I continued on. Not bothering to look back, I continued on. Letting out a deep sigh, still I continued on.
What had been had been, and what was simply was. There was no point in me wasting time in things that had passed, and so I climbed up the ladder once more as soon as life had sprung back into me.
"I'm thirsty..." I muttered to myself, noticing how dry my throat had become.
Water. I needed water.
"Well, you certainly have a lot around you now, why don't you?" The Reaper's voice whispered into my ears. Truly, his once persuasive voice had turned sour in them.
"What do you want?" I asked passive-aggressively as I made my way along the upper level of the sewers.
"Nothing much. Just telling you the truth, you do have lots of water around you!"
"Hardi-har-har," I laughed sarcastically.
Although I tried my best to take my mind off it, the scene that had just played out in front of me kept on repeating itself in my head like a broken tape. Stevie was his name, and Rain was his murderer.
"I need to find my things," I said into the darkness, trying to will my legs to maintain pace. My throat was dry, and my body was failing me; truly a wonderful predicament I'd gotten myself into! "I need to find my things, and get the hell outta here."
As soon as I said these words, my legs immediately gave in.
With a painful crash, I fell to the ground: tired, adrenaline having worn off, and fatigue slowly catching up.
"Damn it all," I cursed out.
Seeing this, the Reaper could hardly contain his laughter. Absolute git, I swear.
Before I knew it, I was already on my back, sweating profusely as I tried to take in as much air as I could into my lungs. The fact that I had no water too was not a good thing. I felt like passing out right at that moment, but I resisted the urge.
It was amazing how much your body could disillusion yourself from feeling neither tired nor pain during a fight! Of course, the Mark had a play in all of this, but still...
I lay there for God knew how long, trying to let my body reclaim order among itself, but the lack of water gave me a huge headache.
It did pass, but by the time I managed to get up, I was still very much weak on my feet.
"See?" The Reaper said, grinning at my suffering. "Don't take this Contract lightly, Rainy boy. You might think you've found yourself a way to exact your revenge, but you still have your promise with me now. Don't forget that."
"I know..." I groaned.
Once this was over, I continued to make my way through the damp floor of the sewers. It was pretty apparent by now that I needed to quicken up the pace, and so I did exactly that. Using the edge of the walls to guide me, I pushed on forwards into the dark, hoping to find some signs that would show me that I was on the right track!
Something, anything!
But nothing came. All was dead still, and all was dead quiet. The only thing I could do then was to simply... Continue.
I walked on for the next five minutes, making my way in the direction I had chosen. It wasn't exactly an accurate calculation, but knowing how sewers were often interconnected with each other, it was only a matter of time before I'd meet some familiar walls.
At least, this was what I had strongly come to believe. That was, before I was faced with yet another crossroad: one to my left and one to my right.
If I purely relied on my guts, I would've gone to the left, no question asked. There was simply no way that going to the complete opposite direction would be right!
...
Right?
There was something deeply wrong about the left hallway. It wasn't something I could put my finger on, but there was something. Something dangerous I could smell from deep within its darkened gaze.
"Grim?" I asked, unsure of what to do. "What's that?"
I pointed towards the left hallway, hoping for a much better articulated answer than my poor question. However, what I got instead was...
"I don't know. Why don't you find out yourself?"
Maddening.
I inched closer and closer to the mouth of the hallway, and peeked into the abyss hidden within. Surely, I could've just left things behind and go immediately to the right, but no! There was something calling me from this unknown darkness.
It was as if a silent voice was pulling me, tugging me to go to it.
Was it the smell of blood too that I sensed? Death? There was another layer to this enigma of a hallway that I, myself, could not explain. What was this feeling? What was this tension?
Feeling completely overwhelmed, curiousity beat me to it and my legs began to move by themselves.
Happy or not, I was going to see what was in this damn hallway.
Hell, maybe I might find one of those men in here as well! That'd surely be a bonus, if it meant leading me back to my things!
Yet, as soon as I set foot into the mouth of the hallway, this sentiment quickly faded away.
The walls have eyes.
This was what I had come to conclude when I first set foot onto the place. I wanted it to be nothing more but the shakes, but the truth simply was... Something was lurking in that darkness. Something was sure-as-hell watching too!
With every step that I took, the smell of Death grew stronger and stronger. It was almost gag-inducing to a certain extent, and it was at this moment that I realised I had done a mistake.
Reason began to come back to my clouded mind, and I quickly turned around as soon as I possibly could.
Leaving some stones indeed unturn? I didn't care, so long if it meant me being alive by the end of the day!
But just before I was about to jump out, I readied myself for one last look behind me, curious of whether something would truly show up. Something to tell me what exactly was I dealing with here.
"Don't."
The Reaper's words were short, but it did exactly what it needed to do.
Heeding his words, I didn't turn back for a single second. Instead, I only heard the scuffling noises as something was being cut off right behind my neck.
Grim?
I tripped and hit the watery surface below me pretty badly, and by the time I had regained all of my senses, it was already over.
The Reaper was the only one left.
"What was that?" I asked him, my tone dead-on serious.
"A presence's not that of a human, that's what," he replied curtly. His face was covered by the shadows, but I could sense his feeling of uneasiness.
Whatever it was that resided in there, it sparked fear in even the Grim Reaper himself.
...
That wasn't something you'd hear everyday.
"And why is that here?" I finally managed to ask. Holy moly, my throat was realy dry now!
"I can't say. But I don't like it. The fact that it's already gone too makes me don't like it even more," he snarled.
"What?"
It was only then that I realised what he had meant.
Everything had gone; all traces of whatever it was had completely disappeared.
"How?" I asked in disbelief. Even the smell of Death! Even that was no longer anywhere to be found.
Nothing. It was as if it was never there in the first place.
"Get up on your feet, Rain. It's not safe out here."
This was the first time he had ever called me by my real name, but I couldn't care less given the situation. I didn't like it when things were out of my control, and combine that with something unexplainable, I'd just go out on a complete tangent!
Still, I listened to the Reaper's words.
He was, after all, the one who was most likely in the know when it came to non-human threats. So why would I argue?
However, there was still indeed one huge gaping question that remained.
"Where the hell am I supposed to go now?" I asked, unsure of whether I should continue with my believed route.
As much as I trusted my senses, I still couldn't truly believe that whatever it was that had been in that hallway was no longer there.
It was very jarring, to say the least.
Unfortunately, it seemed such dumb questions invited the sarcastic remarks of the demon in front of me.
"Well, I don't know... But I guess the right one's the obvious choice as it's the right one, right?"
"Oh, shut up," I retorted back.
It seemed he was back to his usual self. The hell did I know whether that was a good or a bad thing.
After having gotten back up again, to which my body let out a resounding number of cracking noises, I slowly made my way back to the entrance of the left hallway.
There really was nothing left...
"Now, come on," the Reaper urged, grinning as he saw my overcautiousness. "There's nothing to be afraid of, it's only the dark after all."
Flipping him the bird, I finally set my foot back to where I did earlier and started my walk across.
Heart beating rather out of sync, I grew antsy at every single thing. This did not exclude the splashes of my steps which caused me to turn around every once in a while by mistake.
"Come on," I muttered to myself. "Be brave."
Imagine saying to yourself to be brave after having killed well over a fifty in the past two days.
Imagine that.
But even with the ever-so looming fear, I managed to get through the whole ordeal fairly well. As soon as I got through the hallway and out into a larger tunnel, I let out a huge sigh of relief, knowing I'd made it.
However, even until this very day, I still had no clue of what it was that I had encountered.
...
...
Soldiering on, I continued to navigate myself through the sewers with much difficulty. Body failing, head aching, throat dying; these were all the things I had to deal with along my journey and truth be told, it was hell.
Even the Reaper himself got so bored watching me like this that he decided to vanish mid-journey.
If it wasn't for the sole fact that I had nobody else to rely on, I probably would've just laid there right at that moment and await for help.
But yeah, life was never that simple now, was it?
Moving my way even deeper and deeper into this sewer complex, I'd come to appreciate just how well built the whole thing actually was. Sure, they were rusty as all hell but for the most part, the whole structure seemed to have stood against the test of time.
...
I see, my mind had become this tired that it began blabbering about the architecture of the place. Beautiful. What could be better than distracting your mind from your own slowly deteriorating body!
"Come on, get it together," I said, slapping myself in the face. "If an enemy were to be here, I'd be dead by now."
And surely I would be.
My guard was just purely abysmal at the moment; it had been lowered so much that I didn't think anybody could ever make it if they were to jump down onto it.
...
Okay Shakespeare, that was more than enough for the day.
Thankfully though, taking me away from my random ramblings of thought, I came to meet a promising, small corridor among the sewers. I wasn't sure per se, but the direction it was leading towards seemed to be the same place where I had originally fallen down into the sewers. Meaning, this was the direction to go.
That was if my calculations were right, which last time I checked was one of my stronger suits.
Nevertheless, the size of the corridor itself did impose some heads-up of the problems it had.
"Guess I just gotta get on with it," I sighed, as I squeezed my way through the rather small gap. Sure, it wasn't enough to cause claustrophobia, but it was smaller than what moustache-dictator from before could ever hope in managing.
Slowly, I made my way through the whole thing. It was nerve-wracking to say the least, but at least I had something to hold on to along the process.
Fortunately, all this hardwork did indeed pay off.
As if the heavens itself had opened up, there it was. The giant gaping hole where I had fallen down from, sunshine radiating through the space between.
I walked into the light, and felt my whole body regained its energy underneath its warm glow.
Photosynthesis, if I could ever have one.
This moment proved to be such a peaceful solitude for me that I almost forgot one huge glaring problem I'd overlooked.
Almost.
How the hell was I supposed to get back up!?
"Aw shit," I cursed silently, my throat too dry to speak. Even in the silence, I could hear the Reaper's laughter.
Letting out a huge sigh of disappointment, I gave one sad look back at the blue sky above me. All I could say was goodbye. I needed another exit pronto, and water too by the look of things, so I didn't have time to waste.
This whole day just keeps on getting better and better, I thought to myself.
And so, once again I set forth into the dark with a feeling of huge discontent carried in my arms.
And that was when the whistling began.