Elias "Salty" Thorne had smelled some rank places in his sixty-odd years on Earth, and his nearly fifty days in this new, gods-forsaken reality.
He'd smelled the bilges of leaky merchantmen, the festering wounds of dying men, the cloying sweetness of overloaded spice barges rotting in tropical heat.
But the tunnels beneath Caer Danu, the ones that young Kenji "Whisper" Tanaka had expertly guided them into, had a stench all their own.
It was a miasma of stale seawater, rotting fish guts, unidentifiable chemical runoff, and something else… something ancient and faintly metallic, like old blood and rust, that Salty suspected was the very breath of the sleeping god whose bones formed the city's foundations.
He led the infiltration team of Kenji, silent and watchful as a shadow; Idris al-Arif, his usual suave demeanor replaced by a grim focus; young Riku Tanaka, Kenji's brother, trying to look braver than he felt; and Marisol de la Cruz, her gentle face set with a surprising determination deeper into the oppressive darkness.
Their only light came from the faint, System-enhanced glow of their optical implants and the occasional, eerie phosphorescence of strange fungi clinging to the tunnel walls.
The core image for this chapter: The infiltration team navigating a treacherous, crumbling sewer tunnel, with glimpses of the oppressive city structure above. It was a descent into the literal and metaphorical underbelly of Caer Danu.
"Smells like the devil's outhouse down here," Salty grumbled, his voice a low growl that barely disturbed the oppressive silence. He kept his hand on the butt of his energy pistol, his senses on high alert.
His System role, Master-at-Arms Ship's Security & Discipline, came with enhanced senses, a heightened awareness of his surroundings, but even without it, his years at sea had taught him to trust his gut.
And his gut was currently screaming at him that this whole damn city was a trap waiting to be sprung.
Kenji, scouting ahead, materialized from the shadows. "Passage narrows further up. Looks like it might open into a larger cistern, or perhaps a maintenance conduit for the lower city. I'm picking up… vibrations. Machinery. And voices, though too faint to make out."
"Alright, Whisper. Lead on," Salty said. "Rest of you, stay alert. No telling what kind of vermin, two-legged or otherwise, make their homes down here."
They pressed on, the tunnel twisting and turning, sometimes so low they had to crouch, other times opening into larger, echoing chambers where the sound of dripping water was a constant, maddening rhythm.
The air grew heavier, thicker, the stench more potent. Salty could feel the immense weight of the city above them, a crushing presence that seemed to press down on his very soul.
Caer Danu. The Dragon's Tooth City. From the sea, it had looked almost beautiful, a chaotic, glittering jewel clinging to the black cliffs.
From down here, in its guts, it felt like a diseased organism, ancient and corrupt, its foundations built on secrets and suffering.
They encountered their first real challenge at what Kenji had identified as a possible exit point of a rusted iron grate set high in the tunnel wall.
Beyond it, they could hear the distant clang of metal, the murmur of voices, the hiss of steam. It seemed to lead into some kind of workshop or factory in the lower districts.
"Locked tight," Kenji reported after a quick examination. "And the bars are thick. Too thick to pry without making a racket."
"Riku, got anything in that fancy System toolkit of yours that can handle a bit of rust and iron?" Salty asked, turning to the younger Tanaka brother.
Riku, whose System role as Gunnery Cadet also came with a surprising array of minor engineering and demolitions skills (apparently, the System believed in well-rounded cannoneers), examined the grate.
"I might be able to use a focused sonic emitter to vibrate the lock mechanism apart, or weaken the hinges. But it'll make some noise. And it'll take time."
"Time we don't have," Salty said grimly. "Idris, you're the smooth talker. Any chance you can… persuade that lock to open for us?"
Idris al-Arif, whose Diplomacy & Trade Specialist role included skills like 'Charm Person' and 'Master of Disguise,' looked dubious.
"My skills are more suited to… organic locks, Salty. Not rusted iron. Though," he added, a flicker of his old charming smile returning, "if there's a guard on the other side, perhaps I could convince him it's in his best interest to let us pass."
"No guards visible, or audible," Kenji reported. "But the workshop sounds active. We go through there, we'll be seen."
This was the reality of infiltration, Salty knew. Not the glamorous, high-tech stuff you saw in spy movies. It was about patience, about problem-solving, about finding the path of least resistance, even if that path stank like a week-old corpse.
His years as a bosun, and later as a Master-at-Arms on merchant ships and even a few less-than-legal privateering ventures in his wilder youth, had taught him that. It was about keeping your crew safe, getting the job done, and living to sail another day.
He remembered one particularly nasty incident in a lawless port in the South China Seas. He'd been first mate on a tramp steamer carrying a… questionable cargo.
A local gang, tipped off about their valuable goods, had tried to hijack the ship while they were anchored in the harbor. T
he captain, a nervous, inexperienced man, had frozen. Salty, with a handful of loyal crewmen, had organized a desperate defense, using whatever came to hand belaying pins, flare guns, even a fire hose to repel the boarders.
He hadn't been a hero. He'd been scared shitless. But he'd also known that if he didn't act, they were all dead. He'd taken a knife to the arm, a blow to the head, but he'd kept fighting, kept his men fighting, until the local port authorities, drawn by the commotion, had finally intervened.
He'd saved the ship, saved the crew, not through brilliance or bravery, but through sheer, stubborn refusal to give up, to let his people down.
His likability wasn't in charm or wit; it was in this bedrock loyalty, this gruff, unyielding protectiveness of those under his charge. He was the sheepdog, guarding the flock, even if he sometimes barked a little too loudly.
"Alright," Salty said, his mind made up. "Riku, see if you can weaken those hinges, quiet-like. Kenji, find us another way. There's gotta be more than one rat-hole into this damn city."
While Riku set to work with his sonic emitter, its high-pitched whine barely audible even in the oppressive silence of the tunnel, Kenji melted back into the shadows, scouting further along the passage.
Marisol, her face pale but determined, stood guard, her small energy pistol held at the ready. Idris, surprisingly, proved useful by producing a small, System-issue oilcan and meticulously lubricating the hinges of the grate as Riku worked, minimizing the screech of tortured metal.
It took nearly an hour, an hour of tense silence, of strained nerves, of the constant, gnawing fear of discovery.
Finally, with a low groan, one of the hinges gave way. Riku, his face beaded with sweat, managed to loosen the other enough for them to pry the grate open a few inches.
Just then, Kenji returned. "Found another option," he whispered. "A storm drain. Leads directly to a canal in what looks like the lower market district. It's… ripe. But it should be less populated at this hour."
Salty weighed their options. The workshop was an unknown. The storm drain sounded… unpleasant, but potentially safer. "Alright, Whisper. The drain it is. Riku, secure that grate. We don't want anyone knowing we were here."
The storm drain was even worse than the tunnel. It was narrower, slimier, and the stench was overpowering.
But Kenji was right. It led them, after another twenty minutes of claustrophobic crawling, to a moss-covered opening that looked out onto a dark, narrow canal. The water in the canal was black and oily, reflecting the faint, flickering lights of the city above.
They could hear the distant sounds of Caer Danu now the murmur of voices, the strains of strange music, the occasional shout or burst of laughter. It was a city that never truly slept.
They had made it into the lower districts. But they were a long way from their objective, the Flesh Markets, and even further from the three hundred souls they had come to save. And Caer Danu, Salty knew, was only just beginning to reveal its dangers.
The atmosphere of the city, even in these squalid lower reaches, was oppressive. The buildings leaned in on them, their ancient stones seeming to watch with a malevolent intelligence.
The air was thick with the smells of exotic spices, of strange foods cooking, of unwashed bodies, of the ever-present tang of ozone and discharged energy from the city's myriad technological and magical devices. Strange, guttural languages echoed in the narrow alleyways.
Figures, cloaked and hooded, flitted through the shadows. This was a place where life was cheap, where fortunes were made and lost on the turn of a card or the flick of a knife, where every shadow could hide a threat, and every friendly face could mask a betrayal.
The city's defenses, Salty noted, were not immediately obvious, not in the way of uniformed guards or visible fortifications.
But they were there. He saw the glint of what looked like energy field emitters tucked into alcoves, the dark lenses of surveillance cameras half-hidden in the ornate carvings of ancient archways. He sensed the presence of… something else, too.
A subtle, pervasive watchfulness, as if the city itself were an extension of the Veiled Council's paranoid, all-seeing gaze.
"Stay sharp," Salty muttered to his team as they slipped out of the storm drain and into the labyrinthine alleyways of the lower market. "We're in the guts of the beast now. And it's starting to wake up."
Their infiltration of Caer Danu had begun. But Salty Thorne had a sinking feeling that getting in was going to be the easy part.
Getting out, especially with three hundred freed captives in tow, was going to be a bloody miracle.
And Salty, for all his gruff pragmatism, was starting to wonder if they'd bitten off more than even a System-enhanced crew could chew.