The dark cave opened up into a much wider space after a while; streams of Incendiary Scrapster ran around the place, but those in the greater numbers were a new type of cockroaches that David and Erin had started seeing for a little while. These were called Laborer Snapsters.

These new kinds of creatures were essentially the—laborers. Not only were there a lot of them but although their levels were the lowest among those they had been fighting, hovering from level five to level six, they were three times as big as the Soldiers and practically half the size of the builders. Thankfully, they were that much weaker and fragile.

"We are getting close to your target, I believe," said Erin.

Although she filled the cave with her beautiful smell, which for some reason did not trigger the Scrapsters' senses, the air was starting to get staler; they had descended quite far under the ground, more than Dave was comfortable with. The only thing that managed to give him some sort of comfort was that he had his Trespasser ability…which he didn't really know how to use, but it was better than not having it.

"The Source better drop something with this daft Queen Quest; it's already absurd that it gave me the job to kill a Queen…I would never in my wildest dreams think of doing something like that, never!"

"Davi, why are you shouting now? It echoes here," Erin said, chuckling and massaging her ears covered by her huge tuft of hair.

"It's the air, too stale for my likings; it's killing my neurons," Dave answered.

"N'iu'orons?" Erin asked.

Dave sighed, "Biomancer, eh?"

She frowned, "Why does something tell me that was not a statement?"

“Come on, let's get this over with," saying so; David pointed his hand in front of him and shot an Arcane Missile.

Ever since the tunnels had become wider, they had started taunting creatures with this technique.

He hit a builder—the ones that felt his attack as if it was a tap on the shoulder—and they started investigating the source. Given that they received no damage from it, the creatures were not overly alarmed; thus, when they went to scour the place, they brought only a handful of soldiers and the unlucky laborer who didn't know its place.

After Erin took care of the Builders, Dave neutralized the Incendiary Scrapsters' flamethrowers with a series of precise Arcane Missile shot, bursting their fire glands; after that, it was only a question of taking care of the creature with the Bone Blades Erin had procured them; they would shut down the whole unit in less than twenty seconds.

"You are getting very good at murdering, Deviant," Erin said with a frown that, as David had understood, she used intentionally to joke around.

"I am a born killer; they called me, Bourne for a reason back in my Catford," he took on a serious expression.

"Why would they call you that? Aren't you called Davi'ant Son?"

"That is…nothing. Nothing at all. Let's move along, ma'am, you first," he said, showing her forward.

Erin shrugged then proceeded; they kept advancing by clearing small groups at a time.

Another hour went by before they successfully managed to reach a tunnel that opened into an even bigger room.

However, David was starting to get tired; his Stamina was not recovering as it should have anymore, even considering Erin's buffs. He was leaning on a wall.

"Don't you tire?" He asked Erin which was scouting ahead.

"My body can absorb and utilize nutrients much better than yours, partly because of my Constitution and partly because of my Skills. But you are doing…fine. Besides, I believe we are almost there; I'll go scouting ahead while you rest if you wish," she answered.

"Wait, are you leaving me alone?"

"I think you can handle yourself rather well; you've killed dozens of Scrapsters by now, you should know how to handle a few.”

"Oh…I get it; it's another test, alright. I'll just shout if I'm about to die," Dave said.

"No, don't shout, the Queen may have elite Sourceborns Scrapsters as protection; their senses are likely different from those of the regular creatures; they might hear you," she said, darkly.

"You say that only now!?" David shouted wide-eyed.

Erin gave him a look that said, “What did I just tell you?” but she answered neutrally. "Everything is a lesson, Davi; you've been shouting for a while now. You are in enemy territory, and you've been doing that only because I told you they were deaf, but who said that there would not be any exception? If you don't know how to handle yourself, you could die, and this is a lesson better learned in a controlled environment than when there are real threats, isn't it so?"

David listened to her, unbelieving.

"Did you belong to some sort of assaulting unit when you were with the rebellion? You're starting to scare me…" he said with a half-smile.

"Something like that…" Erin conceded, "I've done…a lot of mistakes in my youth. I don't want you to do the same; you are under my protection now. Well, I'm off."

David couldn't wait anymore, "Erin, wait."

"I'll be brief, don't worry."

"No, it's not about that. I need to know why you are taking such good care of me," he placed his eyes in hers, unwavering; Dave needed answers.

Erin smiled, she was about to open her mouth to answer in the same way she did before, and David stopped her before she could even try.

"No bullshit about being Fey, life is sacred, yadda yadda yadda. Tell me the real reason."

Erin's smile became colder, but not to him. "I…you don't know anything about my past, and you don't despise me, not like most of the other Fays around here do. I look at you and see no judgment; I look in your eyes and know that I don't have to face my mistakes or my past reflected in your eyes. It makes me feel good. So I want you to live, I want to protect you, or at least until you'll hate me too."

David didn't answer right away, yet he shook his head, "I don't care what you did; besides, I'm not a saint either. If I've learned something in all my years is that judging somebody else for their past is the dumbest thing one could do, so," he shrugged, "whatever you did, as long as you don't start using me for Biomancy experiments, we can be friends."

Erin looked away, it took her a few seconds to answer, but when she did, it was clear that she wanted to change the topic, "Not even trying to make you grow wings? They'd look good on you."

David scoffed, "Like those enormous teats on your shoulders, no thank you; I'm fine with my package and don't need something else."

Erin paled… "Teats on my shoulders...you really are a deviant…"

"Emh, duh? That's quite my name," he replied, grinning.

Erin left, shaking her head but chortling.

David was left alone as he wondered, "What are those horrible things for, really…she calls them wings, but I only saw them on her…they look more like oversized nipples than anything else."

"Aaaah…" he sighed, "It's in times like these that you'd want a cigarette…Now, I'm here, stranded, left alone in the middle of what we could call a Dungeon, my useless pet is sleeping upstairs, I have to kill huge cockroaches, and I haven't even been given a Noisy Cricket to defend myself...but, I guess a bone stick is still a weapon."

Dave straightened his back when he heard the clicking sound of giant insect feet on the rocky ground, "Well, here we go. Legs, try not to give out, okay? Let's kick some giant cockroaches' arses first."

 

***

 

Cyana kept pacing in front of her wardrobe, "This is wrong, this is wrong," she kept repeating to herself as she shifted clothes around to find something that would be appropriate for what she was going out to do.

The Fiendess had already selected her target before truly realizing to whom she could speak about the topic weighing on her mind.

There was only one person who she knew where to find, who was accessible enough, and that she knew had taken part in enough missions with her Captain to be used as a reference to analyze the difference between the person called Virael and the one she had built in her dreams. The person she was looking for was Five.

After slamming all her clothes back into the wardrobe with her Kinesis, Cyana left her apartment dressed up with a silver suit, one to rest and exercise, not a suit for a date or a lunch with friends; she put on a long maroon reefer, took her omnitool, a device that acted as cellphone, apartment key, and credit holder, and left.

The apartment opened up into a hallway, and she quickly aimed for the elevator, the short trip inside of it was a silent one.

She stared at her reflection in the elevator's walls. Her eyes were puffier than what she was used to, and overall she was darker, tired.

Cyana couldn't understand herself anymore. Or even better, she had to find out if Virael, the person she believed to be the perfect specimen of Fiendkind, was indeed the same person she had always thought him to be, or if she had created an idea of him to fit her need of a role model.

The sliding door opening up brought her out of her self-reflection, "Good morning, Ms. Reilin'grad," it was the custodian, an old Fay, prime for retirement, she hadn't known him for long, only ever since she transferred at her apartment eleven years prior.

"Good morning," she said, shooting out of the building with burgundy carpeted floor and silver-painted walls, typical yet stylish.

The doors of the building gave out to the outside air, and the thickness of the Resilience Threshold manifested stronger than ever.

Even her one hundred and seventy points of Resilience were slightly affected by the one hundred and thirty points of pressure needed even to breathe the outside hair.

No wonder the use of tech substituting for Magic had become more and more preponderant during the years.

She sneezed, "And this is ground level…"

Her eyes rose up, and she took in the grand buildings of the City's Heart, the Fingers.

Cyana had no idea what or who or how many lived up there, but the Threshometers measured a Resilience Threshold of up to two hundred and eighty points.

Indeed, the air traffic stopped at a certain height; going higher would mean getting poisoned, for most of the City's inhabitants but the Servers, those that used all their points to level up Resilience and work in the Fingers.

Well, her appointment didn't lay in the Fingers; she just had to reach the Ring, the Drunken Pilot. Cyana could have flown around, but she didn't really know where this weird pub was located. So she called for a taxi.

Then again, using her Flight filled her Well each second, and at almost one hundred and thirty points of Resilience; she emptied her Well by forty percent per minute, and experience had taught her that having your Well as empty as possible was the surest way to survive any encounter.

The black and blue streaked flying cab stopped near her, by the sidewalk; the driver was a dark green-furred Fiend, "To the Drunken Pilot, please," she hopped on the cab as the door opened by itself.

The driver studied her up and down from the rearview mirror. She was used to those kinds of glances, but this time it wasn't one of those.

Indeed, the driver turned around, "Are you sure, ma'am? That place is not suited to you; well, to anybody, really."

Cyana had to resist the urge to arc her brows, "Thank you for your concern. But I'm looking for a...friend."

The driver shook his head, "Then we'll be there in ten. Fasten seatbelts," he ordered to the car, and after an azure light pulse, both their seatbelts fastened by themselves.

The car rose up, reaching the highest permitted altitude before shooting to their destination.

Cyana's tired gaze reached the streets below as she rested her head on the glass of the car door. They moved fast; the images of the City almost blended in with one another, but her Alacrity, boosted by her Mind Magic was decent enough to follow Varya's colors.

Arthan's Capital was indeed beautiful, but its heart had been built with the Xaphi'relian capital in mind, Mashi.

Silver, dark silver, and blue were the most prominent colors…and ever since she had transferred over to Arthan, in her late twenties, she had started accepting the beauties of it, as a whole, to be much superior to the desolate lands of Xaphi'rel. It had been hard to accept for her proud self, but in the end, their Emperor, in one of his speeches, said the same thing without any shame.

The audio channel getting back to speaking about Captain Virael's stunt and the actions it could bring forth made her frown and distracted her from thinking about the trips in which her big brother used to take her around Arthan.

"Here we are," said the driver. Cyana wasn't expecting that they had already arrived.

She automatically let her omnitool slide over the payment station in front of her, "Thank you—" she said as she prepared to drop off, but when her eyes took in the disgusting sight of the district in which the Drunken Pilot's was located, her foot automatically climbed back onto the car.

"Is there a problem, ma'am?" Asked the driver, he wasn't hiding his amusement very well.

"Is this the place?" Cyana asked.

"Indeed it is, ma'am, and although I've never been there…” he jerked his head toward the pub, “they said that the outside is much better than the inside."

"That is not inspiring," she said, finding the will to place her hooves on the ground finally.

The street was hot, burning for the sun that was instead almost permanently shadowed by the Fingers' huge building. The Bird Houses, the huge places from which interplanetary travel happened, with which the Fiend could move from one of the planets in which they had extended their patronage to the other, should have been enough to shield the sun from reaching the ground, but it didn't.

Cyana raised her head up; the huge partially shattered Bird House, the one destroyed and left in misuse for the heavy smuggling, had been abandoned and left in disuse.

Indeed, that was the worst of the City's district, where the worst possible scum from all over the world had chosen to take their abode, the Open-House.

The district's name reminded the listeners about the huge broken-down, square-shaped building that rose high in the air, but it left the lingering feeling of the name being open for other interpretations.

Cyana sighed as the taxi left. But she straightened herself; she was a grown Fiend and a Special Forces. If anyone was going to try something funny there, it would just mean she would make an arrest today.

So she set out to the close-by Drunken Pilot. The trashy 3d image used as a signboard showed a wobbling aircraft and a drunk yet happy Fiend riding on the front seat. Yet the front of the pub looked rather well-maintained; it seemed actually untouched by the filth and waste littering the street. She was not used to staring at such a ruined piece of architecture; Varya was a grand City, not a dump.

Cyana kicked away a bottle that was rolling her way for the wind, then casting one of her Heavy Slot defensive Skill, Force Shield; she entered the building by pushing the door, which, sadly, wasn't a sliding door. Touching a door was something rather…almost indecent.

What showed through the door was indeed a pub, a regular pub, the likes of which she had seen many over her twenties. But...it was not as bad as the driver had said, not at all, but it was ancient.

The environment was not too luminous yet not too dark; the tables and chairs were made in wood, once again, ancient…Maybe a Wood Fay owned the place? She didn't know, she would eventually find out, but it did not end there; there was barely any music playing, only a really slow crescendo of a melody could be heard, but it was not loud enough to distinguish the genre correctly. The Fiendess was by no means an expert in music, but her Kva'ri formation required her to focus in any environment, which had her train through every type of music as well.

When she stepped in, the eyes of the few patrons reached her, somebody whistled, she did not answer. She simply went over all their heads looking for a Fiend of Level sixty-five, which should have been Five. She only needed to present herself to him. It was unlikely that he had reached his Baptism day over the night and aged to sixty-six, but Cyana would consider even that.

However, as her gaze washed over the present, no one fit the description, but she found out something else, these people were all Arthan enthusiasts. No matter their fur's color, red, green, blue, bronze, the Fiends in the pub had removed their horns in Arthan's honor to show to everybody—especially the Fey—their appreciation for the world they had shared with them.

These people did not judge anybody for not acting as they did; it was the opposite; they were judged by the Fiendkind as a whole to simply be…weirdos. Still, it didn't matter; there was no level sixty-five or even sixty-six among them.

Sixty years for them was the peak of Fiends' youth, up to one hundred eighty, two hundred years, they kept aging, then died, the only one who had defeated death, and inexplicably so, were Emperor Xaphi'rel and his brother, Warden Xantus.

Cyana sat down, taking her place to one of the many empty tables; her gaze went to the bartender, who nodded at her and leisurely walked over to her.

"What may I get you?" The bartender was not a Hornless.

"Anything that can defy thirty points of Constitution, as long as it still leaves me with a modicum of sense is fine…" she said.

The bartender gave her a sympathetic smile, "Rough day?"

"Rough week," she met his eyes.

"Well," he answered, filling his belly with a slow breath, "our musician is good enough to free you of any worries, the song just started, but in fifteen minutes you'll find yourself in Kva'ri blessing."

Cyana's brows rose up, "This music is being played live?"

"Yes," the bartender smiled at her, "this is Blood Fey music, the Song of the Wind; if you sit over there, closer to the little arc, you can see it being played live."

Cyana was intrigued, "May I?" She asked, getting up.

"Of course you can. The central table for spectators is still empty, it won't be in a couple of hours, so if you take it now, you can listen to the full display; it's going to play for the whole day."

"The whole day?" She had never listened to music that lasted that long.

The bartender smiled, then nodded, "I'll bring you your drink once you find your seat."

Cyana thanked and got up to find the stage. It was right behind the corner; she hadn't given much thought to it because she believed the music came from the speakers.

But when she finally found her seat, she was swiftly taken aback by the display.

The Hornless giving it his all on the little stage, raising roughly a meter from the ground, was a silver-furred one, something of a rarity for Fiendkind. He was short but, smiling, she admitted that he was cute enough to make up for his short stature.

So she sat there, enthralled. Looking at the music played with the weird, wind instrument that also displayed strings.

Sitting this close, the sound was even more harmonious than it felt before, and the slowly climbing notes were so gently interwoven one into the other that it created a unique—in all sense of the word—melody that she began wishing it never stopped.

Cyana didn't even hear the bartender when he brought her drink. If there was only one weird thing about this whole situation—still something that she pushed at the back of her mind—it was that the musician was level sixty-five.