Champions of Zaun

Chapter Fourteen

Ferdinand was anxious, even frightened, as he and his men slowly descended further below Zaun. They'd been searching for Slane for days, until finally word had reached him that Slane might have been seen on the absolute lowest level, the last one traversable before you hit the Gray. What in blazes possessed that damned monster to go hang out there, he didn't know, but since they'd had no other leads, it had to be checked out. While he was starting to disagree with his brother's plans more and more often, he did concur that without Slane, they stood no chance against that fucker Martin and his blue-haired bitch.

He nervously touched the wand contained in his pocket. Though he was accompanied by over a dozen of his men, he knew full well that if it came to a fight, most of them would be useless. He had only three of the former bruisers from the Daymen with him, with the rest of his group made up of burglars, con men, and even one of the whores. In a fight, all of them would be completely useless, and that wasn't even considering the fact that if it came down to a fight, they'd be going up against a nigh-indestructible abomination. He just prayed the command sentence or the wand would still work. If the former didn't, he'd just fry the monster with the wand, gather up his personal fortune and leave for greener pastures somewhere. Fuck Zaun and Piltover. He heard Ixtal had some nice coast lines to retire near.

As they went lower and lower, the normal sounds and smells of Zaun disappeared. There had been mines this deep, once, but as the Gray's level rose inexorably, year after year, they'd been overrun and abandoned. As a result, the air was oddly non-toxic this deep. It didn't exactly smell fresh—no fresh air would ever come down here—but the lack of toxins from the mining operations did make it smell considerably better than it would half a dozen levels up, where the mines spilled their poisons straight into the streets and alleys of Zaun proper.

Similarly, there were no sounds down here. People never ventured this deep anymore, except for a few of the most stubborn Zaunites who swore that the Gray would never chase them from their homes—an idle boast if he'd ever heard one; once the Gray showed up at their doorstep, they would run away from complete destruction as fast as any other man. Decades of run-off and sludge from the mines had created a slurry so absolutely antithetical to life that it killed by mere touch. Other than Slane himself, nobody had ever survived contact with the Gray, and he started having doubts about Slane actually still being alive.

As if his thoughts had been spoken out loud, Torlan said from beside him, "It's so quiet down here. Too quiet. It's downright fucking eerie."

"An odd thought, coming from a thief," Ferdinand replied blandly. He wasn't particularly interested in conversation, but Torlan was his most valuable asset: A thief nearly as good as Martin had been. What little money their gang still brought in was mostly due to Torlan's skills at stealing valuables. For that alone, the man deserved his attention.

"True, but then, no thief would ever come down here. There's nothing left to steal."

Ferdinand grunted in agreement. Despite the fact that it had been abandoned out of fear of the Gray, none of that had ever stopped the looters. Anything with any kind of value at all had long since been stripped from these levels. Valves, screws, wheels, even entire pipes had been removed, leaving a barebones amalgamation of pipes that were too large to remove and iron walkways and handholds that were too heavy to carry out of here. It was as if the entire level was already dead, and it was just awaiting its final fate of being submerged by the Gray.

He wondered what Zaun would do, thirty, perhaps forty years from now, when the Gray would start encroaching on still populated levels. Would people still move further up? How long could they keep that up before all of Zaun would be swallowed? And if all of Zaun was swallowed, what would Piltover do? It was something he'd debated with his brother once, but Calvert had merely shrugged and said it was a worry for so far down the road it needn't concern either of them. He idly wondered if they could blow holes in the rock face and create drains into the deepest fissures, the ones that were never mined due to the sheer difficulty of getting ore out from that deep in the ground. If they'd be able to do that, it'd give them a respite from the Gray for hundreds of years, most likely. Until it would rise again, that Godsdamned slurry.