54 Summer, 1041

Year 18

The fist exploded through her gut as she doubled over from the pain. Defiantly, she brought her eyes up to stare back at Jame. It was not comfortable to hold his glare, not while she was struggling for breath through the swelling bruise across her diaphragm, but if Aziza was anything, she was stubborn.

She had ghosted our of her window that evening, as she had been doing for all these long years. Her practiced footfalls had made barely a sound as she padded across the floor and darted out the side of the building. Dangling out the window frame by her right hand, and pushing herself away from the wooden slats with her knees, she had hopped to the ground with the practiced flourish of a professional. She had been free and clear she had thought, she had assumed, up until the very moment she had turned to dart away through an alleyway.

Rather than the cold embrace of darkness, however, what she had found instead that night was the form of three fellow orphans. They quickly moved to surround her, reaching to hold her still. Even then, seeing the large shadows of two boys and a girl standing tall above her, Aziza didn't grasp the danger. She felt like she had raised all three of them, their little child smiles still shining brightly at her in her memory, and she remembered all of their scraped knees, childish fits, and stolen treats.

So it was that as they approached her in the night, reaching for her, she was just a hair slower than she should have been to run away. And that moment of hesitation, that millisecond, was all the little thugs had needed. As she tried to dart away, to skirt the hands of small Poe, she had instead spun right into the waiting form of the second orphan, Darius. If she had another second, she felt she still could have slipped his grasp, but her time was cut suddenly short with the boy's massive fist to her gut.

"You think we don't see you sneaking off in the night?" Jame started, seeming inclined to try his hand at words after he had failed to cow her with his stare. "Staying out until the morning hours and then sleeping all day while the rest of us work?" His fist took her in the stomach yet again, driving the air yet further from her despite the desperate fire in her lungs.

Poe, as if taking the hint, stepped closer to the boys and hovered over the heaving body of Aziza. Aziza looked up at her for a moment, desperately pleading with her eyes, before Poe's cold tone came crashing down on her, "Elf bitch, heading out and hitting the town while the rest of us slave away at our actual jobs." Her hand darted in, taking Aziza quickly and solidly across the face, "It's time you learned your place, party girl."

The deep voice of Darius resonated slowly, picking up the thought as Aziza wheezed in his grasp, "Ya, par-ty girl." Aziza could not see his face, but she somehow felt the boy's leering steer across the back of her neck, "Come party with us, par-ty girllll."

Until that moment she hadn't thought to fight back, not seriously. The idea of hurting the children who she had helped raise, who she had seen grow up had never even entered her head. But something about Darius tone, something about the way his words crawled across her spine and down her neck broke her out of that stupor. Something about the situation didn't feel right, didn't feel like the good-natured bullying that children tend to do, and deep in her heart she suddenly realized that she was fighting for her life.

Her arms twisted quickly against Darius' thumbs, ripping their way out through the cracks in his grip. As fast as her arms were, however, her legs were quicker, and her foot stomped bodily against Darious' shin before darting out to tag Jame right in his knee. She didn't dare breathe as she lashed out, not trusting in her swelling diaphragm to function as she moved, and Aziza knew she had a second left barely before her body betrayed her.

Her eyes darted for an opening as the boys yelped out, but saw Poe already moving to cut off her retreat as she moved. Against one of the boys, two even, she felt she would have been fine, but Poe being there, with her own meaty human hands, left her at a sudden impasse. She moved to dart away, feinting right and then left, but Poe avoided the bait. The older girl just bent down with her arms outstretched and ran in for a tackle.

When Darius' hand finally found it's way back to her arm, moving higher and tightening the grip, she finally surrendered. Understanding came to her in that moment of her inevitable fate and the futility of this type of struggle. With no path left to her, with her diaphragm starting to pulse as it screamed for her to breath, she finally, reluctantly drew one of her daggers from her wrist.

They were crude bits of steel, the weapons she carried, made more for throwing than for stabbing and lacking even a semblance of a hilt. Still, in her practiced hands, it didn't much matter what they looked like. It mattered only that her daggers were in reach and that there was a point of the ends.

Blood squirted from Darious' thigh as Aziza's practiced thrust found its mark. The blade was deep in the meat, buried deep within the cords of his muscle, but her hand reacted without her conscious thought, twisting the blade cruelly and ripping it free with a slurp.

Poe hit her then, tumbling onto her victim's body and driving the pair down to the ground. The dagger held firm in Aziza's practiced grip as she fell, twisting as she widened her arms and hugged her assailant to the ground. It wasn't an ideal situation to be in, being pinned in the dirt by a body that outweighed her by a good five stone, but with the weapons in her grasp and the decision already made, Aziza felt no fear at all - only pity.

A hand grasping Poe's back, the other at her dagger, Aziza buried the wet steel between floating ribs, spearing cleanly a kidney. She abandoned the blade as she bucked her hips and rolled, spinning the surprised Poe onto her back only to drive the knife even deeper into her body, tearing as it was slammed by her weight against the earth.

A second blade flew from her fingers before Aziza was even fully standing, sinking its way into the soft flesh of Jame's stomach, dropping the last of her assailants. She had it in her mind to question them, to blame the demented little group for the disappearance of so many other orphans, but thought better of it as she found herself standing over the broken and bleeding bodies in front of her. There was no way that Jame could have been hurting or killing people when the first disappearances occurred, barely being out of diapers himself. And the other two wouldn't have been in any more of a position to hurt anyone until these last handful of years.

Instead, she quietly walked over to Jame, kicking the blade still embedded in his stomach as he clutched and cradled the wound. "Who put you up to this?" she demanded. "Was it the Madam? What did she say to you?"

The voice of the boy in front of her came out of a squeak, reminding Aziza of nothing more than how he used to scream out when he was hungry, when food had run low. The voice sounded desperate and young and hurt, "No one. No one put us up to it. We just were tired of your shit..." he managed to get out before wretching yet again, spilling the rest of his dinner on the cobblestone.

To the side of the boy came an angry hiss. Aziza's eyes quickly darted over to Poe, paranoia shooting through her body. But the girl hadn't even yet been able to stand, she just lay on her back and hissed words evilly, even as a dark stream of her blood pooled around her body, "You think you won, bitch?" Her eyes shone triumphantly even through the extreme pain, "Don't expect to be able to come back here. You just assaulted three children with deadly weapons, you know. Do you even understand what you've done?" A short, triumphant laugh gurgled from the girl's lips.

Squinting her nose, Aziza walked over to Poe, arching an eyebrow, "You seriously think this is a first for me?" Spitting on the dirt behind the sprawled bodies, "Well it isn't. Hell, this isn't even the second. Do you have any idea the things that I've done to keep food in our pot, to keep clothes on our backs?" She frowned, a strangely serious expression on her young face, her eyes haunted, "You don't know what it was like, before. You won't remember what it was like here when the kids here were more concerned with starving to death than they were about hurting each other."

She heard Darius behind her struggling to get to his feet, his face pale and white from the blood even still shooting from his leg in little jets. Poe just smiled back, spitting at the ground through the side of her mouth, "You think you are some savior?" The words brought forth a wet sludge from her mouth as she spoke, frothing with the words, "You're just a lazy thug. Don't try to justify yourself. You just stabbed three kids in the middle of the street; you're just a piece of shit."

Tears rolled down her cheeks as the adrenaline started to leave Aziza's system. Darius fell back over, collapsing against the wet stones underneath his body, and as she surveyed the wounded in front of her. She suddenly understood that all three of these children could die. There were supposed to be Awakened who could heal such wounds with a wave of their hand, bring people back from the brink of death. Hell, if the stories were to be believed, there were people who could cross that brink and breath life back into the recently dead. But people like that did not find themselves on the northwest side of Illmouth, nor would they be concerned with the problems of orphans on the wrong side of town.

Still, it was one thing to know, to realize what it was that she had just done, but it was another entirely to know what to do about it. She wanted to call out, to raise the alarm, but the guards rarely ventured into this side of the city, and any help she achieved would be more likely to help her to the hangman's noose than to save the children on the ground in front of her.

Instead, at a loss, she retreated down the long alleyways and into the familiar sewers below. Fear and horror blended in her stomach as she ran, and her only thought was to find Mad Morrison and confess what it was she had done.

It occurred to her briefly, for half a second before she forcefully pushed the thought away, that it would have gone better for her if she had slit the throats of her attackers before they could tell anyone what had happened. Likely enough she hadn't been seen, the trio would have tried to ensure that they were alone, and if there was no one left to tell tails, then there would be nothing that could connect her to their deaths.

She knew better though - she did not want the children to die. She hadn't even wanted to hurt them in the first place. She had simply been in a poor place with poor options in front of her and had reacted on instinct. As bad as the current situation was for her, just as much what she had done horrified her to the bone, the idea of inflicting more violence, more pain, made her physically ill.

. . .

The Underside was bustling when she finally cleared the darkened sewer paths and found her way into the hollowed caverns that housed the city's thieves. There were men laughing, women selling their stolen goods at the markets, even a few children darting back and forth across the stone on some errand or another. It was comforting to her, approaching that den, to see life continuing. In the back of her mind, she realized, she had half expected the place to be unnaturally still, the entirety of Underside holding its breath at the knife now dangled precariously above her head. Metaphorically, of course.

She made her way toward Mad Morrison's chamber, barely sparing a glance or a word for her friends as she passed. She gave Tob a nod, Eria a half-hearted smile, but dodged away before anyone could engage her.

Morrison's door was closed when she got there, as sometimes happened. Rather than wander through the market or find one of her partners and plan, she instead just sat down next to the door and curled her arms around her knees. Waiting.

It was some hours before Morrison's door opened and he looked out, seeing the small girl huddled so intently by the door. Without a word he merely nodded his head, beckoning her into his chamber.

He listened intently as Aziza's story spilled out of her small lips, patent and quiet as the words tripped and crowded each other in her frenzied confession. It was some time before she finished, but he sat forward and listened to every single word until finally, she stopped, spent. It was some moments before he finally responded before he was confident that the girl had said her piece.

Thoughtfully, he took a careful breath, "Well, Aziza, truth be told I had expected this sooner or later." He closed his eyes, focusing before he continued, "It was the reason, in fact, that I pushed you so hard for your Awakening. It was my hope, all this time, that you would Awaken before worse came for worse. For while sleepers may make a life for themselves in the world above, live long happy lives, that is not true for those of us who huddle here below.

"You're welcome down here with us, of course, until all of this passes. I'm sure there are still jobs down here you can run, and there's room at the inn for someone such as you." He nodded, a thoughtful look crossing his eyes, "But still, I think your first order of business should be to see Lady Erisa the Watcherwoman. More than anything else, Awakening should be your goal, and she may be able to help you with that."

Aziza raised an eyebrow, "Erisa? You mean the old apple-seller, Sir? She never looked like much to me."

Morrison's face cracked into the smallest smile as she spoke, snorting, "Yes well, she's quite a bit more than she appears I think you will find. Each of us is given our own gifts in awakening, and hers happen to be of particular value to a sleeper. I think you should see for yourself." He shrugged, turning back to one of the many ledgers spread across the small table beside him, "Let me know if you find any trouble here and don't worry about the world above for the time being. This is your home now. As it has been for some time now, I would imagine."

Aziza bowed her head for a moment before turning away, the formality between the two old associates having mostly faded some time ago. The little underground inn would be the priority she knew, with the uncertainty of not knowing where she would sleep eating at her for the first time in her memory. Lady Erisa would come next though, without a doubt. Morrison was kind, despite his usual blustering, but she knew just how understated the importance of her Awakening had been. Without some precious skill or ability, she would be at a severe disadvantage to her compatriots, and there were many places down in the Underside that was dangerous at the best of times even to those who had already achieved their Circles.

. . .

With a room to call her own and a quick confirmation that it contained a bed that was not more wood than blanket, she made her way further down into the city. Scarred, unwashed figures scurried to and fro through the tunnels, up to something unlawful to a one without a doubt, and yet she somehow felt safer here, with these rogues, than above in the world of so-called 'law' and 'order.' Especially after her run-in with people who she had considered more family than friends.

The shops in the Undercity were musty. Each was drilled out of the side of the cavern, shadowed, worked walls leading back past the booths into long shadowed alcoves. The merchants, though rarely engaging in antics throughout the overcity, were not to be trifled with. They consisted mostly of former thieves and agents who had moved on to a retirement in the impromptu city that the denizens of the underworld had once carved out for themselves. They didn't look like much, and more than half of them were more straight batty than wise, but even among the Undersiders, they were given a broad, respectful birth.

Some ways through the maze of shops and stands Aziza found what she was looking for - a long, pine table piled high with fruits and vegetables. There was a comically oversized picture of an apple carved into planks and hung over the open stand. Lady Erisa was talking to some old denizens of the city, as she tended to do, while the girl approached, words low and unintelligible to anyone further than a foot away. Aziza busied herself in a show of inspecting the produce while she waited for the gaggle to finish.

Some two minutes after she had arrived, the gaggle of seniors dispursed and Aziza was free to approach the old woman. She hesitated though as a strange feeling crawled up through her throat. Desperation and forboding clawed against each other in her chest, struggling for control of her body.

In the end, it was the Lady herself who ended up doing the approaching, hobbling over and narrowing an eye at the young girl, "Somethin' I can help you with there little missy?" Her voice scratched and whined, but the glint in her eye showed anything but decrepitude.

Swallowing loudly, Aziza looked up at the woman. "Yes..." she paused, licking her lips, "I was sent here by Mad Morrison. He... seemed to think that you might be able to help me with a personal problem that I've been having?"

Erisa clucked through her teeth, "Yes, I can't say a young thing such as you would be quite so interested in what the fruit looked like." She nodded, turning away, "Follow me, follow me, little one. I expect that we have much to discuss."

Aziza moved along quietly, finding herself at a loss for words. When the pair were far back in the corner of the shop, crates and fruity smells rising around them, the old woman turned back to the girl, "Now, what is it exactly that Mad Morrison would have of me then?" Narrowing her eyes, "I'm retired from all the huffling and scuffing above, I'll have you know. And if you're plotting something devious I expect you'll be disappointed."

Shaking her head, Aziza only shrugged, "No no. He said that you might be able to help a person concerning matters of... Awakening." She muttered her words to the woman's watchful eye, finding herself looking away as the words dipped into a silence that the old woman seemed unwilling to shatter.

After some time spent in that silence, the old woman staring and, perhaps, sizing her up, Lady Erisa finally spoke, "Now now, young thing. You're what? Fifteen in elf years? What would a babe like you want to go messing with all that for?"

Aziza glanced back at the woman's eyes before finding herself, once again, looking away, "Some people attacked me above. Good people. But I did some bad things to them and I..." pausing, the enormity of the night's events only now fully processing in her thoughts, "I can't go back. And I can't stay a sleeper. Not if I want to stay down here."

The woman shook her head, moving in with an uncomfortable closeness, "Now who put that fool notion in your head, girl? Can't stay down here a sleeper. Ha!" The woman spat on the ground as she continued, "Many who 'Awaken' discover truths that they would rather not have known. And many others fail to find any comfort in the supposed 'power' of the Circles.

"No, no. You are young, healthy. Just stay asleep. Live. Find someone to take care of you," her eyes moving up and down the girl's body, "If not now then soon, I am certain, there would be plenty who would give their souls to do just that. There is no comfort in waking up, and often precious little benefit."

Aziza, fighting her urge to take a step back, to accept the words of the woman and make a quiet life somewhere, protected, looked up instead. Meeting the woman's eyes, she spoke with all the authority a somewhat pubescent teen can muster, "No, ma'am. It's not about the power, not really. I came down here in the first place, all those years ago, I came down here because I know there is something more out there. Something that I cannot find by tagging along letting others keep me safe. There is a certain something, beautiful and yet just out of reach that I see at night when I dream. That we race for beneath the sleeping stars until it's time for me to wake."

Erisa raised an eyebrow, "We? The power of dreams is indeed a significant thing." Nodding, "But it will not be like you expect. Even if I can help wake you at all, with my own hidden little talent, it would not be easy or safe. You'd be more likely to wind up on a pyre somewhere, your corpse decorating the winds of the east than finding whatever it is you seek." Her eyes unfocused, and looked through Aziza as if reading some arcane bit of text, "For you especially, it would be better to let it lie. Have babies, raise a family. There are precious few wildlings in the world these days; I cannot even count the decades it has been since I've seen you're like walking among the humans. It would be a shame to lose you to some meaningless errand."

Aziza shook her head, "I care little for my race or people. And less, even, given that they are not here to help me. I just want to see the world the way I do in my dreams. Beautiful. Free." The girl trailed off, not sure of what else to say.

The woman went back to staring at her, squinting her eyes in an aura of menace that only one of her aged years could possess. It was some time before she let off, giving a sigh and a weary nod of her head. "Fine, girl. Though don't be sayin' I didn't warn you." Her eyes unfocusing again, looking through the girl, long past her physical self and into some unknown abyss. "I have an exceptional ability, gifted to me with my Awakening." She clucked her tongue, "But our gifts often end up becoming our curses in turn. And with wisdom, we are so often made to regret the actions of our youth.

"I cannot count, girl, I can not count how many young souls I've sent off to their deaths. Charging directly into the jaws of oblivion over whatever random jest of fate they discovered the gods had in store for them." She grimaced, a fierce look returning to her eye for a moment before she finally relented, the fight bleeding out of her expression as she continued, "I swore years ago that it was the last one when some boy charged himself directly down the throat of some dragon. The last one!" she raised up a finger as she spoke. "But if Mad Morrison sent you than I can not deny you this curse. Whatever he has in mind girl, I can promise it may not end up where the two of you expect it to go.

"Anyway, you tell that old halfwit that we are even after this. All debts repaid. You hear?" She shook her head, "And do it before you charge off into something's gullet, understand?"

Aziza nodded, eyes widening. The old woman's warnings touched something in her, some bit of fear, but it was nothing compared to the guilt, to the unease she felt at the thought of facing the world above once again. And she wanted to be something else, someone else, someone better when next she stepped out into the light of day.

"My Awakening conferred on me a very specific ability, you see. These old eyes of mine, I can reach into someone and pluck out the quests that they haven't yet finished. Which means little to for other Awakened, they can all look them up themselves, yes? And a quest is not something that can be stolen nor conferred, so it means all of jack and squat to those here would intend to take someone else's destiny.

"However! Yes, however, for the sleepers in the world, my little 'gift' has an extraordinary purpose indeed. For each sleeper has one and only one quest assigned to them, no more!" Her eyes shone, looking into Aziza for some hint of recognition, "Never more, and certainly never any less than one! And while half, no, more than half of the damned fools out there never stumble upon it, never meet its terms of completion, there are always those who do."

Lady Erisa leaned over conspicuously, "Now tell me, girl, tell me. What is it exactly that you think happens when those quest's terms are met?"

Aziza worked her mouth a few times, unsure of what she was supposed to say. "They... Awaken?" she guessed.

"Yes!" Erisa's voice swelled now, lost in the excitement of uncovering a long-guarded secret, "Yes, they Awaken! Whatever purpose it was that was given to them by the gods having been completed, they are gifted with skills and knowledge beyond that of their mortal kin. Usually, it is some foul thing, defeat this monster, obtain great wealth, save the life of some girl. Dangerous, most first quests are, but easy enough to stumble upon by chance through the course of living.

"You, however, now you... yours is something else entirely. Can you tell me, I wonder, why it is that I see what I'm seeing? Why yours would be so ostensibly mysterious when others have often amounted to little more than 'kill five wolves'?"

The young girl blinked, taken aback. There was a foreboding in hearing that her fate was different, her task was unique, but at the same time she couldn't help but feel she must have been somehow blessed... chosen even. And she was more curious than ever to learn what it was. "My past is a shroud to me, my parentage and the place of my birth lost. Please, I do not know, but I will beg you to tell me if you would ask it."

Erisa chuckled, a deep throaty, scratchy rumble. The sound of the woman's mirth, somehow, frightened her even more than the woman's earlier cold stare, "Yours is deceptively simple and yet so very, very impossible at the very same time. Your task, your quest that would lead to your Awakening is this and only this, 'Enter the dungeons of Illmouth.' And I hope that I don't even have to explain to you why that would most certainly end your short life."

Aziza merely gaped at the woman, the key to her long-sought fate laid out before her if only she were to take it. And yet the old woman was right. Those who entered the dungeons of King Ricter were known to never see another day in the sunlight. It was an impossible task. And yet, above all, it was an impossible task that she must one-day accomplish if she wanted to live her own way.