Crysalis: Merrill's Tale

Cerberus

“Rope, we definitely…”

“…need a long rope.”

The voices jerked me out of the reverie I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen into. I looked around. We were approaching Muttville, the boys’ home and, in many ways, my own. Sure, I grew up at the Brainery and was born in its crèche, but home is a different concept there. Muttville is warm and welcoming and comforting. The Brainery isn’t.

A wide crevice, a deep c***k in the rocky substance of Tredecim, loomed before us. A rickety suspension bridge shot across its expanse, cutting one thin line across the inky blackness far, far below. No one knew quite how deep the ravine was here, but the Great c***k made a good barrier to protect Muttville.

No one is sure exactly how long Muttville has been around, either, but those of us who’ve studied it—mainly me, in other words—think it dates back at least to the first plague, i.e. within the first hundred years of Tredecim’s existence. Muttville has grown even since I first visited it, for sure, and it’ll continue to grow: radiation is always with us, and with some of us more than others, especially the further out you go towards the surface of our little world. And since mutts are either aggressively unwelcome or actively hunted and killed in some sectors, it only made sense for the ones who can manage it to congregate together in a safe and easily defendable spot. Of course, being human after all, regardless of multiple heads, legs, arms and so forth, they had first settled in a wide-open area between a cliff and a small lake. But the original settlers, creatively-limbed and otherwise, weren’t any more stupid than so-called norms, so they at once began fortifying their selected spot. In other words, Muttville folks, exposed on a plain, realized they would one day need a place to hide. Luckily for them, a convenient quake helped out, and the c***k split in front of the original settlement, with only a few huts toppling inside and minimal loss of life. Now, after what we suspect may be three to four hundred years of constant building of battlements and such, the settlement of Muttville is as secure as possible under the circumstances.

The Great c***k in front and looping around, several small spring-filled lakes so a steady water supply, then cliff behind. The cliff rises several hundred feet to the top of the cavern and is honeycombed with openings, a lot of them hung with rock-colored homespun or their mouths carved in jagged, natural shapes. The original plain, the part that hasn’t been bifurcated by the c***k, is encircled by high-piled rock walls and thick with labyrinths of fungus, mushrooms and other crops, with cleverly-camouflaged hydroponic tanks scattered about near the ponds. Tunnels, carved out by a team of miner-alts who’d showed up from somewhere and had been asked to stay, snake below the plain, joining up with the ones carved in the cliff and with their other ends opening in walls of the c***k. Ledges and platforms snake down the c***k itself, offshoot colonies and places for quiet reflection away from the bustle of town.

And even if some i***t group or other decides they fell like a holy war and need to purge Tredecim of the mutts, they’re going to be out of luck. No one can enter the town proper without being vouched for by Cerberus. And yes, he, does have three heads; it runs in the family. I’ve known two so far, Eleven and Thirteen. Twelve died young after ingesting too many pickled eels: three mouths, one stomach, you do the math.