Oratorio, //O3 - Bladerights Estate
_{In collaboration with @ERode}

---

Elys scanned the room, picking up on monochrome ‘feels' of gravity playing off of objects. Her ‘stare’ focused on one item in particular - the humanoid figurine. Hovering, before her attention shifted to the mass as it- she, spoke.

"I'm looking for work, ma'am," Elys said. "Crag said this was a place where a blade could be used."

Yes, Crag had said this was a place where her skills could be used. What she was sensing wasn't lining up, though. There were children here. There were studies. Everything screamed that this place was simply a plain old orphanage, and she could take her staff and move on.

But a singular noise contradicted all of that. The strange noise of wood clacking on wood.

What did it mean?

Elys brought herself back to the conversation, back to the question asked.

What did she value?

A strange question.

Sensations passed through Elys' mind. The smell of smoke, being suffocated under floorboards. The weight of a sword in her hand.

Burning brighter than all of them, ascending the stairs, to the top. Bated breath caught in hopeful lungs.

"I value justice, and a dream."

Another pause.

"Who... am I speaking with?"

That question was left unanswered.

"Come with me," was what Elys heard instead, the presence heading deeper into the estate.

"Who taught you to wield a sword?"

Lips pursed, Elys followed the mass with ease, staff in hand, as they ventured deeper.

"I taught myself, ma'am." A slight pause. "It was... necessary."

There was no response. A door hinge creaked, and the smell of incense was lessened as the outdoor way blew in. The estate had an inner courtyard, where the clacking of wood sounded more loudly now.

Plenty of individuals present. Plenty of pairs, swinging wooden sticks at each other.

The intention became clarified soon enough.

This "ma'am" strode to a rack against a wall, taking two more sticks. One for herself, the other for Elys. Around her, the clacking of wood quieted down, the students shifting to give both women space in the center. A few whispers sounded, curious about the stranger with masked eyes.

"When you're ready."

In one smooth motion, Elys took the stick offered to her while giving her staff to one of the students to hold. Ah, she understood now.

They stood across from each other. Elys’ hand wiped the wooden stick down, getting a feel for its dimensions, before she raised it, lowering her stance.

At once, she shot forward, locked on the mass in front of her. Her stick came down diagonally, and was met with a resounding clack of a block. She struck again, pushing forward, trying to get the mass pinned against the wall. Another strike, and another, before the ‘ma'am’ pushed back.

Elys lost ground, backing out of the strikes as they came. The “ma'am” had a way of making her strikes unpredictable, causing Elys to take another step back.

No matter.

Elys spun, her stick snapping into a scooping motion, before she followed with a furious jab.

Both were parried flawlessly, before the “ma’am” spoke. “Don't lose control.”

Brief confusion flickered across Elys’ pursed lips. How did she know?

A hot exhale of breath, a brief step back, a brief coil, before springing forward again, trying to keep her movements tight and controlled. She began to encircle the mass, trying to find a break in the defense. Diagonal slashes down, from the sides, step, step, more downward slashes. They increased in speed, in fervor-

Clack!

The “ma’am” swatted aside her attack and came narrowly close to striking her chest. Elys sidestepped, feeling the rush of her hair and robes in the wind from the speed.

“Lower the intensity.” The mass said.

Elys’ lips spread into a thin line, feeling her competitiveness begging to go all out.

But this was a sparring match. She just had to play it smart. Difficult, given the experience and skill she was up against.

Her breath was coming in even gasps, her pulse rushing through her ears, body alive and sharp with adrenaline.

This time, she waited for the mass to approach first. This time, she would be ready.

As the monochrome ‘sight’ of masses playing off gravity, and a stick swinging towards her, Elys took a step forward. Her stick parried to the left, pressing the opposing stick to the side enough to leave the ‘ma'am's body open. She took another step forward, aiming to go for the neck.

But, as her stick snapped forward, a familiar weight was pressed against her own neck.

The “ma'am” had easily slipped past Elys’ own defenses, and now they perfectly matched in their spar-ending poses. Noting her opponent's stick, it had actually made contact, while Elys was just an inch off making contact.

Elys took a gasp of air, breathing heavily against the stick against her throat.

"A draw."

Perhaps if both of them moved at their full speed, it would be a different result, but as it stood, there was no difference between a blade at one's throat and a blade an inch away. Neither trajectory was impeded; both swordswomen would have their necks sliced open in sequence.

"You taught yourself how to fight animals and monsters. That has made you direct and forceful, your sword a cleaver. Your footwork is all over the place, made to work more through athleticism than technique."

She retracted the stick.

"But it's an honest style."

Around them, the sound of clacking wood resumed, some sort of unknown signal made for the students around them to go about their own training once more. There was a breath, a rolling of the shoulder, before the woman spoke up once more. "I am Therese, the instructor of the Bladerights. Wield your sword for me, and I shall teach you how a sword may become more than a sword. But if your dream is of more import, then I can offer you a bed and a meal, on the condition that you spar with my students on occasion."

Elys’ lips parted in awe. Was she just… was she just offered a place among their ranks? A place she could call home? A place where She could wield her sword in a good way, with a good name?

It was everything she could have hoped for.

And, sensing the clacks of wooden sticks resume once more, Elys had every reason to settle down here among the children as a fellow acolyte, as a sparring partner.

“That… sounds wonderful…”

But, alas, she knew in her heart she was not meant to stay. Something pulled at her. To the void that existed within the Abyss. The unknown.

There was a slight apologetic look that graced her lips as Elys squared her shoulders.

“Madame Therese, you honor me. Alas, I’m called to the Abyss. I would like it if I could spar with your students here, spend the night, and venture out tomorrow.”

---

And indeed, the words of the child informed Ananta of everything she needed to know.

Well, perhaps that is a small exaggeration. Certainly, Ananta could easily base her decision off of those two words, but whether or not she had the tools to truly help would be another matter entirely. Indeed, for those without a strong innate resistance to such things, even something as simple as a common cold, or an otherwise easily treatable infection, could spell the end for a slumborn of any sort. That was just the reality of the environment her fellows were forced to suffer through.

Indeed, every inch of life was a battle for even something as good and well as air that does not burn the throat. Something that she learned, later in her adventuring career, likely came from an abundance of mold or something similar. Every single aspect of the world that surrounded was actively working against her fellows, all for the sake of dragging them down into the dirt, to proliferate off of their corpses to drag down even more. To survive, you needed to learn how to cope. How to breathe, and how to move. How to walk and run, and how to hide. How to figure out who is diseased, and with what, to know who to avoid and who was an acceptable risk...

But then, she was getting off track. Though the child's situation was far from unique, Ananta wouldn't be particularly surprised if she could find many others in the Underpass looking for help with something similar, there was a chance that she might be of help. It was a small chance, it entirely depended on if what she had on hand was enough to heal the mother... but she would try.

As such, after that moment pause to ponder, Ananta spoke quiet enough for only the child to hear. "I cannot guarantee a cure to whatever might afflict her... however, should I possess something that might assist your mother, I will provide." For the time being, the Abyss had become the furthest thing from Ananta's mind.

Her path, for the time being, had been decided.

"Please, lead the way." She finished, at the same volume as the rest.

She did have some amounts of medicine with her, so there was a chance...

//O11 - Deserted Backstreets
The three thieves traversed through town without much more in terms of fortunate or unfortunate encounters, keeping to themselves as they sought out a proper hideout among the shacks and alleys, the shoddily-made buildings of the Outer Layer. And while the potential hideouts they found couldn’t be considered anywhere fit for one to live in, they certainly could be fit for storing ill-gotten gains or hiding away from angry mobs.

A derelict warehouse, the home of rats the size of one’s hand, offered plentiful boxes for storage, rotten as those boxes were. The rats themselves, so long as one had a long stick, could be temporarily scared off, but there had to be an understanding built here, mutual respect built between mankind and the rats. It would take only one bite to end a life.

The sewers, filled with a nightmarishly sludgy stench, offered another avenue for long-term storage. While entrances were few, the labyrinthian sewers served as a perfect hideout if one wasn’t afraid of getting lost. Of course, hiding spots in sewers didn’t exactly take a genius thief to figure out. Just because the trio didn’t encounter any others within the sewers beneath the Royal Road during their first venture did not mean that they or their loot wouldn’t be discovered by another sewer-venturer down the line.

Other avenues could be found in an abandoned watchtower off to one corner of the district. The structure was a groaning, creaking thing, even on a day with no wind, and it was difficult to gauge just how much longer it would last for. The interior took some actual climbing skill to navigate, and if it collapsed, it would no doubtedly take everything in their hideout with it…but for that same reason, Talia couldn’t imagine anyone else thinking there was anything of value in here. Sometimes, it took a gamble.

But why take a gamble, when you could take a sure thing instead? Local gangs certainly offered such services, and one of the slumlords even offered a small suite in one of their properties free of charge, if only Talia and her men would do him an occasional favor every once in a while. It was certainly more secure than a random hiding spot, and it had the added benefit of serving as a place for them to sleep without worry too.

It was, of course, also a choice that may be naive. How much upwards mobility could she expect, if she were to align herself with an existing gang, while she herself was a total outsider?

The options were before Talia, nonetheless. With her numbers, it’d be difficult to renovate and maintain more than one of these potential hideouts.
_@OwO

---

//A14 - Slaughterhouse No. 4
The dwarven woman let out a low whistle as the chains suspending the sandbag creaked rhythmically. The genetics of a dragonkin was nothing to scoff at, certainly, when even a shrimp like Frederika could generate that much force.

“You can hit hard, sure, but plenty o’ hard hitters round these parts. Like yer gusto tho, kid.” She nodded, then turned her attention back to Almagest. “If yer not giving her up permanently, guessin' ya don't know our deal in the Slaughterhouse. We usually take ‘em in, make sure they know their ropes. Then work ‘em up an audience n build a story up to get folks riled up.”

She did some calculations in her head quickly.

“Could bring her into one of the battle royales tonight, but just need ta know, old man. You’re rentin’ her out then? Kid’s not plannin’ on being one o’ my own?”
_@Izurich

---

//O7 - Public Square
The wagoner was a man in his fifties, thickly built with a head that reminded one of a fish: bald and oval in shape, with bugged-out eyes and an overbite. He looked down at Lethe upon the Ichor-Blessed’s approach, blinking twice in the way that someone unaccustomed to people speaking to him did. A flick of his wrists, and the reins on the draft horse snapped, the beast itself slowing to a stop.

“Out the city,” was the response. “Found something you want?”

Around the other side of the wagon, his partner stepped out, more curiosity rather than suspicion in his own gaze. No one had reason to rob the corpse-collectors, after all. “Who’re you to ask anyhow? Don’t look like you’re around these parts.”

An assertion that came, no doubt, from the fact that Lethe had approached them to begin with.
_@Thayr

---

//A3 - The Entrance into the Abyss
As their path continued through the Adventurer’s District, quietude began to descend. It wasn’t due to the decreasing amount of people, no, for there were still plenty of adventurers present. But outside of those who were bold and inexperienced, less of them saw it fit to make merry. They had to get into the headspace for adventure now, after all. An adventure not through the vast lands, but through the forbidden depths, where death and glory was divided by a borderline the width of one’s blade-edge. Grand walls loomed before Theodore and the mining crew, and rather than entering through any ground-level gate, they were marched up the staircases instead, trudging up higher and higher until they joined many other adventurers upon the tops of the walls.

It afforded a view that was at once beautiful and terrifying.

Behind them laid the entirety of Oratorio and the lands they had traversed to enter this city, a sprawling of terrains and the cloud-dappled heavens. Before them was a sheer drop into the depths of the Abyss, the hole bored into the planet when the Thousand-Faced God was slain by a foreign entity that pierced through the firmament. This was the cradle of the monsters, that accursed labyrinth from which corrupted creations spawned out of. Standing on the edge, Theodore could not help but entertain the idea of simply stepping off the wall, of plummeting into his destiny.

A drive towards death. It would come for him either way. Why delay it? Why not return as fast as gravity would allow, into darkness so deep that he could make out no details of what laid at the bottom, even when the sun was shining bright overhead?

But the Ichor-Blessed did not step off. Shepherded by a gruff-voiced man, he was instead lead upon a rudimentary elevator system, crammed upon a single platform that no doubt was overtaxed by the presence of everyone aboard. The chain was a lifeline for all these miserable, unprepared, undersupplied part-time labourers, but that chain looked so fragile, so slender.

It slinked away nonetheless; his ‘employee’ would be taking the next elevator down, no doubt with much more space inside the wooden cage than was afforded to the twenty-odd that Theodore and his followers were stuck with.

What could be done though?

Without power, all he could do was plot and bear with it, the abyssal descent a snail’s pace rather than a freefall.
_@Silverpaw

---

//O7 - A Shanty Between Buildings
The girl was still for a moment. As if in disbelief. Being ignored for so long had paralyzed her to what she would do if someone actually heard her story and sought to help her in a way that exceeded a coin or two dropped in pity.

It was the movement of others in the Underpass though, that forced her into action. Other beggars, hearing of medicine being offered, shifting and preparing to approach. Other children, for there were too many children, who saw the possibility of a soft heart, a charitable soul. The girl nodded, then turned, guiding Ananta out of the Underpass and into the Outer Layer once more.

For one Ichor-Blessed, it seemed, the Abyss could wait.

Thirty five minutes and twenty nine seconds later, the dark-haired adventurer found herself in the space between two larger buildings, nothing more than a nook made due to inefficient spacing. The remnants of a wooden fence and rough canvas wrested from an old carriage formed a roof for the pathetic shanty, where an older woman laid. Her hair, a dull red, seemed to have wasted away with the rest of her body, her clothes hanging off her bones. Upon their approach, she opened one eye, the shifting of the blankets indicative of her grasping something hidden.

But it was her daughter, with a stranger who didn’t look completely a scoundrel. The woman relaxed, if only enough so that she could sink into the fatigue of sickness once more.

“Thank you.”

Words, rasped out from a leaded tongue. Her child scrambled to her side, helping her sit upright as she beheld Ananta properly. There was gratitude, but resignation too.

“You got hurt again, Sasha.” She nudged the girl’s cheek. The bruise was forming. “I told you. Watch out for yourself first.”

“But ma, she says she can help.”

“And I told you.” A dry cough sounded, the movement causing the blankets to shift once more, revealing bare flesh and the very edges of a strange, pulsating mark. The woman moved her blankets once more, covered it up once more. “It’s not something that can be helped.”
_@Kero

"..." Frederika would've made some kind of smug grin when the establishment's staff complimented her strength and guts, but then she just had to sneak in a disparaging remark there, not the first time, nor would be the last, but since the woman was the welcoming sort - unlike that other ringmaster - the dragonkin decided to just assume that 'kid' here referred to her being younger, instead of a literal one, whatever the truth was, she'd substitute it with her own, for the sake of smooth employment.

With the demonstration over, it was Almagest's turn to continue the business negotiations, an exchange of service for pay, "I see, so you take in people and hone them into fighters," The astrologist nodded as he briefly glanced toward the arena, "I can see that you're running a quite successful venture here." Detached from his family's teachings he might be, Almagest was still the son of merchants. "Yes, she will work for you as one of your entertainers in exchange for salary, but I'll let her manage the details with you herself." As he said, he was just here to accompany her.

"Yep! What he said~" The petite horned woman smirked, "I even brought my own weapons if that means anything, can't say that I'm not prepared for this!" Rika quipped as she showed off her gauntlets, one of the things she and Almagest bought with their life savings before departing on a one-way-trip for Oratorio, "Battle royale? Sounds good, so, how much does it pay?"

@ERode

“Just honest pilgrims,” came the gravekeep’s response to the second, looking the pair over with honest appraisal. They were surprised by the question, by the wonder, and that meant they came and went without issue from the gangs and such which they had earlier passed by. It meant the practice they gave, whatever it was, wasn't a new one. It had become accepted, cemented by all as fact. That could bode ill or well for the gravekeep. It depended on the practice itself.

He looked up at the first man, older and well-worn. A thought came to Lethe, a minor worry compared to it all. “Work, maybe. What happens out the city?” The gravekeep adjusted the shouldered shovel pointedly with that implied meaning as he asked. Sucking his tooth for a moment, he nodded, adding, “Mind we talk as we go? Wouldn't want to hold you up.”

Oratorio, //O3 - Bladerights Estate > The Underpass
_{In collaboration with @ERode}

---

"Ah, the dream."

There was both understanding and resignation in the older woman's tone.

"Little other reason to come to Oratorio, except for the Abyss's siren song. Regardless though, so long as your hands remain clean, you're welcome here. A name would be convenient though."

Elys slightly grimaced. In her efforts to keep up with the instructor, she had forgotten an introduction.

“Elys. Elys Adair, ma'am.”

She considered her travels thus far. She had an early start in the day, and imagined there was still time to explore before calling it a day.

The instructor had her worried, though. Was it really so difficult to keep one's hands clean in a city like this?

Regardless, the desire to use the day to her full advantage was upon her. She could at least relax knowing she had a place to rest for the night.

As one of the students passed her staff back to her, Elys spoke. “I will do my best to honor your welcome, ma'am. I will try to return before night comes. There's some of the city I want to see today.”

Staff in hand, she bid farewell to the Bladerights Estate and continued down the road. She walked towards the heart of the city, following the call in her heart more than gravity. She made note of where and how she walked, ensuring she would be able to find her way back ‘home’ again.

Thus, she found herself at the mouth of a tunnel - The Underpass. And she walked inside.

//O4 - Main Streets

Sebi and Sumiye left 'Sunchy' to his dreary position as they departed -but not without a delicate wave on Sebi's part, to add another final seal to Sunchy's even more delicate psyche. The two ladies left the wall partitioning the Royal Road and made for the 'Onyx Sardine'; a terrible name for a bathhouse if ever there was one. Who would think to give their establishment a connotation of saltiness and fishy smell? Sebi hoped dearly that it was some sort of historic joke to the place, and not any genuine descriptor.

Leaving the Outer Layer via the Royal Road's underpass, the two kitsune delved into a dark, perhaps even seedier stretch of the city wherein their foreign appearances earned them no less of a staring audience. At least there were no guards here to make comments on their race. Poverty appeared even more rife down in the tunnels, and Sebi's mood turned sour.

It was not a feeling of revulsion, but of helplessness.

In the city she lived in for most of her life, poverty was not an alien concept -but the depths of it she saw here cursed her with a kind of eldritch knowledge that threatened to drive anyone suitably unaccustomed mad. In the city of Tairyo, she was priestess, and for all of her unaccountable behavior after defending the city, her responsibilities never quite went away. It was perhaps when the needy were in need that she was most attentive. Tairyo was so loveable in part because of the tiny fraction there who suffered in ways like she was seeing here in Oratorio. A great amount of the pleasure she took in playing priestess was in the happiness she saw in those starving given food, and those cold given shelter. These were the things she loved the most herself -a warm cushion, and hot food- and so in giving them to others...

But here... how could she even begin to fix something like this?

"It will take time," Sumiye said sagely, eyes forward amidst the shadowed suffering. Sebi's worried expression was yanked away from the source of it, and she blinked. Had Sumiye once again read her mother's mind, or was it merely coincidence? Sebi knew her daughter shared similar values, and so it was just as easily that she was feeling the same things. She said nothing to her daughter, but the silence spoke volumes.

//A5 - Adventurer's District - The Onyx Sardine

As a distraction, Sebi relayed her "plan" to Sumiye under whispered words, earning a smile and a sigh from the more pragmatic daughter. She went with it, nevertheless. Their first step of course was to get a bath, and approaching the Onyx Sardine as they made it out of the underpass and into the Adventurer's District, that