Descent Into The Vein
[Date: August 5, 980 GD. Time: 18:00. Location: Maintenance Elevator -- Descending to Layer -1]
The old cargo elevator descended with a painful screech of metal, as if the machine itself was vomiting, forced to swallow us into the belly of the earth.
There was no soothing background music like in the Apex Tower lifts. No synthetic lavender scent to hide the sin. Here, the air had texture.
Heavy. Wet. Sticky.
The smell invaded through the rusted floor seams—a mix of sharp ammonia, burnt waste oil, and the nauseatingly sweet stench of organic trash decaying in perpetual darkness. It was the fermentation odor of a city consuming itself.
I stood in the center of the lift, arms folded, enjoying the violent jolts of the cabin. The heat from the Solstice Burn still sizzled wildly beneath my skin, making me feel immune to the damp chill trying to creep in.
To my left, Rian paled. He pressed a perfumed silk handkerchief to his nose, his eyes watering as he fought nausea.
"My God..." Rian mumbled behind the cloth, his voice muffled. "It smells... like we're descending into the intestines of a corpse."
"Not a corpse, Rian. This is the smell of digestion," I corrected coldly. My eyes stared at the scratched-up elevator door. "But you're right about one thing: the smell is disgusting."
I inhaled the air deeply, letting the grimy particles fill my now super-charged lungs.
"But do you know what's more disgusting?" I asked, a cynical smile etched on my lips. "The scent of perfume in The Gilded Exchange."
Rian stared at me, confused.
"Up there, in Zenith-Zero, they cover the smell of the people's blood and sweat with expensive incense and Golden Smog. They smile politely while squeezing the life out of millions. That's a sterile hypocrisy."
I pointed downwards, towards the approaching darkness.
"But down here? This stench is honest. It's the real product of our system. It's the excretion of a sick city's metabolism. I am disgusted by this filth, yes. But I'm far more disgusted by the holy bastards up there who pretend this toilet hole doesn't exist, even though they're the ones constantly shitting into it."
DANG.
The elevator stopped with a violent jolt that almost threw Rian into the wall. The iron door jammed, creaking pitifully, forcing Kara to kick it open with a loud crash.
We stepped out.
Welcome to Layer -1: The Drip.
My first sensory input was sound. The constant hum of dying, stolen neon. The endless drip of water from millions of leaking pipes in the ceiling—plip, plip, plip—creating an eternal rhythm of water torture.
The second was sight. This was a giant concrete cavern, the remnants of The Great Tether's foundation. No sun. Light came only from bioluminescent fungi growing in the waste, and illegal power cables dangling from the ceiling like disemboweled intestines, stealing power from Aurum above.
And the people...
They were ghosts made of mud and despair. Thousands of Stateless—the nationless.
They huddled in plastic tarpaulin tents wet with slime. They sold junk on repurposed shipping crate tables. Small children with grayish skin ran after mutant rats the size of cats, while their parents stared vacantly at the black water stream carrying trash from the Upper City.
As I stepped forward in my conspicuously clean Grand Praetor robes, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, but without a miracle. Only fear.
Silence. The impromptu marketplace went dead.
"Look at them," I whispered to Rian, my eyes sharpened by Mana dissecting the crowd.
I saw an old man with a rusted Valdor prosthetic arm, trying to fix its knee joint with duct tape—a veteran discarded for being "obsolete."
I saw a woman with a crudely crossed-out Aurum barcode tattoo—a runaway contract slave unable to pay the "breathing tax."
I saw a mad former Aethelgard priest, muttering prayers to an oil puddle, cast out for "flawed faith."
"They are not criminals," I said, my voice full of contempt for the system. "They are Scrap. Valdor discards the weak, Aurum discards the poor, Aethelgard discards the sinful. And gravity pulls all that trash down here."
The heat in my chest churned. Anger. Productive.
"The system up there is broken, Rian. They discard assets just because they don't meet their aesthetic standards. Look at these people! There are mechanics, farmers, laborers. They have muscle, they have brains. But they're left to rot here into compost."
I walked through the crowd. My clean boots stepped into mud mixed with feces and oil without hesitation. The residents shrank back, pressing themselves against the damp, mossy walls, making way for the "God" descending into hell.
A small child—skinny, his eyes covered in a dirty pus-seeping bandage—suddenly ran across the path, stumbling right in front of me. He fell into a puddle of black water, splashing filth onto my expensive robes.
Kara moved quickly, her killer reflexes igniting. "Move aside, rat!"
"Hold," I commanded sharply.
I stopped. The child trembled in the mud, awaiting a blow. He knew the rules of this world: the strong strike, the weak bleed.
I crouched. I didn't care about the stain on my robe. This stain was more honorable than the wine stains on Titus's clothes.
"What's your name?" I asked.
The child didn't answer. He just raised a hand, showing a rusty can containing a few old bolts and screws. He offered it to me with a trembling hand.
I took a single bolt from his can. Old iron, rusty, worthless.
"A transaction," I said.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single ampoule of pure Lux. Its blue light exploded in the darkness of the corridor, dazzling the eyes peeking from behind tents. The light was too pure, too clean for this place. 1 Lux could feed this child's family for a week, or kill him if he wasn't careful.
I dropped the ampoule into the child's can.
"Buy shoes," I said flatly. "And tell everyone here: the Grand Praetor hasn't come for a 'cleanup.' He's come to shop."
I stood up, looking at the crowd now watching me with a mixture of greed and confusion.
"You were discarded by your old Masters. But me? I'm a scavenger. And I see value in broken things."
I started walking again, my pace quickening, manic energy driving me towards deeper layers.
"That was dangerous, Sir," Rian hissed as we moved away, glancing back anxiously. "You just flaunted wealth in front of starving people. That's a recipe for a riot."
"Let it be," I replied indifferently. "That wasn't charity, Rian. It was an advertisement. Now they know I have resources. In a dark place like this, people don't follow the light of morality. They follow the light of Lux."
We continued our descent.
Passing through Layer -2: The Rust-Works.
The air changed drastically. Humidity vanished, replaced by dry heat and metal dust clogging the pores. The sound of dripping water gave way to the clang-clang of hammers on iron.
This was the territory of Forge-Mother Kora. Here, people didn't cry; they worked. They turned trash into weapons. I saw cybernetic eyes watching us from ventilation shafts—red lenses blinking in the smoke. My diplomatic invitation had arrived. They were waiting.
And finally, we reached our main destination.
Layer -3: The Veins.
This was no longer a city. It was a giant internal organ.
We stood before the mouth of a ten-meter diameter pipeline tunnel. Its walls were made of ancient, slowly pulsating metal, remnants of technology from before the Great Tear. This was the main drainage channel for Aether waste from the Sky, but currently, it was in dry mode.
The smell here was different. Not the stench of organic decay, but of chemicals, ozone, and... power.
In front of that pipe gate stood a checkpoint. Not a random pile of junk, but a neatly arranged barricade of steel plates. Its guards wore uniforms—patched-up old city technician uniforms, but clean. Their weapons were oiled.
This was Vance's territory. Organized. Efficient. A neat tumor in the body of the sick city.
A guard stepped forward. His face was covered by a gas mask.
"Jurisdiction of the Pipeline Syndicate," his voice sounded mechanical through the mask filter. "Governor Vance is having dinner. No audience without an appointment."
Rian stepped forward, this time with arrogance borrowed from me. He raised the scroll of invitation with its glowing gold Senate seal.
"We are the appointment," said Rian. "Tell the 'Governor': the Grand Praetor has come to discuss the legality of his neck."
The guard looked at the gold seal, then at me. His eyes behind the mask glass narrowed.
"Wait."
He spoke into an old pipe intercom.
A few seconds later, the sound of heavy hydraulic hissing was heard. The steel gate behind him slowly opened, releasing pressure steam.
And from within the dark tunnel came a scent completely out of place.
Not the smell of waste. Not the smell of death.
The smell of rosemary grilled steak and freshly opened cheap red wine.
"Damn," Kara muttered, her nose twitching. "He really set up a dining table inside a shit pipe. The old bastard has style."
I grinned widely—a predator's smile smelling blood mixed with barbecue sauce. Here was the mastermind. The man trying to build a palace inside a sewer. A small hypocrisy imitating the great hypocrisy up there.
"Of course," I said, stepping into the darkness of the pipe lit by chandeliers made from old bottles.
"Let's go in. Don't let the food get cold. I'm hungry."
Layer -3: The Veins -- Pipeline Syndicate Headquarters
I had eaten at Aethelgard's white marble tables surrounded by Moon-Lilies.
But I had never had dinner inside the colon of a mechanical monster.
This "banquet hall" was actually a giant pipe junction. Its walls curved, made of ancient rusted yet sturdy metal. Thousands of cables and hydraulic hoses hung from the ceiling like banyan roots made of rubber and copper.
Yet, amidst the industrial squalor, lay an absurd sight.
A long table covered with a clean white tablecloth—a painfully stark contrast to the oily iron floor. On the table, aromatherapy candles burned, trying (and failing) to mask the smell of ozone and waste. Shining silver cutlery sparkled under the light of makeshift chandeliers.
And at the head of the table sat our host.
Vance "The Valve".
He didn't look like a crime lord. He looked like a hospital patient who had escaped with his medical equipment.
His body was skinny, almost skeletal. His skin was pale like old paper, speckled with oil stains. He wore an oversized formal suit—probably stolen from the Upper City—but what caught my eye were his connections.
The back of his wheelchair was connected to the pipe wall via dozens of transparent tubes. Neon green and dull blue fluids flowed into his body. He wasn't just sitting there; he was plugged into the city's pipe system.
"Welcome, Grand Praetor," his voice sounded, amplified by a small speaker in his modified throat. It was hoarse, metallic, and full of false self-satisfaction.
"Forgive the decor. We do our best with what... you drop down from above."
I stepped closer, my boots clanging on the metal floor. Kara behind me snorted in disgust, her hand not leaving her knife hilt. Rian walked as if afraid of stepping on a landmine, his eyes eyeing the silver cutlery with suspicion.
"Don't apologize, Vance," I replied, my voice echoing in the acoustic space of the pipe. The heat in my body made this room feel too cramped, too cold. "I like the aesthetic. 'Industrial Chic'. Very Valdorian."
Vance smiled thinly, revealing teeth replaced with silver metal.
"Please sit. The meat is still warm."
I sat in the provided chair. In front of me, a cracked porcelain plate held a medium-rare steak. The smell was tempting, but to Rian, it probably looked like poison.
"Real beef," Vance said proudly, slicing the meat on his own plate. "Smuggled from the Iron Bastion kitchens."
He put a piece in his mouth, chewing with relish. His shiny black, cunning eyes scanned each of us in the dimly lit pipe room.
"And now look who's come to my dinner table," he murmured, placing his silver knife down with a sharp clink.
"Three Valdor Dogs. Or should I say... Stray Dogs?"
Vance pointed at Kara with his fork.
"One mad dog cast out from the kennel for biting its master. Muscle without brains."
Kara growled lowly, her hand gripping the iron chair back until it bent, but she didn't move.
Then, Vance's fork shifted to the figure standing silently in a dark corner, slightly apart from the table. The figure of a grey-haired girl with a slowly spinning black umbrella, creating a constant hiss of steam.
Solstice Burn.
She wasn't sitting. She leaned against the pipe wall, her glowing blue eyes watching Vance with lethal boredom. The heat aura around her made the paint on the pipe wall peel.
"One burning dog," Vance continued, his voice trembling slightly as he looked at Solstice. "Valdor's prized runaway weapon. The Walking Disaster. What did you bring her here as, Praetor? A fireworks display?"
Finally, Vance's gaze returned to me. He sniffed the air, smelling the residue of Solstice's energy now flowing beneath my skin.
"And one mongrel... a mutt that smells like an oven," he sneered. "You lead them, but you yourself have Valdor blood, don't you? So technically, there are three Valdor souls in this room. You're all the same. Failed products from the ironworks."
Vance laughed hoarsely, a sound like rusty metal scraping.
"What are you looking for down here? Leftover bones? Or are you lost, trying to find your way back to Titus's kennel?"
I wasn't angry. Strangely, I was amused. With Kara on my right and Solstice on my left, I felt like I was holding two nuclear warheads.
"'Valdor Dog' might not be quite right for me, Vance," I replied casually, picking up the glass of cheap wine and swirling it. "Perhaps... 'Heaven's Pride Hound' is more fitting? Sounds more expensive, doesn't it?"
I glanced at Solstice. The girl just snorted, spinning her umbrella a little faster, sending a warning wave of heat towards Vance.
I put the glass back down on the table with a thud.
"I didn't come to discuss dog pedigrees, Vance. I came to ask one thing: What do you want?"