[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/KFCQcTH.png[/img][/center]
[center][color=0869ec][h1]Ananta Aroa[/h1][/color][/center]

[center][b]//O8 [/b][/center]
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Ananta had heard much of Oratorio, before her coming. A symptom of the location of her old home. With its relative close proximity, hardly a day would go by without at least a single outsider arriving and professing how it would be they who would conquer the depths. How it would be they who would become the next Sword of Varanasi, or whatever other great legend that the nobodies wrongly thought they had a chance to become. Those types are often the ones that you never hear about again.

But more than the fools who cannot comprehend the magnitude of the journey they are about to undertake, Kamal, alongside its status as a strong general hub for adventurers, can be called something of a retirement town for those who’ve had their fill of the Abyss that Oratorio imprisons. Be it those that have become too injured to continue their delving, those who have had their fill of the danger, or the lucky few who have lived to an old age, there is plenty of reliable and not so reliable tales one can collect from the folk of Kamal. 

Much of the time, one does not even need to bother asking. So long as one hangs around the local taverns or the guild, you will surely overhear at least two separate tales of greatness or stories of embarrassment being spouted off by someone or other. Usually, the tales of greatness are epics of bravery and adventure, primarily about the trials they grappled with in the Abyss. The stories of embarrassment were much more often found to hold the setting of the city of Oratorio itself.

The way Oratorio was described varied in each and every tale. For every one that described it as some variation of glorious splendor, there were at least four or five others to counterbalance that called attention to a revolting underbelly of some sort. It was a contrast, many said. The further up you could pull your gaze, the more beautiful it would become, and the further down your eyes were dragged, the more horrid.

It was a contrast that, upon setting her sights on the city for the first time, Ananta found herself agreeing with. 

But at the same time, it was not a sight that she could muster up any kind of special feeling for. How could Ananta, when she’d glimpsed and journeyed through cities of much the same states? Indeed, it was a clear, horrible showing of class divide, but that was the reality of any city. As was the smell, and as was the state of the homes. The truth of the matter was that Oratorio was nothing special… at least, outside of the Abyss it surrounded.

It did not take long for her to break into the slums of the city, from the hill she had glimpsed it on. The people of it were as standard as slum dwellers came. Their clothing was so unwashed that the environment they lived in had become one with it, and the stench as well. All who entered and passed by Ananta’s hooded gaze were some manner of sickly, clearly showing signs of illnesses that, in many other towns and villages, had long since been extinguished.

Some had eyed her cloaked form, sizing her up, but would turn their sight elsewhere upon glimpsing what she carried with her. Ananta could guess that they would try to find another, less equipped adventurer as their next mark, or a fellow slum dweller. 

Her pace was steady, and filled with purpose. The slums, though familiar to her in many ways, were not her goal.

Like the legends and the fools both who had come before her, Ananta’s destination lay past the slums, below the road, and through the Underpass. 

Her destination lay, instead, in the den of fools.

The Adventurer’s District, and the Abyss beyond it.

Approaching the Underpass, Ananta moved in time with the ticking of her heart.