Following the invisible flow wasn’t as easy as it should have been for her, but she managed it well enough, and found herself walking down a narrow street between two lines of apartment blocks.

A fight was coming. No matter what, she was in for a fight of some kind, and the knowledge had her whole system at a slow boil. Saketa took off the coat sleeves and let the garment hang off her shoulders like an unfastened cape. She kept her breathing steady and strong. She made sure both scabbards were in their ideal spots on her belt. And above all else, she kept alert.

There was plenty to notice. Traffic was quite sparse despite the relatively early hour, but she still passed people. They were all either alone and furtive, with a slight but noticeable stoop in their posture, or in groups and collectively carrying a predatory tension.

There was a somewhat special quality to it all. Saketa’s duties as a Warden had brought her to no few poverty-stricken pits, but only a handful had had that particular air of desolation about the people themselves. They were being poisoned, by forces they could neither see nor taste, nor measure with any tools forged by man.

Saketa tried to be alert as to whether it was seeping into her as well, but her steps felt weighted down regardless these days, so she couldn’t really be sure either way.

She neared the beating heart of this awfulness, this corruption, and keeping her breath steady became a bit of a fight. Oddly enough, there was a significant drop in the number of tense, armed groups, and more solitary, exhausted-looking labourers, addled-looking addicts, and the like.

She only spotted one who broke the mould in any way: a broad-shouldered man in a hooded jacket, leaning up against a wall. He had a melee weapon she’d seen on a statue shortly after coming planetside; it was something between a long-handled axe and an odd, short polearm. It was clearly meant to be seen by anyone who glanced his way, and he stood with a dangerous air. She could tell that the shadowed face within the hood followed her, and she stayed extra alert as she left him behind, half-expecting an attack or at least a confrontation. But the distance between them widened, until pursuit was clearly not coming. Still, the tension remained.

There was a single break in the gloomy surroundings, and the near-identical housing. Nestled between two blocks, like a sapling between full trees, was a three-storey house actually built with a certain amount of artistry in mind. Its front doors were open, and within she could see people clad in a slightly more practical, everyday version of the white and orange outfits she’d seen at the dock yards. The people wearing them were tending to the sick, or perhaps the badly addicted, on cots. Children played with simple toys, and live string-music of some sort echoed out into the street.

The glow always endures, a voice from the past told her. It can be starved and stamped low, until people think it is gone. But it always endures.

They were the words of one of her mentors, and she didn’t know why their sudden appearance stung so much. Nor could she tell if it was a pleasant sting or not. But this was a poor time to get emotional, and she fought to get herself under control. Because she was nearly at the place of power.

Saketa didn’t remember every single detail of the map, but as she stood before the side-street she knew it was surely the route to her destination. It throbbed, silent and invisible, beyond a mess of apartment buildings, waiting for her.

With no idea what exactly to expect, Saketa drew her sword right away and did a quick twirl to loosen up. Then she headed off, away from the narrow street and down an even narrower one.

It quickly became apparent that the city’s taste for careful planning had truly been abandoned in this area. The blocks were among the taller ones she’d seen so far, and tucked quite closely together. Most of these apartments surely never saw direct sunlight. And as for light at all, aside from a faint glow from some of the windows, the illumination was mostly limited to a single big bulb glowing above each main entrance. It was like she was traversing a dark sea, dotted with circular, glowing islands. On top of everything else there was no straight road through it all. Passing through the area required circling around one block after another.

Saketa considered Shifting up onto a rooftop, and maybe leap between them, but she decided against it. The roofs weren’t quite close enough together to make it an easy matter, and she needed all of her strength right now.

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It was a real shame that her strength was already being challenged. The further she moved into this dark, cramped underworld, the more she felt the corruption of the local energies. Her own darkness got heavier, weighing her spirit down as she went, threatening to inflame the ugliness, the despair, and the rage. And the hate.

She hated him. She hated them all.

Saketa reached the centre of this oversized maze. It was something of a hollow core; a stretch of much lower buildings, though no less cramped. And in spite of space clearly being a precious commodity around these parts there was a distinctive feeling of abandonment to this core.

Saketa took off her coat and bag, and stuffed both in a basement window frame where they were unlikely to be stolen. Then she continued on, with slower steps and both hands wrapped around the sword handle.

This was it. This was definitely the place of power. Here Warden Urinn had been, three hundred years previously, and noted this place. Back then it had been a set of old stone ruins, from the planet’s distant, savage past. They had been replaced with concrete and fibres, but the energies remained.

The heart of it all was a particular house. It was a rather large three-storey, and there was just enough light for her to tell that it had been made with a fair amount of artistry, which had then been largely destroyed by some calamity. Possibly a fire.

Some of the light came from the two poles on either side of this little sub-neighbourhood, and some of it came from within. There was a faint glow, peeking through damaged shutters and small openings.

Someone was making use of this place. And it would surely not be the homeless. Not when other empty buildings were nearby, that wouldn’t give them quite the same sense of inexplicable dread.

She considered Shifting in, for a potential surprise attack, but didn’t feel up for a blind Shift. So she simply strode forward through the main doorway. The door was long gone, and she simply had to push aside a hanging curtain to find herself within.

The faint lighting came from glowing cables hung up along the walls at head-height. They were just barely strong enough for one to be able to navigate the surroundings. It was a setting a person might use if they were going to sleep. Or acting as a night-time guard.

Saketa walked in through the initial corridor, keeping her steps soft and slow, ready to strike out in any direction. The only remaining pieces of furniture were built into the walls and floors, but an effort had been made to clean away trash and old debris.

With no particular plan in place, Saketa simply followed the rope on her left through a doorway. It led into a room with two other doorways and she went with the one closer to the exterior wall. She crept on, sticking by that outer wall, room by room, hallway by hallway. Nothing greeted her save for more emptiness, and she finished a full circle with her tensions entirely unsated.

She walked to the end of the hallway she’d started out in. A line of glowing rope led down an opening. The frame around it was of the same style and materials as the rest of the house, but down below waited something much older.

It was a stairwell cut right into solid stone, wide enough for four people to walk abreast. It was old and weathered down by elements and generations of human feet. It seemed she’d found what remained of those old ruins. Someone had decided to include those as a basement, as a special touch on a new residential building. Probably before the surrounding forest of cheap apartment blocks had sprung up.

She headed down, and did her best to prime her sensitivity for tripwires, lasers, motion detectors, and the like. Such simple, predictable dangers ought to register to her remaining abilities.

The basement wasn’t all that deep down, but she really took her time, touching her soft boots on each step with a surgeon’s precision. If she’d found her quarry, then a stealth attack was her best chance. The building remained as quiet as death as she finally touched down on the floor. It was just as old and weathered as the steps, and the glowing rope was strung around stone pillars that framed the main floor. Beyond them were raised steps, forming what had possibly been a small auditorium on all sides.

She took her first few steps across the floor and turned into a slow circle, ready to strike or parry. A portable generator had been set up by one of the pillars. It powered the rope, and cables led out from it into a few other appliances that had been set up. A few steps away from that was a portable toilet, because devoting oneself to reaching through the veil of the universe for vile power did not stop biology from being a thing. There was also a single portable bed, slightly more substantial than Saketa’s own.

So they weren’t asleep, then.

Saketa took a few more steps, until she was well away from the nearest pillar and had plenty of space to react. This place stank of more than corrupted power. There was the sharp, almost painful smell of dried blood. And it was certainly more than one person’s worth. Saketa had found the right place. But had she found the right person?

She waited in place, refusing to be goaded somewhere she could be ambushed.

“Just come,” she said.