Tunnel Rat

Milo shook off the stun from a near-miss with a cannonball, seeing double for a moment. The small falls to hard surfaces hadn't helped. The damage was only from the explosion and three painful splinters, but he was running low on health. Strangely, no one was trying to immediately kill him. It was almost totally dark in the cramped ductwork or tunnel he'd fallen into. He climbed the short ladder and checked the hatch he'd fallen through, finding it hopelessly jammed.

Nearby, several dwarves were cursing as they slowly walked with heavy chests down a corridor. One glanced at him, squinting, and yelled, "Shake it off, girl, or Mako will trim your beard so close you'll bleed to death. We need to stow these chests in the lockup and then get the hell out of here. They need all hands to work on the hydraulics." Two eels slammed into the hull, shaking the ship and adding to the authority of her words.

Milo realized that in total darkness, he could see clearly, while the dwarves couldn't. As good as they could see in the caves and tunnels, the total darkness of an enclosed space only let them see shadows. The case of mistaken identity was explained by a body half in the halfway and half in a small sleeping room to his left. A scavenger hadn't weathered the fall as well as he had. She'd been packing a smaller chest down a ladder when the eels hit them. From the angle of her neck, she wasn't getting up again. He grabbed her monocle and top hat from the floor, then pushed the body into a small alcove, relieving it of a of a bright red vest. The vest he sliced into something he could tie around his lower face, then slashed it to long strips. In any other light, it wasn't a braided beard, but it might serve here. With a little mana, the Runeboned cowl became a long-sleeve shirt and vest similar to what the other Scavengers were wearing.

Donning the parts of his quick disguise he picked up the small chest and hurried after the other dwarves, keeping his head low. A dozen top-hatted Scavengers were struggling along with their loads, coming to a steeply slanted ladder going down another level. All of the walls were metal, and from what he could see through open doors, the outer walls were curved. From the curvature of the walls and what little he'd seen of the inside, he guessed he was in a disguised submersible, much smaller than Leviathan.

The next deck had more room, and they worked their way past hissing boilers and machinery along a metal walkway. A dozen machinists were working frantically to replace the parts of the hydraulic system they'd been in the process of refitting. With weeks sitting in port, it had been the perfect time for repairs. Now they were trying to do the work of hours in mere minutes, getting the main crankshaft back together and the linkages to the storm-mana-generator that ran the lights hooked up. Until they did, the ship wasn't capable of moving ballast, using its propellers, and many other tasks that required mechanical power. Milo itched as he walked past the job in progress, especially when he saw a part being bolted on backward, but kept his head down, hoping to find a way out before his disguise was revealed or the lights came on.

The final destination was a room whose entire far wall was a vault where the chests were being handed to two muscular dwarves while a steel-eyed mate watched on. As each person handed over their chest, they turned and retreated back the way they had come.

The eels didn't seem to be discouraged by the metal hull of what Milo was sure now was a disguised submarine. They were ramming it repeatedly trying to get to him, somehow sensing where he was. As Milo was almost at the front of the line, the ship lurched and tilted, the vault going down and the corridor behind him slanting up. He stumbled into the two dwarves in front of him, all three going down and the two chests flying into the vault, slamming into other containers, and spraying coins and bars of precious metal everywhere.

The mate laughed hard, "That's one way to stow the cargo! And at this point, I don't care. The lights and hydraulics are down and this door is going to be a bitch to shut at this angle, and no balance to it. Too much weight is on the hinges. Get behind and push hard." The four scavengers moved to positions behind the circular door and Milo bent low to push at the bottom. It annoyed him that they had gone with a circular design for the vault door. This forced the hinges to be close together. A square door would have spread out the hinges, and been easier to open and close.

And it was indeed a heavy door, almost four inches thick, and made of Hammer Steel, a Tier 3 alloy made by layering metals, folding and hammering the piece flat with a hydraulic press, then folding and repeating the process until the metals fused into a durable alloy that resisted damage. With all of them working together, they managed to get the door shut. Milo's sharp ears failed to hear any latches engage.

"Good work, now get the hell up top and get to your stations. Whatever is hammering at us doesn't seem to be stopping and I don't know what the boss's plan is." The other scavengers groped their way upward, the slope now almost thirty degrees. Milo wanted some distance between him and them, and he was curious why the mate was staying behind. He saw no locking mechanism on the door. As he observed her from a dark alcove, she pulled a gold-rimmed monocle from a pocket and replaced her plainer one. Grunting in satisfaction, she activated a Rune that covered most of the door she was trying to lock. To Milo, with his goggles and runic abilities, the Rune glowed brightly as day, but it was obvious the mate was having trouble seeing it, even with her fancy monocle. Three times she tried to work the rune, messing up the sequence. Frustrated, she pulled out an emergency flare, something not generally good to use in such an enclosed space. Milo found himself outlined in the light of the flare, and slightly blinded by the sudden glare.

"What in hell are you!" She would have said more, but both she and Milo were sent flying toward the vault as the ship went nearly vertical. The sound of explosions echoed down from above and a stream of seawater began pouring in. That didn't deter the mate from pulling a hammer from her belt and hitting Milo in the head. He'd just regained his feet, as found himself knocked down again with the mate on top of him, fighting for his life.

"Why aren't you dead? That should have crushed your skull."

Milo found the statement ludicrous. He'd taken a far worse hit from the Mace of Armageddon or when he'd left a dent in the tower of strife. A blow from a ball-peen hammer backed by the mate's muscular arms was nothing to sneeze at but at the same time...

"I've been hit harder."

"Fine, I'll hit you again then." But while she tried, she found her opponent was hard to pin down. He seemed to anticipate her blows and moved his head to the side at the last instant, while slapping her face with his stupid tail, breaking her nose, and infuriating her. She took blow after blow from him and only got in a glancing hit and two punches from her left hand in return.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Milo knew he was winning, but at the same time, the water was filling up the compartment. He'd raked her with his claws three times, but the sturdy dwarf had taken the blows and kept coming at him with a vengeance. As the ship rocked again, he slipped and she loomed over him, hammer raised. Dread filled Milo, not from the mate but from the shadow behind her.

The eel bit off both her arm and her head as it slithered down into the room from what was now the ceiling. That was enough for Milo. If water and eels were coming inside, he couldn't be blamed for putting holes in the ship. As the eel swallowed its meal and glared at him, he built a runic array of three force runes and a void rune. There was no time for control runes. Hundreds of mana poured into the array and he cut loose with a blast of pure force that blew apart the eel, killed the two eels behind it, and destroyed all the hatches for fifty feet up. More water poured in, and he tried to find a way that kept him from drowning and being eaten by eels.

Outside, swarms of the smaller eels were converging on the disguised submarine, and five large eels were charging it again and again trying to break in. A Seam had popped in the aft end from Milo's spell and water was roaring in. The compartments were sealed, but the weight of the seawater had changed the balance of the ship. She sank in the stern and her bow lifted up. The wooden superstructure used to disguise the submersible was disintegrating under the fire of the Iron Orca as the ship slaughtered the eels converging on Milo.

Captain Annie laughed hard and pointed at the vessel. "Stumpy! Look at that! It's the damned Silver Shark! They ran her into port with a wooden shell on top. Such a shame we didn't know that until after we'd hulled her with a dozen cannon."

Stumpy looked at the familiar shape of the huge submarine with its ridiculous fin-shaped conning tower, now exposed to the air. "Sorry Captain, looks like an eel-infested hulk to me. I think it's our civic duty to fire a broadside."

"All cannon, load armor-piercing shells, and send that hulk to the bottom!"

Within a minute, the Iron Orca fired a broadside and with both ships sitting still, every shell hit the Silver Shark, tearing through her hull and allowing more seawater to pour in, running the length of the ship which sank lower in the water as the wooden ship concealing her was destroyed. The steam cannon raked back and forth across the eels and the other steamships fired their cannon.

No one liked the Sharks, having lost far too much money to their schemes over the years. Given a chance to vent some of their frustration in a semi-legitimate manner, no one held back. The vessel broke into several pieces and sank into the ocean, the bulk settling in the shallow waters, but one end tumbled down the steep drop-off at the edge of the bay. The few eels left followed it down.

Milo was running out of time and air. He had some ideas, but he also didn't want to risk losing certain valuable items. He summoned his chest and quickly put in everything he was wearing that wasn't soulbound, pulled out some additional ammunition for his spells, and then sent it away. With that done, he relaxed and took stock of his situation. The piece of wreckage he was in had come to rest on the bottom of the ocean floor with the vault slightly higher than the rest of the wreckage. There were some air pockets in the chamber, he had strong lungs, and more eels were coming to kill him. He started carving more runes of destruction into the skulls at his feet.

The next monster to make it to him could barely fit through the openings, making it easy to kill. It took four castings of Harpoon of the Winds, but with his spells doing extra damage to eels, the outcome was never in doubt. Now, with the mass of the dead eel blocking the way, he had time to catch his breath. That lasted for half a minute before the eels began hammering at the hull again. He watched as the seam began to split and water poured in. He was definitely going to die, but he looked at the bright side, so were the eels. The next eel to put its face near that seam took a bone harpoon to the brain. Milo carved another skull and waited for the next one to present a target. Knowing he wasn't getting out of there actually gave him more options and he was determined to take as many eels with him as he could.

The horde of lesser eels were cut down by the exploding skulls he tossed through the holes in the hull and the larger eels were torn up by his harpoons. His Bone Caster spells were efficient to cast and stretched his mana farther.

One last eel was circling around, the largest he'd encountered so far, except for the behemoth he'd seen in the deeps. Milo took a deep breath of air from the small pocket remaining and started drinking the mana potions he'd pulled from his chest. Drinking with his face in the small pocket was difficult, but he needed the extra mana. He considered that putting potions into leather wineskins might work better. He'd have to try that.

When he'd recovered as much mana as he could, he stared hard at the last eel. It was too far to throw a skull, and the way the eel was twisting constantly meant it was preparing to dodge his harpoons. What it couldn't dodge was a wide-angled force blast. He built as many runes into it as he could, and then poured in all of his mana. The blast exploded through the hull sending shrapnel in a cloud at the eel. The force of the spell stunned it and the shrapnel tore it to pieces. It bled to death a moment later and the hungry crabs moved into a feast.

Milo didn't fare much better. Without a Void Rune, he hit the back wall, his body hitting with the force of one of the Iron Orca's cannons.

Knocked out, he drowned a moment later, just after the last eel met its own end. The crabs only got a few bites of him before his body faded away.

Horridragh felt it when the end came. The lesser relations he had sent after the little bone beast had been dying as they fought against the surface dwellers and chased their enemy. Clever of it to use others to do its killing. Now the last of them were close and some had tasted his blood. The large explosion ripped through them, sending ripples through the water, killing the last of them. He could no longer sense his enemy, no longer taste him in the water. Horridragh considered it a fair trade.

With the pain in his tooth gone along with his tooth, he felt sleepy and once again sank into the muck at the bottom of the bay. His coils surrounded the island he guarded. From atop the tower, an ancient elven sorcerer set down his plate of snacks and wondered what the hell he'd just witnessed.