Arne, Eli, and Thea creeped warily towards the alleyway. Within its dark recesses was the pungent stench of urine, and a looming uneasy aura. Shadows danced along the dirty and unkempt walls and despite the cobblestone flooring being only a year or two old, it was grimy and weathered.
The alleyway was narrow, and uncomfortably humid. It traced the outlines of three houses, forming a "T" shaped intersection. Despite it being narrow, it was still almost wide enough for two of them to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Where the three cramped paths met was the entrance to the sewer. It was a stone staircase, framed by a simple archway. The entrance was small, enough for Arne to fear hitting his head, as he is quite tall for his age at around 5 feet 4 inches.
As the three began to slink down the stairway, a hot and damp breeze blew into their faces, like the breath of a gigantic dragon. The faces of the three tightened in disgust as the pungent scent of feces penetrated their formerly un-tainted noses.
"Ugh"
It was so unimaginably awful that it made them dizzy. To say that it was the worst scent they had ever smelled would be a severe understatement, compared to other kids their age, which would be around 9 years old, they have had their fair share of stenches, but this was incomparable.
It was an ungodly mixture of excrement, rot, and the hovering smell of something unknown.
The smell of death.
As the three paused in order to recuperate, they realized that the scent was not dissipating, and their poor noses were not adjusting. They definitely wouldn't get used to it.
Arne's eyes shone with sharp determination.
"Let's keep moving," he said.
When they reached the last step a surprising scene played out before them. A uniform waterway was spread out almost as far as they could see in either direction, though to call it a waterway would be more of a half-truth.
The sewer appeared to be a simple hallway, around 10 meters wide, with a 3 meter wide river of grime in the center. Every once and a while, a small bridge would cross the river of grime.
The ceiling was tall, Eli could stand on Arne's shoulders and still wouldn't be able to reach the ceiling. Above the "waterway" the ceiling was raised in an arch, similarly to the entrance to the sewer. A hole in the ceiling was clear every 20 meters, where sewage and rainwater would drop in from above.
The walls were flat, and made of hard dark grey brick, with almost black mortar between each brick. Though it was hard to tell if that was the original color, or one adopted from the adulterated fumes. Along the walls, separated by around 3 meters exactly, were what looked like small cups mounted to the walls.
In each cup was an orb, a fiery red orb that looked as if it were a smouldering campfire condensed and crammed into a beautiful red gemstone. The bright orb was emitting a soft glow, and small flames occasionally licked the air around the orbs.
"Mana stones?" said Thea, as she remembered Mr. Gregory's lesson around them.
In their second year, they were finally allowed to learn more about magic, sadly the Sword Kingdom had heavily restricted the learning of magics so that those in non-privileged situations would not have the means to gain strength to revolt against the tough law of the King, and possibly increase the number of the already influential revolutionaries.
Mana stones looked fancy, but in reality, they were quite simple. Incredibly potent ones could be mined and found across the world in deposits heavy with ambient mana, but impure stones could be created by hand, and were very much sought after in the market.
All it took to create one was to have a few skilled mages focus mana into a small stone. Sadly it didn't work on larger stones, Mr. Gregory explained that the material that the stone was made of would not be able to retain enough mana to become a mana stone.
For example: simple rocks as a material can only contain a certain amount of mana before it implodes, but the size of the vessel also determines how much mana it must hold before it has a qualitative change and becomes a mana stone. Thus, a large boulder would not be able to contain enough mana to give it a qualitative change before the energy destabilized the boulder.
The threshold of the perfect mana stone was determined to be just small enough to fit into one's hand. When the stone goes through the qualitative change it changes appearance to become more like a gemstone, which reflects the nature of the mana that was infused into the stone.
Many different materials could be used to create mana stones, and gems were considered to be the best by far, but Lumin Town is not the capital, so the sewer's mana stones were just former rocks.
What was surprising about the sewer was not the simple repetition of patterns on the walls, or the exactness of the flaming mana stones, but what was not put there by the designers. Lining the walls and the paths where one may walk were small tents and beddings covered in grime, that all had the same brown or black coloring.
Along the dirty river and by almost every tent was a net, likely for catching anything that was not excrement to collect, use, or sell. The people that lived down here must be desperate in order to result to such things.
As the three stood in awe at the secret society that lay out in front of them, Arne's eyes narrowed as he realized something strange. There were no people. At this time people would normally be at home, and even with the possibility that the occupants of this place were part-time thieves one would think that there would be at least one person.
There was no sound but the soothing echo of flowing water, though it was not-so-soothing when accompanied by the smell.
Arne immediately tensed up.
"Eli, Thea, whatever you do, don't let any rat touch you." he said as his eyes whipped back and forth, looking for any sign of movement.
"Stick close," he continued, his hand moved slowly towards the knife in his pocket.
He stepped slowly and carefully towards the nearest tent, like the others, the inside was obscured by a tattered and loose flap, which would occasionally move like it was blowing in the soft breeze. He pulled out the knife completely.
Arne's left hand creeped towards the flap, and his grip on the knife tightened fully. He held out his right hand to signal the others to stop, keeping the knife tight in his palm using his thumb. Eli and Thea stopped, and Arne crept forward alone.
His trembling hand gripped the flap tightly as he bit his lip. Thea and Eli peeked over his shoulder from behind to catch a glimpse of what was inside.
WHOOSH
He pulled the flap to the side, and inside was what Arne feared most.
A man.
His skin was pale, and colder than the midnight air. His lips were ice-blue, and his muscles had tightened with rigor mortis. His dull eyes bulged out of his swollen head. The parts of his body not wrapped tightly in poor dirty bandages were covered in pus-filled abscesses. Dark bags underneath his dull eyes made evident the nights of suffering the affliction he had brought on.
Arne's left hand shot back to cover his mouth. His eyes shook, he walked backwards almost automatically and fell to his knees. Thea stifled a scream, and stood still, staring in shock. Eli retched and then vomited into the river of sewage, shaking even worse than Arne.
'There's no way' thought Arne. 'All these tents, this can't be real' Arne remembers the clinic, not one person at the clinic looked as misfortuned as the people who lived down here are. He thought of Thea's mother, of his own mother, of how easily a rat may have rubbed up against the people in the crowd outside Philip's bank.
'Nobody even knew...' he thought. The man must have been dead for at least a day or two, and nobody had come to investigate? Then who was that man who left this sewer the other day? Why didn't he do anything? Arne never did see his face and he was wearing a baggy cloak, so it could have been anyone, even a woman, he wasn't even sure it was a man.
Arne felt like his stomach had been twisted and tied into knots. He had never seen anything like this before. The most gruesome thing he'd ever seen was him and his friends covered in bruises, and now he had been exposed to one of the most cruel and gruesome scenes he could have seen: death.
A sudden sound drew his wavering attention.
Out of the tent strolled a rat. A "white" one.
Arne couldn't move. In his hand he had tightly gripped the knife, but it was useless in his hands now. He was in shock. Sounds drifted right through his skull, but his brain was processing none of it.
His mind was racing with questions and worry, fear for the lives of those in the village.
The rat moved closer, slowly, but its eyes were fixated on the closest person, Arne. Thea was still frozen behind him, unmoving as her eyes shook watching the small creature close the distance. Eli coughed harder than he ever had in his life, he hadn't even noticed the rat yet.
The cough shocked Thea back into reality, and she immediately panicked and made a decision.
"Do something!"
SLAP
A red handprint began to develop on the side of Arne's face. He shook his head to wake himself up, and stood up to face the rat. He took a deep shaky breath, and exhaled slowly as the rat sped up. He brandished the small knife as the rat charged towards him.
He slashed straight towards the mangy rat's center. It changed directions quickly, dodging Arne's very predictable slash. It jumped towards Arne with an open mouth, with sharp yellow teeth. In a moment of extreme focus Arne hand flew directly into the rat's flight path.
The rat couldn't stop midair, so it split directly in half between the eyes.
In place of the blood Arne expected, only a bright light appeared, and the corpse of the rat dissipated into wisps of light.
Thea's eyes trembled.
"They... They're summons?!" she exclaimed.
Arne, Thea, and Eli, who was no longer vomiting, looked at each other.
"This is the work of a magic user," said Arne, "I think it may be the work of a person." Despite knowing that the rats were summons, he didn't know it was the work of a person.
Thea and Eli were shocked at the idea, but things started to make more sense, Arne had already mentioned he had seen someone leaving the sewer recently.
"In the morning, we need to tell everyone. Tonight, we can kill as many rats as we can so they can't get more people." said Arne, "I'm sure we can find something around here that you two could use as a weapon." He swallows dryly thinking about the people who lived down here.
"The more rats that we kill down here, the less people have to suffer." said Arne, before softly smiling.
"We can also use this opportunity to hone our skills."