Normally, at this time of day, Hinnom would be trawling the neighborhoods, letting zir spectre and ghouls stretch their leashes as far as they needed. Each one would take a letter, and off they'd go, depositing them into the little niches and holes of each hiveblock apartment, and the occasional single or duplex.
It was boring. The ghosts did all the work, really: all ze ever did was stand there with their light-deflecting device open and the mailbag cocked on a hip, and wait. Sometimes a ghost would tug too far on the leash and ze'd have to wind them back in, and sometimes a lusus would come huffing over to investigate, and ze would have to pull zir specibus... but that happened so rarely, and most beasts only needed a solid thwack across the snout to send them packing.
But this was different. Marduk had asked zir for a favor, and that never happened. Hopefully it'd start happening more, though. Hinnom was going to prove how great ze was for favors, and then people would stop treating zim as such a wriggler, and ask zim to do things for them all the time.
It was going to be great!
"Almost, boo," ze calls, sing-song, over zir shoulder. "Chillax!"
It'd been such a hassle to convince Marduk to enter the sewers, but she hadn't known how to get to the coordinates she'd been given, and ze had refused outright to take her over the roads. The streets were built for lusii and transportation engines, not trolls: they were filled with all sorts of roadblocks that made travel difficult, whether they were fences or hives.
Underground, so long as you stayed in the outer districts, there wasn't any of that: just the clean lines of the sewer system, running in seamless parallel to the streets above.
(If you ventured too far into the inner city, of course, then you started hitting the old ruins, where the city had been built on top of itself for centuries and centuries, and the dead still roamed freely. Ze had ended up heading down there, once or twice, trying to figure out why the air was thick with ghosts and the smell of decay, but that'd been on purpose, just to explore. It'd be shorter to just cut straight through there, but ze wasn't about to lead Marduk down there.
She'd probably cry.)
The coordinates hadn't been too from Marduk's academy, but it had taken forever to walk, with Marduk's hand on zir shoulder. The numbers along the wall were steadily shifting higher, though, and there was an ancient climbing device up ahead, mounted to the stone wall with rusted old screws.
Ze pauses, politely ignoring the way Marduk stomps on zir heel as she comes to a stop, and peers at the numbers nearest to them. 612314. Close enough! "We're here," ze announces. "Gimme a hot sec and lemme send one of my ghouls up to scope this out, 'kay?"
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It was boring. The ghosts did all the work, really: all ze ever did was stand there with their light-deflecting device open and the mailbag cocked on a hip, and wait. Sometimes a ghost would tug too far on the leash and ze'd have to wind them back in, and sometimes a lusus would come huffing over to investigate, and ze would have to pull zir specibus... but that happened so rarely, and most beasts only needed a solid thwack across the snout to send them packing.
But this was different. Marduk had asked zir for a favor, and that never happened. Hopefully it'd start happening more, though. Hinnom was going to prove how great ze was for favors, and then people would stop treating zim as such a wriggler, and ask zim to do things for them all the time.
It was going to be great!
"Almost, boo," ze calls, sing-song, over zir shoulder. "Chillax!"
It'd been such a hassle to convince Marduk to enter the sewers, but she hadn't known how to get to the coordinates she'd been given, and ze had refused outright to take her over the roads. The streets were built for lusii and transportation engines, not trolls: they were filled with all sorts of roadblocks that made travel difficult, whether they were fences or hives.
Underground, so long as you stayed in the outer districts, there wasn't any of that: just the clean lines of the sewer system, running in seamless parallel to the streets above.
(If you ventured too far into the inner city, of course, then you started hitting the old ruins, where the city had been built on top of itself for centuries and centuries, and the dead still roamed freely. Ze had ended up heading down there, once or twice, trying to figure out why the air was thick with ghosts and the smell of decay, but that'd been on purpose, just to explore. It'd be shorter to just cut straight through there, but ze wasn't about to lead Marduk down there.
She'd probably cry.)
The coordinates hadn't been too from Marduk's academy, but it had taken forever to walk, with Marduk's hand on zir shoulder. The numbers along the wall were steadily shifting higher, though, and there was an ancient climbing device up ahead, mounted to the stone wall with rusted old screws.
Ze pauses, politely ignoring the way Marduk stomps on zir heel as she comes to a stop, and peers at the numbers nearest to them. 612314. Close enough! "We're here," ze announces. "Gimme a hot sec and lemme send one of my ghouls up to scope this out, 'kay?"