Of Subways and Side Quests

There was a sharp echo of their footfalls as John and Ela slowly walked down the stairs into the subway. The steps were slick with the ooze that had coated the streets, and it puddled at the bottom before running off onto the tracks. The clack of her armor and the stomp of his boots rang out into the darkness, so loud in contrast to the silence around them. Down here, even the rumble of the storm was naught but a feeling.

The pair had decided that it was worth at least looking at the subway before making a final decision, and so now they descended into the blackness to recon the side area. The Bookworm knight was in front still, though The Gamer was close enough behind that the light from his staff could shine over her. Amber brilliance pushed back shadow, casting warped silhouettes across the ground.

“How long will you be able to keep that up?” Ela asked, her voice joining the echoes.

“Oh, this? I, uh, don’t think it costs anything for this particular spell. If it does, then it’s lower than my regen for now,” John replied as the two reached the bottom. “I’ve got a flashlight and one of those headlamp things in my inventory as well if we need.”

The underground station was empty - no enemies, no corpses, nothing. Muddy brown and red stains were smeared across the concrete flooring, trailing off into the far darkness. What tile there had been was mostly cracked, snapping as they took their first steps onto it. There was a dusting of dirt over everything, but the structure itself seemed remarkably intact, all things considered.

Ela stepped forward, her armor crunching the rubble as she crossed the ruined station to a set of old turnstiles. At the end of the row was an old ticket booth, its windows cracked and filthy. The blonde tried to peer inside, looking for anything left behind.

Meanwhile, John wandered to the side, examining the nearest support pillar for signs of distress. “Doesn’t look like it’ll collapse on us right away…”

The Gamer turned back to his companion as she hopped the line of turnstiles.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, heading over to join her.

“I would like to know where this goes before we decide if we are going to try it. Hopefully there is a map of the tunnels somewhere.” She shook her head, setting down a box of ruined papers.

“Hmm… I’ve seen subway maps on the walls in movies and stuff; any chance it's over closer to the boarding area or whatever it’s called?”

She shrugged, turning to join him. Together, the pair cautiously continued towards the tracks, following the trail of blood and ooze into a different section of the station. The light of the surface grew distant behind them.

Once, the next room might have been a nice waiting area, though now it was ruined by gore and sludge and time. The walls, originally painted a brilliant white, were now yellow, flaky and peeling. Thick, dried pools of blood ran from underneath the seating area, streaking along the crumbling tiles of the floor.

’I guess the train wasn’t at this station when this all happened,’ John thought, scanning the room.

“John, over here,” Ela said, walking over to an area of the wall with a large, glass-covered display.

She’d managed to find what was left of a subway map, though it was pretty worn-down. The plexiglass it was covered in was also dirty and smeared over, but they were able to clear it up enough to be usable with some water from his bag and a very cautious application of his wind abilities.

As John took some pictures for use later, his companion cross referenced the route to the map they’d taken from the Lighthouse.

“I think that the next stop should take us most of the way downtown,” she said, comparing to the route they’d followed to the square above. “Unless the tunnel has collapsed.”

The Gamer took a second to mull that over, looking at the paths she was comparing. “I doubt we would have gotten a side quest to explore a dead end.”

“I agree,” the blonde said, backing away from the wall. “Your window made it sound like something was down here, so I suspect we will find a boss.”

’Yeah, that would be just my luck,’ John lamented. “What do you think? Wanna check it out?”

“I think that I would be willing to see what this has to offer,” Ela replied, finger on her chin. “You said the rewards were considerable, right?”

“Yeah, I think. I’ve only seen a couple legendary items, and they’ve all been pretty cool. Plus, it was like half a level’s worth of experience… I feel like we’re supposed to try it,” he said with a shrug.

Ela nodded, turning towards the tracks and raising a hand, which began to glow a faint teal. The Gamer walked over to join her, as she began to wave back and forth, stopping as she pointed down into the shadows where the station ended and the train tunnel began.

His twintailed companion knelt, resting her weapon next to her. The blonde began rummaging around in her bag, searching for something. With a small exclamation of success, she tossed something to John, which he almost fumbled.

“A gas mask?” he wondered, trying to make sense of the thing.

Rather than the old-timey type of mask he was used to seeing from World War One movies, this was relatively sleek and small, like a single piece of a kevlar-type material, with two low-profile cylindrical filters on either side. The frame was etched with lines and sigils, gently glowing blue with mana, as were the air filters. Several tangled straps hung off the back.

“I didn’t get sick last time,” he said as she quickly untangled one for herself. “Any reason you think it’s important to crack these out now?”

“Generally, active mana improves the body’s resistance to illness, but the air down here is more static and polluted than elsewhere,” she explained. “While it should be impossible for a barrier you created to have its own diseases and ecosystem, we have already seen the impossible from you today, so I am being overly cautious.”

“Not like I thought of it at all,” John chuckled, returning to untangling the mask he’d been given. “I’d have just tracked the super flu back home.”

The Gamer struggled to get his mask situated correctly before realizing that he could simply try to equip it. Even if he had no idea how the straps worked and how to place it right, his powers seemed to. It fit snugly, with straps around both the back of his head and behind his neck. He could immediately tell that the air was purer, if slightly stale and dry.

“Fortunately, Lady Gaia’s protection for the mundane extends to Abyssal disease for the most part,” the busty blonde elaborated, walking over and examining him to make sure that he’d put the new piece of equipment on properly.

She fiddled with his mask to make sure it was secure. “If necessary, you can focus mana into the mask to increase its strength.”

He nodded, channeling his mana to test the feature out. Reaching within himself, he found the draw of the mask, a similar emptiness as his staff had, but shallower. The cost was relatively meager, though it was a constant drain, so he cut it off for the time being.

’Hopefully I’m just not ever going to need to turn it back on.’

It would be pretty rude of me to stick fantasy anthrax or something in one of your dungeons.

'Yeah, it would. Any chance you want to confirm you didn't?'

No, because I like the face she makes when she gets all serious about this stuff.

John looked up at his companion, her face scrunched, deep in thought. She’d turned to gaze down the tunnel again. Even with that serious expression, it was impossible to ignore the gentle way she chewed her lip, the laugh lines creased onto her angular face, and the light blush she sported from the dungeon’s effort so far. Something about her intense focus was captivating.

'Yeah, she's really cute,' he conceded.

Quickly opening his inventory, John grabbed the headlamp he’d scavenged from his garage the previous evening. It wasn’t a fancy thing, just a small light with straps, but it was better than nothing, he figured. He tapped on Ela’s shoulder to get her attention, offering the item to her.

“Just in case. I’m going to have to fire off this spell eventually, and we might lose the light for a bit then.”

“Thank you.” She nodded and strapped it on, checking the light herself.

With new equipment sorted, the pair readied themselves and set off down the subway, walking along the side until it thinned out enough to **** them down. John looked over, not thrilled at the prospect of plodding through the mix of ooze and whatever else was coating the floor. Ela hopped down without complaint, landing with a strange squishing noise.

She paused, grimacing as she lifted her boot from the river of filth. “It is sticky.”

“Wonderful,” John said, jumping down next to her.

Experimentally, he tried moving around. His feet were heavy, and the gunk clung to him as he walked. It reminded him of what he’d read about quicksand, though thankfully neither of them were sinking down into it.

Once sure they were both steady, the pair headed out, deeper into the abandoned underground.

Ela led the way, always at the ready. John followed, his light their only illumination. The amber waves of his held [Lesser Air Burst] shedding strange reflections across the slick surface of ooze-coated tracks. The muck had gotten deeper as they moved further in, though The Gamer was lucky enough that his boots were tall enough to prevent any from leaking in.

They’d been walking for quite a while, and John began to grow restless.

’Upside - we aren’t doing this completely blind,’ he thought, splashing onward. ’Downside - everything’s definitely going to know we’re coming this time.’

The first stretch they were traveling through was very narrow, just enough for a single train to have fit in. It went on for quite a while, the pair walking in single file, eyes peeled for any sign of monsters. The endless gray and black began to blur together for John.

The pair found more desiccated corpses, growing in frequency the farther down they went. Their condition began to vary wildly. Many were in even worse shape than the ones they’d seen before, crumbling away in the swamp of goo beneath the city. Others were almost whole, simply missing limbs or with holes in their torsos.

Every small noise made The Gamer jump slightly, echoing up and down the subway. The splashes and squishes of every step through the gunk that coated the tracks left ripples and prints behind them. Once or twice, John swore he saw movement beneath the inky blackness, but neither he nor Ela found anything.

Nothing.

More and more nothing.

’Maybe it’s just the boss or something?’ he wondered. ’I don’t think purely an optional boss is unheard of. Long walk to get there though.’

Slowly, the tunnel began to drift, turning to the right. As they navigated the curve, the sounds around them began to distort. The ground grew more slick. The nervous nerd continued to check all around them as his companion slowed, almost causing him to bump into her. She placed a cautionary hand on his chest, turning to him with a finger over her mouth in a silent shush.

John caught his breath, heartbeat in his ears. Biting her lip, Ela closed her eyes, tilting her head. Slowly, she opened her eyes, looking over at the staff in his hands. She leaned in, tantalizingly close. Anxious adrenaline began to pump through The Gamer. If they weren’t in a freezing underground railway, he’d have had a very different reaction.

“Stop your spell,” she whispered, so close John could feel the warmth of her breath.

With a shaky nod, he willed his mana to disperse, the amber winds fading away. Darkness descended upon the pair as the world settled once more into silence. It took John a second to realize what was going on.

Faint, warped sounds were floating over to them from beyond the corner. He couldn’t make out any of what they were though. The Gamer swallowed, the all-too-familiar feeling of fight or flight creeping upon him. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them again, looking at where Ela’s voice had come from.

“What now?” he asked, trying to be as quiet as she’d been.

“Be ready to fight. No light until I click mine on.”

“OK.”

As silently as they could, the pair snuck forward, deliberately placing step after step as to mitigate the squishing noises from the ooze. John clutched his staff with both hands, unsure if the chills affecting him were from inside or out.

The closer he got to the sound, the more he realized that he could faintly see again. A strange, blue light shone from in front of them, ever so slightly lifting the darkness. Squinting, The Gamer tried to make out what exactly was going on.

The tunnel they’d been following opened up drastically, revealing a massive connection chamber where a second railway behind them merged in. Pulsating blues and teals bounced between the twisted and broken metal of the tracks in the room, which had been torn from the floor. Rails were bent and twisted upward into a forest of steel.

The sounds were loud enough now to be sickening. The ripping and smacking sounds of flesh. The dripping of blood and ooze onto the flooded floor. With a hearty splash, something crashed to the ground in front of them.

The light began to quiver.

A ripple ran through the goo around their feet. The blue hues of the room began to grow brighter, shimmering to a neon vibrance. Bits of color fell to the ground, staining the darkness. John looked up, as the azure beacon in the distance slowly descended to the ground, the entire room seeming to shift around it. Then, it began to move towards them.

Ela’s light clicked on, a small beam of white shooting forward into the void, revealing gnarled limbs and twisted flesh. As quickly as he could, John pulled forward his own mana, a [Lesser Air Burst] forming and showing clearly what they were facing.

The creature in front of them was a mass of meat and bone, an abomination of flesh, only vaguely recognizable as once being human because of the broken skull upon its neck. Where the other monsters had been worn-down, with rotting flesh, this one had limbs piled with sinew and muscle. Its very flesh seemed to slither and squirm, writhing beneath its skin..

The monster’s arms were equally hefty as they were long, and it leaned on them as it moved. Upon the beast’s back was a gigantic, bulbous tumor, double the size of its own torso. It radiated the blue hue from before. John now realized it was a fleshy tank of mana, which wobbled uncertainly as it moved. It lumbered forward with an odd grace.

John took a scared step backward, almost trembling. Ela took her stance, more slowly than last time.

The thing’s head was twisted, the jaw missing entirely, though new rows of teeth and bone ran down its neck and chest, to where exposed ribs were intertwined, dripping with blues and blacks and reds. The bones trembled, before the whole creature reared up on short, stocky legs, stretching its arms wide as its entire chest unfolded, ribs opening like jaws. Unnatural fibers and tentacles writhed within its chest-maw.

Bits of desiccated bodies fell to the ground, deprived of all life’s essence.

A spine-chilling roar seemed to come from all around them, as blue fire ignited within the abomination’s empty eyes. More liquid mana poured from it, streaks running through the ooze below. The room seemed to quake with its cry.

Then, something changed.

Everything changed.

The black ooze itself shook, lines of color shooting around them. Severed heads began to snap their jaws, mangled torsos twisted and tried to drag themselves. The discarded bodies shifted, un-life returning. All the corpses began to move again, called once more to battle. In a matter of moments, two on one would become two against dozens.

Eyes widening as he looked around, panic began to descend upon The Gamer. His stomach churned as rotting bodies emerged from the goo around them. Reflexively, he loosed the [Lesser Air Burst] he’d begun channeling, golden winds alight with verdant greens whirling across the room at the monstrosity in front of him.

The monster shifted to bring its arm up in time for the spell to crash into its shoulder, sizzling as it popped and sprayed holy flames across the guarding limb. The squirming sinews seemed to visibly recoil from the strike, though the creature only grew more furious. A second, throatier howl rang out across the chamber, and every hostile set of eyes turned to look at John.

’On second thought, this dungeon sucks.’