Meeting a contact in the sewers would seem like a quiet affair, but it never is. In fact, it is often downright noisy. There is, of course, the flow of sewage water. A mixture of slushes, slurps, drips, and gurgles that echo off the maze of subterranean brick-laid tunnelways that help keep the city clean. And then there’s the various creatures that live among the sewage. Rats and bats and far worse things. Plus there’s the people. An series of underground passages leading to almost anywhere in the city safe from easy viewing? They may not be clean, but the sewers are handy.
Speaking of not clean, there is the man before you. He’s a little too fat. Has a little too much unkempt facial hair. His voice would be echoing off the walls of his little lantern-lit hidey-hole office, if he weren’t smart enough to keep his words to a whisper.
“All righ’, I says you done righ’ by us. Earned you’self a proper meetin’,” he tells you standing on the other side of a beat up desk after inspecting the thing he sent you to obtain.
The man glances behind him, toward the doorway and pops his neck in agitation upon not seeing what he had hoped to see. “Kathrri!” He yells angrily, his tongue giving a little roll to the “r’s” in her name. His voice certainly echoes now…
It takes a few moments, but then the young woman you briefly saw crouched and waiting among the shadows of the nearby passage you came from slinks in. She’s not cowed or frightened in the least. If anything, she looks defiant. Annoyed. A rebellious teenager with eyes that gleam slightly in the lantern light. She’s fitted out with high quality blackened leather gear. Has a hood pulled up over her head that just about fully hides her dark hair, an oddly pretty face and… pointy ears? You spot a bevy of matte-black k nives strapped to her person anda dark colored shortbow strapped across her back.
“This ‘ere is Kathrricallia…”
“…I told you not to give ‘way my full name.” the girl interrupted. Her manner of speech is different. Not of the city and certainly not of the numerous thieves that do their business in the sewers. She almost sounds like she belongs elsewhere. In the wilds, maybe? That said, she does seem to have picked up a few bad habits. Dropped syllables, shortened words. Or is she trying to hide her original accent? Like the hood hides her ears and face?
“…She’ll show you to th’ meetin’ point,” your contact tells you and her. For a second nobody moves. Not your contact. Nor your new escort. It takes a violent grimacing head gesture from your contact aimed back at the open doorway for thing to progress again.
“Fine…,” the girl says. “But then I am headin’…”
“No! Then you’re comin’ back ‘ere.
The girl gives a little ‘tsk’, more like a hiss really, and meets the larger man’s stare. You notice her back straighten just a little. He does too.
“We have work to’nite…” he says, but this time there’s something else beyond just anger and command in his voice. A bit of fear? Pleading?
The girl ‘tsks’ again and nods. Still not cowed, but… resigned to her fate? Hard to tell.
“Come on. It’s this way,” she tells you before heading towards the exit. “And, for the record: To you I am ‘Kathrri’,” she too lightly rolls the ‘rii’ portion of her name, “or just ‘Kat’ if you can’t say it right.”
You nod, not about to argue how to pronounce someone’s else’s name, and soon you’re back alongside the noisy flowing sewage. You take a moment to check the opposite way and when you turn back the girl is… nowhere in sight. No… wait… there she is. Twenty, maybe thirty feet ahead crouched and peering around at the next right angled junction.
She really is a cat, you think. She’s quick and quiet as one, at least. Those traits hold true as she guides you further along the various passages of the sewer. Twice she stops you to let others pass at the far end of a tunnel or visible across the sewage going the opposite way. Busy place, the sewers, but she’s got good awareness and instinct, too, and she leads you onward undetected.
Eventually, you reach your destination: A kind of access shaft, a large circular hole, really, built into the ceiling some twenty feet above you.
‘Tssk’, Kathrri hisses again, a little longer and louder this time sounding even more like a pissed off cat as she paces back and forth beneath the opening.
“Oooh, when I get my claws on them I am gonna’…” she begins, talking to herself.
“Do we need to find another way?” you ask.
She turns and you can just barely make out the roll of her eyes before she answers saying, “No. But you are twice blessed lucky I am the one leading you and not Bobbit or Shel. Just… stand back a second,” she says, gesturing you away.
You do as she says even as you are curious what her plan is. There’s no hand holds. No rope. Not even a wall near by to jump kick off of. There are no athletics or acrobatics you know of that will get her up there. But then she just very slightly tilts her head and…
Nostalgia. Happiness. And a cool breeze and golden red sunset wash over you. Leaves: bright reds and yellows on the many surrounding trees. And beneath your feet are as many more dried brown leaves. You can feel them crunch as you step. Smell their dusty fragrant odor as they crumble.
… in an instant she is out of the sewer and looking down on you from above even as you start slightly at whatever just happened.
“Hold tight. I’ll be right back,” she yells down to you. She ducks away and a few moments later you can just barely make out a series of grunts. Something being dragged along the ground? Then she is back and attaching some kind of bundle of rope and wood to two hooks spaced maybe a couple feet apart at the top of the circular exit. She lets go of the large bundle and it falls and unfurls into wood-planked rope ladder long enough to stretch from the surface to a foot or two above the bottom of the sewer.
“We normally keep the ladder rolled up and balanced just right up here at the top,” she explains with a smile on her face almost like she is relaying gossip to you as you climb. “Shel just hits it with one of her little fire blasts. Bobbit? He throws one of those big rocks set up along the wall and knocks it loose. I just…”
She doesn’t just pause, Kathrricallia suddenly jerks her head to look behind her and then literally jumps to her feet.
“Trouble up here… sorry,” she whispers. “Might as well come up. They will just chase you if you run,” she says before turning and facing whoever else is up there.
With only a half dozen more wooden steps to go, you hurry up top and climb to your feet only to find yourself in a partially closed off back alley with three men facing down your escort and now you. Two of them are just thugs. One dressed more or less in street clothes with a simple club in hand. The other, fitted with a old, rusted breastplate. He holds a spiked club in one hand and a lantern in the other. The two are big, but none too bright looking. The third, however…
“What do you have there, Kathri?” asks the well-armed, fit looking man standing a decent distance from you crossbow in hand. He didn’t roll his ‘r.’ “I thought we’d agreed, you and I, that this side was ours and that you’d stay clear. Maybe if you’d heeded my warnings, your friend would still be alive.” You follow the man’s look back and see the larger of the two thugs move his lantern to reveal a burly young man slumped bloody in the shadows against the far wall.
“Bobbit?!” Kathrricallia yells as she runs past the men to her friend and grips his shoulder. She shakes him as if trying to wake him, but he is quite dead.
“Burge…” she says slowly, her voice low and angry.
“What? Oh! Of course! You’re wondering where Stel is? She is alive. For now. But I can change that if you continue to make things difficult for me.”
“We were just passing through, Burge. No looking. No takin’. You know that. You didn’t have to…” Kathrricallia answers. She looks up to him with tears in her eyes and a barely restrained quiver in her voice.
“I’m sure you were, Kitty Kath,” the newcomer leader teases, intentionally mispronouncing her name a second time. You take a step back at the dark look taking over the young woman’s face. This man has clearly mistaken her anger for anguish. “But you knew the rules I set. And you and your friends continued to defy them. So… You go run along. Now.” He says, pointing his weapon at her with a smile on his face. Kathrri holds up her hands and slowly moves away from her murdered friend. She pushes past you, seemingly intent on going back down her rope ladder, but she gently touches your side with her hand so as to get your attention.
“Be ready…” she whispers, her voice barely more than an enraged hiss, as she moves past. The look she gives you makes the annoyed, defiant glare she gave her boss down in the sewer seem daintily polite in comparison. She is going to do something. What? You are not sure. But she is not going to defer to this man any longer. You are sure of that.
“Now that we’re alone,” Burge says as your assigned companion begins down the rope ladder, “I want you to tell me just who it was she was taking you to meet.”
“I don’t know where we were going,” you answer.
“Oh, I know that. But it’s not what I asked you, is it?” Burge replies. He again readies his crossbow. “Who?” he asks, as he points the dangerous bolt directly at you.
Kathrri’s eyes are just about to disappear from view when it happens again…
A clear blue sky arcs high overhead obscured by the many trees. There’s just enough leaves left on them to provide comfortable shade. A chill wind sees all the shadows cast on the ground move and dance in time to each other.
…and in an instant she is behind the more lightly armored of the two thugs. Both you, Burge, and the man in heavy armor recover quickly from the flash of Autumn, but the other thug is just standing there. Confused? Or maybe still trapped within that vision? An instant more and Kathrri’s dagger is plunged in the side of his neck. With less effort than you’d expect, she cuts his throat open clean left to right in a sneak attack he had no ability to defend against. She gives his body a solid shove and it topples forward without any resistance.
Then, she does something else you’ve never seen. Thrusting her arms out towards you she makes some kind of full-handed gesture and speaks in a powerful, magical language you’ve never heard before. A wispy shape of a great bear made from a unending flow of rustling leaves and blowing winds gusts into existence and lopes towards you and Burge. To say the both of you are completely taken aback at this development is a vast understatement!
“Fight!” Kathrri yells to you from across the way.
Many things happen quickly now. Burge raises his hand crossbow at you and fires. There’s nowhere for you to dodge to and the bolt strikes you mid chest. A fatal shot. Or… it should have been. Instead, while the impact hurts, the bolt fails to penetrate when it should have and falls to the ground, rebuffed by some unseen forces as the illusory bear roars. Emboldened, you draw your weapon and Burge draws his and the two of you advance on each other and clash only for you to find yourself outmatched.
Past you, Kathrri is in much the same predicament. The thug she attacked is down and dead. But the other one is twice her size, much more heavily armored, and fully aware of her. It seems to be all she can do is stay nimble and dodge the swings of his spiked club scrambling to keep her distance as best she can. Her dagger doesn’t have near enough reach to strike back, and there’s not enough space for her to grab and use her shortbow. You block another one of Burge’s attacks then catch view of Kathrri lunging for her opponent. Not with her agile dagger, but with… animalistic clawed paws?! She connects with the man’s arm and blood goes flying. But he’s merely hurt, not dead. He counter attacks and lands one vicious hit to her head. Then another. The two grapple and plunge out of view into the shadows.
Burge seems to have you, as well. After a couple of his attacks are magically rebuffed, his sword beings to lands solid hits. First one. And then another. The wispy bear made of forest magic prowls nearby, but it’s temporary armoring effect seems spent for now as Burge’s stabs and slashes are bitting deep. And you’ve not done nearly so much damage to him in return. You’d contemplate your poor luck, but your feet are closer to the large opening in the ground than you’d like, and he is pressing his advantage knowing you are nearly out of room to maneuver.
But then something else happens.
The armored thug you though had gotten the better of Kathrri goes running past you both screaming while frantically pulling at his chest plate which is now glowing a bright heated red. He trips and falls and screams a few seconds more before his voice quiets into near silent whimpers. Both you and Burge look towards the inky shadows where the man ran from and you see them: Two gleaming eyes looking back.
But these eyes are not at the correct height for an angry young woman. No, they are much lower to the ground and a moment later you see why. A long, black-furred panther comes slinking out of the darkness. It bears its fangs, lets out a long low growl, then charges Burge. The thug leader turns to face it, but the panther topples him with a slash of its claws then lunges for his neck, grasping him in a mighty, bloody bite. He gets a solid stab in between the panther’s ribs, this attack is not deflected like his crossbow bolt was for you, and the large cat yelps in pain but goes for another vicious bite. Seeing an opportunity, you move in for the finishing blow on Burge and he falls still.
The panther falls, too. Weakly onto its side before shifting back into the shape of the leather-clad young woman who was ordered to escort you to a secretive meeting. She’s hurt. Bad. A gash on her leg. Another stream of blood flowing from her head. Kathrri holds her side, too, where she was most recently injured. But then she clenches her eyes shut and cries out in that same unfamiliar language and suddenly the air is thick with hundreds of glowing butterflies that appear out of nowhere. They flutter all around you both lighting up the dark spaces where you lay. Most of the bright glowing insects disperse and vanish in all directions leaving just one to land on Kathrri’s leg. You watch intently as her wounds close and her tense muscles begin to relax. Soon, she releases her side and pulls herself shakily to a sitting position before turning to you.
“He got you pretty good, I see,” she says. She reaches out her hand and her butterfly briefly moves to land on it before it crosses the short gap between the two of you and lands near where you were hit by the crossbow bolt during your fight with Burge. You feel a slight chill and the burning pain of your wounds soon cool in kind as the healing spirit mends your injuries like it did for her. She helps you to your feet, and you to hers.
“I know this is asking a lot, but they… they have my friend. My only friend. I’ll get you to your meeting, I swear it on my life, but first… will you help me save her?” Kathrricallia’s words are, for the first time, simple and honest. No anger. No slyness or defiance. Just a request from a mysterious contradiction of a young woman to the only person she thinks will listen.
You nod.
“Ok. Thank you. Come on, I think I know where they have her hidden. It’s this way.”