I raised my left hand, signaling James and Keane to freeze immediately in the shadows of the alley.
Just a few yards ahead, two mutated thralls were hunched over the bloody carcass of a fallen carriage horse. They ripped at its exposed stomach, slurping its grey, cold intestines down their throats like sloughs of thick spaghetti. Dark, stagnant fluid dripped from their snapping jaws onto the sunlit cobblestones.
"Don't make a sound, keep moving slowly."
Stepping carefully around the shattered glass and debris, we bypassed the feeding monsters and slipped out into the wide thoroughfare.
Reaching the city gates on foot under the blinding mid-day sun was excruciatingly slow. Had it been nightfall, I could have unclasped my canvas cloak, uncurled my dark crystallized wings, and leaped effortlessly across the rooftops to scout the route from above. But the lethal UV rays pinned us to the shadows of the street level.
We picked our way through ruined storefronts and overturned carts for a full, tense hour, covering nearly two kilometers of blood-slicked avenue.
As we finally rounded the final bend leading to the grand perimeter, the scene before us froze the blood in my veins.
The heavy, fortified settlement at the city gates was a total slaughterhouse.
The massive wooden barricades… built from thick timber beams and wrapped in heavy iron chains… had been completely pulverized. Twisted strands of barbed wire sat discarded in pools of darkening blood, littered with the shredded, half-eaten remains of the guards and archers who had tried to hold the line.
Worse yet, my single green eye locked onto the main iron portcullis.
The massive outer gates leading beyond Lulu City weren't just opened… they were shattered off their heavy iron hinges, crumpled like parchment. A wide, open breach gaped in the stone perimeter, leaving a clear, unobstructed path to the open countryside beyond.
Dozens of calcified ground-thralls and winged horrors were already shuffling and perching freely through the broken threshold, streaming out toward the neighboring towns and the path toward Caria City.
The quarantine was officially broken. The plague was no longer contained.
"It's over, the gates are down. The whole damn city is leaking into the kingdom." Keane said
"Oh, shut up, will you?" I snapped, my crimson eye locking onto the catastrophic scene ahead.
"Shut up?! Look at it! The guards are dead! The barricades are splintered! Those things are literally wandering into the countryside! If your paladin friend was here, she's either digested in some beast's gut or turned into a bone-bladed freak by now!" Keane hissed back, waving his arms frantically at the breached iron portcullis.
I ignored his whining, keeping my body low behind an overturned merchant cart while my gaze swept across the courtyard. Hundreds of mutated thralls were milling through the wreckage, tearing into the remains of guards and horses.
Keane was wrong. Patricia was a paladin, and despite her rigid code, she wasn't stupid. She wouldn't have stood in the middle of an open courtyard to be torn apart, nor could she have escaped into the countryside earlier. The massive iron portcullis had clearly been sealed shut during the initial defense and only recently breached by the sheer weight of the horde.
So where would she go?
Hiding in the surrounding stone guardhouses? Impossible… those structures were completely overrun, their windows smashed and doors splintered. They were death traps.
She had to be underground.
A cold, calculated realization settled in my mind. Lulu City had an extensive, subterranean drainage system… a massive network of wet, stinking stone sewers running beneath every major district. I knew this system intimately. A year ago, during my meticulous preparations to infiltrate the Dodorant Citadel using Keane's face, I spent weeks studying, mapping, and memorizing the underground blueprints of Lulu City as a contingency escape route. Even after a year, every turn, overflow valve, and junction box in those damp tunnels was burned into my memory.
If Patricia was backed into a corner at these gates, the sewer was the only logical choke point that offered shelter and a discreet way out.
And what about Chris, Aisha, and the crystallized Lukreia?
As James, Keane, and I had been picking our way through the ruined streets over the last hour, I realized the direction Chris and Aisha had bolted… when James tripped and broke his ankle… was the primary thoroughfare directly connected to this exact gate perimeter. Aisha was a pure survivalist driven by sheer instinct; the second the streets collapsed into chaos, she would have sought the quickest, darkest path out of sight. They had almost certainly dropped underground as well.
I turned back to James and Keane, keeping my voice low.
"Patricia, Keith, Chris, and Aisha aren't dead, They're underground. There's a primary sewer junction right beneath this courtyard that connects to the main river outlet outside the walls." I said firmly.
James wiped cold sweat from his forehead, his hand tightening on his Tommy gun.
"The sewers? You want us to dive headfirst into a dark pipe beneath a courtyard packed with hundreds of those things?"
"It's the only path that isn't swarming with winged horrors or exposed to direct sunlight, I mapped these tunnels a year ago. I know every exit, every dry walkway, and every dead end."
Keane stared at me in disbelief, his jaw practically hitting his chest.
"Wait... you memorized the sewer layout of a city you didn't even live in?!"
"I prepare for contingencies," I said coldly.
I raised my left hand and pointed through a gap in the cart's wooden wheels, highlighting a heavy, round iron manhole set into the cobblestones near the edge of a ruined guard barracks… just twenty paces from our position.
"That's our way in, we make a quiet run for that grate, slide inside, and seal it behind us."
Keane grabbed my cloak, pointing a trembling finger up at the perimeter rooftops.
"Run?! Eirene, we'll be spotted the second we step out from behind this cart! Look up there! There are dozens of those winged bastards perching on the roof tiles! The moment we break cover, they'll drop on us like vultures!"
"It's our only way out of this city, If you want to survive, you follow me."
Keane swallowed hard, his knuckles white as he clutched his torn collar.
"You really think we can just walk into a street full of monsters?"
"I know I haven't been a good leader, I dragged you into hell a year ago when I stole your identity, and I didn't want you dragged into this nightmare today. But I have a son waiting for me at home, Keane. I am surviving this, no matter what it takes. So if you want to live to see tomorrow, trust me right now."
Keane stared at me, the terror in his eyes slowly giving way to a quiet, desperate resolve.
"Fine... let's do it."
I raised my left hand, holding up three fingers.
"One... two... three… GO!"
We burst out from behind the merchant cart into the open glare of the courtyard.
SCREECH!
The moment our boots hit the cobblestones, several calcified ground-thralls and two winged horrors turned their hollow, milky eyes toward us and lunged.
BOOM!
I fired the Death Chant point-blank into the skull of the leading thrall, obliterating its head in a cloud of dark blood. Beside me, James raised his Tommy gun to his shoulder, letting loose a roaring, full-automatic spray of wind-bullets that tore through the torsos of the incoming winged beasts, holding them at bay.
We reached the iron grate near the ruined barracks in seconds. Keane threw his body weight forward, grabbing the heavy edge of the cart parked beside the manhole and shoving it hard to create a temporary metal shield against the incoming horde. He reached down, hauled the heavy iron manhole cover back with a sharp, metallic groan, and dropped headfirst into the dark shaft below.
"Go, James!" I barked.
James didn't hesitate, sliding down the iron ladder behind Keane despite his numb, swollen leg.
With both of them inside, I stepped over the threshold. Three winged thralls swooped down from the rooftops, their jagged bone blades whistling through the sunlit air straight for my neck. Without a split second to spare, I threw myself backward into the darkness, grabbing the heavy iron manhole cover with my single hand and slamming it shut above me as I fell.
CLANG!
The heavy iron cover sealed into place, cutting off the blinding sunlight and plunging us into the cool, damp, pitch-black silence of the subterranean sewers.