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This isn’t a bit like Other London, she thinks to herself ruefully as she creeps around the edge of the cavern. Yes sure, it’s dark and damp and a little cold, and everything does want to kill her, but this is still nothing like Other London, and now she’s mad at herself that she was ever excited to come down here.
The stinking black pit in front of her is unlike anything she’s ever seen before either. It occasionally bubbles and dredges up scum or an object from below the surface, but it’s not boiling, it almost seems to be fizzing, the kind of sound that feels like someone breathing down her neck. They’d had something of a sewage system in the townhouse - more than most of Other London anyway - and she’s worked out that’s what this pit must be, or at least the run off from it. Which means that with any luck, each of the pipes leading upwards into the darkness above her has a building attached to the other end. That’s something at least.
She shimmies a little further out onto the ledge, craning her head and lifting the torch to examine the pipes better. Some of them are far too small, narrower even than her wrist, but there’s one or two that it looks like she could comfortably maneuver through, and way more that Hamid would have no trouble with. She tucks the torch into her pocket and reaches out for the biggest pipe above her, already prepping for a test climb, but the inside is filmed with oil and algae, and her hand slides right off. Hamid won’t be making it up there - and neither will she, not with Zolf on her back. They might have better luck if he’s able to get up on his own, but she doesn’t like the way the pipe looks to be sloping, and it’s an unforgiving drop into the frothing pit below if anyone slips. Safer not to, then. Safer to turn her back on the comforting markers of industry and try to find her way back to the others. She fishes the torch back out of her pocket, and begins winding it up. It is an awkward, cumbersome thing, battered with use, and it flickers feebly for a moment before flaring into life, illuminating the chamber she is in, and the stone corridor ahead of her, and the splattering of shimmering liquid across the path she has just come from.
She flattens herself against the wall immediately, pressing the torch lens into the side of her thigh to restrict the glow. A second later it occurs to her if this thing lives underground then the light might disorient it, but she’s not daring to move until she’s got a better grasp of the situation, and if she has to do that in the dark, then so be in. At least she’s used to that. She edges down the tunnel slightly, thankful that even the unworked stone appears to be smooth enough, straining her ears for the slightest sound. The torch dies out, taking its whirring with it, and finally she thinks she actually stands a chance at being able to hear something. There is no sound aside from the pounding of her heart in her chest as she inches ever further down the corridor, and she allows herself the briefest moment of hope that it might have passed her by. In fact, she doesn’t hear it at all, it is only the slight displacement of the air that lets her know whatever this thing is, it’s right behind her.
She triggers her wrist sheath, stabbing back unthinkingly with the blade clutched in her hand. It meets resistance, not flesh, something with a little more give to it, but she feels the moment it pierces the outer layer. The creature bellows, a guttural inhumane cry that echoes off the walls like a physical shockwave. On one of her escapades as Rakefine’s plaything, she’d climbed up onto a railway bridge, and the rushing of the trains overhead had seemed to rattle her bones inside her body. There’s no whipping wind and blinding sun here though, only the roar of that colossal being behind her, and the unwound torch still clutched in her off hand. She casts a glance to the left, in the direction of the tunnel that will take her back to the others, and she runs.
Throwing out a hand, she feels for the edge of the stone, her fingers skimming the wall to keep her on track as she bolts. There’s no sound coming from that thing anymore, but it has to still be behind her. There’s nowhere else for it to be. Leading it back to Zolf and Hamid is a terrible idea, but it knows these tunnels far better than she does, and trying to throw it off her trail is only going to get her lost. So she keeps running. The change in the echoes around her tell her that what she had by torchlight assumed to be two small alcoves are actually two perpendicularly intersecting tunnels, and something heavy is shifting further down one of them. She doesn’t bother trying to figure out what it might be, just keeps going, but the creature behind her seems to hesitate for just a moment, and then goes after it instead.
Sasha allows herself to skid to a stop, one hand still braced against the wall as she catches her breath. It’s definitely gone, at least for now, which is a good thing. She shakes her limbs out like a dog flicking off sand, and glances around instinctively. There’s still no light, but she knows how to orient herself in darkness well enough, and she begins creeping back in the direction of the others. This place is clearly far more of a labyrinth than it had first appeared, and if there’s any chance one of the tunnels up ahead will spit that monster back out at her, she wants to get as much of a drop on it as she’s able.
She’s moving slowly, one foot over the other, hardly even daring to breathe. Being underground has always been more comfortable to her than the surface, but right now there’s nothing she wants more than to be as far above ground as possible, right up on the tallest building with nothing but air around her. A shudder runs through her, but she keeps inching forwards. How they’re going to find their way out of here is a problem for later, right now she just has to keep moving.
The tunnel is opening up again, she can tell by the way the air currents change around her. Zolf should be able to see her coming, which is good, because she doesn’t want to risk making more sound than necessary. She’s just raising her arm to signal to the tunnel behind her, when his voice comes from the darkness ahead.
“Sasha, run, it’s above you!”
Diving forwards, Sasha flings the torch out in front of her for Zolf to take. As soon as it leaves her fingers she spins, a dagger in each hand, both arms up as if in warning.
The torch flickers to life behind her, but by the time there’s enough light to see by, she’s staring at an empty room, and she tentatively drops one arm, eyes swivelling in case of ambush.
“What was it, Zolf?” Thankfully, she’s blocking Hamid’s view, so he doesn’t start panicking even more, but the pitch of his voice indicates that he’s quickly heading that way. “What was that?”
“Shh…shh…shh…” Zolf only just manages to avoid sounding dismissive rather than comforting. “It’s gone. I think.”
Sasha glances them both over, then focuses on Zolf. “So what was it? What was it? I just looked…” she pauses, shakes her head as if trying to physically sort through her thoughts, “it was behind me, and then I stabbed it, and I legged it.”
“There was some tentacles above you, like…” Zolf trails off, but Sasha can already picture it, and she shudders. She isn’t bothered by insects or spiders, and some of her first friends were rats, but tentacles are not something she is familiar enough with the idea of to be comfortable with.
“Like what?” Her mind is racing. “What, like that thing in the channel?”
“No, can’t have been. Didn’t seem like it. I don’t think this thing’s built for water.”
“How did it…I didn’t hear anything behind me. Nothing sneaks up on me, Zolf. Nothing.” Sasha keeps glancing towards the mouth of the cavern, as if expecting it to reappear. It won’t go far, not now it knows they’re here.
“It’s used to hunting in darkness, it’ll have evolved to give it as much of an advantage in this place as possible.”
“What, you think it lives down here? You don’t think it’s guarding something, big scary thing like this.”
There is a distant echoing roar that feels like it’s coming from every direction at once. Under the torchlight, something in Zolf’s expression shifts. “Why? What did you find?”
“Uh, big cesspit. All sorts of weird chemicals flowing, I guess out of Paris, down to there. Don’t think it’s doing much though, just where all the run off goes. I was looking to see if any of the pipes were climbable, but I don’t know-”
She’s cut off by Zolf angling the torch at something behind her, not the mouth of the cavern, but off to one side. “It’s still there.”
Sasha turns, but there’s only an empty tunnel. “Okay, so it’s big enough to be in two places at once…” she glances back in the direction of the cess pit, “or I guess there’s several of them?” She reaches into her jacket for a fire flask. “Okay, if we can get back to the cesspit, it’s just a little room, only one entrance, so we can…” the idea of intentionally trapping themselves in that space with it, when she’s the only one that can fight, makes her stomach ache. “I found a pipe that I thought we could climb up…” the thought of that tentacle snaking up behind them, grabbing Hamid or Zolf and yanking them away. “I just stabbed it and I legged it. I thought I got away, but obviously it followed me. I’m sorry I bought it here.”
For the first time, Sasha lets her gaze drift from Zolf to Hamid. He’s hunched protectively around himself, still cradling his mangled arm, eyes wide and glistening in the lamplight. There’s no way he’s climbing anything, and certainly not while being chased. New plan then. “There’s one more tunnel, no tentacles have come out of that, we could just…dash down it.”
Of course, if there is more than one of these things then they’re almost certainly just going to run straight into another, but that tunnel is leading in nearly the complete opposite direction to the cesspit, and Sasha doesn’t care how big this thing might be, she doesn’t think anything can be that big.
“I can’t walk.” Zolf might be one of the cleverest people she’s ever met, but right now he is being really stupid and she doesn’t have the time for it.
“Can you make your hovery thing?” She gestures at the air between them, drawing a circle with her hand. “Can you sit on that?”
“It won’t move very fast.”
Sasha’s fingers flex involuntarily and she scowls, her face twisting in frustration. She doesn’t think Zolf is advocating for sitting there politely while they get devoured, but he doesn’t seem to be hearing that he’s shutting down their only way out of here. She’s been in enough situations like this to know when to cut your losses and turn tail, and they reached that point one cave-in ago. “I can pull it, push the disc.”
“Alright, okay.” He’s still clearly not listening, but she can’t really be mad about that when she’s just spotted the same thing - another tentacle, shaping and reforming as it feels its way around the mouth of the tunnel. For a second there is an eye, then a gaping maw, and then it withdraws again as the torch is turned back on it. Zolf begins casting, but she’s already after it, back down the tunnel towards the cesspit. She doesn’t hang around, just throws a fire flask as hard as she can and turns back on her heel.
She has no idea what she’s running towards, but it’s better than tentacle monsters and weird goo, so it’ll have to do for now.