Poison! DO NOT ENTER!

Lugh’s own fist could have caved in this opening.

[Previously] They journeyed toward the human world via a winding series of underground tunnels.  Once sewers, unfinished subway rails or long-since evaporated water ducts, it was not a path for the faint of heart. 

Nearer to the city’s locked down boarders, the air underground grew drier than a fall leaf.  This change of atmosphere caused some of the Fae to cough.  Iron piping began to appear overhead, and graffiti covered the subterranean walls.  It was difficult to tell how old the urban scrawl might have been. More than once it was a wonder that these humans had found their way this far to begin with.  Had they been living down here?

Without the measure of sun, moon or stars, an inestimable amount of time passed before the group found themselves at the threshold of a knocked out wall.  Judging by warped rebar that protruded from the jagged, concrete edges, Lugh’s own fist could have caved in this opening.

Eventually they came to a disused manhole ladder, encircled with rusty rings, which led up the side of the wall to a door.  It was dubiously bolted to the walls still, the dry air had probably helped slow the rate of decomposition.  The fae had noticed along the way the uncomfortably decreasing plant-life the closer to city limits they came.

“How have you humans survived so long in a wasteland? We would all have perished in a world like this; this is why we no longer enter your world, until now...”

“We have a Greenhouse!” blurted a mousy, young girl who’d been silent until now.  Her hair was dingy and unwashed, but her face was round with a button-nose that sported a smear of dirt.

           The human leader shot her a silencing look and she slumped dejectedly. “We don’t live in the city proper.” Xan informed as he pushed open a door at the top of the platform. The other side was marked with a symbol that screamed Poison! Do not enter!  “Once the wall was built, the city began to recede inward as resources dried up.  Out here on the Edge there’s a whole network of abandoned underground.”

Poison! DO NOT ENTER!

           The Pixies slipped through the hazard door in silent single-file.  Gwydd visually scouted the tunnel stretching away in both directions, noting the strange symbol on the door.  She made a note to herself to ask about it once they had reached their destination.              
            “We’re almost there,” Xan informed. “Keep in mind, the Greenhouse isn’t the City proper. Though technically inside the walls, we are still a couple miles out from where the population line picks up.  No one ventures to the actual Edge any more.”
             They turned to the right and the corridor began to angle upward.  Moisture was tingeing the air, if somewhat acridly.  In the cracks and crannies, thin moss and lichen could be seen adding their wet-green color to this otherwise drab world.

“Why not?” asked one the wyldefae, dragging her finger along a dusty wall.

            “You’ll see eventually.” His scruffy chin brushed his cargo jacket as he looked back over his shoulder at the Fae.  “In short: it’s a deadzone.  Now, watch your grip,” he nodded up at the manhole ladder, took hold, and hoisted himself up the first rung.

To be continued!...