The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 8.2

The space they found themselves in was a ruined tunnel of some sort, but constructed differently than the sewer network of Oridos. This was older, built of slabs of sandstone that looked as if they had originally joined to make a trapezoidal passageway through the bedrock. The original shape was only barely discernible: the tunnel was now a shifted mass of wild planes and angles that revealed earth and raw stone and even a few twisted roots.

The floor was a tumbled mess, the slabs meeting at every conceivable angle. The path was only navigable because the original tunnel had clearly been broad and high, leaving more than enough room for Helg and Thijis to scamper over the stones, and because of the soft yellow glow lighting their way.

The light source appeared to be some sort of lichen that clung to the walls and ceiling; it responded to the lantern light, too, its glow brightening when he brought the lantern close and remaining brighter for a few moments after he took it away. The result was that the lantern's glow was reflected on the walls as they traveled the ruins of the ancient tunnel. The effect was both beautiful and eerie. Thijis had never heard of any such phenomenon before.

Helg led them down the passage to a collapsed junction and pointed at a hole in the wall slightly above shoulder height. He climbed through first, before Thijis could stop him, and disappeared. Irik was momentarily convinced he'd been tricked, that Helg was about to trigger some greater collapse and bring the whole ruin down on his head, when the doktor stuck his head back through the gap and beckoned to him. The uneven floor and wall of the tunnel made climbing into the broken hole easy. As he passed into the darkness, he saw that the tunnel continued past the ancient collapse, lighted by the glowing lichen and seemingly unexplored.

What ancient people had built this place? Why had he never even heard mention of such an obviously primeval ruin beneath the city? Oridos was indeed old, but this seemed older still. Thijis shook his head and filed it under the increasingly long list of things he didn't understand. The history of this city was a massive blank space, an empty shelf. If he survived to retirement, maybe he'd write a book.

The hole turned out to be a breach leading into a newer, but still ancient crawlspace made of granite block, which in turn led downward at an easy grade. He thought they were heading roughly south, toward the Inner Sea, but he might easily have gotten turned around in the pathless depths. The crawlspace was wide enough to move easily but not high enough to walk in, so they were forced to go along at a bent shuffle.

"What was this? A breathing shaft of some kind?" Thijis asked. Helg did not respond, only beckoning again. Thijis grimaced and followed.

He must have been correct, because eventually the floor of the shaft dipped to form a shallow basin with a grate at its bottom before continuing on into the darkness. An air shaft.

Helg opened it easily. There was no rust on its hinges. Looking up at Thijis over the now gaping hole into a black space below, he beckoned again. It took a moment for Irik to figure out that he was asking for the lantern. Yes, Irik, give the crazed murderer your only light and let him leave you alone in the black beneath the city. He had a momentary vision of himself crawling lost below Oridos for the rest of his natural life. He'd gone this far, however, and it seemed best to go with that decision.

He handed Helg the lantern and watched as the scrawny doktor lowered it through the hole, looked around briefly, and then hopped through.

Thijis gripped the rim of the grate and looked downward to find Helg looking up at him, beckoning again. Yes, yes.

The drop was less than ten feet, but it hurt. Helg seemed to have made it without complaint. Thijis followed as the old man led the way through a small chamber adjoining a larger through a square archway.