The nervous girl shifted her dress to hide the stains within some wrinkles. She pulled down a hole-less sock she’d found on the side of the road to cover the end of her staff. Finally, but most importantly, she adjusted her tanned cowl, making sure that not a single strand of hair poked out of it. She took a deep breath then chanted at her reflection in the window.

“You are talented, Luci. You are smart. You can do this.”

Her reflection—filthy, cracked-lipped, and thinned from malnutrition—stared back at her with doubtful, silver eyes. She ignored its protests and walked into the bustling dungeoneer pub.

Colourful, well-geared dungeoneers were crammed into every available space. Drinks were served by beautiful women and well-groomed men. Guests, dressed pretty, cozied up to the dungeoneers, seeking to form relations with the adventuring sort. Their geared-up companions, still out drinking this early in the morning, threw kin at the bartenders to flaunt their wealth. Televisions played combat sports; the patrons cheered each time a competitor took a brutal hit. It wasn’t a place Luci would have come to in her lifetime if she wasn’t so desperate.

Luci pushed through the crowd towards a seated group of four dungeoneers. They looked haggard, a sign that they’d just emerged from the dungeon and had come for a drink before heading to bed. She bowed respectfully before them.

“Excuse me, honourable dungeoneers,” she said, a little too softly.

The table, evidently not hearing her speak, eyed her one at a time, annoyed that Luci had disturbed their after-crawl drink.

Luci swallowed saliva and said what she needed to. “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for a support, would you?”

“Buzz off. We’ve already got one.”

She bowed again before she left.

To another table, she explained, “I am a respectable level thirty-one. However, I only use an amplifier—”

“An amplifier? You’re useless then.”

To a third table, she waved her cloth-wrapped staff. “Yes, this is the amplifier. The staff is quite strong but I avoid using it. I can assure you, there is a good reason—”

“So, you’re just wasting levels? Forget it.”

To another group, she explained, “I have a few levels to spare to bond with a QuickHeal, but I am lacking funds at the moment. Therefore, if you have one spare—”

“You’re a support without a healing afto? What’s the good of you?”

After another night full of rejections, it took Luci everything she had to keep up a smile, to hide her shame and embarrassment. She offered an apologetic, low bow to the last group that had shooed her away before giving up for the night.

As she turned to leave, one of the patrons of the busy pub rammed right into her. Luci’s feet came out under her. She had a split second to choose between saving her footing or her stuff. She chose to keep her cowl on her head and her staff in her grip. Luci toppled into another patron’s legs, bumping them hard enough with her small frame to cause them to spill their drink.

Luci stood quickly and shifted into an apologetic bow. “Please forgive me. It was not my intent to bother you, Domina,” she said, using the highest honorific she knew.

The woman in question stood a full two heads taller than Luci. She was donned in bulky armour that was covered in scrapes and dents, and now also in her drink. Understandably, her face was twisted into a scowl.

“You damned grupp head!” the dungeoneer snarled. “You better be paying for that.”

The conversations surrounding them grew dull. All eyes were on the two of them—a situation that Luci wanted to avoid like a bogfly! Her heart began to race. In her pocket was a purse containing exactly eighteen kin. If she paid for this woman’s drink, then she wouldn’t have enough money left over to eat a proper meal.

She was hungry. She needed to eat. Her survival instinct begged her to run and keep the money. But reason was telling her otherwise. If she ran, she would have been chased by dungeoneers and caught, brought to trial for her crimes, and subsequently recognised. She gripped her staff tightly as she struggled with the decision.

Reason won. Luci handed over fifteen kin without looking the woman in the eye.

“Please accept my humblest apology, Domina,” Luci said. Her legs were trembling.

The woman snatched the crystals out of Luci’s hand with a scoff. “What’s a Shantie-rat doing in a place like this, anyway?”

Luci knew that she should have been offended. Perhaps four months ago she would have. But the woman was right: she was covered in grime, she probably stunk, and she had no place amongst these veterans.

She kept her eyes trained on her muddy shoes and headed for the exit. The moment the door swung shut behind her, the mood of the pub exploded and laughter trailed out behind her.

Stepping to the side of the doorway so as not to inconvenience everyone, Luci closed her eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath. A deep pit had formed in her stomach and she felt like a warped fool—no, even a warped afto could be overcharged under certain circumstances. She was spent kin! She wanted to curl up in a ball on the side of the road and cease to exist, but that would have been impolite to the passers-by.

As though to rub in her failure, Luci’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten all night as she’d been hopping from pub to bar to inn since before the moon had risen, all in the futile attempt to find employment. Dungeoneers were up at all hours as there was no sun nor moon to synchronise their sleep schedule to beneath the surface, and Luci had searched at every possible hour!

The sun was beginning to peak over towering rooftops, casting the city in perpetual shadow. A few streets away, Luci could hear the bustling and cries of hawkers setting up for the morning to sell their produce. She walked towards the commotion in a hunger-induced daze.

Dozens of food stalls were lined up in a long plaza. Canopies had been raised over the open area to protect from the early spring sunshine. Crates of fruit, vegetables, and freshly baked bread were hauled to their appropriate stalls. Their scents mingled into the sickly-sweet blend that could only be found in a market.

Delivery vehicles arrived with the rest of the morning produce. The vehicles were rectangular, bulky in the back, and trimmed down so that only a driver could fit. This thinness allowed them to navigate the winding streets of Anypaxia.

When Luci had first arrived in the city, she’d been shocked to realise that the city had been constructed in such a laissez-faire manner. Buildings had been plonked anywhere that spare land could be found, and then atop other buildings when none could be found.

Had this been the dungeon city of Praesummus, the city in which Luci was born and raised, those buildings would have been torn down as fast as they were erected. They would have then been replaced with orderly, square structures interspersed by perfectly straight roads that cut through the contours of the land with abandon. Well, that was possible in Praesummus because, unlike with Anypaxia, the dungeon was a mountain—a whole mountain! If builders cut too low in Anypaxia, they’d break through to the dungeon that sprawled beneath their feet and monsters would pour out. Besides, Luci liked the way Anypaxia was constructed. The haphazard, tacked-on buildings had a certain charm to them.

As Luci skirted between the rows of stalls, her mouth was watering. The lightness of her purse, however, stayed her desire to buy a freshly baked pie or a glazed doughnut. She needed something cheap yet filling. She eventually settled on a fruit stand where a man, who was already sweating bullets from the morning’s humidity, hawked oranges for two kin each.

Luci slinked up to the stall and the shopkeeper’s nose immediately curled up. He didn’t greet Luci, which she took to mean that he really didn’t want to sell to her. One thing Luci had realised about being filthy and poor was that people would either give you what you wanted to get rid of you, or refuse to acknowledge your existence entirely. She aimed for the former.

After a long and careful search through the orange display, taking care not to touch, she found one particularly bruised one.

“Excuse me, mister,” she piped up.

The shopkeeper glanced sideways at her. Despite the shopkeeper being oddly dismissive for an Anypaxian, Luci maintained a cheerful tone. She knew politeness could open doors while rudeness would see them slammed shut.

“This orange looks like it’s about to go rotten,” Luci said, pointing at the bruised orange. “Would you be willing to drop the price from two kin to one?”

The shopkeeper leaned forward over his stall and curled his upper lip at the orange. After making a show of considering Luci’s offer, he said, “Two kin.”

Luci wasn’t willing to give up just yet. “But it looks terrible. Nobody is going to buy it from you if it’s the same price as the unbruised ones. You’ll have to dump it anyway, so why not sell it to me instead?”

“It’s an orange,” the shopkeeper said. “It’s worth two kin. You pay two kin.”

Luci’s hand gripped tightly around her staff. She was about to protest, but that was when she felt a tightness in her stomach. Instinctively, she looked around and realised that a lot of the neighbouring shopkeepers were shooting her wary stares. One of them had lowered his phone mid conversation such that the screen faced Luci. Staring back at her was a picture of herself, sans dirt and cowl.

This was terrible! The last thing she needed was for someone to recognise her. She needed to leave before that happened, meaning she had no more time to haggle. Luci adjusted her cowl then looked down at her filthy shoes, refusing to let anyone look her in the eyes. “Okay. Two kin.”

Though she could have picked any orange for that price, Luci chose the bruised one. There wasn’t really a reason for it; she just picked it in the moment. She immediately regretted her decision.

As Luci walked away, she spotted a young girl, about in the same early teen years as her sister, crawl up to the side of another shopkeeper’s stand and swipe a plump mango. Everyone was so focused on the mild drama Luci had caused that they completely missed the thief.

At the sight of the thief, duty took over and Luci forgot herself. She opened her mouth to inform the other shopkeepers, but at the same moment her stomach rumbled. She stared at her bruised orange. It practically called to her.

Sighing, she peeled her orange and devoured a slice, pips and all. She was pleasantly surprised to find the orange’s insides were nowhere near as damaged as the shell. If she’d waited until the afternoon, however, it might have been a lost cause.

She wound through city streets. There were no street signs in Anypaxia, and if Luci followed a road for too long, she’d sometimes end up back where she started. Her only guide was the cloud-piercing SIN tower at the city’s northern peak, a steel monster whose heights were lined with pulsing crystals and glowing antennae. It reminded Luci of a long, bright bug trying to climb out the sky. When the streets angled towards the tower for a hundred or so metres, she could finally make it out over the rooftops. Luci took note of it at each intersection and curve to guide herself back to the Gethalat River that cut straight through the river’s heart.

She followed the river south, past factories, past the cobbled-together Shanties, to the wide gate that led to the farmland that lay within the outer walls of the city, called the Patches. The guards on duty, wearing long coats of blue and green, Anypaxia’s colours, paid Luci no attention as she passed.

It was an hour-long trudge to the next gate from there, past farmlands teeming with wheat and barley. Thin, crystal-powered trucks loaded with freshly harvested grain passed Luci by, making their burdened trail into the city.

Now that she had her footing, Luci took her phone out of her pocket. She clicked on a button on the front of the bulky rectangular device to take it out of power saving mode, and the screen flashed to life in an instant.

Luci’s eyes darted to the corner of the screen. The battery icon, a diamond was fixed there, coloured a critical red. Next to it was an ominous, 1%. Not good. At best, she had maybe half a day of regular usage left. She had to use her phone as little as possible. Luci settled on giving a quick look at some job postings for support party members.

Farm after farm she passed. Job posting after job posting she skipped. Each and every one of them had the same line listed in their offer: Must have a QuickHeal or equivalent healing afto.

She was so absorbed in her search that Luci barely heard someone call out to her. She looked up and waved once she recognised the man.

“Good morning, Mr. Hapswitch,” she said, a little too cheerily for her mood.

The sun-worn farmer leapt onto the chest-high fence to save his voice some trouble. “Glad I caught you, Luci. We’re starting the harvest tomorrow. It’s forty kin for the day and we’ll need you for the next week. Could use your help.”

Luci became acutely aware of her near-empty purse. She needed to look for more jobs, but she really needed the money. Her heart told her to find another pub on the edge of the Shanties, but her head told her she needed to eat tomorrow, and the day after that.

“I’ll be glad to help,” she called out.

The farmer nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Crack of dawn.” With that sorted, he dived back into his fields of tall barley stalks and was quickly lost from sight.

Luci went back to scrolling again. She’d already spent an hour searching for jobs with no luck, however, and by this she was frustrated. Tomorrow, she’d spend a week working just to survive, which meant a week not looking for work as a dungeoneer. It was tiring.

So, on a whim, she decided to check out offers for lambasters. Not only was she shocked to find that there were more offers today, but that many offers were open to having enma-focused dungeoneers like her. She kept scrolling past one lambaster job posting after another.

She gave her staff a squeeze. With an enma amplifier like it, she thought she might actually have a chance. Her level was even higher than what most of the applications were asking for, and her highest spike level, fifty-one, soared above expectations!

However, she dashed those thoughts immediately. Lambasters were all power and snubbed control. The last time she’d used her full strength… no, best not to think about that. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from her phone.

After a long walk, the low outer wall came into sight, meaning Luci had reached the end of the Patches. The small outer gate reached overhead. Guards carrying low-level spear aftos gave her a curt nod, but Luci was too caught up in her scrolling to notice.

She walked past her usual stop then had to backtrack. She snuck through a grazing pasture, using trees to cover her passage from the property owner. A little while later, she came to a steep embankment on the side of the Gethalat. Head down, Luci ducked in behind some bushes and into a small clearing. Inside was a makeshift tent, a patched-up tarpaulin strung up between two trees. A couple of pots lay off to the side, positioned beneath canvases she’d strung up to catch rainwater. Underneath her tent was a torn bedroll with a few rough-looking blankets thrown on top. With a sigh, Luci threw her staff down onto the bedroll then plonked down nearly on top to it.

She kept scanning through the job offerings. A yearning fascination had hooked her against her better judgement. She needed to see one more, just to know if she could, not that she ever would.

Then her phone’s screen went black. Staring back at Luci was her filthy reflection. It took her a moment to realise that her phone’s battery just died.

“No, all my notes!” she cried. She had about twenty different job prospects stored on her phone, plus parties to keep track of for vacancies. Those were now all gone.

Without batteries, the minimal storage on a phone would simply be wiped out. When someone needed to save data, they’d have to buy storage on the Syndicated Information Network, or SIN. Luci didn’t have money, which meant she didn’t have storage.

Luci flopped back and covered her eyes with her arm. A hole in the tarpaulin beamed hot sunlight down on her face. Her clothes were torn. Her phone battery was dead. She felt like she had a hole in her gut and her will to exist was draining out of it. She took out her purse and weighed the single clear crystal in one palm.

Biting her lip, Luci rolled over and dug her fingers into the earth. She kept digging until she took out a small, dented tin box. Sighing, she pried it open.

Inside, were all the possessions she owned aside from her staff and clothes: a near-finished spool of thread, a crumpled tube of concealer, and money. She shuffled the money to one side first, then pushed them to the other to count them. This was pointless as she was always acutely aware of how many crystals were in there, but she had to count them to put her mind to rest.

There were one hundred and forty-two clear, flat ovals for kin, worth one a piece. Nine tetrahedrons that emitted a white glow, piras, were scattered about. They were worth twelve kin apiece, totalling one hundred and eight kin. Finally, there was a single, pale blue cube, a cet, poised in the centre of the box. Given its weight, Luci guessed it would be worth about sixty kin. All up, it came to about three hundred and ten kin. The actual total, however, depended on their weight, the vendor’s temperament, and some haggling. All of which were against her favour.

The fund was intended for buying an off-brand healing afto. However, that was another six hundred kin away, which was still far less than the more expensive QuickHeal. Given that it had taken Luci almost two months to collect just over three hundred kin, she was hesitant to spend it.

However, she really needed to charge her phone. Without her phone, it was pretty much impossible to work as a dungeoneer. They were used for all administrative purposes these days. She would have had to use at least six kin to use a charging station—four to charge the phone’s aftocore battery, and two for the service. Furthermore, she needed to eat, as her stomach reminded her almost every fifteen minutes these days.

As she shuffled the pieces around, a face appeared in the swirl of crystallight. Her breath caught in her chest. Stamped on an old photograph was a face that looked almost like hers. However, she was about five years younger and had rounder cheeks. The photo was wrong. The girl’s left eye was intact. It should have been hanging out the socket, the side of her head caved in from—

Luci slammed the box shut and stifled a sob. The last thing she needed was to see Vesina, her sister, again. She wasn’t sure she could handle the shame right now.

Taking a deep breath, she ripped her cowl off and stumbled out from her tent, now boiling under the morning sun. Long, silver hair flowed out behind her. It caught a hint of the setting moon and reflected the moonlight, making her hair glow an ethereal silver. She slipped down the steep embankment, kneeled before the rushing river, then splashed brown water over her face.

A thin layer of concealer was rubbed off to reveal Luci’s freckles. In the reflection of the water, they twinkled like the stars, gold and silver and cobalt.

It was a stark reminder of who she was: Lucina Animana, the Daughter of the Waxing Moon, the heiress to the throne of Sylexa. At least, that was who she used to be. She’d fled her home, abandoned her duty, shamed her family. Now, she was just Luci.

She bobbed closer to the water and frowned at her miserable reflection. “Lady of Fate, righteous Starfonyne,” she prayed to her goddess. “Is this my punishment? For all the wrongs that I’ve done?”

The water rippled in answer. Luci blinked in surprise. Sure, she was religious, but she never expected a goddess to answer so blatantly. She leaned in closer. Her reflection morphed into something hideous, something with broken teeth and scars all over. Her mind spun for meaning, to try and interpret this odd sign.

Then the hideous face breached the surface and yelled, “Hugs!”

Luci leapt back with a squeal. As she scrambled, her hand slipped on the steep embankment. She lost footing and slid right into the water with a great splash.