The Upward Sump

The green phosphor runes pulsed around the heavy iron lock, humming at a frequency that made Brono's dental fillings ache.

With two tons of collapsed ceiling blocking the passage behind him, there was no debating the route. He withdrew the Imperial Resonator Pin from his inner tunic. The knurled bronze rod was cold, its three tuning ridges catching the phosphor glare. He aligned the brass pins with the lock's vertical channel and slid it home.

A deep hydraulic groan echoed through the stone floor. The iron sluice gate shuddered, its counterweights lifting the six-inch slab into the vault above with a wet hiss of ancient grease.

A wall of foul, stagnant vapor rolled out of the dark.

Brono drew his service broadsword in his right hand and held Dravko's heavy border crossbow cocked in his left, a notched iron quarrel resting in the groove. He stepped through the threshold, his boots sinking into black, greasy sludge that surged up to his mid-calves.

The conduit stretched ahead as a massive, circular brick pipe, ribbed with rusted iron reinforcement rings every three paces. Water trickled continuously from the ceiling, splashing against stagnant pools.

Ten yards in, the water shifted.

A rhythmic, skittering scrape vibrated along the submerged brick floor. Brono halted, his ears straining against the dripping acoustics. With Perception at 14, he caught the distinct crunch of calcified leg joints scraping masonry.

Not one. Three.

Ahead in the darkness, three pairs of pale bioluminescent eyes blinked into existence. They were Sump Stalkers—man-sized predatory crustaceans with flattened, armored carapaces designed for sliding through drainage pipes, their front appendages tipped with serrated crushing shears.

The lead stalker hissed, its throat sac swelling with greenish bile, and surged forward through the sludge, propelling itself with frantic kicks of its barbed legs.

Brono didn't rush. The narrow diameter of the pipe worked in his favor; the beasts couldn't fan out or flank him.

He raised the border crossbow with both hands, braced the heavy stock against his shoulder, and sighted the lead beast's throat sac. He squeezed the steel trigger lever.

THWACK.

The three-hundred-and-eighty-pound draw prod drove the iron quarrel straight through the creature's unarmored throat gland. Green fluid burst across the brick ceiling as the lead stalker convulsed, flipping upside down in the muddy water and blocking the two behind it.

The second stalker clambered furiously over its thrashing comrade, its heavy right pincer snapping like an iron vise aimed at Brono's ribs.

Brono dropped the empty crossbow into the sludge behind him and gripped his broadsword with both hands. He focused his intent on the blade's steel edge, calling the skill from his interface.

A faint, high-pitched ringing emanated from the forged steel. As the stalker lunged, Brono sidestepped into the curve of the brick wall, letting the creature's snapping claw bite uselessly into the empty air where his chest had been a fraction of a second before.

He drove the calibrated broadsword downward in a clean, two-handed diagonal strike.

The blade hit the thick neck joint just behind the carapace. Instead of glancing off the hardened chitin with a dull clatter, the weapon bit deep, slicing through the nerve cluster and severing the beast's left claw at the shoulder socket.

The stalker screeched, thrashing against the conduit wall. Brono reversed his grip and shoved the point through its central eye cluster, pinning the beast into the muck.

The third and largest stalker—the pack alpha—roared, venting a cloud of stinging alkaline steam from its breathing vents. It charged over the two dying carcasses, its broad carapace scraping sparks against the brick ceiling.

Brono pulled his sword free. His essence flared as he sustained the skill, burning another unit to reset the blade's harmonic vibration.

He didn't try to block the brute's momentum. Instead, he planted his back boot against an iron reinforcement rib on the wall, dropped low beneath the snapping pincers, and thrust the vibrating sword straight up into the creature's soft underbelly as it vaulted overhead.

The blade sheared through soft tissue from sternum to tail. Momentum carried the creature past him, its internal organs dumping into the sewage with a heavy splash. It crashed onto the stone floor five paces behind Brono, twitched twice, and went still.

A warm surge of essence coursed through Brono's forearms and chest, easing the burning lactic ache in his shoulders.

He waded back to the dead alpha and knelt in the sludge. Prying the beast's thoracic plate apart with his trench dagger, he spotted a fist-sized crystalline sphere lodged behind the heart cavity, glowing with an intense, steady emerald phosphorescence.

Brono wiped the slime from the core with his sleeve and stowed it deep in his pack alongside the copper conduit couplings. Forty silver. That wasn't just flour and salt pork; that was two weeks of full pay for all seven men in the garrison, with enough left over to buy proper boots.

He retrieved his crossbow from the sludge, wiped the mechanism with an oiled rag from his watch kit, and slung it across his back.

Ten paces past the dead alpha, the conduit opened into a vertical exhaust chimney. Ancient iron rungs were driven directly into the masonry, ascending toward a faint circle of grey sky sixty feet above.

Brono slung his sword into its scabbard and began to climb.

He climbed until his knuckles rawed against the frost-bitten iron, pushing through decades of soot and cobwebs until his helmet clanged against an overhead iron grate. He set his shoulders against the crossbars, braced his boots, and heaved.

The rusted latch sheared with a sharp crack.

Brono shoved the grate aside and hauled himself up onto wet gravel, coughing foul conduit water from his lungs. Cold frontier wind hit his sweat-soaked neck.

"Two minutes slower than my conservative estimate," a dry voice observed.

Brono wiped a smear of green crustacean bile from his brow and looked up.

Yevzkov sat on an overturned ammunition crate three paces away, feeding dry pine twigs under a blackened tin kettle. The old scout didn't even look up from his boiling water, though his scarred thumb rested lightly on the pommel of his trench knife.

"The drop-hammer collapsed the intake gallery," Brono said, climbing to his feet.

"I felt the rumble through my soles twenty minutes ago," Yevzkov replied, finally lifting his grey eyes to scan Brono from his mud-caked boots to the heavy border crossbow on his back. His gaze lingered on the stained canvas pack. "You killed Dravko."

"He was standing where the slab came down." Brono reached into his pack, pulled out the glowing green phosphor core, and tossed it into Yevzkov's lap. "And I brought the market price for your next lesson."

Yevzkov caught the core in one scarred palm, feeling the steady heat of the crystal. For the first time since Brono had marched the Dreg-Ward garrison past the border pylons, the old hound's mouth twitched into something resembling respect.

"Get away from the fire, Captain," Yevzkov said, pocketing the core. "You smell like a sewer."