Dripping Away

Chapter 8: Covered In Lines

        Abers knocked on the grate to the sewers, only to be welcomed by the quietness of an echo. We all stood there in the rain, soaked and tired and unable to think straight after my reckless stunt, which I hated to admit that it was. The rest of them, their feelings about the Forever Spark, had gone as fast as a strike of lightning, but my chest still hurt and my eyes still glowed. Abers shook the grate and shouted down that they were strangers that needed help, and no one answered but the oncoming wind that blew me off of my feet. Stuck in the mud, I began to wonder if the sewers were worth it.
        Weshin, the one who had a distinct scar on his left cheek, finally exasperated what he was feeling. "Maybe the sewer people don't main this exit. It would be risky so close to the Church."
Weshin was right. We were stuck in the church grounds where people outside were screaming bloody murder, and we were stuck banging on a locked grate into a sewer system.
      "Try saying sugar," Westik mentioned. "We haven't done that."
      Abers turned to Westik. "No one's answering now, so what makes you think-"
      I grabbed the grate. "Sugar." My voice had an echo to it I did not like, and yet it seemed to travel down the grate like a bouncing ball. Still, nothing happened differently than before. Except... All of a sudden the grate started to violently shake. I took my hand away, stepping back as the bars began to aimlessly fall onto the ground one by one. Their tops and bottoms were rusted so bad that it looked like they had been there for almost too long, but they were just fine a minute ago. All of us were dazed by it for a moment until Abers walked in without a prompt.
      The sewers were dry, but there was puddles of water everywhere. All of them had trash, quite new, and I noticed the discarded remains of broken weapons and worn torches. This part of the sewers had to have been abandoned, because it looked worn and plagued by the inability to upkeep it. Weshin whispered to his brother in a hushed tone about the state of decay, but to me it sounded like it was in my head. I ignored their childish ramblings and followed Abers like a shadow crawling against the wall.
     "There might be an infestation," Abers admitted. "Trelos."
      Hearing the word made me want to gag, but I sucked it in. "We'll get sick here, then."
      "Just don't drink from the puddles, or- He looked at Westik and Weshin sharply. "-listen to anyone else but us."
      Everyone knew the rules of Trelos. Mom made that apparent when she scarred my stomach with the sharp end of a kitchen knife. I had no idea if Westik and Weshin understood those consequences of losing your mind since they were being raised in the Church. Trelos was a serious illness that affected us all every day, but maybe the Church thought the Forever Spark could save them from it.
     I didn't want to think about Trelos. As a wanderer, I would see it everywhere all of the time, and I didn't want to see it here of all places. We continued on into the dark until Abers found a lit torch on the wall, which led us into more light and more newly discarded trash. Before we knew it, we were upon a gate guarded by two scraggly looking men with stolen Six weaponry. They pointed their weapons, Abers and the twins putting their hands up instinctively, but I only etched closer until I was facing the both of them.
     "Trespassers," the one standing on the other side of the guttural middle spat. "We should shoot you now before you cause any trouble, white eyes."
     "White?" I asked. I didn't care, so I continued on. "We waited at the gate down the way, said the password and all without a response. The grate rusted open, so we invited ourselves in, and now we're here talking to you."
     "Well," the man in front of me sighed. "That part of the sewers has been abandoned for some time. You men are not native here."
      Abers stepped in. "Two men by the names of Arkeshta and Narmelin gave us the password after we saved their lives from the Six."
      The two men lowered their guns. "Say the password and we'll let you in."
     "Sugar."
     They picked at the lock for a moment before pushing the grate inward into the locked in town in the sewers. People were walking on by, across planks of wood that allowed them from one side to the other. I let everyone go ahead of me, and the man at the grate held me back. I turned to face him.
     "You need to go to Grevie first," he told me. "Just you."
     Grevie... The name sounded familiar, but I couldn't place it. I nodded to him, and I caught up with Abers and the twins quickly. We all were observing the place, scrawlings on the walls that had directions on where to go. I tried looking for Grevie, but I couldn't read. I had no idea even how to spell that name.
     "We need to lay low for some time until we're for sure ready to go back up there," Abers admitted.
     Weshin nodded. "We need a plan to stop the Six."
     We did. Already, I was tired of running away from them, but it hadn't occurred to me we needed to fight them head on. With my tired expression, I leaned against the sturdy brick wall. Suddenly, I felt the pulse of electricity exert from within my body to the inner workings of the wall. It went down the one side and sat there in the middle beckoning me to go towards. No one else could see it. I turned to Abers.
     "I'll be there in a moment," I mentioned. "I have to go somewhere."
     "Lostin," Abers started. "Are you sure you're well? Your eyes have yet to dim, and you still have glowing scars on your skin that seem permanent."
    I paid the scars and eyes no mind. I simply shrugged. "I will let you know if it suddenly becomes painful."
     I turned on my heel and started walking through the sewer in the opposite way of them. People were giving me odd looks as I shuffled to follow the electricity in the wall, which was pounding in my ears at every second. The farther I followed, the more it pounded louder and louder like a heartbeat. The moment I realized I was far away from any normal sewer people walking by, my head hit a grate when I was looking in different direction. I heard the snickers of two guards. They also had Six guns at their disposal, but they seemed more lax with them than the other guys. One of them approached the door and squinted at me.
     "You look like you walked out of a fantasy novel with those glowing eyes and scars," he commented with a snicker. "No normal person is allowed beyond this point, so you might as well trek back to the residential sewers."
     "Another guard told me to come see Grevie," I told him.
     "Whoa, your voice even sounds like it doesn't belong to you. Almash, get a load of this guy!"       The other guard ran up, leaving his gun on their table. "This guy looks like he's fiction."
      I rolled my eyes. "My name is Lostin Rotsitt, if that helps the message get across." I could hear the electricity in the center of the room behind them, its beat beckoning me to go farther.
      "Whoa!" the other guard exclaimed. "Bro, you sound so weird!"
     "There's no way you're actually Lostin, though," the first guard scoffed. "We don't allow entry to normal people here."
     All of a sudden, I noticed two gloved hands separating the both of them from each other. Their goofy faces suddenly became serious as they bowed in the presence of an older woman wearing a water resistant suit. Her wrinkles had set in a long time ago, her smile calmer than it used to be. She unlocked the gate and let me in.
     "Lostin," she smiled.
     "You're the... old woman from the Six attack," I exclaimed.
     "Yes," she smiled. "I am the leader of the Sewer People."