Giant Saltshakers

We were deep in the tunnel ghosts of Aqueductor’s past.

It smelled horrible and all of us knew it.

Eventually we reached a set of wall rungs that hadn't been cleaned in the Gods know how long.

They were crusted over with what looked like a decade of mineral scaling and slick subterranean sludge, practically begging to snap the moment anyone put their weight on them.

Shunya reached out his hand and touched it while muttering the word “heal.”

The rungs glowed with a green light and appeared cleaner and the bronze rungs looked more refined and stronger.

The decay was gone.

“Could you heal the air too, Shun? It smells worse than your—” 

“I don't know, I just did what felt natural. Maybe?”

“Good work Shunya!” I said, giving a thumbs up.

That felt dorky so I put it away.

“Thanks,” he said. Already trying to heal the air quality.

We hauled ourselves down the freshly sanitized rungs one by one, emerging into a secondary structural hub where the ceiling vaulted upward into a massive, pitch-black stone cavern.

 Footpaths carved out of the rock ran alongside the ancient overflow channels.

We walked. And walked.

“Oh for crying out loud! How long is this stupid trail gonna go on for?” Coggy said, with a pang of exasperation.

“We can't give up now! We're pretty close to the source, right Shunya?” I said trying my best to act like I wasn't prepared to faint any second now.

“This thing doesn't exactly come with a measurement system. I don't exactly know how far away we are just yet.”

“Screw this, I'm due for a cat nap!” 

Everybody is reaching their limit.

We're halfway there. I think?

Coggy suddenly uses his last bit of energy to shoot himself forward on his cloud.

“Haha! Shelter, due… that way.”

He whizzed back onto my shoulder.

“Gah! Watch it!”

“Meow.”

We hit a junction where the cavern floor split. 

Coggy's paw pointed to the left fork in the road—an iron hatch with a rusted, official sign reading:

Sub-Level 4 Maintenance Bunkhouse & Cafeteria.

Shunya's senses pointed to the right, where the dark, wet pipeline plunged deeper into the abyss after the saboteur.

We had a choice.

And in not even five seconds of deliberation, we made a beeline for shelter.

The Sub-Level 4 Maintenance Bunkhouse & Cafeteria had clearly not received a single visitor since the last person locked it, threw the key into the aqueduct, and made a personal vow never to return.

The door swung open.

The smell introduced itself first.

Not like the tunnel smell, which was bad in a wet, geological, impersonal way. 

This was bad in a human way. 

The specific concentrated essence of people who had lived and eaten and slept in an enclosed underground space for extended periods and then left everything exactly as it was when they departed.

Nobody moved.

"...I've been in worse," I said.

"Name one time," Cogginballs said.

Uh.

I could not name one time.

The bunkhouse was long and low-ceilinged, with eight rusted bed frames lining the walls, each one still dressed in what had once been linen and was now closer to archaeology. 

A cafeteria counter ran along the far wall. Pots. Pans. A stove that looked like it had opinions about being used again. 

Everything coated in the particular grey-brown film that accumulates when nothing has been touched in fifteen years and the air itself has given up.

Shunya stepped inside.

Looked left.

Looked right.

Rolled up his sleeves.

"Okay," he said. "Stand back."

What followed was the most efficient cleaning operation in the history of Sub-Level 4.

Shunya moved through the room with his palms out, green light trailing behind him in soft pulses. 

Bed frames straightened. 

Rust flaked and dissolved. The linen didn't just clean — it refreshed, colour returning to fabric that had forgotten it had any. 

Pillows re-lofted. Mattresses remembered their original shape with what seemed like relief.

He hit the cafeteria counter next. 

The pots scoured themselves from the inside out. 

The pans lost their residue in one green sweep. 

The stove, confronted with healing energy for the first time in its long institutional life, clicked on with a sound like a small dignified cough.

Grime retreated from every surface.

The floor, revealed from beneath fifteen years of accumulation, turned out to be quite a nice stone tile actually.

Cogginballs observed all of this from his cloud, which he had positioned at a height that kept all four paws comfortably above the pre-cleaned floor.

"Stepping a paw in there is a massive no-no," he announced to no one in particular. "Because reasons. You really want your main mode of transportation to drown in sludge? Get bent. I may be on the brink of total cloud depletion but I will stay up here as long as it—"

He looked down.

The floor was now spotless stone tile.

"...As long as it takes," he finished, with significantly less conviction.

He did not land. He did reposition himself slightly closer to the floor.

Shunya finished with the far wall and stood very still for a moment.

Then he lay down on the tiled floor.

His face had gone grey. 

The green light had stopped. His eyes were open but pointed at the ceiling with the specific blankness of someone whose body had filed a formal complaint and was awaiting review.

"Shunya?"

"...Mm."

"You okay?"

"...Define okay."

His cheeks were sunken. He looked like a candle that had been burning from both ends and had just discovered it was out of wax.

I sat down next to him.

He shifted sideways.

His head found my lap with the inevitability of something that was always going to happen.

I decided not to comment on this.

"Here." I unscrewed the canteen and held it out.

He drank.

One second.

Two seconds.

He sat bolt upright with the energy of a man who had been rebooted.

"I'm fine," he said.

"You were grey."

"I'm fine now."

"You were the colour of the floor before you cleaned it."

"The floor looks great now."

"Shunya."

"I'm fine," he said, and stood up and walked to the cafeteria counter with complete steadiness, which would have been more convincing if he hadn't had to put one hand on the wall for exactly half a second before he got there.

I looked at the canteen.

I looked at him.

I put the canteen back in my bag and said nothing.

Cogginballs descended his cloud approximately four inches. Tested the air. Descended another four inches.

Eventually, by increments so small they could each be individually denied, he landed.

He walked to the nearest bed.

Examined the restored linen with one critical paw.

Climbed on.

Turned three times.

Began systematically destroying Shunya's handiwork, pawing the blanket into a nest shape that satisfied some ancient feline geometry.

"This is acceptable," he announced.

Nobody had asked.

He kneaded the pillow once, twice, and settled in with the expression of someone who had personally arranged all of this.

The cafeteria turned out to have a small pantry that, thanks to Shunya's sweep, had been restored to a state of provisional usability. Tins that had been dented were smooth again. Sealed containers were properly sealed.

We looked at it for a while.

"We could cook," I said.

"We could," Shunya said.

"Tonight."

"Tonight."

We looked at it a little longer.

"Or," I said.

"Yeah," Shunya said. "I'm about ready to go sleep."

"Right."

"And our circadian rhythm—"

"—is going to have opinions about this regardless of what we decide." I cut in.

"Right."

We closed the pantry.

Made our respective beds.

Cogginballs was already asleep, or performing sleep so convincingly that the distinction didn't matter, his cloud dissipated entirely on the floor beside his chosen bunk like a deflated endorsement of the evening's decisions.

I lay back on a bed that smelled like nothing, which after the last several hours was the most luxurious thing I had ever experienced.

The saboteur was somewhere deeper in the dark. The lead powder trail was still going. 

The corridor with no map entry was still waiting.

Tomorrow.

Or whenever our circadian rhythm decided shut-eye was no longer on the agenda.

Whichever came first.

***

The omelette was going well until it wasn't.

There's a window between cooking and consequences that I have historically struggled to identify in time. 

The egg went in. The egg looked fine. The egg smelled fine. And then, in the span of about four seconds of distraction, the egg became a decision I would have to live with.

"...Is that supposed to be black on the edges?" Shunya asked.

"It's caramelized."

"That's not what caramelized means."

"It's what I'm calling it."

I put it on a plate. I ate it anyway. It tasted like a campfire made a series of poor choices. I finished the whole thing.

Shunya had, while I was busy caramelizing, quietly located a pantry section neither of us had opened the night before. It had things in it. Actual things. An onion. Something that was close enough to rice to work as rice. A tin of something preserved that he opened, smelled, and deemed acceptable.

He was very focused.

Shunya cooked without announcing what he was making.

It smelled like somewhere else.

Warm and specific and completely unplaceable in anything I'd encountered in Ocrain. Shunya stood over the restored stove with the ease of someone who had done this ten thousand times in a kitchen that looked nothing like this one, and the result came out in a bowl that he set on the cafeteria counter without ceremony.

"Try it," he said.

I tried it.

"...What is this?"

"Something from home."

"Where you're actually from or where you're pretending you're from?"

He almost smiled. "Just eat it."

I ate it.

It was the second best thing I'd eaten since the rumcakes. I didn't tell him that because I didn't want to deal with whatever face he'd make.

Cogginballs had positioned himself at the far end of the counter with the energy of someone who had absolutely no interest in whatever was happening. He was looking at the wall. He was thinking about other things. He was certainly not watching Shunya plate a second portion and slide it four inches in his direction.

He let it sit there for eleven seconds.

Then he ate it.

His ears went flat.

His tail went still.

His eyes did something complicated.

"...Acceptable," he said, to the wall.

"You're purring," Shunya said.

"I am doing no such thing."

"You're literally—"

"Background noise. The pipes. This facility has quirks." He ate another bite. "Don't read into it."

Shunya looked at me.

I looked at my bowl.

We said nothing.

We were kind enough to let him have this.

The knock on the Sub-Level 4 hatch was not a sound any of us had been expecting.

Three of us looked at the hatch.

The hatch did not explain itself.

Shunya opened it.

Froy stood on the other side, lantern in hand, looking like a man who had done something he was going to have to explain to someone eventually. Beside him stood a significantly larger and considerably more official-looking person in a blue sash with more embroidery on it than Froy's, which I took to mean authority.

"...You cleaned it," the official said, looking past Shunya into the bunkhouse.

"We did," I said.

"The whole thing."

"Yes."

He looked at the cafeteria. The stove. The tile floor. The beds were made with corners that Cogginballs had only partially destroyed.

"The pipes," he said, still in the same tone. "In the upper levels. They started improving on their own. About six hours ago. The contamination began reversing."

He looked at Shunya.

Shunya said nothing.

"Healing magic," the official said. "Significant. Enough to trickle through the entire system." He paused. "That kind of mana output belongs to real heroes. Not mere adventurers."

The word 'mere' landed in the room and sat there.

I opened my mouth.

Cogginballs got there first. "Correct on all counts. You're welcome. The feline aspect of this operation was particularly instrumental."

"Coggy."

"I provided morale support from an elevated position."

The official produced a ledger. Made several notes. Documented the bunkhouse. Documented the cafeteria. Documented the stove, which had apparently been listed as a total loss in someone's paperwork fifteen years ago and was now operational, which created an administrative situation he was going to have to resolve later.

"We'll be in contact," he said. "Your party's services may be of use to the Brotherhood in future."

He produced a witness form.

I took it.

"I want to flag," I said, "that whoever did this is still out there. The pipes improved but the source hasn't been found."

The official looked at me.

"The contamination is reversing," he said.

"Because of Shunya. Not because we stopped whoever started it."

He looked at the form.

He signed the form.

"The quest parameters specified contamination resolution," he said. "The contamination is resolved."

He gave us the copy of the signed ledger.

"Congratulations on a successful completion," he said, and left.

Froy lingered for a moment. He looked at me with the expression of a man who understood exactly what I was saying and had zero institutional authority to do anything about it.

"...Good luck," he said.

Then he left too.

We stood in the cleaned bunkhouse for a moment.

The form was signed. The quest was technically, paperworkly, officially complete.

The saboteur was still in the dark to the right of the junction.

"So," Shunya said.

"So," I said.

"We're done."

"On paper."

He looked at the right fork door.

Looked at me.

"...We're not done."

"We're not done."

Cogginballs dropped off his bunk, stretched elaborately, and walked to the junction without a word.

He sat down in front of the right fork and waited.

We grabbed our things and followed.

Shunya's hand went up before we'd been walking ten minutes.

We stopped.

He stood still with that palm-out feeling-for-something posture that I was starting to recognize as his version of a compass.

"It's stronger," he said. "Much stronger."

"How much stronger?"

"Like the difference between someone mentioning fire and standing next to one."

Ahead, the tunnel opened into a wider chamber.

Natural rock, not aqueduct construction. 

And in the centre of it, connected to the piping system by a series of hand-fitted joints that somebody had spent real time installing, stood two enormous lead containers.

Cylindrical. Sealed at the top with manual release valves. Each one easily twice my height, crusted with mineral deposits from long use, connected to the pipes via a drip mechanism that was currently, very slowly, releasing dissolved lead powder into the water supply.

They looked like the world's most sinister condiments.

"...Giant saltshakers," I said.

"Yeah," Shunya said.

"Somebody built giant lead saltshakers and connected them to Ocrain's water supply."

"That's what I'm looking at."

"That's a lot of effort."

"It really is."

Cogginballs circled one, examining it with the critical eye of someone assessing infrastructure. "Manually operated. Someone has to come down here to refill and reset these. Who the hell would go through all the trouble?" He tapped it with one paw. "Putting that much effort in means someone has been coming down here regularly. Which means—"

A door on the far side of the chamber opened.

A person stepped through.

He was wearing a cloak that was trying very hard to be ominous and almost getting there. He was carrying a refill container. He was also, clearly, not the mastermind of anything. He had the exact energy of someone doing a job they'd been told to do without being fully briefed on what the job was for.

A peon if I'd ever seen one.

He saw us.

We saw him.

He looked at the saltshakers.

He looked at us.

He turned to go back through the door.

"Don't," Cogginballs said.

The peon stopped.

"Here's the thing," Cogginballs said, strolling toward him with the unhurried demeanour of someone who had all the time in the world and several opinions about how to use it. "You seem like a man of reasonable intelligence. Not exceptional. But reasonable. Which means you understand that the current situation — you, us, these frankly deranged condiments — doesn't resolve well for you if you shield yourself from accountability."

The peon said nothing.

"I'm going to ask you some questions,"

Cogginballs continued. "And you're going to answer them. Because the alternative is that I let my associate here—" he gestured vaguely at me "—ask the questions instead, and she is going to be so relentlessly pleasant about it that you will feel genuinely terrible about yourself for not cooperating."

The peon looked at me.

I gave him my softest smile.

He looked back at Cogginballs.

"...What do you want to know?" he said.

"Everything," Cogginballs said. "Starting with who sent you here and ending with where exactly that door goes."

The peon told us everything.

It took about four minutes. He spoke quickly, with the energy of a man who had been holding this in for longer than was comfortable and was experiencing significant relief at finally being able to put it down. His employer. The operation. The schedule. The location.

And the door.

Which led, via a passage that connected to the older tunnel system beneath the aqueduct's footprint, to a space his employer had been using as a base of operations for approximately eight months.

"What's it called?" I asked.

The peon reached into his cloak and produced, with the air of someone fulfilling a procedural requirement, a small placard.

He held it up.

It read: Sir Dorian's Lair — Do Not Enter.

We looked at it

"...Sir Dorian," Shunya said.

"Sir Dorian," Cogginballs confirmed.

I looked at the placard. At the careful lettering. At the fact that someone had made an official placard for their lair and sent their peon out with it.

"Take us there," I said.

The peon nodded with the exhausted relief of someone who was very glad this had become someone else's problem.