"Oh?" I tilted my head, staring the rotund woman down. "Then pray tell, who do you think I am, mom?"

"A highborn mageling! One of the upworld bastards from Nemendias that broke my legs and cast me down here!" She snarled. “Just do what you came here for and leave! Stop torturing my poor husband!”

"Nani!" Lic yelled, slamming his fist onto the stove. "Stop! It is her! It has to be! She's cooking with me just like we used to! I’m not drunk today, I can see that she’s our Grogs!”

"You're an old alcoholic," Nandine sighed. "And an utter moron who can't see the truth. Sometimes I wish I'd drowned that day instead of meeting you."

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. This wasn't going to be easy.

"Mom, I'm here to help you and dad," I said slowly. "You think I'm here to hurt you or something?"

"I know you're here to hurt someone or you wouldn't be wearing that bloody, fancy-ass armacus," Nandine replied. "Let's drop the charade, constable. You're breaking my husband's poor heart. Just tell him you're not our Grogs."

"I am Grogs," I said sternly.

“No, you are not! My daughter's dead!” Nandine yelled. “You stole her face!”

“Then why would I have this?” I unclipped the belts at the front of the leather dungeon-diver’s armor revealing the dark, pyramidal debitor’s tattoo on my chest. The slight smell of rotting eggs emanated from it.

“This proves nothing!” The woman growled.

“She’s our daughter, Nani! A tattoo that old cannot be faked!” Lic insisted.

Anything can be faked with powerful enough magic!” Nandine shook her head resolutely.

"I am…" I opened my mouth.

“By Saint Eunissi! Just bloody tell us why you are here!” She screamed, her face red.

I huffed angrily, pulling the chest plate back on.

A small flash of memory manifested itself in my mind.

The kitchen clean. Lic and Nandine thin and hugging each other. Me... no, Grogtilda as a little girl laughing at their jokes.

"This place used to be presentable, clean!" I barked, diving out of the memory offered by the dancing shadows. "Year by year you allowed yourself to sink below Undertown, below where you fell! There's magic all around you, opportunity to be grabbed by the scruff... you don't see it because you've given up!"

"You can't tell me how to live my life, mageling." Nandine shook her head. "You are not my daughter! My daughter died in the accursed Folding Forest!"

"I am your daughter," I said firmly. "I'm... everything that was left of Grogs after three months inside of a Folding Seed sucking at my brain and soul. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I'm sorry I didn't try harder to find you. I'm here now. I'm going to fix all of this. I can take you out of this place. I can bring you up to Lomb, rent a farmhouse for us! You don't have to stay in Undertown!"

"Never," Nandine spat. "I will NEVER go to the surface. Not after what those bitches from Nemendias did to me. Did they hire you to check up on me... to find and to torment me with hope, only to bring me down, to hurt me further?"

"Grogs, we can't move to the surface," Lic said softly. "I was born in Undertown - my family and friends are all here. Don't waste your money on us, please. You might have gotten out… but we cannot leave our home."

"She is not Grogs! Stop calling her that!" Nandine hissed. "She is obviously one of them upworlder sluts, sent here to torment me!"

"No," I shook my head. "If you won't leave, then I'm helping you clean up this place. Room by room, house by house, street by street."

"Ha!" Nandine laughed. "You think you can just clean up Undertown?"

"Yes," I said.

"Really? How?" the corpulent woman laughed.

I lifted my armacus and the weapon unfurled itself from a silver bracelet into the shape of a gun.

"I am the law," I said and Grogtilda's mother paled at the heart-throbbing pulse coming from the weapon. "But… I am not the law of the corrupt bastards who let this place rot and fester. I'm a little girl from Undertown who died and found herself alive again through improbable luck. I am the voice of change. I am a spark of a firestorm that's going to burn everything vile and plant a forest down here."

"A forest?" Nandine sputtered, clearly not impressed by my declarations. I turned back to Lic who looked just as terrified and pale.

"But now, I'm going to make the best, damnedest fried squid with my dad," I smiled softly. "...and nobody is going to stop me. Not you… mom, not the Emperor of the Basq and certainly not the fake goddess whose name you keep bringing up."

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Nandine fell silent at my declaration, looking too enraged to even say anything. I ignored her, focusing on the cooking. My hands knew exactly what to do.

. . .

Breakfast had been filling, albeit a bit plain because Grogtilda’s senses have been considerably dull in comparison to my chimera taste buds. I ate the fried squid with Lic sitting at the front of the house. Chasm clouds rolled through Undertown, painting it with pink shades of sunrise. If I squinted my eyes I could imagine that I was seeing the real sun somewhere among the clouds. The Dungeon was damn good at deceptions like these.

Nandine had chosen to stay inside, refusing to even talk to me after my declarations of blasphemy. She was a big believer in Saint Eunisii or whatever. Dismantling Eunissism was going to be a truly gargantuan challenge and I had no clue as to how I would begin to tackle it. Fighting every single person who believed and convincing them that Eunice wasn't a god seemed impossible… just like cleaning up Undertown.

I sighed, looking at the streets made from and filled with random junk. Even more junk was floating down the river, coming down from Illatius. The people upstairs had a simple solution to trash - just dump it into the sewers for the Undertown denizens to enjoy. I saw that there were many boats assembled from random debris that were fishing newly-arrived junk out of the brown-green river.

“So…” I looked at Lic. “You fished mom from the river fifteen years ago?”

“Yep,” he nodded and looked at me. “I’ve told you the story so many times…”

“Well, please tell it again because the damned Folding Forest sucked most of my brains out,” I sighed. “I’ll have to re-learn everything about Undertown, so bear with me.”

The old cobbler looked at me with slight suspicion.

“Dad, I’m not leaving,” I said.

“You aren’t?”

“Not anytime soon,” I shook my head resolutely.

“Why?” He asked.

“Because, I am appalled at what's happening down here,” I waved my hand at the favelas. “This… it's all wrong. None of it needs to be this way.”

“Which way?” He tilted his head, swallowing another squid bite.

“The way it’s organized!” I snapped. “Nothing here is orderly, nothing is clean. This could be a processing, recycling and organizing facility instead of a cesspit of random trash. There is so much magic in the ground and air and none of it is being used properly!”

“They won’t allow change,” Lic nodded at the black, hex-beacon tipped tower.

“Then I’ll have to drown them in the river,” I snarled. “I’ll dismantle the God-damned Guilds myself if need be.”

“How?” Lic blinked.

“Power,” I waved my armacus at him. “I have a weapon here and the element of surprise.”

“Hrmm,” the old cobbler scratched his scraggy face. “It’s easy to speak of change but much harder to achieve it.”

“I’m going to start slow,” I said. “I’m going to understand the local system, figure out what resources I can bring up from above and below. Unlike the rest of the people here I am not limited by my class.”

“From below?” Lic blinked.

“The Dungeon,” I pointed down. “It has incredible magic. Plants like Folding Trees that can clear the air or the river, suck magic out of the local trash, even rearrange space.

“Aren’t Folding Seeds extremely dangerous?” Grogtilda’s father asked.

“They are,” I nodded. “But they don't have to be. They can understand things, be as clever as people… I think I can train one to obey me.”

“I see,” Lic muttered, returning to his meal. “When I was young, I believed that my future was bright. I was a lot stronger then and worked as one of the ‘fishers’ on a raft.”

“The people fishing the junk out of the river?” I asked.

“Yes,” he nodded. “My net caught something that wasn’t junk… I pulled your mom out of the waters. She was perfect, my treasure found amidst many dirty, broken things from above…”

Tears sparkled in his eyes as he spoke. “My father taught me how to resuscitate one of the drowned ones. I pushed the water out of her lungs, slammed against her chest again and again with my hands to restart her heart. She woke up and looked at me… and I was lost in those emerald eyes. Lost forever… without return. She fought me at first, wanted to return… but alas she could not. Her armacus had been ripped, cut right off her arm, so she had no way to get back to Illatius. Nobody came looking for her and in time she fell in love with me, embraced me… embraced a life Undertown.”

“Her legs were broken?” I asked. “Nobody could heal her?”

“Yes,” dad nodded. “Bones fractured by magic in several places. I did my best to make casts for her, carried her in my arms to wherever she asked… but her legs did not heal properly.”

“Are there seriously no healers in Undertown that could have helped her?” I asked. “Nobody high level enough that could rewind or repair broken bones?”

“People in Undertown do not level up past level twenty,” Lic said. “The healers down here are nothing like those up in Illatius.”

“What?!” I stared at him, feeling completely aghast.

“Only the armaca-bearers can go past the limit,” the cobbler said with a shrug. “The high-level healers are kept under lock by the Guilds.”

“Is this a natural limit?” I asked.

“Some believe that the towers steal experience,” Lic shrugged. “There was a rebellion once in a district that took down a tower. It didn’t end well…”

“The hex-beacon towers keep phantoms from pulling souls of people into the Astral Ocean,” I said.

“Mhhmm,” Lic nodded. “There was an infestation and a purge after. The leaders and strongmen of the rebellion lost their minds, turned into flesh-eating, mad beasts after their tower fell. They ate each other like... wild animals and then the constables from other towers responded and burned them all to ashes.”

I frowned, pondering over his words.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” Lic said. "Please... don't rock the raft you're on."

“You won’t,” I said. “I’m a lot stronger now and I have friends…”

“I have friends too,” the cobbler sighed. “Having friends isn't enough to change anything.”

“Even friends from upstairs?” I asked.

“There have been all sorts of highborns over centuries that tried to impose order on Undertown,” Lic shrugged. “It didn’t work out. It never does. Whoever took you under their wings and gave you that armacus doesn’t know enough about the bastards running this place.”

“I’ll have to approach the problem from a completely new angle. Attempt things that nobody’s done before,” I said. “With wisdom, intelligence, rationality, future-sight and… dungeon monsters on my side.”

“When did my daughter become so wise?” Lic stared at me.

“When I died in the Dungeon,” I replied.

“You... really died down there?” Grogtilda’s father gulped.

“You can probably tell, I am not… exactly your daughter,” I said. “Like I said before, I’m a lot more than a girl that was born in Undertown.”

“In what sense?” Lic asked, his hands trembling.

“I can write, I can read, I can do complex mathematics,” I said. “You can tell that my eyes and hair are a shade lighter, yes?”

“Y-yes,” the cobbler gulped. “I do see it now that you mentioned it.”

“Well, they're going to turn fully orange in time. I’m what’s known as one of the Chosen ones,” I said. “The awakened, Dungeon-blessed Heroes of Humanity.”

“W-what?!” Grogtilda’s father gasped at me. “R-really?”

“Yes. Now, I think... I’m going to grind a very specific set of skills,” I said with a smile. “And I won’t give up until all of Undertown is cleaned up.”

“How?” Lic blinked at me, looking beyond incredibly confused.

I reached into my leather backpack and pulled an old, cracked bowl out of Saccy. “With this one magic trick!”