Chapter 232: Underneath The Undercity
Akira drew her fist back and drove it into the cracked wall.
The damaged section gave way, the stone breaking apart and falling in chunks around her boots. She stepped through the gap and out onto the street.
The flickering lamplight was better than the darkness she’d come from. Not by much, but enough.
She walked forward.
The hole had shown her the cracked paving and the broken lamps, but it hadn’t shown her everything.
The floor was damp, with a thin film of moisture sitting on the stone that made each step slightly slick beneath her boots.
And along the walls of the buildings on either side, vines had grown. They were dark green and thick in places, their tendrils finding every crack in the stone and working their way in until the growth spread across the walls in uneven patches.
She tried the first door.
It opened onto a room where sections of the interior walls had crumbled inwards, leaving piles of rubble across the floor.
Mold covered what remained of the surfaces in dark, spreading blooms, and the ceiling had partially collapsed in one corner, revealing darkness above.
She pulled the door shut and moved to the next one.
Here, all she could see was weeds. They grew from floor to ceiling, filling the interior completely. The growth was so dense she couldn’t see the back wall.
She moved to the next building.
The windows were broken, and the frames empty. Inside she could see that the wall shared with the adjacent building had broken down entirely, the two interiors becoming one continuous space.
She climbed through the window, walked across the joined room, and found a door on the far side that opened onto a different street.
She stepped through.
This street was different.
The cracks were still there, and the flickering lamps still present, but growing in patches along the center of the street were clusters of what looked like grapes.
They were a deep purple, hanging in full bunches from low, sprawling vines that had been arranged in deliberate rows rather than spreading wild across the walls.
Akira stopped.
She looked at the rows, then at the buildings on either side. Then back at the grapes.
Everything else in this section of the Undercity had the feel of abandonment. This did not.
She walked forward slowly, crouching beside the nearest cluster. The fruit was full and unbruised, the color deep and even.
She plucked a few and put them in her mouth.
The flavor hit her immediately. It was sweet and rich, cleaner than anything she’d eaten from a ration pack in the last several days.
This means there are people here. Someone had to have grown all this.
"Who are you?"
The voice came from behind her.
Akira rose slowly, turning towards the voice with both hands raised, palms out as she slyly activated [Kairos’ Fillet].
She watched the next few seconds play out, deducing that the person meant no great harm, before the world resumed.
An armored figure stood at the far end of the grape rows, one hand resting on the hilt of a weapon at their hip.
The armor looked well maintained despite the environment, covering the body completely from boots to helmet. The aura coming off the figure told her they were C-rank.
"My name is Akira," she said, keeping her hands where they were. "I’m not here by choice. The walls of the Undercity shifted while my group was running and the buildings closed between us. I ended up here."
There was a pause, then the figure’s posture changed as they relaxed, their hand moving away from the weapon.
"The shift," the woman said, making a sound of understanding. "It happens. That was how I ended up here too."
She reached up and pulled the helmet free.
Akira looked at her.
The face beneath the helmet was striking. She had a perfectly symmetrical face, with full lips, and a calm expression.
Two short horns curved from her forehead, and her hair was white, cropped close on the sides and longer at the top. Her skin was brick red.
She was a tiefling.
"Holly," the woman said, tucking the helmet under her arm. "That’s my name."
"Akira." She lowered her hands. "Where are we exactly?"
Holly looked at the street around them, then up at the cavern ceiling above, then back at Akira. "Best I can work out, this is the garbage disposal of the Undercity."
She gestured broadly at the crumbling buildings, the damp stone, and the broken lamps. "Buildings that get destroyed, sections that stop functioning, and parts of the city that the dungeon essentially discards. They all end up here."
"So we call this place Underneath, as it is below the functioning city."
"And the way back up?"
Holly exhaled through her nose. It was the sound of a question she’d asked herself many times.
"I’ve been here for seven months," she said.
Akira stared at her.
"Seven months," Holly confirmed. "I have looked. I have searched every building in this section and mapped every street I’ve been able to access." She met Akira’s eyes. "I have not found a feasible way out."
"There has to be one," Akira said.
"There is one way," Holly said. "But none of us have been able to get through it, which is why it is not a feasible way out."
She turned and began walking. "Come. I’ll explain more, but first," she glanced back over her shoulder, "you should meet the others."
Akira didn’t like what she was hearing, but she had no choice but to follow.
Holly walked with a fast stride. One could tell that she knew the route around here very well.
"The Automatons barely come down here," she said, glancing at Akira beside her. "Whatever draws them to the upper streets doesn’t extend to this section. We see them occasionally, but nothing like the patrols above."
"And the buildings don’t move down here, so what you see is what it is." She gestured at the street ahead. "Makes it easier to learn the layout. After a few weeks, I knew every street in this section well enough to walk it blind."
"How large is it?" Akira asked.
"Large enough to get lost in at first," Holly said. "Not as large as above though."
They walked for a few more minutes, the rusted gears grinding slowly somewhere around them.
Then Holly stopped.
A large building sat at the end of the street, wider than anything else Akira had seen down here, its walls relatively intact compared to the crumbling structures surrounding it.
"We’re here," Holly said.
