The sludge twitched and bubbled in front of them.

If all Myrmurs were curses made physical, then these Myrmurs were metal made physical. The sludge boiled up in a slow, sickly pulse, dragging rustled metal up from the floor and walls and sewage to form its body: a wet clatter of chains and plates.

Gael watched in fascinated disgust as the ooze gathered bulk like a tumor learning to walk. Slabs of dented iron, copper teeth, and bits of pipes and grating all fused into the muck, and before long, the sludge stood taller than the statue of the Saintess in his clinic.

It looked like a giant sludge human with two vaguely humanoid-shaped arms and legs.

Maeve took a half-step back, one foot clinking on the metal grating. Her umbrella was already up, tip angled toward the thing's face even though it didn't seem to have one.

"... What the hell is that?" she asked.

Gael twirled his bladed cane once in his hand and shrugged. "Myrmur."

And the sludge-armored monstrosity immediately let out a sound like steam vomiting through a whistle.

Then it smashed one enormous metal fist straight down.

They leapt in opposite directions as the pipe shook around them. The walkway beneath Gael's boots groaned like old teeth. Bolts exploded from the seams. A nearby ladder jolted off the wall and collapsed into the sewage canal below.

While he was thinking about what he wanted for dinner, though, Maeve was already lunging. She bounded up the wall using a sideways railing for leverage, flung herself at the monster, and drove her umbrella straight into the side of its head.

Clang.

The tip of her umbrella pinged off a rusted chestplate. No blood drawn. No crack splintered. A bit of sludge burbled behind the gaps in the armor, but otherwise, the monster was unharmed.

Gael sighed, tilted his head, and lazily jabbed his bladed cane toward the back of its nearest leg. After all, he was sure he'd get an earful from the Exorcist if he didn't even try to make an effort to kill it—and he was equally sure his cane would just bounce off with an embarrassing thock. It felt like trying to puncture a cathedral bell with a toothpick.

"Mm. Sturdy," he noted aloud. "Not ideal."

"Find the Host!" Maeve shouted, dancing along the grated wall as the monster's elbow came swinging toward her. "You have the symbiote elixir on you, right?"

Gael blinked at her from behind the thing's shoulder, and then slowly extended both arms out like a conductor presenting an empty stage.

"I would love to," he said, voice raised over the next slam of fists against steel, "but where, exactly, is our sweet and soft Host?"

Maeve grit her teeth and ducked another haymaker of rusted pipe-limb. Then, she ran low beneath its arm, leapt off a support bar, and circled behind the monster to land near Gael.

She quickly came to the same conclusion as him as she scanned its back up and down, left and right.

"Where's the umbilical cord?" she murmured. "Where's the Host?"

Another roar.

The Myrmur turned. Its entire body spasmed, arms punching wildly into the walls. Pipes burst. Water shot out in muddy geysers, drenching them both in freezing filth. It slammed both fists sideways into the tunnel, and one entire corner of the corridor folded inward like a watering can.

Maeve's boot slipped in the flood, so Gael caught her arm and yanked her back with him before a loose beam could fall.

"Time to go!" he barked cheerfully.

And now they began bolting back through the tunnel, boots hammering metal, breaths catching on the rot-thick air.

Behind them, the pipes screamed. Low groans shuddered through the walls before rising and folding into long, bubbling howls. Not one. Not two. It was a whole chorus—the kind that made rust flake from bolts and rats flee without looking back—so Gael whipped his head left, then right, every twist in the tunnel marked by another flare of red in his vision.

Every shadow blinked with heat. Every wall seemed to breathe.

They really are everywhere, huh?

But the Myrmurs were big, heavy, and relatively clumsy in these narrow corridors. The two of them? Small and quick. Untethered. They weaved through collapsing catwalks, slipped beneath crunched bulkheads, and ducked between pipe-bends that no creature the size of a coffin could follow through. A swing of sludge missed them by a meter. Another monster lost its footing and crashed into a railing, tearing it free with its own weight.

By the time they found the chute again—the long, vertical shaft they'd floated down not so long ago—they were soaked in brine and pipe-sweat, but still standing.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"After you, my dearest wife—"

Maeve didn't hesitate. She leapt, caught a length of loose chain, and started to climb. Gael followed, jamming his cane into a gear socket and pulling himself up by boots and fingertips. His coat trailed behind like a cape made of mold.

The sludge Myrmurs arrived seconds later.

He looked down just in time to see the first giant-sized brute crash into the chute wall and slop down to the floor, hissing through its armor seams. More followed. They slammed into each other, trying to wedge upward by force of rage alone—but none of them fit the chute. They writhed, clawed at the vertical stone uselessly.

All they could do was stare angrily up at the two of them, making Gael laugh.

"Ohhh, climb, you poor bastards! What's wrong, no ladders for sludge-born aristocracy? No footholds for meat balloons?"

He kept laughing until Maeve, climbing on the chain next to him, smacked the top of his head with her umbrella.

"What are those things?" she snapped. "Aren't they Myrmurs? Our vision went red, so why don't they have—"

"Oh, they're Myrmurs through and through," he mumbled, swinging slightly as he jammed his cane into the pipe wall and used it to pull himself higher. "In fact, we Bharnish even have an adoring nickname for them: Rustwights, They Who Live in Mold."

Maeve glanced down. Below them, the tunnel was dimming. No more roaring. No more sludge. The Rustwights were retreating, and the only sounds that remained were the soft, suckling drip of slime dispersing back into darkness.

"…Why do they get special names?"

"Because they're special," Gael pointed down at the dim shapes crawling sluggishly back into the pipe veins. "Look closer."

Maeve squinted harder. After all, it wasn't just sludge slipping through the grates anymore. A sickly, viscous green sheen clung to the Rustwights' armor, leaking between seams and dripping like slime down rusted shins.

"What is that?" she asked, pointing down at the leaking slime herself. "That's… water?"

"Gulch water," Gael said simply, climbing another rung. "Pure Gulch water—unfiltered, unrecycled, and straight from the source—is viscous for a reason. The stuff's full of half-sentient microscopic organisms that wriggle together in a big family stew, so it just so happens that when you drink it, all the little organisms work together to rejuvenate you. That's why Gulch water has natural healing properties."

"That's… disgusting."

"There's little organisms in everything you eat," he replied cheerfully. "Anyways, because the organisms inside Gulch water are technically alive, the water's considered at least half-sentient—which means Gulch water falls under the same classification as those Mournspire Pines in the Fogspire Forest."

Something seemed to audibly click in Maeve's head.

"So it's the same case as the Mournspire Pines," she mumbled. "Only this time, the Myrmurs are parasitizing the Gulch water itself?"

"Yep."

"Then why do they look like that?" She frowned, glancing down again. The last Rustwight was slinking back through a shattered canal, its metal limbs scraping the edge of the wall like someone trying to pull on wet armor. "The giant humanoid shape, the metal plates, and… where are their umbilical cords, still? Even the halfling Myrmurs in the Fogspire Forest had umbilical cords leading back to the trees."

"Because," Gael said, hauling himself up past a dripping bolt, "Myrmurs adapt to stay unnoticed by their Hosts, and when the Hosts are dumb fucking water, they can afford to be a little lenient with what form they want to take." Then he tapped her mask with his sheathed cane, making her scowl and swipe at him. "The Gulchers live down here, remember? So the Myrmurs mimic them—slap together enough arms and legs and grime, and they pass as just another big boy stomping through the muck."

"You mean the Gulchers are five meters tall and look like tiny giants?"

"Some of them. I've heard the ones who live in the deeper pipes are much bigger than that, since they live on a diet of almost exclusively Gulch water that mutates them constantly. The Gulchers are also known to slap whatever they can find onto their leather suits, so it makes sense the Rustwights also armor themselves in metal plates."

"What about the cords?"

"What about them?" he mumbled. "Their Hosts are viscous, stupid blobs of water. Why take the risk of leaving their Hosts outside when they can instead form their bodies around their Hosts, and then clad their metal plates around their Hosts like a suit of armor?"

Maeve stared.

"That shouldn't be possible. Only Blight-Class Myrmurs and above are intelligent and strong enough to wrap themselves around their Hosts."

"Well, those Rustwights are definitely not Blight-Class beasties, but I've noticed a running trend where you Vharnish severely underestimate the ingenuity of Bharncair monsters," he said brightly. "In any case, the Rustwights are simultaneously the easiest opponents to face—because their Hosts are inside them—and the hardest opponents to face—because their Hosts are inside them—which is why nobody, even the Repossessors, like clashing with them. It takes too much firepower to kill a Rustwight, and frankly, even the two of us together don't have that kind of firepower."

Maeve tilted her head. "If they're that hard to kill, then how do the Gulchers survive down here?"

"Fuck if I know."

Thirty minutes of climbing left their lungs wheezing like a punctured bellows. Every grip was slick, every bootstep a gamble, and by the time they reached the top, both of them were trembling, soaked to the ribs, and smeared with enough rust to pass for pipe scrap.

They hauled themselves out through a crooked hatch, through a few more twists and turns, and then they stumbled straight forward, hip lanterns flickering and gutters hissing around them. The darkness was thick, wet, and reeking of old steam for only a few more minutes—and then it broke.

A slit of moonlight widened across their shoulders.

They staggered through one final bend, and just like that, the tunnel spat them out. They sloshed into shallow river water beneath the old bridge next to Miss Alba's shop.

…

Gael tilted his head to the sickly silver sky, and then he dropped straight onto the wet stone with a thump. Maeve followed a second later, groaning as she flopped down beside him, skirt soaking in riverwater.

Both of them stared up at the moon like it owed them something.

Gael exhaled loudly, chest rising and falling. The ache in his arms was already beginning to throb.

"One thing's for certain," he muttered, voice dry as bone. "If we're gonna find the central control chamber before we grow old and dusty, we're going to need a better map of the damn place."

He turned to grin at Maeve.

"And I know just who to ask."

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