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[sub][i]Kina City///Dark District[/i][/sub]
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Follow violence.

That was the last directive deciphered from the garbled remains of the Prime Circuit, and Io had followed it since. Endless violence between Kina City and Ghaba Madina, and the nations surrounding them who profited off conflict. The Sentry had gathered much in their last month of activity, and now sought to gather more within the walls of the mountainous fortress-nation.

The sky was blue and bright, clouds splotching cerulean purity with their puffy, white forms. The sun beat down overhead, gently roasting the white stones that Kina City was constructed of. Masses of humanity could be found everywhere, and so could their ideologies. Posters plastered the walls, decrying the atrocities of the beastman and calling for the pureblooded to rise and defend their nation from the savage threat. Crippled veterans stood out on wide-open plazas, the Voice Stones tied around their necks enabling their fiery rhetoric about the immoral, deviant crimes of war committed by their mutant foes to echo through crowds of people whose opinions already aligned with them before this. Off to a corner, an ugly child, forced into a cloak of animal furs, was being beaten by crueller peers. Elsewhere, someone peddled magical tools bearing the mark of Ghaba Madina, having [i]liberated[/i] them from a caravan a few days past.

Io closed their eyes, briefly. They remembered that caravan. Crows chewing intestines, the shattered husk of a carriage left to rot and rust on the bottom of a valley.

They opened them again, recording the face of the merchant, the crowds of prospective customers they drew in. Then turned and walked off. The Hope District was meaningless, the Light District was toothless. If one were to follow violence and vice, the Dark District was the only way to go.

The buildings became taller and the streets narrower. Even in midday, long shadows were cast over the roads and alleyways, the sky becoming slivers amongst the desiccated cesspool that was the Dark District. This was the endpoint of wealth and affluence, the rotten underbelly of prosperity. Io took it all in, their senses sharp enough to draw in all that the district’s citizens have grown numb to. White sheets dried in the stale air, but they’d never be clean, not where it mattered. Children in the body of grown men picked fights with wild abandoned, spitting out teeth as onlookers laughed. Merchants and customers would slit each other’s throats alike if they knew they could get away with it. A degraded noble rocked quietly against a piss-stained wall, thin rags hiding their emaciated frame but doing little to hide the stench of the parasites chewing away their insides.

Io did not shy away from this either. They continued to observe, their green hair flat against their back, their glowing eyes boring into the skulls of all those that required further observation. None of them looked like they would like to be remembered, but the Sentry didn’t care either.

Follow violence.

The nature-infested nation of Ghaba Madina was much nicer, much brighter, much softer. There would be no answers there. A war born had not been born there. No, it was within this melting pot of greed and sadism that a greater conflict had been wrought. Io took it all in. This was where the origin must be. Now, to find i-

A bottle shattered against the back of their head, lukewarm alcohol spilling over their head.

Behind him, a muscled human, a prior target of observation, shouted incoherently at Io, still brandish the weapon, now much more lethal with a dozen jagged points. Io watched him, recording the stream of slurred words into their personal storage without decrypting it. Their Abacus Circuitry spun meaninglessly, feeding garbage statistics to their Logic Circuits, before Io calmly shut them down, and decided to refrain from action.

They’ve judged the man an example of irrational violence: willing to inflict it, but unable to inflict it.

Moments later, Io was proven correct.

A sickening crunch resounded through the alleyways of the Dark District as the man broke three fingers against the Sentry’s slim nose. He howled and screamed, the tantrum of an undeveloped adult, as Io continued to stare, recording his expressions for posterity.