Bowels of the City

Can't shut off the tunnels to work on them.  City wouldn't stay up if they got shut off, and we can only put her down every few years.  Too risky to do it more than that.  So I'm there, in the tunnels, wind whipping past me stuck onto the ceramic siding with a piton, fixing the cracked tiles and re-etching the runes into the clay.  The chisel chained to my wrist hanging loose right now.  Can't go in here with magical auras up or they'd gunk up the system.  Can't go in here with anything loose or you'd gunk up the system.  More than it already is, mind.  gotta keep an eye out when you're working.  Can't hear anything besides the woosh, and maybe a buzz if you're in the right spot.  Gotta look upwind and hope you see something before it hits you.  Only really works for the big stuff though.  If you can see it early enough to get out of the way, not getting out of the way tends to cause severe injury.  Saw a guy last week who got hit by a flock of birds that got in, ripped to shreds by all the beaks and talons that went by.  Small stuff is harder to deal with.  Gotta wear protection and hope it doesn't let anything through.  Non-magical though, auras, remember?  Can't outfit every worker with mithril armor, so most of us have steel and iron, but not too muck or the weight cracks the tiles.  Anyway, I'm making my way from the service entrance over to a bad spot, musta got hit with something really big to have taken out so many tiles.  Gotta actually bring in some more tiles and fix 'em onto the walls.  Mean's more weight so less armor.  I've got the bag on my front like a chestplate, hope it slows down anything that hits there and doesn't break the tiles too much.  Take a look upstream and I see this bright red trail come round the bend about half a mile up.  Could be blood or it could be wine, both, neither, a long banner caught and threaded its way into the tunnels.  I don't know what, so I start back tracking towards the entrance.  I was a ways off though, so by the time I'm halfway there this stuff hits me square in the face.  It's liquid, that's for sure, but it a'int anything I'm familiar with.  Then I feel the magic in it.  It's a honest to goodness gigantic batch of potion that made its way down here.  Some kook must have poured it off the edge to get rid of it.  I got no idea what this stuff does, but its started working, and that's a bad sign.  This stuff is gonna gunk up the tunnels real good, but more importantly, I may or may not kill me first.  I can turn my head and get a look at it as it flows on past and rounds another bend.  Hope some other guys are luckier than I am in avoiding it.  Gonna have to get a filtration crew in here.  Then I'm slipping.  Look down and see the stuff is eating through my rope.  Doesn't feel like it's doing anything like that to my face, but on the rope it's chewing through it like acid.  Weightless isn't the way to describe it.  It's more like you can feel yourself falling sideways.  Wind just picks you up and throws your body down the tube.  Only way I can get a hold of something is with a lot of luck.  Tiles scatter down-wind of my, falling out of the bag.  I'm going fast, but I know where I'm headed.  There's a gap up here soon.  Intake output for the sky.  It's about a mile down, so I've gotta get luck on my side.  I've got the mithril gauntlets for it, habit of mine, but I'm not near any pitons.  When I do get near this one is broke off, musta got smashed off sometime since last week.  I remember replacing it.  Time's not on my side and I go hurtling out the side, can't get all the way across the gap, tips of my gauntlet bounce off the other side and I'm falling, down this time, and it really does feel weightless now.  Get a good look at the city as I go, white towers stretching upwards toward the sun.  It shrinks slowly, bit by bit until it's the size of pea.  Then I'm going through a cloud.  I'm not gonna turn around, don't wanna know what I'm gonna hit when I hit ground.  Don't know what we're over today, I never really check.  It feels like forever, and then it's water.  Cold, hard against my back as it seeps in through my back-armor.  I'm alive so far, but I don't know how long.  The ground is a tough place, from all I've heard, and I'm sinking.