3. Welcome to the Underside
The Underside was a strange place. That in and of itself wasn’t particularly surprising. If anything, it was to be expected given what it was; no secret parallel fantasy land accessed through the goddamn subway system could ever be normal.
(It wasn’t even a very good subway system, in Isaac’s opinion. The Chrowall City planners had clearly not known what they were doing. The combination of nonsensical stop locations and strange line choices was the pinnacle of modern incompetence.)
Isaac could still remember the day he’d stumbled, literally stumbled, into the Underside four years ago. He’d been delirious and barely capable of processing his surroundings, which was perhaps why he hadn’t noticed he was no longer in Chrowall City until the gold line pulled up to its final stop and he found himself in a place that most certainly wasn’t the Earth that he knew.
That place had been the entrance realm of the Underside, which was fittingly known as the Golden Lands, considering it was accessed via the subway line of the same color. The name only grew more appropriate when considering the appearance of the place. As far as Isaac knew, only a single building rested in its center—Lilith’s home. The rest of the realm consisted entirely of rolling hills of flora, all different colors, from which golden lights rose endlessly towards an inky dark sky. He was embarrassed to think of it now, but Isaac had thought he was in heaven when he’d first stepped off the train and seen those warm glowing lights surrounding him.
He’d wandered aimlessly for hours, stumbling over perfectly blooming flowers, until he’d finally collapsed from exhaustion. In the last moments before his eyes had fallen shut, he’d managed to make out an approaching figure. The figure was dressed in an elaborate, eccentric layered black and white dress that looked more like the sort of costume a circus performer would wear. She had soft golden hair that curled over her left shoulder and the sort of beauty that could make anyone look past her fashion choices and even enhanced said questionable choices. As Isaac had finally lost consciousness, he remembered hysterically hoping that God’s outfit wasn’t indicative of how her brain worked.
Needless to say, Isaac had long grown past those initial feverish moments. After he’d woken up, he’d quickly learned that no, he wasn’t dead, and no, this wasn’t heaven. The woman who’d found him was sort of like a god, so that, at least, had been one of his few accurate observations amidst a pile of misconceptions. Unfortunately Isaac’s hysterical assessment of the woman’s personality had also proven accurate.
Lilith Montaigne (or just Lilith—she didn’t have a last name and had only invented one so that Isaac “wouldn’t feel left out”) was Isaac’s current boss, the only level 100 in all of the Underside, and the one responsible for implementing the poorly wrought stat system flashing on the tablet screen in his hands. Unfortunately, because she’d technically saved his life, he was beholden to her whims. That, and he may have unintentionally contributed to the implementation of this system himself.
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After he’d woken up, Lilith had given him a basic rundown of the Underside. It was a parallel dimension, or a collection of realms rather, and each subway line corresponded to one of 8 unique realms that each housed different creatures, including dragons, demons, fey, and super powered humans.
According to Lilith, there was a serious problem of mass property damage in the Underside. An unfortunate consequence of having a bunch of overpowered freaks living in the vicinity of each other was that there was a lot of very destructive fighting every single day.
Isaac, in his confused state and in an attempt to make sense of everything, had offhandedly mentioned that it sounded like a video game. Looking back on it, that had been the start of Lilith’s “grand plan.”
Four very busy months later, the end result was the tablet sitting in Isaac’s hands and an 8 realm spanning system made to, as Isaac liked to say, “keep shit from falling apart.” Everyone in the Underside was given stats and skills reflecting their abilities, and whenever there was a disagreement, this new system would automatically compare their stat sheets and calculate a victor without the need for physical fighting.
The problem (one of many) was that there was no easy way to assess everyone’s stats. The tablet could calculate them, sure, but it had to be manually activated. That was where Isaac came in. He was given the oh so distinguished task of recording and updating people’s stats. He was essentially a glorified census enumerator. Why Lilith’s godly magical powers couldn’t find a way to automate the system, Isaac didn’t know. He was fairly certain that she purposely didn’t do it just to force him into this tedious, time-consuming job.
Isaac scowled down at the tablet in question, scrolling through his list of stat update requests for the day. Igor had left a few minutes ago, running off to who knows where with that deathly serious eye of his. Isaac had stepped out the alleyway and was walking down the streets of Solonell City as his eyes scanned the tablet. Just as he reached the bottom of the list, however, the screen began to glow gold.
A familiar voice began to speak, a voice that was rich, bell-like in quality, and absolutely dreadful. A voice belonging to the aforementioned “god” of this world.
“Isaac dear, you’ve got another request added. It’s your favorite!” the voice said cheerily.
He didn’t need to look to know what it was. “It’s the fucking purple line isn’t it.”
“Bingo! Now hurry along now; chop chop those stats need updating!”
The tablet ceased its glowing at the same time as Lilith’s voice faded, and Isaac sighed and pinched his nose bridge, begrudgingly staring down at the new request that had appeared at the bottom of the already too-lengthy list.
This was going to be a long day.