Tonks said:
Azot's mind was racing a thousand directions at once as he tried to make sense of the message being given to him. If Sebek wanted him to stop the death of the city, could he truly do it by leaving the city? Could Sebek even hear his prayers if he left the walls of Metropolis?
'Are you truly prepared to die Sebek? If you were, why then did you send me out to stop your death?' Who among the gods have already fallen?'
Sitting down, Azot knew the rat's eyes were still upon him. They glowed in the quasi-darkness of the sewers like two small golden orbs of light; waiting to see his next action, or perhaps his next reaction.
'This is beyond me...what business do I have in the affairs of gods? I thought perhaps Sebek was making a point to me by showing a wound, but now I know the truth of the matter...he is truly dieing.'
Closing his eyes, Azot rested his head against the slick stone wall behind him and for a moment allowed himself to listen to the sounds of the sewers. The endless flow of water through the drains, the sound of the rats fighting over their feast on the wildlings, the lapping of the river of waste, and his own breathing.
'If I do not do something, this will all come to an end. Sebek's lair will be no more and those who live beneath the city will fall quickly behind those on the Upper world.'
Rising slowly to his feet, as his body was still sore from the earlier beating he had taken, Azot called out to the rat across the way.
"Tell yer Masters I will do it. I don't know what in the hells I am supposed to do, but I will do it all the same. Sebek has started me on this quest, but it seems his cause is not to be alone."
The water churned before him in mid-stream, the strange rat seemed to smile at him and for a moment Azot wondered if he'd said, or done, the right thing. An enormous tidal wave of stormwater rushed through the tunnel almost instantaneously, Azot barely heard the noise seconds before it hit. He went under, and his head hit something hard...
[sblock=Azot]Water rushed in Azot's ears and darkness consumed him swiftly.
Awaking, the thudding of his heart pounded in his ears causing his head to ache even more. Sitting up he shook his head a little to clear the water from his ears and get his bearings, where was he? It was some huge cavern, somewhere no doubt.
It was strange, the noise of his heart beating still filled his ears, even though his ears seemed to have recovered. Trying to clear his head, Azot focused on the chamber around him, there was a great deal of water pooled around him where thick red vines drank deeply. The filthy corrupted water from the surface could not give sustenance to normal people without filtering, whatever fed here had either adapted well or was...
...dying...
Azot's eyes stared up into the gigantic beating heart who's thudding still echoed through the chamber. The veins that ran from the organ suspended it in the centre of the chamber as well as feeding from the pools of water on the ground, it looked sick though, very sick.
"Well you're the first person I've seen in here for a while..."
Azot turned to a spot where a moment ago there was no-one. A strange halfling sat on a rock stroking the head of the rat that Azot had rescued. The halfling was dressed in the garb of a sewer shaman also, though not of Azot's ilk.
"My name's Taran, this is Twitchy. He gets away from me sometimes, and those damn cannibal dwarves still roam the city. I'd like to thank you, but I don't think you'll like my reward..."[/sblock]