Piper shakes some of the muck from his hand and rubs the rest off on a portion of his shirt that isn't quite as filthy as the rest. Once that's done he gives the Zerda a pat on the shoulder. "Now now, Messieur, it was my fault for being so curious. I assure you that the sewers are not so dangerous. I have wandered them for years and have never encountered such a thing."

The Zerda starts at the pat on his shoulder. "Gah!" He blinks up at Piper when the other starts to talk, but he doesn't look reassured. "What was that thing?" he whines. His eyes drop once more to the ground, and he circles his arms to hug his elbows, trying to still the shaking in them.

The Gallah shrugs. "That is what I was trying to find out, Messieur. Perhaps it is someone's pet Gooshurm that was flushed down the toilet when the owner got bored with it?"

"Oh, a pet … " Jojo looks momentarily reassured, then his ears flatten back. "Gooshurm? Who would keep a gooshurm as a pet?" He edges further down the bench, and away from the manhole in the adjacent street. "And what happened to your shoe?"

"This is Rephidim, Messieur. Stranger things have happened. I would not be surprised if swimming through the sewers is much like digging in the dirt for a Gooshurm." The mutt holds up his bare foot and wiggles his toes. "It pulled it off, and I did not feel very much like requesting for it back. I also lost my bow."

The desert fox mouths an 'Oh.' "I'm sorry." He releases his deathgrip on his own elbows, then fidgets with the sleeves of his robe to keep his hands occupied. "I, uh, I, um, don't think that, er, this job is really for me,"

Piper whines softly, and then throws his arms apart, slinging a few droplets of filth out in his wake. "Nonsense, Messieur! We are both fine, and my losses are because of my own curiosity. After facing such a beast, we are ready to face anything in the sewers! The rest will probably seem quite easy now."

While ringing dirty water out of the edge of one floppy sleeve, the mapmaker watches Piper's emphatic denial with a few blinks. "You, uh, you don't, um, think there will be … er … more?"

"If there are, I will know better than to go climbing in after them this time." Piper winks. "But if Messieur would not mind, I would like to replace my things and get cleaned up before we resume again."

Jojo seems less than reassured by this line of reasoning, though at least he's stopped shaking. "Well … uh … of course. I, er, should copy my slates to parchment, any road." He stands, grabbing his pack clumsily and pushing it up to his shoulder, then fidgets with it after taking a step, trying to get it more comfortable. "I'll come by … uh … tomorrow?" He sounds uncertain, but his voice grows more definite as he continues. "We can, um, try a different section, then."

"Very well, Messieur. And you need not pay me for today. It was my own clumsiness that caused all the trouble. I am sure that the creature would have left us alone if I had not poked at it." The Gallah wrings out the corner of his shirt. "Now let me escort you back to the Blackrock. Messieur Durog's wife is making a wonderful stew for dinner."

"Uh … okay." The Zerda's big ears perk at the mention of food and money, and as he settles the pack more comfortably onto his back, he seems to cheer up markedly.

Over the course of the next several days, the Gallah manages to acquire a replacement shoe and a new bow, in between trips with Jojo to the sewers. Sewer shifts are fairly short by the canine's normal twelve and fourteen-hour days standards, mostly because the mapmaker needs to spend a good deal of time drafting a polished map based on his slate drawings and measurements, so Piper finds himself with ample free time to pursue other goals despite the regular work. The bowyer manages to talk him into a very nice recurve yew, with a smoother draw and more powerful action than his lost homemade one. The carved and dark-stained wood looks beautiful, too, though the cost leaves Piper not only grateful for his newfound employment, but looking for exterminator jobs on the side.

The sewer work, while as repugnant as ever, is mercifully dull, as they explore ducts and byways underneath the scholar's quarters for a time. The mapsmith recognizes that they need to return to the Freedom Park region eventually, but for now he seems quite content to show it a wide berth.

Down once again in the darkness, Piper is playing a quiet tune for his own entertainment, while the Zerda measures out the curved walls of the short tunnel they are currently in. The Gallah is forced to crouch in the muck flowing through, as the tunnel is too short for even the smaller fox to stand upright in, but the acoustics are fascinating, making strange echoes of his piping.

The Gallah hobbles a few inches along the tunnel, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the Zerda is all right before playing a tune at high speed and then perking an ear to listen to it echo back at him. "My playing is not disturbing you, is it Messieur?"

"Mmmm?" The Zerda looks away from the measuring string in his hand, and the thread droops, unattended. "No, not at all," he replies, while the echoes of the song die down around them. "It's rather pretty, really." His last words are spoken over a warbling trill, so distorted by the walls that it doesn't sound like Piper's playing at all, now.

"Merci," the Gallah barks. He puts his pipes to his lips and plays a soft keening melody, this time trying to see if he can incorporate the echo into the music at all.

Jojo turns back to his measuring, scribbling some notes onto a slate. This time, the echoing seems to start almost immediately, and the notes resound in a deeper, more mellow tone than the sound of his pipes. Oddly, instead of coming from all around, the strongest sound of the echo comes from the far end of the narrow tunnel.

Piper takes his instrument from his lips and whistles softly, trying to make his voice carry to the end of the tunnel, but keeping it soft enough to keep the echo down.

The whistling must be too faint, because no echo bears it back. He does hear a faint, irregular splashing sound that soon fades, however.

"Messieur, I am going to check something up ahead. I think a vermite has fallen into the water, or perhaps some other creature." The Gallah pockets his pipes and waddles further up the tunnel. "I will not be wandering too far. Just call if you need me."

"Er, all right." The map-maker's big ears twitch, a sign that he's worried about something, but he seems too intent on his measurements to panic yet. The canine makes his way farther along, holding aloft one of the two shuttered lanterns the pair brought with them. His feet slosh through ankle-deep muck for several yards, then he almost falls forward as the floor of the tunnel drops a foot, plunging him into calf-high filth as the liquid-level remains the same. The tunnel walls broaden here, flanging into an open, cavernous space.

Piper straightens himself out in the open area, grateful to be able to put his spine right again. He holds the lantern aloft and whistles again, imitating a chirruping Creen, a squeaking vermite, and a couple of bug chitters he's remembered.

The calls echo in the cavern, resounding back to him, and then he hears an answering squeak from an actual vermite, to the south end of the cavern, and the echo of a soft splash from the west, just audible over the faint churning of distant pumps.

The Gallah draws out his bow, holding onto it with a deathgrip this time as he walks closer to the source of the splashing. The vermite is probably capable of taking care of itself, and is doubtful to cause any harm to the Zerda.

Footing on the slick floor is tricky, and gets more so as he realizes the ground is sloping further, and soon the slop comes halfway up his thighs as he cautiously crosses to the west end. No further splashing beyond his own is audible, though he feels an undertow in the water around his feet, gently tugging him westwards.

Piper stops walking and leans back slightly to brace himself against the current. He notches an arrow into his bow and perks his ears, this time just listening to the noises around him.

After a few seconds, the remaining echoes of his splashing fade out entirely, leaving only the distant chittering of a pair of vermites, and the soft swooshing noise of the pump. A piercing skreeeing sound cuts through it all, startling the canine until he realizes it's just Jojo's chalk at a bad angle on a slate. Something lumpy and slimy brushes past his knee, floating along the current.

The Gallah takes a moment to put the handle of the lantern in his mouth, wincing at the taste of it. He draws his bow out again and starts to walk back to rejoin the mapmaker.

Faint sloshing noises echo again as he retreats back to Jojo's position, but no other fresh sounds. The mapmaker glances up from his slate as the canine returns. "Did you, uh, catch it?" he asks.

"Nuh," Piper mutters through the lamp handle as he resettles his items back in their places. He switches the lantern back to his hand once his bow it put away. "I think I was just hearing garbage moving about, Messieur. But you should know that the water gets deeper up ahead, and there is a bit of an undercurrent."

"Undercurrent?" The Zerda rubs his head, glancing at his pack. "Maybe there's a submerged tunnel in there," he remarks, "or another pump? Mph." He settles his slate into the pack and lugs it to the end of the tunnel, wrinkling his noise as he pans it across the cavern. "Ugh. This one's big." He rummages through his pack, pulling out a collapsible rod and unfolding it.

"There is a drop, and it gets deeper along the way. Mind yourself, Messieur." The Gallah keeps his eyes on the water, hoping that the thing that brushed against his leg was just a piece of trash.

More lumps of unidentifiable matter – or at least matter he wouldn't want to identify – bob on the slick and fairly smooth surface of the sewage. Jojo nods to his companion, taking the unfolded stick and poking the ceiling with it clumsily. He collapses a few segments until it fits precisely from the top of the cavern to the floor where he stands, and then he repeats the motions in different places around the room. "Ugh," he repeats as he continues. "This floor is horrible. It's all different heights!"

"Do you know why it would be so, Messieur?" Piper cranes his neck and takes an experimental whiff of the air. "Perhaps it was made to lead the water down a certain direction?"

"Probably at one time," Jojo concedes. "But now a lot of the bricks must've settled out of place or further down … it's, uh, not just one grade. What a pain! It'll take me hours to figure out just what it's like." He gives another sigh of longsuffering, and continues his work, jotting down measurements.

"Mind yourself, Messieur. I would not want you to fall down a hole or get swept away." He transfers the lantern back into his mouth and pulls his bow out again. Holding it loosely for now.

"Oh! Uh, I will." The Zerda looks nervously down to where his feet must be, hidden beneath a couple of feet of sewage. He makes clucking sounds as he jots down notes, moving around the cavern and marking out the various exits to it and their heights. After some hours, he cries out, "Aha! Here it is."

Piper ties the tails of some dead vermites together and sticks them in his quiver for storage. "What did you find, Messieur?

"This is where the current's flowing to," the Zerda says, triumphant, pointing to a spot near the western side, where Piper had explored initially. "I wonder if it leads to an abandoned treatment plant?" He digs out his coil of measuring thread, ties a lead weight to it, and starts letting it down into the submerged hole he's discovered.

The Gallah carefully walks closer to Jojo. "Would it be completely submerged, Messieur? I do not think that sewer sludge is good to dive in."

The canine loses count of the number of foot-knots tied into the string that go past as the Zerda lets it drop into the liquid. "I sure won't be!" he agrees, fervently. "This is … uh … some deep hole." Abruptly, the tension on the thread releases, and it stops pointing directly down, drifting loose in little circles instead. Jojo frowns.

Piper tilts his head to the side. "Has it gotten caught on something, Messieur?"

"I don't … " The desert fox draws some of the string back, then tries to let it down again, but it coils on the surface rather than descending. He grumbles under his breath. "The weight must've, uh, come loose." He draws the string up quickly, pulling it back until the smooth-cut end of it appears. Jojo stands with it in hand for a moment, his mouth open to gape at the thread.

"Perhaps a fish thought it was a lure," the Gallah barks, smiling nervously for a moment. "Has it been untied or cut?"

He pokes the end tentatively with a finger, as if he expects it to bite. "Uh … cut." His ears go flat against his head, and he twitches his face around as if afraid someone – or thing – is watching them.

"I could shoot an arrow down there, Messieur, but the water would stop it after a short distance. Why don't you try another weight and see if it happens again? Perhaps if there is a plant, there is a turbine that is still spinning, oui?" Piper smiles reassuringly.

"Oh!" The Zerda's ears perk. "That'd make sense!" He loops another weight around then, and after making note of the last knot and its color (the strings' knots come in various colors, which seems to mean something to the Zerda) he lets the thread down once more. A minute later, he gives a sharp yelp and his arms jerk suddenly downwards, following the string.

Piper dives after the Zerda, trying to grab him before he gets pulled under.

The Gallah's hands wrap around the waist of the startled fox, who sputters as his face hits the liquid, then the tug on him stops abruptly as he releases the string, and flails around, trying to right himself again.

The Gallah staggers backwards as the pull stops. He struggles to keep his balance and that of the Zerda's as well. "Messieur! Be still, if we slip here we might get pulled down that hole!"

Jojo wails again, but he stops thrashing around, and in short order Piper has recovered his balance after staggering back a few feet from the drop, bearing the desert fox with him. The mapmaker touches his feet tentatively to the slick floor, staring at his empty hands. "It ate my measuring thread!"

"Perhaps you should mark that spot on your map as a place not to go into?" Piper shakes himself off. "If it is a turbine, your thread may have gotten tangled up in it this time instead of simply being cut. Maybe we can find another entrance to there as you continue your work, Messieur?"

"Uh … yeah." The little fox trembles nervously. "Sure. I, uh, don't need to know this part. Uh. Yet. Or, um, maybe, ever." He shuffles his pack higher onto his shoulder. "Let's, er, call it a day, okay?"

The Gallah bobs his head up and down. "Happy to, Messieur! You can get your string replaced and I can get the bounties in on the vermites I've caught. It sounds like quite the productive day."