The Forgotten Catacombs

"We'll be safer in the Catacombs than up here," Decius declared, and ran to the door.

"What are you doing?!" Ephia screamed, "do you know what's down there?!"

"I do!" Decius shouted back, "But I know what's up here, too! We can find our way to the Arcani barracks through here, I know they have a door to it as well. If we stay here, those warlocks will kill us. It's the only way out."

"Through the Catacombs to the Arcani on the other side," Ephia repeated, her voice trembling. Decius ignored her, whispering the words to the spell of opening he had learned from a thousand-year-old Mauridian scroll he bought in Chyrosia. The ancient warding spells on the door were no match for it, and the heavy bronze bolts slid open. With some effort, he pried the door ajar, carving an arc in the thick layer of dust.

"Where did you learn that spell?" Ephia marveled. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"When you travel the world, you learn magics you could never hope to learn in the college. Come along now, we must be quick on our feet."

It was just wide enough for him to squeeze through, though the slender Ephia would have an easier time. He turned to face her, finding the naked girl still standing in the passage, clutching her unlit lantern. Behind her, the glow of their pursuers' lights was getting brighter.

"Are you coming, girl? Or would you rather try your luck against their hound?"

Ephia shook off her fear and ran to the door after him. Aeramen and his compatriots appeared in the corridor behind her, shouting spells at them. Decius shielded himself with the door and did his best to dispel anything not defeated by it. Ephia seized the ring on the inside of the door and began to pull it closed. One of their foes conjured a wedge of ice in the doorway, blocking the door from fully shutting. Decius swung his stolen khopesh at the ice block, hewing off pieces with each blow. Ephia gave the door a mighty pull, her bare feet scrabbling the dusty floor, and the block shattered. With a resounding boom, the door slammed shut and the restraining bolts clicked into place.

The thick portal dimmed the sound of pounding from the other side, accompanied by the sounds of them trying to pull it open again.

"They won't get that open without a Word of Ruin," Decius gasped, his heart in his throat.

"But how are we to get out?" Ephia asked, her lantern flickering to light. They were in a low-ceilinged passage, its walls covered in dust and spiderwebs. The passage bent out of view just a few paces past the door.

"Well, there's only one way to go," Decius said, starting off down the hall. Ephia stood by the sealed portal for a moment in silent fear before falling in behind him. His stolen khopesh at the ready, Decius led the way into the dark and dreaded tunnels.

He felt the closeness of the walls grow with every step he took into the bowels of the earth. Ephia clung to him, pressing her naked body against his back whenever he stopped all while keeping the lantern raised to light their way. For a time, they followed the winding passage wherever it led them, until eventually they came to an open chamber. Ahead of them, the passage turned into a narrow, unrailed bridge over chasm of unknown depth. They paused at the foot of the bridge and Ephia hung her lantern over the edge. Together, they peered into the depths.

Twenty feet below or more, their white light shone on the surface of a dark pool of water. Whether cistern, underground river or something more sinister, Decius did not know.

"I do not like the look of this," Decius whispered, his eyes warily roaming the surface of the water. "Keep your light from shining directly into the water and let us cross quickly and quietly. It is best not to disturb anything that might dwell down there."

Ephia kept hold of his shoulder and they cautiously made their way across, her lantern low and centered over the bridge. The hall was quiet, the distant sound of the warlocks pounding on the portal had faded. From off in the darkened corners, the sound of water dripping echoed irregularly through the chamber.

Feeling her hand remove itself from his shoulder, Decius looked to Ephia behind him. She had stopped in the middle of the bridge, staring down into the water. He moved to her side and followed her stare.

"What do you see?"

"I'm not sure. I thought I saw something move down there."

"Could be," Decius replied, looking up and around for any other movement, "I have never become acquainted with what the Collegia have abandoned down here. But whatever it is, we should keep moving. This place is no friend to us."

He took her by the hand and pulled her gently toward the far side of the bridge. Still staring into the water, she took a step and then yanked her hand away, pointing it into the darkness below.

"Look!" she hissed, "there it is again! It's some sort of snake, or..." she trailed off, peering into the gloom.

"A snake would be the least of our worries," Decius said, pulling her along again. They reached the opposite side just as the water below surged and churned. Decius shoved Ephia into the hall ahead of him.

"Run!" he hissed.

"What is it?!" Ephia gasped, her green eyes wide with fear. Decius made no answer except to hurry down the hall, checking for pursuit over his shoulder with the khopesh held ready. The hall ended abruptly at an aged door of oak. Decius found it locked, and it resisted his thrown shoulder, though the wood began to splinter.

"Damn," he swore, "Hold this, I need to cast the charm of opening." He pushed the khopesh into Ephia's hands and focused his mind upon the door. His thoughts were immediately interrupted by a shrill scream from Ephia. She flattened herself against the wall and pointed the khopesh toward the bridge.

Decius followed her outstretched hand and looked to the entrance to the hall. There he saw a writhing mass of tentacles slowly advancing into the hall. They reached up from below the bridge but advanced as if they could see what lay before them, spreading out to block all passage past them. Decius found himself momentarily frozen with fear at the sight of this strange creature's appendages. Ephia raised the khopesh above her head.

Decius returned his attention to the door, shutting out all distraction as he cast a simple charm of opening. The lock clicked as the bolt retracted, and he kicked the aging portal open.

"Come on, Ephia!" he called, pulling her towards the door. She tore her attention from the approaching tentacles and bolted for the door. From the bridge chamber, they heard an inhuman roar, a cry that reverberated through the stone and shook dust and dirt from the ceiling. Both Decius and Ephia froze in terror, halfway through the doorway to safety.

The mass of tentacles came surging forward, dancing about each other in intricate, hypnotic patterns. They bludgeoned Decius aside and wrapped around Ephia's pale, white legs. She was pulled from her feet and sprawled in the dusty hallway on her back, the lantern and khopesh clattering away. Decius sprang forward as the monster dragged her down the hall, toward the bridge and the water below. Ephia kicked and screamed, grabbing at the dust-covered floor and the rough masonry walls in vain. The tentacles that grasped her wound their way up her body, tightening their grip.

Decius snatched up the fallen khopesh and darted past the thrashing Ephia to slice at the tentacles. The monster somehow saw him coming, and a thick, meaty tentacle struck out, wrapping around his sword arm. Decius tossed the blade to his other hand and swung down at the appendage wrapped around his own wrist.

The bronze blade struck home, slashing a deep wound in the tentacle's dark brown flesh. The same inhuman roar sounded from the monster's distant maw, and Decius struck again. The tentacle released him and withdrew, its tip hanging loose by a shred of damaged flesh. Freed, Decius returned his attention to Ephia, who was nearly to the bridge. The tentacles wrapped around her tighter as she fumbled a series of incantations in a panic.

Her arms pinned against her side, Ephia's options for sorcery were limited. She kicked against their grip, but they only wound tighter around her. Seeing him standing over her with blade raised, she cried out "Don't hit me too!" Decius hacked at the grasping tentacles, trying to fend off the others that attacked his back. He hastily conjured a burst of flames that licked the writhing appendages and the water that clung to them sizzled in the heat.

A severed tentacle went flying, and then another. Ichor pooled on the stone floor, rapidly congealing with the dust. The monster roared in pain and frustration until at last it released the girl and retracted its tentacles into the dark recesses of the bridge chamber.

Decius grabbed Ephia by the arm and pulled her through the old wooden door, slamming it behind them. They stood against the wall for a moment, panting with the exertion.

"What in all the realms was that?!" Ephia demanded. "I have never heard nor read of such a monster."

"Nor have I," Decius replied, "doubtless it is some experiment or beast brought here and abandoned by a careless sorcerer of the Collegia."

"If I had known that was here, I would have let the warlocks kill us," Ephia gasped. "Its touch felt so..." she struggled to find the words before settling on "foul."

"It was not so alien to our world that it was impervious to the touch of bronze," Decius said cheerfully. "Nor to my fire spell."

"Thank Cerasai for that," Ephia said, picking up her discarded lantern. Looking around at their new surroundings, they could see a series of tunnels branching away from the small crossing chamber in which they stood. "Which way do we go now?" Ephia asked.

Decius had no answer. The Catacombs were ancient and even more poorly mapped than the library cellars. The collegia and the Arcani tried their best to seal off every entrance, but every once in a while, something got out or someone got in. He had some experience in the catacombs, but no knowledge of where he was now. None of the sections he knew from past adventures down here overlapped with each other.

"I am unsure," he admitted at last. "The last bit we were in was uncommonly straightforward. This unmappable mess is more in line with what I know of these tunnels. I will need to look around." He went to each tunnel opening and inspected the walls and floors for any sign of habitation or direction.

"You've been here before?" Ephia asked.

"A few times. We discovered an entrance to the Catacombs underneath the East Cloister. We would sneak down at night to explore it or to hide our contraband from room checks. We encountered a few strange beasts in there, but nothing like that monster in the water. The Arcani sealed it up in my final year here.

"Another time, someone discovered an old passage in the gardens by Oura's shrine. That led to a series of chambers that merchants from across the Way were using to store goods. The Collegia evicted them and closed the passage, which made the merchants quite angry."

Ephia moved up next to him, holding the lantern out so that he could better inspect the tunnels.

"I have no idea where we are," he admitted after a fruitless search. "However, I hear running water from that way. We may be able to find a pipe or something that will lead to the surface."

Ephia looked around at the darkened tunnels and frowned. The chill of being so far underground in the dark was settling it, and her naked skin was breaking out in goosebumps. Decius saw her delightful pink nipples stiffen and rise from her breasts. The sight of them made his cock hard again.

"Lead the way," Ephia said finally, taking no notice of his cock. Decius put the matter aside. There would be time to take the girl to bed later. For now, they had to escape and call down the Arcani on the thieving warlocks.

Venturing down the tunnel he had chosen, they eventually came to a stream of clear, free-flowing water. From a narrow spout in the ceiling, water poured into a stone trough and ran across the chamber before disappearing into the far wall. Decius now came to realize that his exertions of both violent and amorous natures had left him quite thirsty. Still, such a clean source of water in a place of so much foulness struck him as odd.

"Though I am quite thirsty, I am loathe to drink from that," Ephia said, raising her lantern to the water. Decius agreed with her instincts, instead looking around for further signs of where they were.

"Look," Ephia said, and Decius turned to her. She raised her hand and in it was a small, chipped cup. "The dust on this is not as thick. And I think I see footprints on the floor." She pointed, and upon moving closer Decius could make them out, leading from the water's trough out of the room and down a tunnel. The prints were small and unmistakably of bare feet, but it was the first sign of humans Decius had seen since they entered the place.

"What would leave such prints and who would drink from this water?" she asked. Decius shrugged, at a loss. "Do we follow them?" she asked in a quiet, concerned voice. Decius was again at a loss. He pointed at the other exit to the chamber, back the way they had come.

"It seems a better choice than trying our luck back there. Who knows, maybe this will lead to street urchins on the surface."

"When was the last time you saw street urchins near the Collegia?" Ephia asked.

"On the other side of Capitol Hill," Decius admitted, "but I have no other ideas."

Ephia frowned. "Very well, I will follow your lead again. It hasn't gotten me killed so far."

They crept as quietly as they could down the new tunnel, following the faint trail of footprints as best they could. They entered a new junction chamber, but after a short debate they decided to continue following the trail instead of choosing a new path, for the new tunnels were as indistinguishable as the last set.

Decius approached the chamber ahead with a measure of trepidation. Something about the room set him on edge. He passed a pile of discarded rat bones, gnawed and broken. He paused to listen but heard only the uneasy breathing of himself and Ephia. With nothing to hold them, they crept into the room.

It was a wide chamber with a low ceiling, with a well-worn path down the center. To each side of the path were rude huts made of bone frames and old cloth as coverings. Decius immediately felt that they were not alone.

From the shadows emerged a small creature, its hairy head reaching only to Ephia's waist. It was two-legged and moved upright with a considerable hunch. It had large, yellow eyes slit like a cat's and a potbelly. Two narrow ears stuck up from its head, like those of a bat. The gray-skinned creature was naked, covered in fine hair that was brown at the head and gray near its feet. Between its fat legs was a cock the size of a normal man's, though grotesquely out of proportion on the small creature's body, hanging to its knobby little knees. Presented, possibly for the first time, with an opportunity to use it, the creature was hopping with excitement. It bared its teeth at them, showing small, sharp teeth in a wide red mouth.

It cackled and danced before him, singing in a shrill voice and words Decius could not understand. Ephia drew up close to him, clutching her lantern and putting her hand on his sword arm.

"What is that thing?" she whispered in fright.

"It is a gremlin. I've heard stories of them living underneath the city, creeping out to steal trinkets while people sleep. But I've never seen one in the flesh here."

The creature's cackling drew more of its kind, and slowly they began to emerge from the darkness, some crawling across the tops of the huts while others moved toward them along the floor. Decius cautiously backed toward the opening they had entered through, raising the khopesh before him.

"Stop!" a little voice screeched, and the gremlins stopped their dancing and cackling, though their excitement did not abate. From the far end of the chamber came a white-haired gremlin, crowned with a ring of discarded wire about his head. He carried a broken pole with him, presumably as a pathetic staff of office.

Decius raised his hands in what he hoped they would recognize as a gesture of calm.

"We mean you no harm," he said. "We have gotten lost down here and we are looking for the way out."

The white-haired gremlin came to a stop in front of them, pointing his staff at Decius and then Ephia.

"You are humans? From the surface?" it rasped, surprisingly in a broken imitation of the Low Auric tongue. Decius found the very sound of its voice intolerable but choked down his irritation.

"We are looking for a door to the surface," Decius said. "It will be bronze and warded. You may have seen humans come through it before."

"I know doors," the creature screeched. "You want door?"

"I want a door to the surface," Decius insisted. "Do you know of a door to the surface?"

"I know all doors!" the gremlin proclaimed, raising its arms towards the ceiling and straightening its crooked back to its full height. Then he returned to a crouch and squinted at Decius.

"What you give in return?" he asked warily.

Decius grimaced. He did not like the idea of giving up either his weapon or his light source to these creatures, but he had nothing else to trade.

"If your door takes me to the surface, I will leave you with this blade and the lantern," he offered.

"No," the gremlin spat. "We no need light. We no need that," he said pointing to the khopesh, "Too big, we not carry it."

"Well," Decius said, battling his own exasperated tone, "what can I trade you?"

"That," the gremlin king said, pointing to Ephia. "We need more us."

"What?" Ephia scoffed.

"We breed!" the gremlin king cried, grabbing his oversized member from between his legs. The other gremlins joined his cry, grabbing their cocks with both hands and stroking them.

Ephia grabbed the khopesh from Decius' hands in horror and pointed it towards the gremlins. "None of you little devils are going to have me! Take one step closer and I'll cut your cocks off!" She pointed it frantically back and forth while the gremlins shrieked and dove for cover while others menacingly pointed back at her with clawed hands. One of them leapt forward, extending a hand to grab at her bare legs and exposed sex. She kicked it viciously, sending the creature sprawling backwards. The other gremlins ran for cover, while three charged out to form a protective barrier in front of their king.

Decius stretched his arms out in front of her, trying to calm the situation before a battle broke out.

"I can't do that," he told the gremlin king above the din, and the little creature scowled.

"We no trade for you," it said in its awful screech, "man no good. Only woman. We each take her, one after another. Strongest of us make more us. We keep her as broodmother to all tribe!"

"Not going to happen," Decius declared, though the thought of watching the little village of gremlins take Ephia was strangely exciting to him. They were so short they would need to bend her over on all fours. Then they could each form a line and fuck her until they came inside her. The image was perversely erotic to him, though Ephia was doubtlessly not amenable to the idea. Perhaps a set of stocks, he wondered.

Snapping himself back to the situation at hand, he gently wrested the khopesh from Ephia's hands.

"I cannot trade the girl to you," he said to the king, who stamped his feet in anger. "She is mine, she will be my broodmother." He hoped that would get the message across.

The gremlin king waved its staff at him in one hand, while still holding its cock in the other.

"You no trade! You leave us with no broodmother! We no help!" he turned to go.