The Low City is gone. The tunnels are still there, most of the people are still there… The breathing tubes are still there. But The Low City was more than those things, whatever it was, some unquantifiable sum of its parts, and that place is gone now. Now comes the time of change, where the people who once lived there and still live where it was must learn what it is now, what it will become. Probably it will become a dead network of tunnels that alien visitors may someday wonder at. Probably. Now is the time to find out.

 

The first conflict ended quickly; someday, if anyone is around to name things, it will likely be called “The Flesh-Tube Riot” or “The First Battle Of The Second Low City War”, with the fractious time at the beginning of the Low City’s history retroactively named The First Low City War. It was hardly a battle, though, or even a riot. It was a spasm, a tearing-apart, as a society at breaking point suddenly went so far beyond that point that it barely even knew where that point had been. It was sudden, shocking, violent, and very very short. Understanding was not reached, parley was not commenced, victory through force was not achieved. Instead, a few hours into the “battle”, as the people tore their home apart like white blood cells in a malfunctioning immune system, a squad of Golnur was seen emerging from some unknown place, hauling between them a huge box on huge wheels, clearly immensely heavy judging by the strain its movement put on their insectoid bodies. Those rioters who saw this odd procession would later say that they had thought little of it, just another group of the Ministry’s thugs, and some of them had even approached with a mind for violence. Then their minds were changed- not changed, but changed, rewritten in some irresistible and incomprehensible way that made them drop whatever weapons, improvised or otherwise, that they may have been carrying, and go home. The Golnur squad made their way all through the Low City, wheeling their strange and terrible box slowly and methodically down every one of the dying city’s tunnels and paths, and as they went so went the citizenry, all returning to wherever they lived, where they sat in the darkness and shook and wondered why they had gone there. The only place they eschewed was those high-set regions that were- had been- the home to the Hohi, in whose name this battle was allegedly being fought. Those tunnels were already empty, and before too long all of the rest of the city was as well. 

 

The people huddled in their homes, as they had been made to, unsure of what had happened, to them and to their city. The Ministry had had a trick up their sleeve, as everyone could have predicted, but what that trick turned out to be… They didn’t even know. They were shaken, apart from one another physically but also socially, as everyone suddenly wondered what other secrets could be hidden from them. Grib and Skitterling and Umbressi and Fallen and Lesh all cowered in the darkness, those with families holding them tight, those without alone in every way possible. Every now and then, the thought occurred to them to leave, to drum up some courage and go out into the streets that were theirs, to bring down the monsters that had done this- whatever this was- to them. And then, suddenly, that thought would die, and they would collapse back to the floor, collapse back into themselves, as they simply waited for whatever would happen to happen. Some, in the instant before that drive suddenly left them, heard the sound of heavy wheels along the stone and dirt ground just outside their doors, and some heard that and more, something else, perhaps the faintest hint of sloshing water. Even if they hadn’t been somehow compelled not to open their doors, even the most curious of citizens would likely have thought better than to look. Nothing good could come of that.

 

In the days that followed, the people of the Low City coped with the terror and isolation in a variety of ways. Some simply went about their lives as best they could without leaving home, putting the situation out of their minds by catching up on chores or hobbies, cleaning and recleaning their homes until their knees were worn red from kneeling. Others wore their knees by praying to whomever they thought would listen. Some sought more practical outlets: those in larger communes or housing complexes worked to support one another by available means, doling out supplies and services to those in need among those they could reach without breaching the mental block keeping them from the streets. Some discovered that they could get around the block by tunneling short distances to other homes, where they could aid or trade with other residents who were otherwise isolated. Some took the opportunity to do the opposite, tunneling into places they ought not be, safe in the knowledge that nobody would be interrupting them any time soon. Some simply broke, alone in the remains of their homes in the remains of their city. Their doors would never open again. And all the while, they breathed the air whose source they now knew, disgusted with every breath but unable to do anything else.

 

Some others were active, but in a rather different way. A more frantic way. There were of course those in the Lesh Ministry, exceptions to the mental compulsion emitted from the box the patrolling Golnur hauled tirelessly. They worked day and night to find some solution to this crisis, debating and plotting and foiling one anothers plots, achieving little. They were, in truth, not so unlike those who simply broke: all they did, they did to stave off the growing understanding that there truly was no way back to how things were before. The Skitterling was out of the bag, so to speak, and the time of unspoken Lesh dominance over the Low City had… well, perhaps not come to an end, but its casual ease was no more. Whether they eventually decided to parley or use force, regardless of how things panned out there would be hard days ahead. The masquerade of Ministerial Benevolence was gone, and regardless of which side an individual might be on they all knew that the fists would be withdrawn from the velvet gloves.

 

On the other end of the conflict, nominally, and yet reacting to these events in much the same way as the Ministry, are the agents of the Adversary. None knows the identity of another, but they are spread throughout the Low City in positions useful to their anonymous employer. Few had given any consideration, any real thought, as to what the end goal of their espionage had been: their jobs had been to steal, to observe, to sabotage, to perform any number of other inscrutable acts in service of an overall goal they didn’t care to know. Their job had been to make money, not ask questions, not think. But now each and every one of them had been blindsided by this latest revelation and its consequences, and were for the first time considering who and what it was that they had been aiding, and what would happen to those who had collaborated with it now. And they knew that it was The Adversary, their employer, who was responsible for this revelation, for the dissemination of the images showing the perversion of the Hohi, the cost of the air they breathed. Among them were, of course, the people who had distributed the pages showing the tormented Hohi at the source of the breathing tubes, but those agents hadn’t really considered the implications of their actions until it was too late. And all of the agents, regardless of their own personal contribution to The Adversary’s aims, knew that it was their benefactor who was responsible; after all, the images had been distributed on paper- real paper- the material on which all their instructions up to this point had been printed, a material which is naturally incredibly rare in the Low City, and yet The Adversary seemed to have in shocking abundance. Some of these agents took this to mean that The Adversary was incredibly wealthy, to have so much paper to throw away. Others took it to mean that The Adversary had, in their espionage, discovered some incredible hidden cache of paper or old world wood. Others suspected a third, more shocking option, but had no one to tell. Such a horrible thing, to have this knowledge, to know more about this situation than almost any other, and be unable to do anything with it. One agent, a Grib named Sharp/Putrid/Overwhelming, took one of the pieces of paper upon which their instructions had been written, and on the blank side wrote a message to their masters begging for instructions, for explanations, for extraction from the Low City which had become so dangerous a place for an unwitting collaborator such as them. Then, the note done, they simply sat in their office, with no way to deliver the message, impotently raging against the consequences of their own actions.

 

As time passes in the aftermath of the battle, days passing silently by as things settle into their new normal, the Low City begins to change. It has already changed, of course, quite irrevocably, but now that change is reflected in its layout as new tunnels are dug between residences and storecaches, the old paths shunned as the opposite of paths. Despite how cramped and convoluted the layout of the Low City has always been, there is naturally a lot of soil, a lot of negative space between the tunnels and hollows, and now those regions become the new tunnels and hollows, the places between places, where people can live. The Skitterlings, who have always made a habit of digging their own tunnels to avoid the main thoroughfares, are the first to popularise this new mode of operation. Some grimly acknowledge the irony that the Skitterllings were often shunned for this practice, but now it is commonplace for the same reason that Skitterlings have always done it: because the formal tunnels are not safe to travel by. The Golnur squads still patrol the official roads and tunnels with their strange wheeled boxes; corroboration between different groups indicate that there is in fact more than one of the boxes, although as nobody can enter the tunnels where they roam it is difficult to verify. Mini-cities have begun to form in the remains of the Low City, networks of homes and other structures that are networked together by the illicit tunnels, forming odd little regions with their own unclear borders, constantly shifting as new tunnels are dug and old ones collapse. In some regions, where one species was more concentrated than others, these mini-nations are divided along those lines. But even within those regions, there is always at least a few out of place, a few whose home has wound up connected to those of another species and so on, and whose residents have just sort of become part of that group, for now. Despite the awfulness of the situation, some barriers are in fact eroding; this likely will not last, as resources become more scarce and tensions rise, but for now there is shockingly little conflict between formerly hostile groups and cultures. Though there is some between groups whose new tunnel networks butt up against one another, everyone has something to offer someone else: the Skitterlings are masters of digging the sort of small, subtle tunnels that can fit between the larger ones of the old city; the Grib quickly regained access to their farms, keenly aware that they are, as ever, essential to everyone’s survival; the Umbressi, while unable to reach their manufacturing hubs due to their bulk and mostly restricted to their own homes, are nonetheless able to repair and jury-rig almost anything that their fellows need; the Fallen, as ever, are mostly isolated within their Cathedral, but have taken to bartering their services as peacekeepers and mercenaries to those groups who have found themselves with less-than-ideal neighbours; and the Lesh… Well. The Lesh always lived mostly among their own. Some Umbressi and Grib who have made contact since martial law began have sought nothing of them but an explanation, but none of the Lesh they have met have been able to give one. They are not the Ministry, they honestly do not know what has been unleashed on them, they are as trapped as anyone else. Truthful as they may be, their words fall on deaf ears. They didn’t even really think of themselves, most of them, as being at the top of the food chain before. But now they crane their heads back to see the heights from which they have fallen, and fear the day that the streets might open up again, and they have to face their former compatriots. 

 

When the ground begins to shake, everyone thinks that the end, the final end, has finally come. Only the oldest recall the last time the ground quaked, and the destruction that came with it, but all know the fear and confusion that comes with such events, are warned from a young age. But these vibrations in the soil are not quite how anyone expected a quake to feel: they are subtler, more long lasting than the sudden and violent shakes that they were taught of. The seismologists, trapped in their homes, know that there were no quakes predicted for this period, but cannot access their equipment to determine the true nature of this phenomenon. If they had, they would know that this is no quake at all. That the vibrations are coming from multiple sources. And that those sources are moving. The people huddle in their homes again, the modicum of comfort and stability brought on by the New Normal destroyed instantly by this new disaster, and they hear in the tunnels and streets beyond the doors that they still cannot bring themselves to open… Sounds. The whole world is shaking, rumbling all around them, and yet still they hear something in those forbidden tunnels. Most assume that it is the sounds of destruction, of tunnels and infrastructure collapsing under seismic assault, but others have their doubts. All anyone can do is wait and see, same as it has been in the weeks prior.

 

When the shakes stop, it takes the sheltering residents some time to notice that something else has ended, too. They have grown so used to their new world, where the tunnels of the old City are no-go-zones rather than the arteries of travel and commerce, that they typically avoid going too close to the old entrances at all lest they accidentally suffer the waves of nausea and misery that place now conjures. But eventually residents drift in that direction on accident… and feel nothing. The prohibition has ended, as abruptly and inexplicably as it started. It takes some time before people begin filtering out into the old streets, leery of the notion that the prohibition could return at any time, that they could once again feel themselves lose control of their minds and bodies. It takes little time for them to realise that this will not happen, as it takes little time for them to come across the first of the Golnur teams, lying dead among the debris of their shattered cargo. The brave and inquisitive Skitterlings and Fallen who pick through the debris of the boxes that the Golnur had been hauling through the tunnels find that the ground beneath their feet is soaked with water that spilled out when the boxes were shattered, and inside the destroyed boxes… nobody can quite say what they find in there. A body, in each, but of what? They appear to have begun decomposing almost as soon as the water was let out, so it is hard to even tell what form the poor things had when they were alive. They seem, to those who have visited the Reservoir, to be somewhat akin to the nameless things that tend to be thrown back when caught by fishermen… but these are larger. Stranger. One soul points out what could have once been a head, one completely unlike that of a fish and more like… Well, there is nothing really to compare it to. Perhaps a Lesh? Perhaps a Grib? It isn’t really much like either. The sense of nausea and misery returns when one examines the things too closely, thinks too much about them, and soon the people move on. After all, there are other mysteries to uncover. Namely, the new… things, that have pierced the tunnels in many places, which run along them in others. They are similar, somewhat, to the flesh-tubes whose nature started this whole crisis, but they are not fleshy. Some Grib point out their similarity to the tubers that they propagate in their farms, but at an unimaginable scale, and of a much stranger texture. Examining the path the things have taken, cutting a few of them open, a conclusion is quickly reached: not tubers, but roots. The entirety of the Low City has been pierced, run through in a hundred places, by a network of massive roots, hundreds of years of growth having occurred in seconds, and of a species none can identify. 

 

Eventually people begin arriving at The Ministry. Some, because they seek answers: it is, after all, the source of all this mess, and presumably those within will be able to explain the mind-warping aquatic creatures in the boxes, and the roots that have infiltrated their home. Others, though, come to The Ministry because they were led there: they followed the roots, all of which make their way down tunnels and through walls until they reach that place. The building, an imposing blocky structure which juts out of the earthen walls of the large chamber into which it is built, has been choked by roots, its exterior covered to the last inch in the things. If The Ministry building had been made from wood, rather than hard stone, it would hardly have looked different to how it does now. The windows are mostly covered in roots too, though some- presumably those which were open when this… happened, have been infiltrated by the roots as well, as they make their way inside as if seeking some unknown destination. The same can be said for the main entrance: at the top of a short flight of steps, where guards ought to have stopped all entry, the roots have penetrated through into the heart of the building, enveloping the hallways as they have the exterior, leaving just enough room for the bravest or most foolhardy of citizens to squeeze through and discover what has become of the institution, the people, who sought to rule over them. Down dark and wood-covered corridors the people creep, their hands brushing against the unfamiliar material as they search for… something. Answers? They just keep finding more questions. The corridors are empty of people, though none can know for certain if this was the case before the roots arrived: perhaps The Ministry has been as deserted as most other workplaces during the lockdown? Perhaps there are people here, but they are trapped beneath the roots, or even turned into them somehow, harvested like nutrients from soil.

 

The answer raises more questions, of course. In the meeting room where some weeks ago now an attempt was made on his life, the explorers find Phlaighin. As it turns out, his salvation in that first attempt merely postponed his end. His body is still fresh, though this doesn’t surprise those present. It is abundantly clear that his end came with the roots, at their hand. Literally. The former Chief Minister of the Low City is suspended in mid-air, his putrefying eyes still recognisably filled with terror as they gaze at the thing that has killed him. At his own double. In that room, the point where all the roots have congregated, stands a figure all but identical to Phlaighin, but for the fact that it is made of wood. It is utterly motionless, as still as any other plant, as any tree- not that the Low City folk have ever seen a tree. It does not move, does not look like it could ever move. And yet it has taken the former de facto leader of their home, the one whom they would all very much have liked to have gotten their hands on, and choked the life from him. It does not move.

 

And yet it speaks. Not from the mouth of the figure in the Ministry, but from its very being, from every inch of root that has grown throughout the Low City, not audibly but into the minds of every citizen still cowering in their homes, those picking their way through the root-choked tunnels, those who have already taken the opportunity to begin looting and those who have rushed to the arms of those loved-ones from whom they have been kept apart all these weeks. 

 

And it says “Hello, dear neighbours. What a joy to finally meet you after all this time. It is the greatest honour to be here with you. In the Low City.”