Monti walked through the darkness. The sewer water sloshed around his knees, cold and thick. The smell was overwhelming—rot, waste, something metallic he didn't want to identify.
He kept his hands out. Feeling the walls. His eyes adjusted slowly, but not enough. Everything was shadows.
Jes, he thought. I need to get back to her.
But he didn't know where he was. The explosion, the fall, the water—it had disoriented him. He could be anywhere.
He stopped. Listened.
Water dripping. Rats scurrying. A distant echo of something heavy moving.
Something's down here with me.
He summoned a claw. Two feet in front of him. Floating. Ready.
He kept walking.
The tunnel narrowed. The water level rose to his thighs. Then his waist. He was wading now.
Then he heard it.
A splash. Behind him.
He spun. Nothing. Just darkness.
Another splash. To his left.
He summoned a tail. Swung it in that direction. It hit nothing.
It's toying with me.
He backed up against the wall. Put his back to something solid. Summoned claws around him in a circle—floating, waiting.
"Come on," he whispered. "Show yourself."
Silence.
Then a ripple in the water. Something thin and long slithered past his leg. He jerked back. A shape rose from the water—tall, narrow, swaying. It had no eyes. Just a smooth, pale head and two long tentacles in front of its face, twitching like they were tasting the air.
The creature was skinny. Snake-like. Its body coiled and uncoiled beneath the surface, long and flexible.
Monti's claws swiped at it. The creature recoiled, then struck—fast. A tentacle whipped toward his face. He ducked. The tentacle hit the wall behind him, cracking the concrete.
"Shit," he muttered.
He summoned more claws. Three of them. They slashed at the creature from different angles. The snake-creature twisted, dodged, then retreated into the water.
Monti waited. Breathing hard.
The water went still.
Where did it go?
He started walking again. Faster. He needed to find an exit.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer. The tunnel twisted and turned. The water stayed deep. Monti's legs were numb from the cold.
Then the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber. The water was shallower here—only up to his ankles. He could see the walls. Dripping pipes. A faint glow from somewhere above.
And in the center of the chamber, a cluster of pale objects.
Eggs.
Dozens of them. Each one the size of his fist. Translucent. Inside each one, a dark shape twisted and curled.
The snake-creature was there too. Bigger than the first one. Its body was thick as a tree trunk, coiled around the eggs like a guardian. Its tentacles extended toward Monti, tasting the air.
Monti froze.
The creature's head turned toward him. Slowly. Deliberately.
"Okay," Monti whispered. "That's... that's a lot of eggs."
The creature hissed.
Then it lunged.
Monti dove to the side. The creature's body slammed into the wall where he'd been standing. Concrete cracked. Water splashed.
He summoned a claw. Swiped at its side. The claw connected, but barely—the creature's skin was thick, almost armored.
It turned. Tentacles whipped toward him. He blocked with a summoned tail, but the force knocked him back. He slid across the wet floor, hit a pipe, and groaned.
Think, he told himself. Think. The eggs. The creature was guarding them. That was its weakness. He summoned a floating claw near the eggs. Swiped at one. It cracked. Green slime spilled out.
The creature screamed. It turned toward the eggs, ignoring Monti.
He summoned more claws. Two. Three. Four. They swiped at the eggs, cracking them one by one. The creature hissed, trying to block them all.
Monti got to his feet. He ran—not toward the eggs. Toward the far end of the chamber. A tunnel. A way out.
The creature was distracted.
He didn't look back.
" I can run now it's distracted by the eggs, wait it wasn't able to see that first attack then" Monti thought to himself
Then he stopped running just for a second. Then his mind started piecing it all together. The slime trapping Jes, the gravity and them being able to see his invisible Crocodiles.
" They look like snails and nearly have eyes, meaning the blind like them, so hearing and feeling is how they get around," he thought to himself then remembered the gravity shifting around them.
"Of course the slime on them is like vibration senseing the area so to them it's visible," He said looking at the water then at his hand a small smile creep on his face.
He went back this time quieter. Avoviding all the smiles and now he was just on his underwear he left his clothes covered in slime back. His muscles bulged, bruises lined his V shaped abs and chest.
He hid being the corner seeing all the eggs. The creature wrapped around them. Putting aside the broken eggs. In a way it was kinda sweet a horrendous, looking mother taking care of her children. A rat walked past a a side covered in slime, the that creature it swung its head towards the direction of the rat. Not a single second before it swing its tentacle at it smashing it into paste, and destroying ground and leaving blood and guts scattered.
"Shit I knew it, meaning…how Loud can the sound be, till they can hear it," Monti said to himself as he throws a can towards the rat now mangled corpse. Landing on the blood and not any slime. He waited and wait. As nothing happened.
"Perfect" he said with a smile.
Then an alarm went off loud blairing echoed across the sewers. The creature screamed and then over a dozen of the smaller skinny version rush passed Monti ignoring him as if he didn't exist.
Now it was Just them to and he had a Minute to make it count.