Kemp scrambled upright, fumbling for his borrowed war-knife, and Nikha snatched up her gun and spun round. Her eyes shot wide when she saw what was coming. The woman seemed to be quite dead. Her hands were certainly not. They’d peeled away from her arms and now slithered toward them with a rapid, flowing motion, like a cross between a spider and a squid. The noise they made was viscerally awful, a wet sticky peeling.

Nikha let out a strangled wail of disgust and fired at the closer one. The left-hand hand, a mad useless part of her mind provided. She yanked the shot and only blew off its thumb- though this slowed it down considerably. The right hand was too close for her to reload. She readied the bayonet, but its movements were jerky and erratic. Then an idea struck her. It wants to suck my blood, right? It was almost certainly going for her ankle, right? She stuck a foot out and- There! The hand made an abrupt lunge, stretching towards her. and she yanked her foot into the air. She actually felt it graze her through the soft hide of her boots-but her foot was already coming back down. She slammed her heel onto the hand-creature as hard as she could. It felt squidgy and moist, like stomping on raw chicken.

It let out a weird sizzling cry like oil poured into a hot pan and wriggled furiously, its fingers flailing all about. Before it got away, Nikha flipped the rifle in her hands and stabbed it until the bayonet clanked against the floor. Then she did it again, and again, and again. The wounds didn’t bleed, they just oozed out a thin, clear substance that stank like pickling jars gone bad. Finally she stuck the blade in again and twisted. Something gristly tore inside it and it went limp.

One down. “Kemp, are you alright?” Quickly Nikha looked for him, fearing that the other hand had gone for him. It had, but there was no reason to worry.

“Nice shooting! You slowed it down for me.” He had the left hand pinned to the floor with the war-knife. Its fingers stretched themselves feebly towards him, but couldn’t gain enough length to reach. The stump of its thumb leaked profusely.

It wasn’t nice shooting at all, Nikha thought with a frown as she reloaded, but it had been enough. “Hold it still,” she told Kemp. Carefully, she shoved her bayonet into the left hand right next to Kemp’s knife. “Good. Now stand back and cover your face. Don’t want to take a chip in the eye.” Kemp caught her drift and backed off after pulling out his knife. Holding down on her bayonet, she covered her own eyes then pulled the trigger. The gun boomed and fragments whizzed crazily down the hall. A few chips of stone bounced against Nikha’s forearm, but that was all. The hand was in rather worse shape. The bullet had shattered when it hit the floor and the pieces had shredded the creature almost completely. The fingers were barely connected, only held together by a thin membrane of gristle.

Kemp stared down at it. “Well, I would say it’s dead for sure, but I don’t think I’ll be sure ever again when it comes to this stuff. I could swear on my mother about this and no one in the village would believe me.”

“I’ll make sure. Oh, I’ll make really very sure,” growled Nikha. She kicked the two hands into a floppy heap, pulled the bayonet off her rifle, and went to town. It was like helping the cooks chop meat for dinner, except for the smell. Kemp knelt down to assist.

“Huff…there,” she got out after a minute or two, breathing hard. “Do you think that’s good enough?” There wasn’t a piece left larger than the last joint on her little finger.

“I think it’ll have to be,” answered Kemp, sounding frustratingly unexerted. “Unless you’ve got some way to burn them?”

Nikha frowned, thinking, then shook her head. “I brought tinder, but the only fuel I’ve got is the alcohol. I want to save that for cuts- Oh! Like the ones I still didn’t bandage!”

Kemp raised his hands to placate her. “Don’t worry about it, really. They aren’t that bad.”

“Please. They look awful. Now sit down and take off your shirt.”

“Fine, if it’ll make you stop acting like my ma.” He did as she asked, untucking the loose linen garment and shucking it over his head.

“I am not acting like anybody’s-Wow!” The muscles of Kemp’s shoulders and back were incredibly defined, like a hero out of a classical painting. “How did you get so strong?”

“My da’s a blacksmith, remember? I help him out.” he said. “Lots of swinging hammers and pumping bellows and stuff.” He mimed the appropriate motions. “You ought to meet him. His arm’s about as big across as my head!”

“Ah. Makes sense.” Nikha got a few gauze pads ready, then had Kemp hold them while she wrapped the bandages over his shoulders and chest. She tried to use as little as possible; the roll was getting small. She tied them off with the best knot she could muster, then wiped her hands on her skirt-it was filthy anyway. “That ought to do it. Feel better?”

“Not really. It stings.” He poked gingerly at one of the cuts and winced.

“I promise you’ll thank me later when you don’t get an infection.” Nikha started putting her pack back together.

“I’ll thank you right-Oh, are you okay? I didn’t even notice…” She looked up in confusion to see Kemp pointing at the stained bandages on her arm.

“Hm? Yes, I’m fine. Just scratches. From that tree I mentioned?”

“Doesn’t look like just scratches-“

“It is.”

He looked dubious, but nodded and got to his feet. Nikha got her gear on and together they approached what was left of the woman. Her hands were gone, of course, though the stumps were oddly desiccated. Nikha’s little mad minute had made a ruin of her chest, too. The blood that oozed from the wounds was viscous and pale, almost pink. The highest point on her body was now her tongue, and Nikha grimaced when she saw it. Long, forked, and studded with a few rows of tiny sharp teeth. Kemp was already looking pale, and he gagged at this last detail. “What the…”

“I have no idea. But it needs to be stopped.” Nikha gave him a pat on the shoulder that she felt was rather awkward, but he wiped his mouth and nodded.

“Definitely.” The expression on his face was more serious than she’d seen before. “Let’s go. Unless you want to finish her like we did the hands…”

She blanched. That was a little too far even for her. “No, I think I did enough.” It was only when they’d walked a few minutes away that she realized she’d not said a prayer for the woman. She doesn’t deserve one, Nikha decided. And I don’t think she’d appreciate it anyway.

The two of them were quiet for a while. as they continued down the broad, arched tunnel. Nikha noticed that the brickwork was similar to that in the underground canal, though it was in better shape here. The phlogistic lights were just as sputtery and sporadic, though.

She found herself glancing at Kemp every so often, trying to tell if he was in much pain. She still felt terrible that he’d been hurt because she hadn’t killed the mutant woman earlier. If she paid for her mistakes, that was one thing-but for someone else to do it? Awful. Especially if it was someone as seemingly nice as Kemp. He hadn’t even treated her like a witchborn, despite her looks. She thought peasants were supposed to be superstitious.

Kemp must have noticed her looking. “Is- is something wrong?” he asked worriedly.

“No, no, no. Just, um…I’m sorry for getting you hurt.” She found it hard to meet his eyes.

“What are you talking about?” He sounded even more confused.

“If I’d shot her earlier, she wouldn’t have gotten you, Kemp!” Her tone was frustrated, and she hated how childish it made her sound. “It’s my fault you’re all cut up!”

“I’d think it was her fault. She’s the one who did it, after all.” He sounded quite unperturbed.

“Oh, you know what I-“

“Besides,” he interrupted, “it’s not like you can go around shooting everyone you meet on the spot, right? And I did jump in front of you.”

Nikha paused at that. “You did, didn’t you…” She’d entirely forgotten that detail in the ensuing flurry of violence. “Why in the world did you do that?” she snapped, belatedly annoyed. “You’d better not tell me it was some kind of ‘protecting the woman’ thing-“

“I would have done it if you were a boy too, Nikha,” said Kemp seriously. “I just didn’t want to be left alone again.”

Nikha was quiet for a second, taken aback. “Well…thank you. For protecting me.” Her anger had cooled as quickly as it surged. “Just ask me first next time,” she mumbled, mostly for appearance’s sake.

“No,” he said immediately, and laughed when she glared at him. “And thank you too. Martyrs know I’d be sucked empty as a Crownday-morning wineskin if you hadn’t been there.”

“You are very welcome, Kemp,” said Nikha graciously, trying to gather up as much of her dignity as possible. Kemp nodded gravely in reply, though he seemed to be suppressing a smile.

Nikha felt much better in the next few minutes, like a weight was off her chest. Soon she noticed a change in the quality of her footstep’s echoes. “Something’s up ahead,” she warned Kemp. Soon they were able to see it as well as hear it: the end of the tunnel, which was a stone archway much like the entrance.

Upon reaching it, they both froze for a moment. “I didn’t think you could have something like this underground,” Kemp finally said. “Is this supposed to be in your basement?”

“Not…not as far as I know,” Nikha replied, stunned as well. The tunnel had led them to a huge, high-ceilinged underground atrium- or maybe cistern was a better word, for water filled it up to barely a foot below the brick jetty on which they stood. Illumination came from a single huge arc-lamp mounted at the peak of the dome a hundred or more feet above, its fixtures thickly furred with rust. Its light tinged everything a pale jade green. It was hard to tell how far across the cistern was, because reeds, weeds, and honest-to-Martyrs trees grew from the swampy water in abundance. It was as if a chunk of marsh had been transplanted who knew how far beneath the ground to live beneath a brick sky and phlogiston sun.

The only way forward was a crumbly brick causeway extending from where they stood, only wide enough to go single file. They glanced at each other and got moving. Soon they were among the foliage. There were thickets of cat-tail reeds, odd red flowers that grew right out of the water, and most of all the funny-looking trees. They propped themselves out of the water on stilt-roots like knobby knees. Vines and hanging moss grew thickly between their branches, brushing uncomfortably across Nikha’s face. The smell reminded her of the Kheritsyn forest after a spring rain: vegetation, water, and beneath it just a hint of rot. Unlike the forest, this place was quiet except for the burble of water from hidden pipes.

“How deep do you think it is?” asked Kemp in a hushed voice. Something about this place made one want to be quiet.

Nikha didn’t answer immediately. She was concentrating on her footing: the bricks were slick with moss and moisture, and the mortar was nearly as crumbly as it had been in the canal. If the water rose by six inches it would be swamping the walkway. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know,” she finally said. It was the last thing she wanted to think about while trying not to slip into the scum-choked pool below.

“I don’t want to find out either, I can tell you that much- Oh, no.” Kemp trailed off.

“What? What is it?” Nikha went for her rifle and the movement almost took her off her feet.

He sidled up to her and pointed to a spot in the aquatic “clearing” to their left. “Look there.”

Nikha squinted but she couldn’t see anything. “What are you talking about? I know the water’s dirty.”

“Look closer. The eyes.” Almost as soon as Kemp said it, she saw them. Beady little yellow things, barely breaching the water’s surface amidst scum and lily-pads. Unblinking, seemingly not focused on anything.

“A-a-alligator?” Nikha stuttered. “Really? Alligators?”

“I don’t think falling in is a good idea,” said Kemp.