do not know how ancient Tziwan is, but the streets of the Tziwan of today city are built upon the roofs of yesteryear, and Atrix and I waded through that era's streets. For all I know, those streets may too be roofs. I have learned as much from the writings of Dergey to mistrust foundations taken for granted. May it be that Tziwan stands on firmer ground than the enterprise of which he wrote.</p><p></p><p><strong>AS OUR EVER</strong> reliable luck would have it, this lost city had a few inhabitants yet. We came upon a pair of doors on opposite sides of the tunnel that looked in better repair than the rest we'd seen thus far, opening onto stoops whose steps quickly descended into the water. A glimmer of light peeked through the crack. I pressed my ear to the door on the left and listened. Nothing. I checked for signs of traps and tested the doorknob. This one was locked. I swam quietly to the other side, again listening. Voices, several of them. The door looked like it would open without much trouble. I returned to Atrix to whisper my findings.</p><p></p><p>"Can you open the locked one, then, Darren?" </p><p></p><p>"I don't know that I should. This is very strange. We don't know who's there. I'm not sure we should try either door. In fact, if this area is inhabited, we may want to backtrack. Leave this tunnel entirely. Who knows if we've stumbled upon some sort of guardpost?"</p><p></p><p>"A guardpost? Down here?"</p><p></p><p>I shrugged, "I don't know. But I still say we should be careful."</p><p></p><p>Atrix thought about this for a moment, then nodded. As encouraging as signs of human life were, at this point we couldn't afford to risk everything on a face-to-face confrontation with people whose identities we couldn't ascertain or being trapped after venturing into an empty but frequented room.</p><p></p><p><strong>WE TURNED ABOUT</strong> and made our way back up to the previous junction where we'd decided to move straight ahead, still undecided as to whether to turn left or right instead. I cautioned Atrix to silence as I froze in place. I heard movement in the water, off in the distance in the right-side passageway. It sounded like... us. It was the same sort of gentle, rhythmic splashing and buffeting of air that we made as we passed through the sewer channels. Very faint. We waited. A whisper, something brief in Xaimani, almost as if intended to be too silent for human ears to hear. I told Atrix of what I'd heard in my own careful whisper.</p><p></p><p>"Well, we can't go that way then," he said.</p><p></p><p>We took the left-side passage, which then bent to the right. At the next intersection we turned right again. Down the tunnel we saw a faint light from the lower cracks and stoops of two opposite doors, likely in remarkably good condition. This time, the locked door would be at our left instead. Atrix cursed. "We've gone around in a circle."</p><p></p><p>"We've got to get out of here. We can't go back that way again."</p><p></p><p>We returned to the intersection we'd just come from and took the left way instead, moving as quickly as we could through the water without splashing more than we had to. Then, just over the faint noise that we'd been making, I heard the sound of still more people moving through the water. I cursed quietly.</p><p></p><p>"Maybe," Atrix whispered, "We should still move forward. We might be able to win a fight if there aren't too many of them."</p><p></p><p>"Maybe." I peered far down the alley-tunnel. The sound approached closer, but still no torchlight. "Whoever this is, they're used to the dark down here." The sound continued to come slowly at us. "All right. I see a bit of heat. Three warm bodies. I think they're wearing masks. They're deliberately moving quietly but aren't bothering to hide. They're probably wearing black. I bet they don't think they can be seen down here. But they have weapons out all the same."</p><p></p><p>"Three? We might be able to take them. They sound like thieves."</p><p></p><p><strong>WE HAD, IN</strong> fact, unbeknownst to us wandered into the sewers that burrowed under the Shroud <em>qohei</em> of Tziwan. Had we continued the way we'd originally been going, we would have encountered many more murderous and unsavory sorts who used the passages of this hidden city to move unnoticed through the city plying their criminal trade. As it stood, we remained only on the outskirts. But that fact alone was enough to place us in great danger.</p><p></p><p>I looked at the bloody cloths that bound Atrix's wounds but thought better than to contradict his optimism. Suspecting what lay behind us had little choice in the matter. The thieves would be on us soon and time to act was short. A moment's discussion and we moved to opposite sides of the passage, sinking chin-deep into the muck so as to keep unseen as much of our bodies as we could without getting sewage in our noses and mouths. We remained perfectly motionless as they moved towards us down the midpassage. Then as they moved between us, I sprung first. I plunged the dagger I'd taken from the Palace guard deep into the back of the hindmost thief, twisting it hard to dig at organs and arteries. He did not fall, though, and he flailed wildly at his back with dagger in hand.</p><p></p><p>Atrix, relying upon the sound of my spring through the water, leapt wildly at the same thief from the other side and I took care not to be on the wrong end of Atrix's blade. Both of his daggers hit home and the thief between us expired before he even saw me, toppling into the water. The remaining two masked men turned to face us and we abandoned the newly made corpse between us to barrel into them before they could react. I landed as strong a blow as I could manage on one as he moved to step aside while Atrix cut into the other. His off-dagger swung wide as he failed to guess the exact location of his new opponent in the near-pitch blackness.</p><p></p><p>My new target took a broad swing at me with a well-bound club and came within an inch of splitting my skull. The other stumbled and jabbed at Atrix with a dagger, missing. We pressed the attack as I made too short of a jab at the club-wielding thief and Atrix made deep cuts in the remaining knife-fighter. Likely a seasoned thug who could tell that Atrix would land the stronger blows in a straight-up fight, the thief with the club turned his attention to Atrix and hit water. The knife-fighter stepped back from another jab and Atrix winced from a deep stab in his side, near where a bandage covered the spear wound from a guardsman. Fresh blood ran down Atrix's side again. Atrix did not pause his assault, continuing to strike at the knife-fighter and again missing in the dark. I landed a feeble blow on the arm of the thug with the club. Again they pressed Atrix and he managed to narrowly sidestep their blows. Springing back into the fray, Atrix felled the knife-fighter with his right hand and bit deep with his left into the gut of the thug. I joined Atrix in his assault, achieving little more than scratches.</p><p></p><p>The sole remaining thief raised his club again and swung it hard into the side of Atrix's head. He fell sideways with the force of the blow. Attempting to recover his balance, Atrix blacked out and careened face-first into the polluted water, dropping both knives to the bottom.</p><p></p><p><strong>WITH THAT, THE</strong> thief turned to face me. I nearly panicked. Even at my best I was not nearly the fighter that Atrix was. After all we'd been through, one solid blow from this thug would be the death of me, and then of Atrix as well if he wasn't gone already. His life bled out from head and side and mixed with the sewage. I had to test this thief to see how well he could handle the darkness. If his senses weren't perfect, I had a chance. But I had to be fast. Atrix would not last long. I stepped quietly back into the darkness, then watched the thief step cautiously forward, club raised. He moved again, probing the blackness with his weapon. I moved to strike, running my dagger up under his ribcage. He pushed me off of him and swung with his club, again narrowly missing as I let myself fall into the water away from his swing. Sure that I had him this time, I regained my footing and pounced again without caution, driving the dagger home.</p><p></p><p>As the thief collapsed into the sewage, I rushed over to Atrix and turned him face-up. He still bled frighteningly, but his heart was still beating and he immediately coughed up some of the fluid he'd taken into his lungs. Dragging him along the surface of the water, I found a nearby doorway whose door had long since rotted off and drifted away and first attempted to hoist Atrix up into it. My poison-stricken muscles wouldn't do it. I then climbed up myself, careful not to let Atrix drift off, and then dragged him out of the water, bracing against the ledge with my legs. Setting him down, I saw that the head wound's bleeding was worse, but knew that head wounds often bleed badly at first then stop on their own. I prayed that this was a case and pressed with all of my weight on the newly-opened wound at Atrix's side, hoping to staunch it. Minutes passed and Atrix continued to breathe and beat. Weary, I saw that the bleeding had stopped and prayed that what little I knew about how to cut a man to the quick had been enough to save my friend. I gazed lazily at the three lifeless bodies in the sewer and watched the heat gradually leave them.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Feir Fireb, post: 4849859, member: 14074"] [b]An excerpt from "The Unscholarly Journals of Darren the Senalline": City of Shrouds[/b] [B]IT IS CLEAR[/B] now from attempting to recreate the route we had taken that we had most likely been directly under the Square of Wonders. Certainly that would explain the magical influences on the fungi and waters, though it would not have explained why Atrix was adversely affected by his presence there and I was not. In any event, once we had left that cave well behind us, Atrix became as convivial and spry as a viciously wounded, blood-soaked, sewage-drenched, mostly naked escaped slave who hasn't eaten or drunk for an indeterminate amount of time in an Ii-forsaken place which does not see the sun and who fears deeply for his beloved cousin's life could possibly be. His hair was even still in place, of all things, not that I was about to volunteer that information. The water continued to drift gently down the sewer passage. But I had spent enough time with dwarrow as a youth to suspect that we continued a slow descent even without aid of water or amulet. This was a good sign. As far as I knew, only the dwarrow designed underground waterways that did not eventually flow into some open body of water. We pressed on through the water and muck, fearing for the state of our wounds and attempting to keep them above the filthy water. After some time, long-rotten doors and windows began to dot the sides of the tunnels, hanging from holes in the brick that otherwise walled us in. All along the way we passed what must have been abandoned shops and houses full of mildew and decay, the ruins of a Tziwan long-gone and forgotten, forgotten and not missed as Tziwan itself lives on as much as it ever had. I do not know how ancient Tziwan is, but the streets of the Tziwan of today city are built upon the roofs of yesteryear, and Atrix and I waded through that era's streets. For all I know, those streets may too be roofs. I have learned as much from the writings of Dergey to mistrust foundations taken for granted. May it be that Tziwan stands on firmer ground than the enterprise of which he wrote. [B]AS OUR EVER[/B] reliable luck would have it, this lost city had a few inhabitants yet. We came upon a pair of doors on opposite sides of the tunnel that looked in better repair than the rest we'd seen thus far, opening onto stoops whose steps quickly descended into the water. A glimmer of light peeked through the crack. I pressed my ear to the door on the left and listened. Nothing. I checked for signs of traps and tested the doorknob. This one was locked. I swam quietly to the other side, again listening. Voices, several of them. The door looked like it would open without much trouble. I returned to Atrix to whisper my findings. "Can you open the locked one, then, Darren?" "I don't know that I should. This is very strange. We don't know who's there. I'm not sure we should try either door. In fact, if this area is inhabited, we may want to backtrack. Leave this tunnel entirely. Who knows if we've stumbled upon some sort of guardpost?" "A guardpost? Down here?" I shrugged, "I don't know. But I still say we should be careful." Atrix thought about this for a moment, then nodded. As encouraging as signs of human life were, at this point we couldn't afford to risk everything on a face-to-face confrontation with people whose identities we couldn't ascertain or being trapped after venturing into an empty but frequented room. [B]WE TURNED ABOUT[/B] and made our way back up to the previous junction where we'd decided to move straight ahead, still undecided as to whether to turn left or right instead. I cautioned Atrix to silence as I froze in place. I heard movement in the water, off in the distance in the right-side passageway. It sounded like... us. It was the same sort of gentle, rhythmic splashing and buffeting of air that we made as we passed through the sewer channels. Very faint. We waited. A whisper, something brief in Xaimani, almost as if intended to be too silent for human ears to hear. I told Atrix of what I'd heard in my own careful whisper. "Well, we can't go that way then," he said. We took the left-side passage, which then bent to the right. At the next intersection we turned right again. Down the tunnel we saw a faint light from the lower cracks and stoops of two opposite doors, likely in remarkably good condition. This time, the locked door would be at our left instead. Atrix cursed. "We've gone around in a circle." "We've got to get out of here. We can't go back that way again." We returned to the intersection we'd just come from and took the left way instead, moving as quickly as we could through the water without splashing more than we had to. Then, just over the faint noise that we'd been making, I heard the sound of still more people moving through the water. I cursed quietly. "Maybe," Atrix whispered, "We should still move forward. We might be able to win a fight if there aren't too many of them." "Maybe." I peered far down the alley-tunnel. The sound approached closer, but still no torchlight. "Whoever this is, they're used to the dark down here." The sound continued to come slowly at us. "All right. I see a bit of heat. Three warm bodies. I think they're wearing masks. They're deliberately moving quietly but aren't bothering to hide. They're probably wearing black. I bet they don't think they can be seen down here. But they have weapons out all the same." "Three? We might be able to take them. They sound like thieves." [B]WE HAD, IN[/B] fact, unbeknownst to us wandered into the sewers that burrowed under the Shroud [I]qohei[/I] of Tziwan. Had we continued the way we'd originally been going, we would have encountered many more murderous and unsavory sorts who used the passages of this hidden city to move unnoticed through the city plying their criminal trade. As it stood, we remained only on the outskirts. But that fact alone was enough to place us in great danger. I looked at the bloody cloths that bound Atrix's wounds but thought better than to contradict his optimism. Suspecting what lay behind us had little choice in the matter. The thieves would be on us soon and time to act was short. A moment's discussion and we moved to opposite sides of the passage, sinking chin-deep into the muck so as to keep unseen as much of our bodies as we could without getting sewage in our noses and mouths. We remained perfectly motionless as they moved towards us down the midpassage. Then as they moved between us, I sprung first. I plunged the dagger I'd taken from the Palace guard deep into the back of the hindmost thief, twisting it hard to dig at organs and arteries. He did not fall, though, and he flailed wildly at his back with dagger in hand. Atrix, relying upon the sound of my spring through the water, leapt wildly at the same thief from the other side and I took care not to be on the wrong end of Atrix's blade. Both of his daggers hit home and the thief between us expired before he even saw me, toppling into the water. The remaining two masked men turned to face us and we abandoned the newly made corpse between us to barrel into them before they could react. I landed as strong a blow as I could manage on one as he moved to step aside while Atrix cut into the other. His off-dagger swung wide as he failed to guess the exact location of his new opponent in the near-pitch blackness. My new target took a broad swing at me with a well-bound club and came within an inch of splitting my skull. The other stumbled and jabbed at Atrix with a dagger, missing. We pressed the attack as I made too short of a jab at the club-wielding thief and Atrix made deep cuts in the remaining knife-fighter. Likely a seasoned thug who could tell that Atrix would land the stronger blows in a straight-up fight, the thief with the club turned his attention to Atrix and hit water. The knife-fighter stepped back from another jab and Atrix winced from a deep stab in his side, near where a bandage covered the spear wound from a guardsman. Fresh blood ran down Atrix's side again. Atrix did not pause his assault, continuing to strike at the knife-fighter and again missing in the dark. I landed a feeble blow on the arm of the thug with the club. Again they pressed Atrix and he managed to narrowly sidestep their blows. Springing back into the fray, Atrix felled the knife-fighter with his right hand and bit deep with his left into the gut of the thug. I joined Atrix in his assault, achieving little more than scratches. The sole remaining thief raised his club again and swung it hard into the side of Atrix's head. He fell sideways with the force of the blow. Attempting to recover his balance, Atrix blacked out and careened face-first into the polluted water, dropping both knives to the bottom. [B]WITH THAT, THE[/B] thief turned to face me. I nearly panicked. Even at my best I was not nearly the fighter that Atrix was. After all we'd been through, one solid blow from this thug would be the death of me, and then of Atrix as well if he wasn't gone already. His life bled out from head and side and mixed with the sewage. I had to test this thief to see how well he could handle the darkness. If his senses weren't perfect, I had a chance. But I had to be fast. Atrix would not last long. I stepped quietly back into the darkness, then watched the thief step cautiously forward, club raised. He moved again, probing the blackness with his weapon. I moved to strike, running my dagger up under his ribcage. He pushed me off of him and swung with his club, again narrowly missing as I let myself fall into the water away from his swing. Sure that I had him this time, I regained my footing and pounced again without caution, driving the dagger home. As the thief collapsed into the sewage, I rushed over to Atrix and turned him face-up. He still bled frighteningly, but his heart was still beating and he immediately coughed up some of the fluid he'd taken into his lungs. Dragging him along the surface of the water, I found a nearby doorway whose door had long since rotted off and drifted away and first attempted to hoist Atrix up into it. My poison-stricken muscles wouldn't do it. I then climbed up myself, careful not to let Atrix drift off, and then dragged him out of the water, bracing against the ledge with my legs. Setting him down, I saw that the head wound's bleeding was worse, but knew that head wounds often bleed badly at first then stop on their own. I prayed that this was a case and pressed with all of my weight on the newly-opened wound at Atrix's side, hoping to staunch it. Minutes passed and Atrix continued to breathe and beat. Weary, I saw that the bleeding had stopped and prayed that what little I knew about how to cut a man to the quick had been enough to save my friend. I gazed lazily at the three lifeless bodies in the sewer and watched the heat gradually leave them. [/QUOTE]
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