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It is as you had hoped. The Self-Sequestration has managed to staunch the flow. Under better circumstances, you might be sighing in relief right now, but you are currently fifteen feet above the bottom of the well, and right at eye level with the Strange-Stain that your blood just left behind. You had hoped that you managed to yank your finger out of there quick enough that very little blood would be left behind, but as the Stain is still spreading, it looks like that simply was not the case.
As you resume your descent, you realize that as bad as this slip-up was, it could have easily gone much, much worse. What if you had ended up spilling blood in a less-isolated area? What if you had been carrying … something, anything on your back while you were hanging there, Self-Sequestering, and it had shifted your center, or tired you out and you ended up falling? With your whole body as Strange as it is from last night’s casting, every little mistake like this become a potential catastrophe, at a time when you simply cannot afford it.
You are loathe to give yourself even more to do, but after this you feel that you should take the time to perform a Salt-Remediation on yourself, as soon as possible. You already have the bathtub ready, though will need to fill it up a bit more … actually, now that you think about it, you should probably start with fresh water, considering just how dirty you got last night. Hell, you might just have to clean the tub itself before you can use it for the spell.
You finish the descent and slip into the side tunnel. As usual, the tunnel is pitch black, but as there is only one way, so long as you do not somehow get turned around in one of the interconnected, buried basements, it should be impossible to get turned around. And even if you did, you would that you did when you turned up back in the bottom of the dried up well and not in the final basement. Blessedly, you do not make that mistake this time – instead, you arrive in that last cellar without further incident.
Your eyes had managed to adjust enough in the darkness of the tunnels that simply entering the basement is enough to make them strain as they start to adjust back. Wanting to rid yourself of all of the disadvantages that you can, you decide to take a moment to allow them to adjust. You walk over towards a window, and stare at the light filtering through the thick, bubbly leaded glass. Once you are satisfied that you are not going to blind yourself once you open up this bulkhead, you stalk on over and after listening to make sure the coast is clear, you ease the door open, and after navigating your way out of the alley, you stride purposefully out onto the plank streets of the Upper Boardwalk. Up here, the stone of the sloping beach is several feet below the boardwalk, and there is relatively little refuse coating the stone, whereas on the Lower Boardwalk, the stone is never more than a foot away, and the refuse sometimes pushes past the planks.
