No matter how far Gunter pressed onward, each new junction or offshoot seemed to deposit fresh layers of cloying filth and decaying debris. The sewer tunnels had long ceased being mere drainage conduits - they had become a veritable underworld labyrinth comprised of centuries' worth of civic waste.
His hands, already rubbed raw from blind exploration, encountered an ominous array of hazards with every foot gained. Rusted iron grates and discarded tools that could easily pierce flesh. Shattered bottles and crockery with wicked slivers of jagged glass. More than once his questing fingertips brushed against unmistakable forms that made his stomach lurch - skeletal remnants of small animals and other piteous souls who had met their ends down here amidst the lightless flows.
With each passing minute, Gunter felt his mental reserves waning as the never-ending cycle of inching forward, tugging futilely on the rope, and being forced to release and press on utterly sapped his morale. How much deeper could these tunnels plunge beneath the city's skin? Had he somehow become hopelessly lost, doomed to wander in perpetual darkness until finally succumbing to starvation or some other unspeakable fate?
Just as panic began clawing at the edges of his consciousness, Gunter's forearm impacted solidly against some unyielding mass. For a fleeting moment, naive hope fluttered that he'd finally encountered the focal obstruction impeding the entire pipe network. He rapped his knuckles against the barrier, feeling it reverberate with a curiously hollow percussion. Not metal or stonework, but something denser, more...substantial.
Squirming forward, he ran both hands along the anomaly, discerning its curved contours. Whatever this thing was, the rounded impression towered well over his head and seemed to continue outward in all directions as far as he could grope.
Gunter pounded his meager fists against it in growing desperation, shouting out to whatever echoes might carry word of his discovery to his "rescuers". But only deafening silence answered, not even his own voice reflecting back from the claustrophobic darkness.
His lungs burned from exertion and the near-stifling atmosphere as he thrashed against the monolithic, unyielding presence before finally slumping back in defeat. This wasn't just some fallen chunk of masonry or accumulated debris. This...this was something else entirely.
As if to mock his despair, the lifeline trailing from his waist suddenly went taut, yanking Gunter backwards through the viscous mire and startling a garbled yelp from his defiled lips. Too stunned to offer more than token resistance, he felt himself dragged inexorably back toward whichever nightmarish branch had delivered him into this impossible pocket of stillness.
At last, after what felt like an eternity of suffocation and disorientation, a dim shaft of flickering light pierced the inky soup enveloping Gunter's senses. The stench of sewage intensified before he found himself abruptly breaking the murky surface, choking and spluttering amid a shallow pool of tepid runoff.
Byrne and Calley's leering silhouettes hovered nearby, dragging his inert form across the slimy stones like a drowned carcass as he fought to expel the fetid deluge from his burning lungs.
"What'n the unholy blazes was that ruckus all about, rat?" Byrne growled, one steel-capped boot pressing firmly against Gunter's breastbone to hold him pinned. "We damn near yanked yer bones from their sockets at one point!"
Gunter tried to speak, to explain the bizarre impediment he'd encountered, but only a fit of rasping wheezes escaped between his cracked lips. How could he even begin to describe the sheer, looming immensity of that...that thing down there in lightless oblivion?
"Useless worm didn't even make it ten strides by my reckoning," Calley chimed in, his doughy features twisted into a contemptuous sneer as he hocked up a gluey loogie to splatter across Gunter's cheek.
The glob's cloying warmth seemed to revive his senses somewhat. "N-No..." he finally managed to croak out around heaving breaths. "W-Went furth-further than ever. Found...massive bl-blockage."
Now it was Byrne's turn to sneer, the thick cords of veins pulsating across his ruddy neck as he leaned down to glower into Gunter's face. "Is that so? Well if you failed to clear it, then considerin' you've been down there shirkin' fer near an hour—"
"W-Wait!" Despite the authoritative bark, Gunter felt a surge of defiance. After suffering those unnumbered minutes adrift in the endless black, this ignorant sadist would not browbeat him so easily. "T-Told you...huge thing down there! Bigger than any of us, bigger than this whole chamber! Not no blockage, more like...l-like a wall!"
For a long moment, the two men stared incredulously before exchanging bemused glances. Then, with no warning other than a subtle tightening of his features, Byrne drew back his free arm and sent his gnarled fist crashing ruthlessly into the underside of Gunter's jaw.
Fire exploded behind the boy's eyes as his teeth sliced the inside of his cheeks, showering his throat in coppery blood. Dark fuzziness encroached as a profound ringing consumed his senses. This, sadly, was far from the first time he'd been introduced to the exquisite agonies of blunt head trauma.
As vertigo slowly subsided and the corridor's dim, sputtering torchlight resolved, Gunter became aware of indistinct shouting and general commotion nearby. Even with focus returning to his battered awareness, the words remained a meaningless cacophony, like listening to conversations underwater.
Gradually, coherent snatches of sound resurfaced in a miasma of recognizable sensations.
"...Gah, you addleskulled cur! Not serious, were you?"
That was Byrne's guttural bellow, wasn't it? But laced with an unfamiliar timbre of what could almost be interpreted as...apprehension.
"Of c-course he weren't bein' serious! Little bastard j-just trying t'save his hide..."
Calley, undoubtedly. Stammer implying he himself had just endured a similar instructive beating from their fearsome taskmaster. Whatever Gunter had babbled out loud regarding his bizarre discovery, it seemed to have provoked a rather unexpected response.
"Still though, you heard what he's sayin'...whole bloody wall down there? Massive an' all?"
"Shut yer runnin' trap, you! Ain't no call to be chatterin' over the blatherin's of some sewerpup! We've been down them shafts deeper before, they all link up to the main vein eventually."
The heated altercation proceeded to escalate in intensity, with Byrne's gruff baritone increasingly overriding Calley's wheedling intonations. From the floorbound vantage point where he still lay crumpled in agony, Gunter caught brief flashes of real consternation flickering across their supervisor's craggy features amidst the usual brutish sneers and contortions.
Was it possible? Could his muddled account have managed to unsettle the normally unflappable bully in some miniscule way? He'd spoken truthfully about the bizarre presence he'd encountered - that wasn't in question. But could his ravings have somehow intersected with an entity festering down here in the city's most ancient drainage networks?
Gunter knew he should avoid pondering such fancies. Cling to the numbing impassiveness that kept him treading water amidst this bleak, pitiless daily grind. But his brain was not braining within his head, the constant beatings must've gotten to him - even through the increasingly enraged shouting and renewed blows raining down from his vile keepers.
Not even the ministrations of Byrne and Calley's boots and fists could quell the rampant speculation unspooling through Gunter's addled mind. Each rattling impact against his frail body only seemed to stoke the interest festering deep within - what secrets dwelled unseen beneath the city's very foundation?
He endured the brutal onslaught with a detached expression vastly removed from his physical suffering. Gunter's senses attained a heightened lucidity as the world beyond his battering dissolved into peripheral white noise. Every subtle nuance and environmental detail etched itself into his awareness with vivid, dreamlike clarity.
The dank, mineral reek of the alcove's stagnant air became a bouquet of disparate earthy essences - the sweet tang of moldering stone intermingled with the acrid sting of stale urine and burnt wick tallow. He could discern the almost melodic patter of condensation dripping from the arched ceiling pipes with each reverberating blow against his jaw.
More than that, Gunter's ears attained an alarming sensitivity to the most infinitesimal vibrations resonating through the very bedrock. A subterranean chorus of ceaseless ambient thrumming, like the drone of a million industrious insects laboring tirelessly just beneath the skin of perception. He alone could sense their secret, steady pulse enveloping this detritus-choked world - an unseen river of life and purpose flowing counter to the mortal world above.
It was the most alien yet deeply profound experience imaginable for the starving urchin's mistreated psyche. As if in those transcendent moments between Byrne's debasing beat-down, some guiding ethereal force had peeled back the veil of reality to grant Gunter a tantalizing glimpse at the ineffable mysteries pulsing just beyond humanity's dense, self-imposed blinders.
With an abrupt, shuddering gasp, Gunter's expanded consciousness slammed back into him. Byrne's contorted, dripping visage filled his visual periphery, one gnarled fist raised for another crushing blow while the other restrained Calley's oafish bulk against delivering further kicks to the prone boy's midsection.
"...imbecilic blather endin' up puttin' us at the mercy of worse fates than even you runts," the corpulent ringleader spat, his expression etched into deep crevices of disgust. As if observing some loathsome insect having the audacity to breathe his delicately curated air. "Your ignorant utterances could draw things out the dark that make mere Death a blessed mercy!"
"We should just kill 'im now, Byrne!" Calley hissed through a spray of spittle, eyes bulging with feverish intensity. "Silence the brat afore he rouses whatever horrors with that loose tongue!"
"No, you fool," Byrne rumbled, drawing back his brawny arm as if to strike Gunter again despite the warning glare leveled at his accomplice. "We rid ourselves of the nuisance quietly...drag him down into the drains far enough that even lurkers and scavenged won't sniff his stinking carcass for ages to come."
A profound, molten dread congealed within the deepest pits of Gunter's stomach as he registered the full implications of Byrne's vile suggestion. He fought to give voice, to offer some final plea for leniency despite knowing the utter futility of appealing to any scrap of human compassion within these two.
But before his ruined vocal cords could produce more than a reedy burble of desperation, Byrne cocked back that sledgehammer of a forearm, knuckles already glistening with fresh ribbons of Gunter's blood.