Beneath the Catacombs

[Author's Note: This is actually Chapter 4 of a larger work (working title "Patrician"), but I believe that it also stands more or less on its own. Feel free to comment on whether it succeeds.]

Ipretes Onore

         He walked amidst the dusty remnants of the family’s great legacy. Here, in the catacombs, lay the forefathers who formed the foundations of the house above them, one generation upon another, upon another, down into the dim depths of the past.
         As always, they reminded Ipretes why he was proud to serve House Maryanna, why he was proud that some of his own ancestors lay in a section of the crypts, having done their part to support the house for centuries.
         He trudged through these hallowed halls, bearing on his back a bloodstained burden: the leather sack containing the mutilated carcass of one who had sought to strike against the house. It would be interred in the sea, with all the other worthless waste.
         After disarming the traps, Ipretes passed through the concealed gate to the larger Corrinos underworld. Though he had trod these paths before, he would need to mind his way carefully, lest he be lost in the labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels, caverns, accessways, and alleys in the underlevels of the city.
         “Why should she make you go all the way to the canal?” his wife Lara had nagged. “Just dump it directly into the sewers.”
         “And risk clogging them? No. Sofia has the right of it” he had replied. Lara had never really trusted Sofia. She shared the opinion of the wash-maids that her mother Alaynor was somehow behind the family’s recent misfortunes—even six years after her death.
         “They’re an accursed people,” Lara would always say in their whispered debates, “Godless demon worshippers.”
         “Then who would you have me follow?” he would always reply in exasperation. “Her father, barely coherent through his drug haze? Her older bastard cousin in the rare instances when she’s sane? Her younger cousins and sisters, too weak or naïve to run an estate? Who? Everyone else is either dead or gone.”
         “And why do you think that is?” Lara would always say.
         His lantern only illuminated a small distance before him, so even as much as his burden was slowing him, he frequently had to stop in order to make sure he was on the right course.
          His general route was one of descent, for Maryanna Manor was perched high atop the mountain, such that even the dead could look down upon the city. At least, those parts of the family catacombs to which he had ventured were above the mountain’s base. Ipretes was unsure just how deep the necropolis went, and he doubted that anyone in living memory had plumbed its depths.
         He paused at a fork. To the right, the tunnel ascended slightly. To his left, harsh steps tore downwards, but there was the faintest smell of the night’s open air. He knew that he was supposed to turn left at some point, but he didn’t recall the left-hand’s descent as having been quite that sharp.
         He looked back and forth between them until he noticed to his right that the distant light of his lantern had caught something: a glint off of six red eyes, staring at him. Then he heard the low growls, rough reverberations from three throats. And they were coming nearer.
         He edged towards the leftward path, his own eyes fixed on the eyes in the darkness.
         They advanced steadily, towards the edge of his lantern’s radiance.
         The shadows lunged. In a desperate blur, he threw the sack at them, stumbling down the stairs, dropping the lantern, and plunging into blackness.
         Ipretes struggled to his feet, as above him ripped the sharp sounds of teeth tearing flesh.
         He fled through the dark, groping on the walls and floors for some glimmer of guidance. The maw of gloom devoured his world. He ran and crawled until he collapsed, as breath finally left him entirely.
         He lay on the cold stone for a lightless eternity.
         Then he heard something.
         It was the pitiful sound of a child’s mournful sobbing.
         Ipretes slowly rose.
         He felt his way toward the source of the sound, step by step.
         He came around a corner and saw, in the guttering glow of a candle, a child. It was a little girl sitting with her back on the wall, crying into her rough-spun skirt.
         “Hello?” he tried.
         She stopped sobbing.
         She lifted her face up and turned to look at him.
         Her skin was a pale, desiccated husk, smeared with the blood she was weeping from eyes that were orbs of pure black. Part of the cracked skin on her cheek was peeling off, revealing the muscles and tendons underneath.
         “Please help me,” she begged.
         “Stay away,” he begged in reply.
         “Please,” she said, crawling towards him “I’m so hungry.”
         “Stay away!” he screamed. He dived back into the darkness. Her crying resounded through the halls with new depths of despair.
         Ipretes ran with what little stamina he had left in him. He was no longer a young man.
         He sought for light, for the noise or smells of life, for anything that would lead him to escape.
         Eventually, his eyes caught the distant gleaming of firelight. He stumbled in its direction. At last he came upon its source: a great brazier beyond the end of the hall. Its light was blinding at first, but he let his eyes adjust before making his way towards it.
         The hall opened into a grand chamber, so large that even the pit of fire could not cast more than a faint half-light upon its walls.
         As he neared the pit he felt its heat. He hadn’t realized just how cold he was, but now that the flame started to move his blood once more, he felt as though his veins were awash in ice. He walked up to the fire and began to warm his hands. He could finally breathe for a moment as life flooded back into him.
         There was a laugh behind him.
         He jerked around to see a cloaked figure standing between himself and the door where he had entered. The face was shrouded in shadows which his eyes could no longer pierce, having adjusted to the light of the brazier.
         The laugh continued, echoing through the chamber to come back upon itself.
         “Humans work so hard to forget that they are flesh,” rang the high voice from the cloak, “they come up with all sorts of amusing stories.”
         Ipretes stood frozen before the figure.
         “But we know otherwise. Don’t we?” Shadows emerged from the walls.
         “Flesh. Flesh. Flesh.” said the voice.
         The shadows converged closer.
         “Won’t you join us?”
         There were too many.