Genesis Locorum

Within the land of Liberté are several vast city-states. Among the most glamorous is the City Noir. The megalithic buildings pierce the sky with rumors claiming that people could see nacreous clouds from the roofs of these buildings. The Empyreans live lives of luxury at the penthouses of these peaks. Rarely descending to the roads below.

An elevator opens in one of the decadent towers lining the skyline. Clad only in a dark blue suit. His tanned features and dark blue hair mark him as belonging to a demographic rarely seen in the Empyreans’. He exits the elevator and lurks around the penthouse suite.

He passes by several works of art, proudly displayed on the walls. Paintings, sculptures, jewelry. If this were a Dungeon, they could be among its treasures. Yet the man expresses no interest in these beauties. For her is here for one reason.

The blue-clad man steps into the office. He finds a cigar-comping man, who appears to be in his late forties, with an alderman that reveals his avid interest in cuisine.

“So you’re Esteban of the Rouge’s guild?” the man says.

“Yeah,” Esteban says. “It unusual to see an Empyrean come to the Rouges over the Ebony Guards.”

“I think we have a common interest,” the man at the desk wore a suit that was as white as the driven snow.

His mahogany deck matches the other furniture of the building and the walls of the office itself. The floor is dyed red. The wall behind the desk is instead a gigantic window with the skyline of Noir in view. The sunlight illuminated the entire office.

“So what’s the quest then?” Esteban said.

“I have it on good faith you have a history with the Voorhes gang?” the Empyrean said.

“I do,” Esteban said. “Dastards killed my family. Turned my children into monsters.”

“The Ruzlav term ‘vor’ is very appropriate of them,” the white-suited man says. “Unlike you, they do more than merely steal, they consume. They and the rest of the Syndicate ruin the lives of the Eligere and Exsecratii.”

Esteban is skeptical of the man’s concern for the lower two classes. “Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want me to do?”

The white-suited man beckons him closer. Esteban looks out the windows of the office and sees the marvelous skyline.

“The view is different at night,” the man says. “The lights of the cities outshine the stars, casting them into darkness.” He hands him a manilla folder. “These ever-distant brothers and sisters of this star, these suns and daughters of Astra are shrouded by our brilliance. Their cries won’t reach us, much like how the Emperyans are deaf to the pleas of the underground.”

Esteban pours over the contents, revealing maps of Syndicate activity in the abandoned subways and images of vampiric mobsters at the scenes. Clad in bowler hats and ashen-tattered suits.

“Broadway,” the man said. “Heliosphere avenue. There were reports of them scouring local dungeons for something.”

Esteban closes the folder and begins to leave the office.

“As an aside,” the man says, “I want to congratulate you on your marriage.”

Esteban stops his egress. “How do you know about that?”

“Unlike the other Emperyans,” he says. “I’d like to keep a close eye on the underground. Someone has to keep watch over them. A friend from a high place.”

Esteban isn’t sure what to make of the man, he remains suspicious of him as he leaves the office and decides to return to more familiar ground.

“Friends from high places huh?” Esteban takes the elevator and reminisces about his time with the Crimson Hound. His time as a thief working with a famous knight from Charlemagne. He soon exited the tower, on the ground floor. Where the middle-class Eligere populate the streets. His journey is not yet over as he searches for one of his usual exits into the underground. In a remote alleyway, he sees a familiar door door and approaches it.

He knocks on the door. The man on the other side opens a slit in it, revealing a haggard expression. “What’s the password?” the man says.

“I know the moon,” Esteban says. “And this is an alien city.”

The door opens and Esteban enters, he sees that the doorman is a dwarf standing a top of a stool. “Welcome back Esteban,” the dwarf says. His face is as youthful as ever despite his tired expression. Free of both wrinkles and facial hair.

Esteban descends the steps downward, the entrance to what others consider hell, the place where the Exsecratii live, where the most unlucky of souls tread. The Underground.

✦✦✦

Within the Underground. A young girl fights a monster in one of its many Dungeons. A lamia lass with a pink tail. Her fluffy salmon-pink pigtails flow with the wind that blows through the dungeon.

“Ugh,” the girl says. Of all the places to visit.

The sewers surrounding her reek with the stench of both the dead and the droppings of the damned. The monster she faces is a man who was mutated by the dungeon into a rat-like monster.

“Fool, You dare enter my magical realm?” The ratman said.

“Unfortunately,” the girl said. She was given a quest by the Rouge’s Guild to rescue someone who was abducted there. “Time to magicalize!” She takes out a wand and transforms into a new form.

Her salmon-pink hair grows slightly longer and poofier as her clothes change into a frilly dress, with a skirt forming around the beginning of her serpentine tail. Her wand grows into a staff. She uses the magical weapon to shock the ratman with lightning magic. The terrified man flees after taking one too many volts of electricity from the lamia’s attacks.

A chest soon appears, containing gloves and boots. “Of course, Rose,” she says to herself. “You had to take the quest leading you to a dungeon with stuff you can’t wear.”

She takes the gloves and leaves the boots behind. “At least those are clean, you can never tell with a place like this.” She slithers forward into the sewers.

Rose soon finds and encounters more normal vermin. Being careful not to let them make contact with her. She also fights putrid plant life in the waterways, with breath toxic enough to poison her with a single whiff.

“Poisonous plants,” Rose thinks to herself. “Of course.” It didn’t used to be like this. She was once a happy girl living a charmed life as a Eligere living on the ground floor with her parents.

She soon finds the second Sentinel, a larger version of the plants. She tries to fight while keeping her nose shut. But the ferocious flora’s putrid breath wormed its way into her lungs anyway. Rose, now poisoned, struggles to defeat the boss as it proves resistant to her lightning strikes.

The mass of putrid plants and Rose struggle to defeat each other. A battle that is soon interrupted by the plant suddenly igniting.

✦✦✦

Earlier, in another part of the sewers. A crimson-clad little girl wanders the sewers. Her fiery temperament scares away the rats and other vermin. Her chest-length hair moves as if it were flame itself. Her fire spells serve as both illumination and offense as the red wings beneath her arms allow her some ability to fly above the wastewaters.

She encounters several putrid plants, breaking in their fumes. “It doesn’t matter,” she thinks. “Not like death means anything to me.”

She recalls the first time she had died. Crushed by falling debris from an explosion. Her death made news in the underground. She works up nearby a day alter. The second time she died, someone had shot a crossbow in her chess. The building she was in spontaneously combusts, and she woke up in its charred remains. The third time? An entire park was scorched when a car ran her over. Every time she dies, something burns and when the ash clears she is reformed and rejuvenated. She knew not why that was. Only that most people who know of her avoided her like the plague.

She soon hears signs of a struggle nearby and follows the noise to the source. The toxic fumes grow more noxious as she draws closer, she sees a little lamia slithering away from the tendrils of a gigantic mass of poisonous plants. “Rose?” she thought as she recognized the other girl. With an impulse, she takes out her staff. “Magicalize!” she calls out. Her normal attire metamorphoses into a dress similar to the other girl’s with with a crimson hue and stockings. Her hair becomes tied by a ribbon that glows with an incandescent orange. Her staff changes as she uses it to set the boss ablaze.

Sparks fly as the plant mass is engulfed in flames, burning to ash as it falls into the sewage below. Rose tries to dodge the spacial of wastewater but is caught in a wave of the gross fluid.

“Eww,” Rose cries out. She soon sees the other girl. “Raine? What are you doing here?”

Raine approaches Rose with a grumpy expression. “The diner guy said that someone needed help here. Guess they didn’t trust you to handle it alone,” Her condescending tone slightly irks Rose.

“Very funny,” Rose says. A chest soon spawns. Rose opens it and finds several cubes of rubber. A common dungeon substance, used for proofing against electric currents, much like the plant mass.

Rose takes some time to dry off. “I’ll need to take a bath after this, thanks a lot meanie!” She coughs.

“Here,” Raine says, tossing her a phial of antidote. Rose consumes half of the medicine and is cured of her ailment.

“Thanks,” Rose says.

“Things like that are useless to me any—“

“Oh no you don’t, Raine Carnation Cadenza” Rose says. “You know Whisper gets mad every time you die and sets the place on fire.”

“Ugh,” Raine says. She takes the other half of the antidote. Her poison is purged from her body. “And I don’t know why Whisper had to choose that stupid name.”

“It beats ‘Goo-goo Gaga’,” Rose teasingly said.

Raine thinks back on her demises. Every time she dies, every fire sparked by these deaths, an egg is formed from the ashes. Slightly bigger than the last. Within that egg her body reforms and it hatches. She tries to think of the first time that has happened, her true birth, but there is nothing but a haze. “Just what am I?” Raine thinks. A thought that had recurred every day, and each and every time she hatched from her eggs.

The pair of magical girls soon venture forth into the sewers’ depths. There they find more vermin, but also people that are hidden from their sight. A shot is fired and Raine protects Rose from the bullet. Her arm bleeds from the wound but is rapidly healed. Another ability of Raine’s that allows her to regenerate lost tissues and close wounds instantly.

“Tch, it’s had to be the Vanishers,” the phoenixian girl says.

The two girls fend off against the invisible mobsters, aided by their shared ability to sense the mana of nearby lifeforms, and perceive it. One by one, they rout the mobsters from the sewer tunnel and fight their way to a large room.

There they find a captive tied up, a male Arachne. A Nekomata swordsman and a Minotaur are on the other end of the room.

“All right,” the minotaur says. “You better talk or you gonna get a taste of Yaenese steel.”

“I told you,” the captive spider says. “I don’t know nothing about The Shattered! Honest.”

The cat-man solemnly and silently stands, his katana glistens in the dim light. His wavy black hair and two tails frame him as a foreign man to Noir. “You sure picked a dud, Alonso.”

“Tch,” Alonso says, his nose ring gleaming with the shine of the rings on his horns. His suit distinguishes him as a man of wealth and taste that would be out of place in the underground if not for the fact he is connected with the Vanishers.

The two girls realize what is going on and who the captive is. They proceed to rush forward.

“Alright Akira,” Alonso said, “Let’s send this a-hole to the big sleep!”

Akira sighs and moves towards the captive Arachne. He lifts his sword into the air. The Arachne pleads with the mafioso for his life. But as he is about to swing the katana, a bolt of lightning strikes his hands and he drops the blade.

The two men turn around and see the source came from two little ladies. “What the?” Alonso said.

“So you’re the fiends that kidnapped an innocent man?” Raine says.

“We will not permit it,” Rose says. “For in the name of justice, we will stop you!”

“Grr,” the minotaur says. “Vanishers, take care of these brats!” But nobody heeded Alonso’s call. “Vanishers!”

“It seems they had been vanished,” Akira wryly says while reclaiming his blade from the floor.

“If you want something done right…” Alonso and Akira engage the small girls in battle.

Rose makes the first attack, holing her staff high into the air as bolts emerge from it and strike the mobsters. The energy of the lightning charring one of Akir’as tails.

Akira lunges forward and tries to cut Rose down, but she leaps out of the way. Alonso charges at Raine, but she sets his feet on fire with some well-placed spells.

Alonso tries to put out the fires on his legs, giving Raine time to free the captive from his binds.

“They’re taking the spider!” Alonso says.

“Yeah, yeah,” Akira says, “I got it.” He tries to fight Rose and Raine, but their command over fire and lighting combined with Raine’s wings and Rose’s serpentine tail grant them the advantages they need to prevail over the feline swordsman.

The two begin or realize that these little girls are somehow stronger than they expected. “Cheese it,” Alonso says as he flees. Akira knows that his swordsmanship is insufficient against them and sheaths his sword. “It appears you have won this day” before calmly walking away. The girls are left confused by Akira’s behavior.

The sewer serves a significant victory happened and manifests a third chest. This time it contains a pair of staves and more rubber.

The Arachne thanks the kids for freeing him and leaves the room. Rose and Raine leave the dungeon to report their accomplishment to the Rouges.

✦✦✦

A while later, Rose and Raine head to a diner. There they find some of their friends as well as the waitress.

“Welcome ba—“ Lily says. Her four hooves clopped on the floor. “P.U. what stinks?” Her wavy blond locks frame her freckled face as it cascades down her shoulders. Her horse-like ears move down in revulsion of the smell.

“Don’t ask,” Rose says.

“Seems like you two ran into trouble at the sewers,” the waitress said. “You know where the shower is.”

“Thanks,” Rose says as she climbs the stairs to the side of the diner.

The radio tells of a development near the town of Websdale as a Dungeon core was felled and absorbed.

“So you want the all-the-way special again?” the waitress says to Raine.

“Yes please,” Raine says. Her sweet tooth is well noted among both the Coloraturas and the patrons.

“Better you than me,” a blue-haired mermaid says. “I’d choke if I had to swim in the sewage.”

A cyan-haired girl reads a book at one of the tables. “We got it Azalea,” she says with a deadpan tone.

“Where’s Whisper?” Raine said.

“I think they’re out there looking for folks willing to adopt you again,” the waitress says.

A green-haired girl prances around outside, intrigued by the few butterflies that flutter around the underground. Her hooves make a tapping sound as she moves, and her wings block some of the rain from touching the ground.

A wolf-eared girl enters the diner. “Clover found more butterflies again?” she says. Her purple lupine ears on her purple hair had picked up the sound of her giggling from a mile off.

“Yep,” the bespectacled girl says.

“How was your day Anemone?” Lily says.

“Terrible,” Anemonie says. Her lupine tail swishes left and right. “The Rouges had me move to the surface to find a missing woman’s purse.” Her lavender ringlets crowned by a hat decorated by her eponymous flowers exhibit both a regal innocence, while the bangs obscuring her eye give an aura of mystery.

“Least you weren’t tasked by the Rouges to go into the sewers,” Raine said.

“I’m gonna guess you met people calling your dress out of date?” Azelia said. She swims through the air to the sink, using her magic to make a new bubble of water around her head. The orb of water surrounds her cerulean tresses and the large bow adorning it.

“Those were the tame comments!” Anemone said. “Can’t go one day without people calling me a witch.”

“Well my day went swimmingly,” Azelia said. “I visited the aquarium and met some nice friends.”

A Minotaur girl enters the diner with Clover. The latter holding a jar of pretty butterflies in her antlers. The minotaur girl sits on one of the seats only for a noise to be heard as she sits down.

Azelia giggles as the minotaur blushes and checks the seat to find a whoopee cushion. “Azalea!” the horned girl said, her wavy orange hair brushed against the table as she turned to the mermaid. “What did I say about leaving your pranks around the diner.”

“Sorry,” Azelia said in a sing-song tone. “But Strelitzia, you have to admit that is funny.”

“No I do not!” Strelitzia says.

Rose finally slithers back to the diner, having finished her shower and putting on a fresh set of clothes. Her hair left down and reached her waist.

“Anything new happen guys?” Rose says.

“Look at these butterflies,” Clover says as she shows Rose the jar. “Aren’t they cool?” Clover’s beaming smile is framed by her green hair, tied up in small pigtails, and adorned with both ribbons and a deer’s antlers.

The waitress places two slices of chocolate cake with fudge icing atop, and a strawberry to finish the pastry. “Rose, your treat’s ready!” she calls.

Rose slithers down to the pastry and eats it. The sweet taste of the chocolate and fudge nearly makes her forget the sewer.

The children chat with each other and the waitress for a bit. They talk about their day. After a while the diner doors open, and a small more light enters.

“Welcome back Whisper!” the waitress says.

Whisper floats around the room, being greeted by the Coloraturas. The wisp, taking the form of a phantasmal grey squirrel, had arrived after a fruitless day of failing to get the eight girls in their care adopted. “The Eligere are as uninterested as ever,” they grumble.

“How long has been now?” Clover says.

“About two years,” Hydrangea says, putting down her book. Her bob and glasses denote her learned nature. The single snowflake on her newsboy hat evokes associations with winter, ice, and cold.

Rose sighs. She knows they are all orphans, and that none of the orphanages are unwilling to take them in for reasons. The Eligere brand them witches, the Empyreans are too high up their ivory towers to notice them and even some of their fellow Exsceratii seek to exploit them. The only ones that had given them any succor were the Rogues Guild Collegia and Whisper.

Azelia tries to cheer the group up with some jokes, which eventually gets everyone laughing.

Though the sun never illuminates the underground, as most of its rays do not pierce the subterranean buildings and structures that comprise that layer of Noir, the dimming of the few rays of light that do through as well as the city lights turning on tell the diner that night has fallen. Whisper dismisses most of the Diner’s staff for the night, with the only remaining employees being a janitor and the waitress, who leads the girls to their rooms on the floor above the diner. There, the Coloraturas prepare for another night.

✦✦✦

A woman walks down the streets of Noir. Surrounded by both Eligere and the occasional Empyrean. She walks past a store window plastered with advertisements. One depicts a guild hiring adventurers, another is a wanted poster for an escaped criminal, and another still an image of a blacksmith’s services.

Her indigo suit and hair flow with the winds as she walks down the city streets. The cars, centaurs, carriages, and buses passed her by. She stops at a street corner, the traffic blocking her path. She looks back fondly on the day she met a blue-clad man.

She meets a Nekomata woman at the street corner. Her cyan hair and ears and teal blazer let the woman know she is of university age. The girl is assisted by several people of Eastern attire.

The light turns red, the traffic stops and the woman leaves the university-age student without exchanging words. “That girl,” she says. She looks back on the day she transferred from the syndicate to the Rouges Guild.

A previous night, months ago, she traversed the underground, chasing some men who had the misfortune of enraging their boss with constant failure.

Her movements were swift and silent, her leaps graceful and elegant. She soon corners the poor men. Daggers out, she slices the poor men down.

“Curse—“ the last word one of the poor sods uttered as he succumbed to his wound.

The woman leaves the alleyway as quickly as she can. Returning to her employer.

“Excellent work, Julia,” the mobster said as he handed her a sack of silver.

Julia accepts the payment and leaves. That was her life, an assassin, a hitwoman for hire. An agent of death that served the invisible hand of the Syndicate. A murderer with a ledger as stained as her blades.

Yet all that changed when she encountered a man. When the Voorhees Gang had tasked her to slay someone. She had met a suave man. The Azure Rouge, Esteban. He had foiled her attempts on the lives of her mark time and time again. Questioning her on why she had to kill innocents.

With each mission, she had asked those same questions.

At the other side of the road, she recalls a proposal, and also a trip to a dungeon. The dungeons once an abandoned jewelry store, became known for the production of enchanted golden bands. Traversing the dungeon, Julia fights the gremlins that cover their precious precious rings. She recalls the day she quit the Syndicate and joined the Rouge Guild as she fought them. The feelings of tiredness and guilt consumed her with each soul she sentenced to the hereafter. The same song and dance, at least here she is assured that the monsters she slays in dungeons would live again afterward.

Still, she prefers stealth to direct combat. She moves around the shadows of the dungeon until she fights the first boss. A gigantic Constrct in the shape of several rings.

“Someone thinks too highly of themselves,” Julia says as she stares at the creature. The construct, resembling what some people think is the true form of certain Messengers, attacks the assassin with beams of light. Julia dodges and throws her blade into one of the ring’s myriad eyes.

Though it seemed to have felt no pain, one of the golden bands’ eyes was rendered unable to fire its beams of light. She uses her knives to blind it even more, blocking its attacks from firing and in some cases, redirecting them backwards towards the center band. The construct eventually falls.

A chest appears, and inside lies what she wanted to get. A single gold band, adorned with a diamond. She takes the ring and returns home.

Julia then arrives at a mall, one of several places on the surface where the Rouges set up stealth guildhalls. She finds an elven barbarian claiming his reward for a quest he did, as well as a cyclops dancing to the music of a nearby radio and a satyr drunkenly and futilely trying to chat up a mermaid.

Her mind looks back at the day after her trip to that dungeon. Ring in hand she approaches the who proposed to her, a man that she had met before time and time again. Clad in blue, her brown skin was merely a few shades lighter than his.

“Welcome back, Julia,” The man says. A tinge of warmth emanates from his voice. The voice of a man who had become very familiar to her. And she to him.

“Were you up to anything new lately?” Julia says. On the countertop lies a diamond ring sitting in its box. A ring that the man used to propose to Julia.

“Just the usual,” the man says. A dark blue suit stands on a clothes rack, one of several similar attire in the house.

Over dinner the two talk about their day and lives. After the dishes are cleaned and tucked away, Julia presents to him a box.

“You’ve no idea the trouble I went through to get this,” Julia thought.

The man looks inside the box and sees the diamond ring Julia procured. A tinge of joy can be seen on his face. The man, normally unflappable, embraces and lifts Julia into the air in celebration of her answer to his proposal. A custom in Titania that involves both parties presenting each other with bands of eternal love. The acceptance of a proposal by in turn offering an equivalent item in response.

Back in the present, Julia has returned home from her errands and quests. Her bag is filled with several items bought from stores as well as some loot obtained from dungeons.

The man notices the presence of his recently wed wife, “Welcome home, dear.” He says in a warm time.

Julia places her items on the kitchen table. She sees a manilla folder that is already there.

“Found something interesting,” Julia says. “Esteban?”

✦✦✦

A Nekomata girl is sitting on her chair in her hotel room. She looks over the data she had gathered from several items she procured from Dungeons.

One of her entourage hands her a letter. Her dark skin contrasts with her bleached blond hair. “Akko-chan?” the dark-skinned girl says.

The two-tailed and twin-tailed cat-girl turns around and sees the letter. The message turns out to be an invitation to a party in Gatsby Tower.

“A party?” she thinks. She is aware that that dungeon is home to many types of parties, usually either celebrations or people trying to raid the tower for its artworks. Further examination of the invitation reveals it to be the former, and that it would be held in a couple of months. The excuse du jour was the capture of an Excrasatii criminal who had made a habit of invading Emperyan homes and robbing them blind.

“Interesting,” the cat-girl says. “Thank you, Hoshi.”

The other girl leaves the room.

The Nekomata looks at the mirror on the table. In her reflection, she sees a woman with long cyan hair, tied into two ponytails that swirl around in a giant ringlet each. The reflection dons a teal blazer suit, a gift from the university she graduated from. She notices that there is something on her pale skin, a bug, an insect, and swats it off her arm.

Examining the items she finds nothing of use in her goals. “Crap!” she says with frustration. “Is there anything in this city that can help?”

Her eyes return to the invitation. She knows that several Emperyans gather at Gatsby Tower regularly and that many of them are leaders in the study of Dungeons or are dungeons themselves.

Another of her retainers arrives. His short black hair contrasted his with pale skin. “Atsuko-san?”

“Yes?” Atsuko says.

“I bear word of a dungeon overseen by the Rosenkreuz collegia that is rumored to possess advanced technology as its treasures.”

“Saizo,” Atsuko sighs. Time and time again she has heard rumors of supposedly special dungeons, and each and every time, she has learned that they are more mundane than what the hype claimed it is or that their qualities are not germane to their goals. “Do you have any proof of this?”

“I’m sorry, my lady,” Saizo says. “I do not have any evidence, but if I am allowed to lead an excursion there—“

Atsuko interrupts him. “Go ahead,” she says.

Saizo is stunned. “M-my lady?”

“We’ve chased so many wild geese ever since we arrived at Noir,” Atsuko says. “What’s one more? Besides we haven’t tried the New Virginia area yet. Take Noboru, Iyashi, and Suzume with you.”

“Of course, my lady,” Saizo leaves the room to prepare for his search.

Atsuko looks back at the items and the instruments surrounding them. “The dungeons within,” she muses on her thesis, her idea of a microcosmos inside every item generated by a dungeon. “The theories are sound, I’m certain of it, but,” she thinks. She looks back on the number of dungeons she visited, the ones she tested to see if they could withstand the experiences needed to venture into the microcosmos unscathed, and the ones that had failed these tests. The most promising ones she found so far were unable to withstand the voyage and their cores were left scarred by the process.

Atsuko looks back at a portrait of her family from Yae Shoto, where she hails from. She knows she cannot return to her homeland now, not when there is turmoil and strife at the isles. She wonders if her research can help quell these tensions or make them worse.

She ponders on the make-up of the dungeons. “Most of the ones I tested thus far were Natural Dungeons,” she thinks. “Maybe if I could find a Divine Dungeon…”

Her time in Noir and her correspondents back at Yae revealed to her the existence of dungeons supposedly forged by gods. Deities that she was unfamiliar with back at Yale. She is familiar with the idea of Messengers, even encountering some in both Yae and Liberté.

“A dungeon that is also a Messenger,” she ponders. Her musing is interrupted when a stewardess arrives with a cart.

“Room service!” the stewardess calls. Atsuko turns to the employee and learns that someone has placed an order for the hotel staff.

“Hoshi,” Atsuko calls. “Your orders here!”

“Coming!” Hoshi says from another room. The dark-skinned girl clams her order and the stewardess leaves.

“At least we gathered a large amount of money from these excursions,” Atsuko says as she sees her lifelong friend eat her food.

“Make sure I get some next time,” Atsuko says.

The night falls and Atsuko prepares to rest for the evening.

✦✦✦

At the diner, Strelitizia has trouble sleeping. Her mind is haunted by a nightmare. She finds herself in a labyrinthine place, surrounded by the bones of the people unfortunate enough to be there. Demonic bulls prowl the maze, searching for her.

“Consume,” the bulls bellow—the command echoing through the halls of the labyrinth. Strelitzia suddenly finds herself at a table, her body bound to the chair as a server places a plate in front of her.

As the food is about to be revealed, the dream ends, and the young minotaur wakes up in a cold sweat, her breathing labored as she realizes the true nature of her nightmare.

The next morning, everyone arrives at the diner for breakfast. Whisper has already asked the employee to create food for the children. Rose is busy eating a towering stack of chocolate pancakes. Raine is greeted by waffles with a side of oranges. Lily gazes upon the usual display of muffins and orange juice. Hydrangea takes a bite of her bagel as she reads a novel about teenage detectives. Azalea has her usual order of fried fish with a side of cinnamon toast. Clover eats three slices of toast and Strelitzia has some scrambled eggs.

As they eat their breakfast. Strelitizia looks at Clover with a pang of regret as she recalls the nightmare and what it represents. A distorted memory. She looks back on the day she escaped the dungeon where she was born and raised, a labyrinth, where people were sacrificed to it in offerings to one of the Administrators.

“Strelitizia?” Clover says. The minotaur is knocked out of her daze by the call of her name and looks to her peryton friend. The antlers of a deerlet adorn her verdant hair. With wings similar in shape and position to Raine’s folded. Her two cloven hooves move around as she sits beside Strelitizia. This was the first friend the minotaur made in the labyrinth.

“Yes?” Strelitzia says to Clover.

Clover noticed small bags under Strelitizia’s eyes, a subtle but constant reminder of her trouble sleeping. “Did you have a bad dream again?” she says.

Strelitzia sighs as she moves her fork over her eggs. “That obvious huh?” Her horns nearly touch the window as she rubs her eyes.

The phantom squirrel moves to their table. “Was it about the labyrinth again?”

“Yeah,” Strelitizia says.

For as long as the minotaur has lived at the diner, Whisper had known about the nightmares. They had known since the night Strelitizia and Clover were discovered collapsed on the nearby street. They had tried to get help for her, but the local shrinks couldn't find anything wrong with her brain.

The children finish their food and begin to go about their day. Clover leaves with Strelitizia for one of the Rouge’s guildhalls, used to educate young children. The green-haired peryton girl looks at her orange-haired friend.

“You didn’t know,” Clover said, trying to soothe her tormented friend.

“I know,” Strelitizia said. “But they…” She struggles to finish her sentence as they arrive at a subway station, one of many scattered through Noir, connecting the underground with the surface. The two enter a train as it stops to pick up its passengers. Strelitzia takes the first step with her bovine-like legs, and the two girls take their seats.

The radio tells of the day’s news, a breakthrough in insulin shock therapy was announced. The debut of a new automobile model. An incident involving a fire. A missing Dungeon core. All these and other stories were heard over the radio as Strelitzia and Clover looked outside the train’s windows and into the dismal underground streets. Full of run-down apartments and people huddled over burning waste cans. An omnipresent and familiar sight, and a far cry from the clean streets and shining buildings of the surface.

The train stops at its destination and the two girls leave. They walk the rest of the way to the guildhall and greet the older adventurers in its ranks.

The two head to several classes, mathematics, language arts, spell practice, and for Streltiiza, axe handling. She practices with a hatchet as her weapon, slicing at several training dummies.

The teachers were impressed by how cleanly she chopped through the wooden dummies, as were the other students. Others however could have been more impressed.

“Is it possible for someone so small to be so strong?” a dwarven lad says with a hint of lament at his inadequacies.

“She cut through that dummy like a knife through butter!” a boy says with surprise.

“Wouldn't want to be the poor sap that has to fight her,” a young girl says.

Strelitiza ignores these comments and looks at the dummy. Cut in two by her chops. Her skill with an axe is the only thing she knows she could be proud of, for it was what helped her escape the labyrinth. Yet she also knows it came at a heavy cost. She thinks about her deceased parents as she looks at the wooden remains.

A while later, the axe class and school are over. The younger adventurers leave their classrooms. Clover greets Strelitizia. “So how were the axe lessons?”

“They went well,” Strelitizia said. “Teacher wants me to try with a battle axe next time.”

“Really? “Clover says. “That’s awesome! Mine just looks at me and says ‘That is not ladylike, young ma’am’. Like what does she think we are, Emperyans?”

“Must be nice to think we have a shot at life at the upper levels,” Streltizia says. “Despite the Rouges’ best efforts, only a few of us escaped this place for good.” She sighs as she wonders what life would be like if she had managed to break outside Noir. Her tail is stiffed by melancholic lamentations.

“Don’t worry,” Clover says. “I’m sure Whisper will get us adopted in no time flat!”

Azalea greets the two, having just exited her comedy club’s room. “Hey guys, want to hear my new jokes?” she says while floating in place.

“Does it involve fart noises?” Strelitzia says, still irritated at the whoopee cushion gag from the other day.

“Of course not!” Azalea says. “That was a real stinker!”

Clover laughs a little at the pun, but Strelitiza remains unamused.

The three make their way to the subway station. As they enter they pass by a man clad in a pied outfit. The man uses his bardsong to manipulate the rodents in the train and drive them off.

The train soon stops near the diner, the three girls leave the train as it departs. The pied man looks at a flier in his hand. An advertisement from a village in the New Virginia area that needs an exterminator. He thinks it could be his big break.

The train stops at its destination again, a station on the surface that leads to other civilizations. Exsecratii is usually not permitted to use it to exit, but the pied bard had managed to get permission from the city council. He presents a slip of paper to the manager of the trains, having the name “Stanley Piers” on it. The station manager directs him to the train leading to New Virginia. He enters his train and begins his month-long journey.