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Jane picked Erick up like he was a sack of potatoes. She spent two whole seconds eyeing the cylindrical path that Bacci had made down through the dark water, then she leapt. With Erick in her arms. Erick had a few things to say about that, including, but not limited to:

“Glad to know that if all your friends jumped off bridges, you would too.”

“At least you looked before you leapt.”

“Let’s pretend that dampness is water. On an unrelated note: Who wants a [Cleanse]?”

“How the FUCK are you so strong!”

Erick clung to his daughter for dear life. He was not used to this sort of thing. He should probably get used to this sort of thing before this sort of thing killed him. Maybe he should run more. His heart was likely beating too fast to be healthy. Do they have heart attacks on Veird? They must have, right?

Jane had held him all the way down to the bottom of the torrent, cradling his head as they landed, but the impact of landing was there. There was no splash. All around them was a ripping, silent darkness, just beyond the purple sphere-edge of a [Ward]. Jane groaned in pain, then glinted white as a heal washed over her. She was still holding Erick.

Bacci whisper-shouted over the roar of the river, “Move!” as she pulled them to the side.

Savral landed right where Erick and Jane had been.

A white light ebbed from Jane as she tried to set Erick to his feet. He did not collapse, but he did find himself sitting on wet stone.

The [Rejuvenation] light kept ticking off a heal every second. No one said anything. Erick doubted that anything could be heard over the rush of the river above them.

And then Bacci made it worse. She waved her hand above them, dismissing the first ward. Dark water resumed its course, plunging Erick, Savral, Jane, and Bacci into total darkness.

Somehow, it was quieter now. The ever present roar of the sewerhouse thrummed through the stone at their feet, but it was not the same sound as from the surface. The yellow-white light from above had changed, too, replaced by midnight waters all around and barely visible lights above, like distant stars. There was at least twenty feet of water above them. Maybe more. Erick imagined that if enough time passed and his eyes adjusted to the light, it might not actually be so bad down here at the bottom of the river.

But only about 5 seconds had passed since Bacci erased the upward tunnel. More than 5 seconds would have to pass for Erick to feel better about this whole situation.

Jane grabbed his shoulder and he almost screamed. He turned. There was a tunnel leading off into the rock of the riverbed. It was big enough for an orcol and it was dry, because Bacci had put another water ward up, completely voiding the tunnel of water. Savral was already walking inside.

Erick casually stood up and stayed up thanks to Jane, then followed Savral through the tunnel. Jane kept behind him. Bacci took one more look up, and after stepping into the tunnel, dismissed the second purple ward. The river retook its basin with little chagrin, the air bubble that was the warded space annihilated into bubbles like it was never there. The tunnel ward ended right at the river.

Further in the damp tunnel there was a room that had probably always been ‘dry’, but after a small orb of yellow light floated into the air above Bacci, Erick could tell that this room had not seen use in a long while. Bacci threw a [Cleanse] into the space. Green molds and fuzzy growths withered. The space cleared in a second. Even the air smelled cleaner, which shouldn’t have been surprising, but the room smelled fresh. Like a mountain breeze.

Savral said, “We’ll go back out when they’re gone.”

Sudden relief! Erick collapsed to the ground near the wall of the room, his ass hitting hard, wet stone. He said, “I was not expecting this sort of strategy. I thought we’d be dying to fireballs.”

Bacci breathed out. She gasped out a short cry, and then it was over.

“It’s okay, Bacci.” Savral moved to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She leaned into him. “We’re safe as can be down here.”

“I never thought we’d have to actually use this place!” She shouted, “I thought! …I don’t know what I thought. I’m worried for your father. Both him and Mog, though? They should be okay. I hope.”

Savral said, “They’ll be okay. Even if they’re walking into an ambush, or if the story of the dead rookies is true… Either way, Dad and Guildmaster Mog together are more than a match for… For most anyone.”

Now that he was a bit calmer, Erick could feel the stone vibrate with the force of the nearby river. It was the same reverberation that had always been in the Sewerhouse, though it was certainly closer, now. Erick was… Not used to it, not really.

Which brought up another concern.

Erick said, “I thought there were monsters in the water.”

“There are.” Savral said, “Slimes.”

Bacci pulled away from Savral to sit in the back of the room. Erick felt the ambient mana shift as she began to meditate. After the initial shock was over, she wasn’t worried about anything was she?

Erick stared at the darkness, then started laughing.

Something clicked through the stone. Like a god striking the earth from the heavens, the room shook, but it did not move. Erick’s laugh turned into a small ‘eep’. Jane stood by her father, her hand tense on his shoulder, her nails digging into his skin.

Savral laughed. Bacci giggled. Erick and Jane were dead silent.

Jane regained her voice. “What— What was that?”

“They opened the big door!” Savral laughed out. “They didn’t check for traps?”

So… They weren’t worried. They were laughing. They were okay with this series of events. These facts, half formed in Erick’s mind, caused him to reevaluate his world. The first thing he noticed was that the tempo of the river had changed since the large click. Savral eyed the water down the tunnel, grinning. Erick and Jane eyed the water too. There wasn’t much to see, but…

Water definitely rushed in a different direction than usual. Erick couldn’t see it from here, but he could hear it, as the right-to-left torrent combined with the sounds of… left-to-front, maybe? And something like a waterfall? There was already a smaller waterfall in the river room, but now the waterfall sounded bigger and was audible through the stone all around them.

Bacci breathed out in relief. “Give me a bit, then we can go reset the system. It should be over soon.” She closed her eyes. “Everyone thinks we have a lot of money here, but we never carry that much yellow. I’m glad our emergency training sessions weren’t a waste of time, but I would have preferred to never use this place.”

Savral said, “Honestly. Assholes come in to my house and try to rob and kill us? Serves ‘em right.”

Erick still didn’t know what exactly had happened, but Savral and Bacci looked calmer. Jane was holding it together but she was obviously unhappy, from the tension in her shoulders to the glare in her eyes, to the way her nails pierced the skin of Erick’s shoulder.

Jane instantly let go, mouthing ‘sorry.’

Erick asked, “How long can we stay here before the air runs out?”

“Runs out?” Savral asked, “Why would it run out?”

“This room is vented?”

“No. That’d be a terrible design. Someone could send an attack through the vent. If the air gets bad enough for you, use a [Cleanse].”

“… Right. Because [Cleanse] obviously restores oxygen to the air. Silly me.”

“Oxygen?”

“… Never mind.”

After a minute of nothing else happening, Jane, arms crossed, said, “I’ve never been down past the river door. I didn’t know there was a river here. Of course I could hear it, but seeing it and then jumping in was…”

Erick nodded. Yeah. That was terrifying.

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“Sorry about that, Jane.” Bacci said, “This river freaked me out for the first three years, too. Still does, sometimes. I used to swear there were slithery things in the water, but Al put a grate across the whole river one day just to prove there wasn’t. For three months, the only things we ever caught were slimes.”

Savral said, “The only monsters in these waters are slimes… And probably oozes, now that I think about it. But primarily slimes, and only the ones that climb up into the beginning parts of the sewers. The river here moves too fast and the intake miles below is protected by a meter-thick grate with fist-sized holes. On the other side of that grate is a much larger river; there’s nothing on that side that would want to come through to this side.”

Miles below? Meter-thick grate? Things on the other side? If that was supposed to make Erick feel better about monsters in the water, it did not.

Bacci laughed once, then said, “Because fear is based on logic. How I forget sometimes.”

Savral huffed in annoyance, then leaned on the wall next to Bacci.

He said, “If you went out and killed some monsters maybe you wouldn’t be so—”

Bacci glared at him. Like a smart man, he shut up.

That looked like the beginnings of an old argument where neither person gave any ground but the ground was already so tread it was hard to get truly upset over the whole sordid affair. Erick looked toward Jane. She was calmer now. They had had similar arguments over the years. They were in the middle of one of those arguments right now, about killing monsters.

Erick knew he was wrong in the vast majority of cases. He also knew that—

“Why didn’t we fight?” Jane asked, “How do you know the attackers up top would want to kill us?”