Othello entered the slums without any fanfare.
There were no gates, no guards, no walls. The only indication that he crossed a boundary being the hardened earth, the unhealthy hear and familiar stench unique to the slums.
The moment he stepped past the first large ruin that served as a landmark, various signals hit him instantly.
The harsh smell of smoke.
The damp odour wafting off the many stagnant pools and unwashed bodies.
The constant rancid smell in the air.
The endless chatter of depraved civilization.
Othello couldn't help but pause for a moment, his breath slightly ragged. His senses had improved, but along with the improvement came a sensory overload that a normal brain would barely be able to bear.
Arguments from far away, the echoes of a woman's cries in an alley, dry laughter that carried only exhaustion and no joy, the cries of a child that later faded into the gloomy background of survival...
Everything hit him at once, and he took a moment to adjust himself.
'I'll have to get used to this,' he thought, his pace continuing with steady steps.
He continued his walk while observing the slums subtly.
Nothing had changed.
'No... something has changed.
'I have changed.'
As he walked, people walked past him and brushed his side, barely paying him any attention. He focused for a moment, seeing a thin woman dressed in grey rags hurrying along with a basket of half rotten vegetables, her gaze fixed to the ground.
The streaks of tears under her messy bangs didn't escape his gaze, neither did the stains marking her trembling legs.
He retracted his gaze, not surprised in the least. Life in the slums was hard, and would only get easier if you used what you had to get what you wanted.
No matter how temporary.
As his path took him closer to his shack, he noticed something weird. No matter how close or far he was to someone, they seemed to ignore his existence.
They saw him, but never truly noticed him.
It was an alienating feeling.
Just as he was pondering this, faint sounds of a hushed conversation caught his ear.
"...heard children have been going missing lately."
"Yes that's true. Ariella was howling two nights ago about her missing daughter. What pity... without her daughter, she won't have a need to pay us with her body for food anymore..."
Othello paused for a moment before colliding with a man who had been walking with his dirty brow coat fitted around his body.
"Sorry," he hastily apologized before walking away with brisk steps. The man he collided with uttered a few curses that he didn't mind before continuing on his way.
Soon, he got to the front of a stall. Judging from the muck spread at its entrance, the horrid smell wafting from its interior coupled with the grime covering its chairs and tables, one would have never guessed that this was a food stall.
A quite popular one at that.
Two men with brown aprons draping over their large bellies were happily conversing while smoking stood in front of the stall, their towering presence both terrifying and reassuring in the slums.
They didn't notice Othello, so he spoke first.
"I want to know more about those missing children y'all were going on about," he said, taking out a couple of crumpled bills.
The two men stared at him, stunned by his "sudden" appearance for a moment, then they laughed.
"Well well Joshua," one of the men with a particularly messy brown moustache smiled evilly. "Times are really changing. A little kid with some cash actually came up to ask about our conversation."
The second man didn't speak, but his face turned cold and he glared down condescendingly with his brown eyes.
Before Joshua could speak though, Othello's fist crashed into the other man's jaw, sending him spiralling to the floor immediately.
Othello looked up, meeting Joshua's eyes. "If you don't want to be next, answer me."
His voice was cold, as were his eyes. A chill ran down Joshua's spine and he swallowed the words that he was about to say. A smile appeared on his face as he invited Othello with a gesture.
"Please, why don't we talk inside?"
"I feel safer here," Othello replied calmly, not missing a beat.
'Safer?' Joshua's smile froze for a moment, but he quickly recovered and started.
"The issue you asked about has actually been going on for three weeks now. Children have been disappearing for no reason in the slums. At first, we thought it was some slave trader or kidnapper that was running rampant, but now..."
Joshua paused for a moment, seemingly hesitant about saying something.
Othello glanced at him and dropped the crumpled bills on the floor. "Speak and that's yours."
"Well..." Joshua's eyes darted between Othello and the bills. Money was quite a valuable resource, and even more so in the slums where money was easy to spend and hard to keep.
Finally, he gritted his teeth. "I've been hearing rumours that it's the Baron's guards who are taking the children away."
"Baseless," Othello judged.
"They're just rumours. There's nothing much I can do about that," Jonathan sighed, already moving to take the bills.
Othello stepped forward, intentionally or unintentionally stepping on the bills.
"What else do you want?" Joshua asked with a frown. "Don't think I'm af-"
"Inform me about things related to this that happens in the slums again. I'll see you in the alley next to Gregory's Shoe Shack tomorrow at 6." Othello cut him off sharply.
Then, he lifted his foot and proceeded to walk away.
Joshua watched the young man in oversized clothes leaving his presence, his eyes glinting with a dangerous light.
---
It didn't take long for Othello to find his shack. It stood dilapidated in one of the most polluted parts of the slums, the makeshift blockades on the tattered walls made of weathering steel.
He took a few glances around before removing the planks he placed at the entrance to serve as the door and entered.
He didn't feel the emotions one would feel after undergoing a huge change overnight.
Everything just felt... monotone.
The interior of his shack wasn't anything particularly eye-catching. There was a wooden bed he stole from somewhere, a table whose fourth leg had been chewed on by something, and a wooden chair which was the only thing in good condition in the shack.
'Oh, there's that stone too,' he noted, looking at an ordinary stone with an unnaturally smooth surface.
It was present in the shack when he claimed it and didn't think much of it...
Until the moment his vision truly focused on the surface of the stone.
Suddenly, Othello felt a sharp pain in his head, and his vision went dark.