The Seven Sewers
May still had a couple more hours of sleep ahead of her, on her friend Montse’s couch, until either she or her cat woke her at dawn. That would be about two cycles in Oniria. Even though she was still nervous after fleeing, she was more worried about her companions in the dream than about the few belongings she had left in the dumpster she called home.
When she opened her dream eyes, she was in her room at the Seekers’ Guild in the Palace of Desires. She checked her belongings. When waking up abruptly, some of a dreamer’s objects could be lost forever. Everything seemed to be in place. She added pistol chargers, a new towel, binoculars, and two crystallized aerena gems. She picked up a third one, which glowed like a fiery ruby, and pressed it against her chest. For a few minutes, the gem began to lose intensity until it turned to ash-colored dust and vanished. Aerena rubies were expensive and powerful artifacts, but May couldn’t afford to save them in this situation.
She went down to the guild hall. It seemed a bit livelier than usual. News from Sombraverde must have started to arrive. She approached the table by the bulletin board and grabbed the Oniria Times, which was clipped and anchored so no one would steal it. “Unexpected Kabu Assault Topples Sotopeña Square in Sombraverde’s Jungle.” There was an image of the chaos that had unfolded in the square. In the side column, the headline read: “All Trains to Sotopeña Canceled.” May put down the newspaper and slipped out the guild’s door just in time to avoid being bombarded with questions about whether she had just come from there.
The Avenue of Conciliation in the Palace of Desires was one of the largest and busiest avenues in the dream megalopolis. The headquarters of the most important guilds faced it, and it ended in the square before the gigantic scarlet monument that gave the city its name. All kinds of vehicles moved back and forth, not only on the ground but also in the air, like in science fiction movies. Almost everyone dreamed of flying cars, and the city reflected that perfectly. May quickly lost herself in the back streets. Within minutes, she was in an alley in the historic district of P.D. There, she sat on the ground for a moment to recall what had happened in the dream before waking up. In her memory, people and places blurred together in a haze that was hard to clear.
She checked her phone. Missed calls. She dialed Minerva. No answer. Don Gregorio. No answer. Marcus. Nothing. No one was responding. It could be due to the communication failure with Sotopeña. The statue of Tibero had fallen; that’s why she had landed in P.D. Slowly, she remembered Ember and the child Marcus. The fog of raptors and the ziggurat dissipated in her mind. She recalled the group about to reach the second ziggurat… something was happening there, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. And then she had woken up. She needed to get to Sotopeña as quickly as possible and from there venture into the jungle. But without the Oniria Express, there was only one option.
An option she didn’t like at all.
The Seven Sewers were considered one of the districts of the Palace of Desires, but those who had explored them knew that wasn’t the case. It was a network of tunnels that anomalously connected all human settlements—and some non-human ones. Some even claimed it was possible to travel through time if one knew the exact routes. They had likely emerged from humanity’s nightmares about subways, sewers, and the horrors of the underworld. One could descend into them from almost anywhere in the Palace of Desires. Technically, they were connected to Sotopeña, though May had never taken that route.
Someone who had explored them in depth had named them the Seven Sewers because they claimed there were seven underground strata at any point in the Sphere. From the third stratum onward, they no longer even resembled sewers but instead a tunnel network of some ancient mining civilization. May had only gone as deep as the fourth stratum, where they no longer seemed shaped by any intelligent species but were simply natural caverns.
Each underground stratum strayed further from reason and logic. The Aegis struggled to penetrate the underground, which meant many kabus inhabited the sewers. The silver lining was that descending opened the possibility of defying dream-space-time, despite the risks of the journey.
May estimated she needed to reach the second stratum to distance herself enough from the concept of “distance.” If she was lucky, it wouldn’t take more than a cycle to reach the sewers of Sotopeña. However, there was still the issue of direction. She needed a guide. May was an experienced dream traveler, and she knew exactly who it had to be.
And so, she headed for a stairway that descended into a tunnel used for city traffic. On the pedestrian side, a metal door remained closed to the public. May picked the lock using one of her knife’s lockpicks. Once inside, she turned on her flashlight and descended fifteen flights of stairs. Another locked metal door, which she opened the same way, gave her access to the first sewer level. The smell of dampness and waste made her cover her nose with a handkerchief.
The floor of the first sewer was made of scarlet stone, indicating that it was likely a Nirmana construction belonging to the ancient Scarlet City. The ceiling was low but vaulted, and the center of the wide passage was occupied by a rushing stream of sewage. May turned right and began walking down the passage, vanishing into the shadows.
In the first stratum, one had to watch out for three dangers.
The first was the Cult of Fire, a dark guild that gathered criminal organizations, terrorists, unholy cults, and all kinds of shady figures. They held clandestine combat bets in what they called the Pit. Many of them also used the first stratum as a hideout and base of operations, making it common to run into hostile and armed individuals. Though they weren’t truly organized, the director of the Pit’s fights was highly influential.
The second danger was the Harlequin. No one knew if it was a kabu or a deranged dreamer. Many witnesses claimed to have seen it. A sadistic serial killer who sometimes left his victims alive after terrifying them. It was believed that his actions increased the number of kabus able to rise to the first stratum due to the psychological fluctuations he caused in his victims.
After changing direction several times, descending a few flights of stairs—without leaving the first stratum—and crawling through some of the conduits, she finally saw them.
The third danger.
And her guides.
The Intelidogui Resistance.
