Page 84 of Crossing Quinn

Chapter Eighteen

As it turned out, cleaning up the dung was pretty drekking hard. The Tanezumi, ratlike creatures with long tails, lived in tunnels beneath Tanith’s cities. A lot of the passageways were too small for someone of Quinn’s size to fit. Me? I was tiny enough to travel down the narrowest tunnel. Color me happy.

Aruid, the tubby warrior Zarek had put in charge of tunnel operations, was an arrogant, lecherous ass. “On your comm screens you will find your room and tunnel assignments. Any attempts to enter each other’s room will be reported to the Overlord.” Aruid paused, and a ravenous desire filled his eyes. “A female with your abilities deserves a full-blooded Coletti, not a hybrid.”

“It’s not your decision to make. It’s the Overlord’s,” I snapped.

The lecherous ass smiled. “As is proper. Please note that your duties include the lower thirty tunnels.”

“Thirty tunnels? This can’t be right,” I exclaimed.

“Those are the Overlord’s instructions,” Aruid said with a smirk. “Your tasks must be completed each day.”

Quinn growled in my head, “I don’t like the way Aruid is looking at you.”

“Me either. If he keeps it up, I’ll introduce him to my fireballs.”

“If you need anything, Xenia, please come to me. I know how to treat a female properly,” Aruid said, licking his lips obscenely.

Quinn pulled his sword. “Touch Xenia and I will kill you.”

“Weapons are not permitted in the tunnels,” Aruid replied and teleported away.

I grimaced in disgust. “Ugh. What a cowardly creep.”

“Stay away from him.”

“Not going to be a problem.” I glanced down at my screen. The instructions read: Dump the dead Tanezumi and their dung into the incinerator chutes. Using a high-pressure hose, you will clean any residual excrement from the cages and replace the bait. Once completed, you will return the traps to the specified locations.

“Let’s get started.” Quinn held out his hand.

I took it. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

“I do. Which is why we got stuck cleaning shit out of the ninth level of hell.”

* * * *

One thing Zarek and Aruid failed to mention was that sometimes the Tanezumis weren’t quite dead. The first time it happened, I had just opened the cage, and a growl like a grizzly bear erupted from the supposedly dead rat. I jumped about a foot, and the rat burst out of the cage with one only one thought on its tiny mind. Kill! The little monster had sharp teeth, and the fight to keep it from chewing on my neck left me covered in dung. I incinerated the nasty thing and danced on the shitty ashes.

Fortunately, the poisoned bait usually killed the rats quickly, but not before they filled the cages with an enormous amount of dung. The stench was horrific. It was a mixture of rotted eggs, ammonia, and death. Ugh. The breathing mask didn’t help at all. My appetite disappeared completely, and I pretty much survived on Quinn’s blood. Even after a long, hot shower I still stank. People avoided Quinn and me like the plague.

Not to mention trying to clean thirty tunnels a day was an impossible task. Using Quinn’s teleporting skills, we somehow managed to pull it off. I also cheated and fireballed as many rats as I could. If the Overlord’s intentions were to keep us too exhausted to mess around, he had accomplished his goal.

At the end of our third week in hell, I wearily dragged a cage down a narrow passageway when my internal radar went on red alert. A sibilant hiss sounded from somewhere behind me.

Quinn immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.”I looked over my shoulder. Funky, milk-white cobra eyes stared back at me. In the shadows I could make out a bulbous body with a long snakelike neck and the head of a raptor.

“Fuck! That’s a nauger!”

The nauger’s mouth opened, exposing needle-sharp teeth. It hissed again.

I groused, “Don’t need to be armed, huh?”

“I’m getting a laser rifle from the armory!”

An emergency siren began to wail.

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