TIME July 2nd, 9:30am LOCATION The sewers beneath Chuza
BACKGROUND:
Silvered blades, alchemist’s fire, and Brin’s cautious go-ahead to dig into Get Stuffed – the Agents went back into the sewers under Chuza looking for a way into the building that didn’t involve knocking.
WHAT HAPPENED
The trek upstream was slow going. Raven dodged a scalding spray from an outflow pipe by a hair, and Crowe finally reached an iron grating bridge he judged close to Get Stuffed itself – along with the distinct sense of being watched from the shadows. The bridge held his weight, but a bottle came flying out of the dark the moment he started across, followed by two more as he made it to the far side. Raven and Krusha caught two more crossing behind him.
Crowe pressed toward the source and took a club swing from a shadowy shape perched in the pipework above – Raven reacted first, hauling herself up onto the conduit and putting a blade into the mole before it could land a second hit. It slumped off the pipe and drifted, face down, toward the bay. The bottles stopped. Whatever else was watching decided against a second round.
Looking for an entry point, Crowe spotted a fizzling torch beneath an outflow pipe, and masonry that didn’t belong to the main sewer line. A second torch burned thirty feet up the shaft; Raven thought she could hear metal tapping stone somewhere above it. Nothing else nearby looked promising.
Crowe went up with a dagger in his teeth, fighting slime, insects, and a losing battle against gravity the whole way – the shaft walls slick with algae and grease, insects scuttling across them to drop onto his hair and face, a mosquito whine buzzing constantly around his ears – until a last push got him level with the torch.
The brickwork beside it had been freshly repaired. He climbed back down to report, then went up a second time – sunrod dropped to the others for light – to see where the shaft actually came out.
It ended at a storm drain, daylight above, mosquitoes swarming him the whole climb up the handholds. Jamming the torch into the grating finally got Reese’s attention from the street, and between them they lifted the grate. Crowe radioed the others he was heading for the Copper Pan.
Clean, dry, and back at the Section House, they laid it out for Brin. Off the record, he pointed them at the freshly repaired brickwork as the likelier way in than the front door.
Krusha worked out a plan to blast straight through it.
They geared accordingly – Crowe in a poncho, waders and gloves instead of armour, Krusha in mithril, Raven bagging her own armour to be hauled up separately – and went back down, Crowe climbing the rope first, Raven’s armour following behind her.
Krusha began the incantation to call down KemerLexi’s destructive force on the repaired brickwork ahead.