Raph climbed down the side of the building, his mind beginning to clear of the fear that had filled it in his confrontation with the Iron. It sharpened quickly to the sound of sirens, the wailing grating against his ears as he reached the bottom of the alley. Inwardly he scolded himself for being caught so off guard by Gallowglass, he was better than that or so he had thought. If he had learned anything in his years on the streets it was that a man who let things happen to him instead of causing them was a dead man. Raphael's life had no place for passive observation and displays of confoundment like had just occurred in the apartment above. Silently berating himself he reached down and rummaged around the pack he had left waiting for him on the street and from inside he quickly withdrew a squashed flat cap. With a practiced movement Raph snapped the cap before pulling it down low and obscuring his face. Reaching deeper pulled a pair of heavily mended socks and a pair of well worn leather boots. He slipped the socks on quickly using the wall for support and then he untied the string around his ankles and slipped on the boots. Bending down he tucked his pants into the boots and laced the string into them, his fingers moving in quick practiced motions as he laced and tied. Finally he withdrew a workman's vest that, like his socks, was covered in mended patches and faded orange cravat. Raphael slipping both of these walked out the alley and into the streets of the city with a confident stride. Tentras was the capital of the Kerantians colony on the continent of Sarpine and as such held and as such he hated most every feature of it. Tentras was a modern city in every way, it was a festering overcrowded cesspit plagued by crime, corruption and abuse. The foul city had been his home for as long as he cared to remember and he had learned how to use the foulness of the city to his favour. Admittedly though Raph had to admit cared about the city, granted it was in the same one feels for a boil or a mole or a particularly ugly deformity. It was the type that grew because of somethings flaws not in spite of them. Tentras was Raphael's boil, it was for this reason that he felt completely safe and at home as he stalked down its dank alleys. The alleys and streets Raphael walked through tonight however were not dank, he was in Hiten, a quarter that was reserved for the noble and exorbitantly wealthy more often than not the two went hand in hand. Hitens streets were wide and lined with trees, crystal street lamps offered a cool white glow that lit the cobbles. Even the atmosphere was different in Hiten due to its position high up on the slope that was Tentras. Its elevated position meant it received cool ocean breezes avoiding the foul stagnant air of the lower parts of the city. The design of Hiten itself aided in creating this cooler climate, the large alleys, green spaces and lawns allowed the cool breeze to circulate throughout the quarter. As one moved down the slope less and less space was wasted until the buildings packed so close that one relied on their neighbors' homes for support. Raph tried to enjoy the atmosphere as he walked through the streets towards his home lower in the city, it stirred uneasy memories that he turned away from as they surfaced in his mind. Walking down the sidewalk openly he did his best not to hunch or hide his presence, just his face. Looking at his shoes and the neat cobbled street in front of him he heard the clacking and groaning of a police carriage. The sound came from behind him and he could tell that this carriage was not one of the horse drawn ones commonly seen in the lower city. He chanced a quick look over his shoulder, there was something off about the sounds they made and he caught a whiff of cut grass not the sweat of horses. They were hulking metal monstrosities that must have just been shipped in from Kerantas, powered by sorcery. In each sat a stone mage, these mage constables powered emerald dynamos that moved the carriage's wheels. The mage constables drove the carriages, hands on what looked like shimmering green reigns that connected them to the emerald engine and allowed them to steer the sorcerous contraption. Mage carriages were not new in concept technically and had been a common enough sight on the continent. However, advances in manufacturing must have been made to allow them to be made cheaply enough to ship to Tentras. The carriages were quickly becoming ubiquitous amongst the constabulary and even some of the denizens of Hiten. The large machines were less and less common as one ventured down the city, the thinning roads becoming harder and harder for them to maneuver in. Raph made an effort not to look at the carriage as it made its way across the cobbles towards him, even dressed as a labourer. Anyone in Hiten should have been used to the sight of emerald carriages so gawking would instantly draw suspicion. The carriage passed him by and through one of the exits to and from Hiten onto the Crescent.

The road drew its name from its curving shape as it ran from one end of the city to the other creating a half circle that effectively belted the city with a third of the city above it and the rest below. Constantly filled with traders, nobles, businessmen, and workers the road flowed like an artery in some great beast. The crescent radiated smaller roads that cut up and down the sloping peninsula that the city was built on; these were called the cuts and were what separated the city into many smaller quarters. The cuts ran from the Dukes Citadel at the top of the city through the artery where carriages rode four abreast down until they spread out and dispersed into the countryside. Different types of carriages and conveyances populated the crescent and the cuts, some small carrying important men and women. Others larger with workers piled in and on them the buses taking them to jobs across the city. The very largest vehicles on the roads sometimes took up half the width of the crescent of entire Cuts. These massive loads were moved by large teams of horses or more commonly now emerald dynamos and carried industrial goods. From the cuts and even the crescent itself, although less common, snaked smaller alleys and roads that wound through the quarters, into neighborhoods and between factories. It was one of these few snaking alleys that Raph made his way towards as he stepped from Hiten and out onto the crescent. As usual the highway was travelled by myriad late night traders and a fair share of people drunk of spirits or worse. Making his way across the street he spared a glance to his right where The Citadel loomed, its uneven construction stretching across the top of the city and up into the sky. The great building grew out from the tip of the peninsula like vines creeping along the ruins of some necropolis. Massive halls and buildings even straddled the Crescent road with great arches supporting them and hanging over the road. It sprawled across the upper city with tendrils snaking down lower and lower into the city. The scene evoked the idea of some monstrous creature rising from the waters around the city and consuming it. The building had begun as a fort to guard the harbour that sat safely nestled where the peninsula flattened. Over the years though it had grown and as a city had grown around the harbour the series of more and more important governors living in the fort had added onto it. Now the only visible remnant of the former fort was a tall black cathedral tower rising out of the center and glittering dangerously in the moonlight. The tower was made of the sharp black glass commonly found in the area and rumour said it had been pulled from the very stone of the spit by a mad mage years before the first Kerantain settlement. Surrounding the spire walls had been built, now these were replaced by the palace of the duke with its vast gardens and ballrooms. Spilling from the palace were chambers of parliament and servants quarters to service the needs of The Citadel. As the colony had grown and heads of different departments had needed to be appointed, accommodations had been made for them and new buildings added. Eventually a barracks was established in The Citadel after the salt rebellion in which the natives in the city had tried to trap the mages in The Citadel with massive salt circles. In response the next governor had added numerous barracks and training grounds to The Citadel in order to enforce a new set of draconian laws. As the laws drove the native peoples of the city into closer and closer communities the Citadel had been added onto yet again when the minister of information had created the department native integration. The Ashers as they had come to be known had grown as they worked to infiltrate the communities and find elements that were considered subversive. The Ashers position among society was an awkward one, they were responsible for the relatively recent stability of the colony on one hand. On the other hand, the agents Ashers who were called Ashers themselves were almost always of native blood themselves. It was this very fact that allowed them to do their job and this fact that made them hated by both the Kerantians and their kin. Perhaps most frightening to the nobility and the mages of the Minerack guilds was the fact that mages were starting to be born within the ranks of the Ashers. It was few now but as the Kerantian blood within the agents concentrated it would become more and more common. Raphael shuddered as he thought of what a war between the guilds and the Ashers with the city as the battleground. He knew from experience that something was coming, the tension was palpable in the city and he knew more than most the horror that could come when nobles and mages felt out of control.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The Citadel passed out of view as Raph reached the far side of the road and he slipped between two apartment blocks that marked one of the highest class areas of the lower city. As he just entered it was easy to tell the change between the streets of Hiten and where he slunk now. The alley stunk of garbage and the unwashed laborers that made their way through to the bus stops along the Crescent. Raph made his way through the creeping alleys deeper and deeper into the lower city until he reached his destination. The Pits stretched out in front of Raph in great pockmarks on the lowest part of the city, they yawned open like craters of the moon that sparkled above. The Pits were where the lowest of the low resided, it wasn't even technically part of the city of Tentras if one looked at the maps inside the Dukes palace. The Pits had not always been the deep holes that gave them their name, they had apparently once been beautiful. They had originally been large shallow bowls full of dried and cracked salt, there were theories on how these bowls had been made, some even trying to claim it had been ancient Kerantians. The more likely theory was one more recently put forward by Kerantian geologists. The theory conspicuously was essentially the story the native people told of how they had come to be. The story went that the peninusually had been flush with the coast once and the pits had been filled with ocean water. Sometimes though the earth shook and the peninsula would rise slightly and the holes would dry leaving salt. Eventually the ocean would erode away the sides and fill the holes again, this repeated for many generations or so then natives said. Until one day the earth had shook ferociously and the peninsula had ripped out of the water. The change had been so great the pits dried again, the years of evaporation and refilling had by this point filled the pits almost to the top with salt. It was in this condition it had been found and they had stayed untouched due to mages' unfortunate reactions to salt. However this changed after the salt rebellion, it was here that the natives had been forced to move and literally carve out a life. The Bantan were the native people of the Tentras peninsula although to the Kerantians they were just muddies, and a muddy was anyone with skin dark enough to draw attention to themselves. Raph looked out onto the pits, the deep holes surveying the vast series of interconnected pit mines. Homes stacked one atop the other with rope bridges strung between the precarious towers. The pits dotted across the landscape and were each filled with a motley and ramshackle collection of homes and businesses. Separate pits were connected to each other via long and intricate sets of rope bridges and towers with tunnels sometimes betweens pits that were particularly close. The Pits had been Raphs home for most of his life and he had been raised by their streets and on these streets he had found the greatest cruelty. He remembered the countless beatings and violations visited upon him in the dark alleys and ropeways. Despite the cruelty he had suffered here he had also found something else in the depths, something he had never thought he would recognize again, a home. Raph made his way to the edge of the pit and began to make his way down the steps carved into the side of the pit. Raphs life in the pits had been hard, cruel even but he didn't blame the pits, and he most especially didnt blame the Bantan. The corruption that gripped the pits was a symptom of the sepsis that festered in the whole city. It was the Kerantians, his people, they were the infection, they were the ones that had thrown him and the Bantan into the pit. They had tossed him and the people that now served them like slaves into the pits like nothing more than waste.

The Bantan people told stories about how even before the first Kerantian had put light into the first quartz the Bantan peoples had had kingdoms spread across the continent. Somehow though this civilization had collapsed and what the first Kerantian explorers had found were tribes that kept a wary peace. It was the poison of civilization, of rulers that had destroyed the Bantan empire. It was this same poison that even now gnawed its way through the very souls and foundations of the Kerantian empire. The nobles of Kerantas bred themselves with mages creating more and more powerful sorcerers while they amassed more and more wealth from their far flung colonies. As the nobles' coffers filled with gold and gems the Bantan and the people of the pits were left fighting and scrounging for scraps and iron coins. Clank as it was called was the icon of the depths, the iron pieces were used for everything and the ingenuity with which it was used could only be bred by desperation. It was used to buy things but it had myriad other uses, from decoration like wind chimes to filing them into the iconic triangular “clank shanks'' that had become synonymous with the gangs of the pits. It was said if you walked into the pit with a single clunk then if you were smart you had a chance to walk out with fortune. Even if you weren't smart you had a fair chance of leaving with more, although more likely than not it’d been in the form of clank shanks lining your corpse. Raph grinned at the thought of some noble or mage coming down to lord his power and ending up leaving on a stretcher. Reaching the bottom of the steps and he was surrounded by the salt walls that had been stark white once but now were stained by decades of smoke and worse. The smells were what someone usually noticed first when they first arrived in The Pit. The senses were assaulted by the mixing scents of human filth, and sweat, covering these though were the sweet scents of smoke and spices. To Raph though the smell had an important meaning, it was the smell of home and as the years passed it had come to mean safety and protection from the city above. While not necessarily safe from harm here he was safe from the persecution and police of the world above. Raph made his ways through the alleys that had become as familiar to him as the scars that criss crossed his body. He waved to the shop owners and residents that called out greetings to him in a variety of languages. While the majority of the population was Bantan there was a fair mix of other peoples native to Sarapine here too. Anyone with skin darker than the milky skin of the Kerantas was almost always unable to live in the city. Most often the greetings were said Keran and Bantan. They called out greetings as they stirred pots of curried goat or plucked chickens outside their homes. The shop owners hawked their goods in their greetings screaming things like “Raphael my boy, I know the look of a man coming home richer than when he left it.” The ground crunched beneath his feet as he walked through the pits, granules of salt snapping with distinct pops as his boots crushed them. It was this distinct feature that had given the pits the degree of freedom that they had. The Bantans had quickly learned of the minearak mages ' aversion to salt, seeing how they avoided the pits the Bantans had chosen to make their homes here after their expulsion. The grains of salt crunching beneath his feet Raph made his way back to his home, the slinking hunch of his back straightening as he got closer and closer to home. Raph walked down crowded streets, the faces around him growing darker and darker in complexion as he moved deeper into the Pits. The sounds of Kerantian dimming around him and the melodic sounds of the Bantan language mixing more and more with other languages. The streets and houses packing closer together and the scent of sewage filtering off to be replaced by the thick heavy spices of Bantan cooking. Here the houses were painted in bright colours and patterns, oranges and reds that made the eyes water and the people were dressed similarly. Some even wore daubs of paint across their brows or were marked with the ritual scarring of some of the tribes found further inland. Despite his glaring white skin Raphael was at home the deeper and deeper he got into his neighborhood which jokingly referred to as Bantan Heights.