"Gods, this is so much worse than I had imagined." Bob complained as they crawled through the cramped space. They were up into their knees and elbows in human waste. 

"It is really bad… and I'm even used to, like, rotting corpses and decay." Zephyra replied breathlessly, desperate to avoid the terrific stench that threatened to melt her nostrils. "Why are we doing this again?"

"Because, it's one of the unguarded entrances and exits to the city. But, good lord, this was a terrible idea."

Zephyra's hand brushed up against something soft, hairy and wriggly lurking within the sludge. She shuddered and quickly moved her hand away. "Ugh, what even made you think of this?"

"Uh, some... stories that we used to tell back home." 

"That would make sense, only fictional characters would even consider doing something this disgusting. Except for you." She felt something warm, wet and very much alive brush against her inner thigh. Instinctively, she pulsed a small surge of mana into the thing and killed it dead. "Ugh. Never again. I'll never ever listen to your advice, ever again." 

"I deserve that... and, uh, I'll never listen to my own advice ever again." He held a small makeshift torch above the sludge to illuminate their way through the maze-like interior of the sewers. "Although, to be fair, I expected the sewers to be much larger. Like… we wouldn't have to crawl through them."

"That would've been better. But, ugh, the smell would still be just as awful. At least, I wouldn't almost have my face in it."

A disconcerting tremor sounded from the streets above them. The tunnel shook and trembled, flakes of dust and rock crumbled and fell away from the ceiling. 

Zephyra sighed dramatically, a bit relieved that the tunnel held. "If it collapses on us, I'll haunt you forever."

Bob paled. "C-can you do that?"

Zephyra shrugged and smiled coyly. "Who knows? You won't have to find out, if we escape." 

"Ahaha…" Bob laughed nervously and crawled forward ever so slightly faster than he had been. "On the other hand, if we hadn't opened a…"

"Inter-planar rift?"

"That. Thank you. If we hadn't opened a rift, we might not be quite so worried about the tunnels collapsing around us." 

"Mmhmm." Zephyra hummed amusedly. It was fun to play this game. "And, if I hadn't opened a portal, we wouldn't have had time to fix your leg, or your arm, and you would've had all of the fun of crawling through this muck all broken and battered."

"T-that's…" 

"And, if someone hadn't thrown themselves off of a wall, I wouldn't have even had to open a portal." 

"Y-you don't know that."

"Haha, well that's true. I don't know if that would've been the case. But, we could've moved a lot faster and a lot stealthier from the beginning."

"W-well, if you had just healed me properly-"

"Then, we would've been discovered, surrounded and executed before we even had the chance to escape. "

"..."

"..."

They both continued forward in relative silence. The moist squelch of their progress disturbed any sense of peace that they may have found. And, only seemed to heighten their discomfort and dismay. The sewers were truly an awful place. Neither one of them were keen to stay for long. 

"Is it much further, do you think?" Zephyra broke the silence with a heavy handed question. 

"I don't even know if we're going the right way. We might be… um… lost." 

"Well, I'm not dying down here. I refuse. We'll just have to keep going."

"It's not like I was just going to sto-"

Bob lurched forward. He suddenly found that he didn't have any sort of hand hold. The stone beneath his grasp simply dropped and gave away. He tumbled head first into the muck, refuse and excrement. 

The light of the torch extinguished as he dropped into the sludge. 

The tunnel fell into darkness. 

Zephyra waited for a moment and held her breath. She waited for the sound of her newly adopted pet to break the surface and gasp for air. But, only the bubbling mire around her responded to her silent plea. 

"Bob?" 

No answer.

"Bob!"

...

"Gah, perfect. Just great. At least, Ted didn't drag me into a sewer and nearly drown himself." Zephyra took a quick gasp of the fetid air. Her lungs burned and protested. Then, she quickly dived under the filth. 

Her eyes clenched shut. The liquid surrounding her was thick. A viscous slime that coated across her body and seemingly violated her entire sense of self. It felt wrong. Repulsive. And, far beyond nauseating. She wanted to be sick. But, instead, she pushed down the bile that built in her throat and gently spun her mana into thin threads to search for her lost puppy. 

It didn't take long for her to contact him. He had panicked and struggled every which way underneath the sewage. And, He couldn't tell which way was up or down anymore. He was starting to grow faint as the familiar prick of dark magic brushed against his skin. 

A moment later, Zephyra grabbed a hold of him and hauled them both back to the surface. They broke through the pool of secretions and gasped for breath. They managed to fill their lungs with air, but a part of them wished that they hadn't. They felt completely dirt-ridden inside and out. 

"W-what the hell, who would put a sudden drop off in these tunnels?" Bob spluttered as soon as he caught enough breath to recover. 

"Ugh, a deterrent for intruders maybe?" Zephyra ventured her guess. 

"Yeah. As if the rest of this shit wasn't enough."

"I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to take this way. I'm going to need to bathe for a week."

"I swear, some true asshole designed this place. No, wait, several assholes helped make this place."

Zephyra groaned. "I, so, don't want to laugh at your stupid jokes." 

"That's… fair."

"It takes up too much breath and air to laugh. And, I really, really want to breathe and smell as little as possible."

Bob leaned back against the wall of the tunnel to steady himself for a moment. He was already covered from head to toe. They both were completely soiled. So, he didn't care much about sitting down in the filth for the time being. Even so, it was still definitely gross. 

"Hey, Zephyra?

"Hmm?"

"Thank you for saving me."

"... You're thanking me for this now? We're still in the gods forsaken sewer. You can thank me after we get out."

"Well. Yeah. But, I meant. Well. Just… Thank you for everything that you've done for me. I wouldn't have made it this far without you." Bob muttered and mumbled under his breath. 

"Yes. I suppose that you would've died on a pyre rather than the sewer without my intervention." 

"You know, I can't really say which one I would've preferred right now." 

Zephyra thought for a moment and coughed in an attempt to remove some of the grossness from her mouth. "Pyre. Definitely the pyre."

Bob laughed somewhat exhaustedly. "It's been quite the day."

"Yes. Yes, it has." Zephyra lightly pressed against Bob's shoulder and urged him to move forward. "I'd like to end it outside of this place though. If you don't mind."

"Oh? Are you sure? It's rather warm and cozy, once you get used to it. Never mind the dark and the smell. It's quite lovely." 

"Alright then." Zephyra pushed past the sarcastic "heretic" and continued down the tunnel without him. "You can stay here. I'll keep moving forward." 

"Then, again." Bob pushed himself from the wall and followed Zephyra. "I've heard that the weather outside is quite lovely this time of year. Only a small chance of it raining death monsters."

"At least, we can fight death monsters. We can't do much against the sewage."

"Oh, we could've opened a rift in the sewers. Then, we could've had an unstoppable army of shitty death monsters. If the monsters don't kill them, then the stench will."

"... You talk a lot."

"Sorry. It helps me deal with the stress."

"Mm. I guess, I should start getting used to it between you and Ted." Zephyra used small tendrils of her mana to feel her way through the dark tunnels. She watched out for any more pitfalls and to scope out which ways were dead ends. It was slow going without being able to see anything. But, they likely saved time from wandering through a wrong turn. 

"So… what's this thing that you want me to sign?"

Zephyra stopped still from her progress for a moment. She had reached an intersection and was deciding which way to go. She thought she felt a slight breeze and turned toward it, heading toward the right. 

"It's a… party agreement of sorts. Ted, Phil and Karen all signed it before they joined up with me."

Bob fell silent for a moment. "Huh, is there any need for that though? Like, as a necromancer can you even enforce a contract in a court of law? You're pretty illegal." 

"It… um… operates above the law. It has a very powerful guarantor that will help enforce the terms of the contract."

"Okay… that could not have sounded more shady if you had tried."

"W-well, it may not… exactly, be a standard party contract."

"I was wrong. It can sound even more shady!"

"Aha, w-well, it might possibly be a, um, magical contract." Her voice dropped to a barely perceivable whisper with her last two words.

"I… have no idea what that is. I mean, I can guess. It sounds shady as fuck."

"... You swear a lot for a Church fanatic."

"Hey, don't change the subject! But, yeah, I wasn't always in the church."

"Oh, where were you before that then?"

"It doesn't matter and you're still dodging the subject." 

Zephyra smirked and retorted back to him. "I'm not dodging the subject. You're dodging the subject!"

"Wow, what are you, a child?" 

"I'm like…"

"You know, on second thought, don't tell me your age. It's only going to be bad news."

"Oh."

"Yup. You gotta have some secrets. But, not this one. What's a magical contract?" 

Zephyra squirmed and wriggled her way through a tight opening in the tunnel. She could hear the faint rush of water ahead of her. 

"It's a… contract."

"Oh, really? Go on." 

"So, sarcastic, geez. It's a contract that's enforced through magic." 

"... Yeah. That's definitely still shady. How does it do that?"

"Um, usually, by killing someone that breaks the terms of the agreement…"

Bob stared at her ass in disbelief. He would've preferred to look at her face. But, he didn't have much of a choice at the moment. He sighed. 

"Alright... That tracks. Necromancer. Death magic. Death contract."

"O-oh. I said, usually. Mine doesn't do that though."

"... Then, how does it, you know?"

"It might make breaking the contract impossible."

"Right. Okay. Yeah. That explains so much."

"I'm trying, alright! This is my first time."

"... I'm really glad that we're the only ones here and no one can misunderstand. Wait. Do you mean you didn't explain all of this to the others?" 

Zephyra squirmed again. This time out of sheer discomfort with the conversation. 

"I-i didn't get the chance."

"What?" Bob deadpanned.

"They… um… agreed to sign before I explained it to them."

Bob's eyes glazed over and became a bit dead and listless. "You know, I didn't know them for very long. But, I can see them doing that." 

"Aha, yeah. It really surprised me too."

"And, you just let them sign it anyway?"

"Well… I was a bit desperate-"

"Yeah. You'd have to be desperate, or seriously amoral to have them sign something like that." 

"I-its not like I've abused it! I only ordered them when their lives were in danger."

"Oh, yes. That makes forcing them to be your puppets much better."

"They're not my puppets! They're more like my possessions. Or, my pets. They're bound to me."

"I don't see that making the situation any brighter."

Zephyra stayed silent for a moment, contemplating her actions and everything that had happened to them. Bob spoke up before she had a chance to dwell on it for too long. 

"So, I'm supposed to sign this contract as well."

"Yes." Zephyra whispered. 

Bob sighed and pondered his fate in his private thoughts "Well… I did promise. I wonder if it will even affect me though. Or, if it will interact with my… I guess, I'll just have to wait and see."

"I promised that I would sign. So, I will. I owe you my life."

"You will?!"

"I just said that I would. Didn't I?"

Zephyra pouted and trudged forward toward the breeze that steadily grew stronger in front of her.

"Well, yeah. But, that was before I even-"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. I still think that this whole contract business is amoral and shady as shit. Actually, worse than shit. It's way worse than the sewer."

"Then-"

"I'm not finished. I think that it's terrible. But, I understand that as a necromancer, you really don't have anyone that you can trust. And, this… contract business, is just a way for you to protect yourself."

"Yes! Exactly! That's exactly why I'm using it!"

"Uh-huh, look I think that you're not an evil sort. But, you're not exactly good either. Good people don't extort other people into contracts, or open "inter-planar rifts" over an entire goddamn city."

"So, wait. Then why-"

"Because, I think you need people at your side. Good people that will keep you honest. I plan to be one of those people. And, I really don't want to see you, like, accidentally abuse others." 

"... And, you think, you're honest enough to do that?" 

Bob turned his head and blushed at the darkness of the sewer wall. It did sound awfully conceited when someone else said it out loud. 

"Ugh, damn it. Look, I'm no saint. But, I'm going to try, alright?"

Zephyra smiled and nodded as she whispered back to him. "Alright."

A small light could be seen at the end of the tunnel. It shined through a grate. The roar of a river washed beneath it. They were finally free from this terrible place. And, Zephyra couldn't help but to feel that she had just managed to escape with her first friend in tow.