She wakes to the guard watching her from the other side of the room. He doesn't say anything. She is still on Derr's sofa, but there is no Derr, and her sword is on the table. Someone had touched her fucking sword when she was knocked out. Fuck, the box, the satchel, where is it? Still slung over her shoulder, the box still in it. Good. She grabs her sword and stumbles out the door into the street.

Her eyes meet those of an untouchable sitting in the gutter and sorting through a heap of garbage. The untouchables are a paradoxical people. They are the lowest of the low. Yet a protected kind. The city would turn into a dump within a moon without them. They were once ordinary people who denounced their lives for whatever reason to become what they are now. Their faces are always covered with rags and their skin is dirty beneath tattered clothes. They are the sages of the city striving for enlightenment through degradation.

Once, the only way to traverse from one circle to another was the immense stairs chiseled by countless slaves into the mountain over half a millennia. Starting down at the Abyssal Gate and ending at the Great Silver Gates. The only entrance to the city. These days, there are also large spiral steel staircases to avoid the chaos of the entire city's growing population having to use the same stairs.

She climbs the rusty staircase from the First to the Second Circle. In the lowest circle people are too preoccupied with their own shitty lives to care about rusty staircases. In the Second Circle, however, most industries are situated and people have jobs and the living conditions are better. If it is better to work oneself to death instead of starving. At least there, one gets to suffer among less rust.

The Main Street intersecting the Second Circle is lined with factories producing everything from weapons to toys. They are what feed the city with credits these days. City of Slaves used to be naught but a giant mine. As the riches were exhausted, they used whatever resources were left to develop into an industrialized economy. Now the city is the factory of the world. It's sooty economic heart, thumping with oil.

Besides the factories, establishments sell whatever products or services the workers need. Be it clothes, bread, or prostitutes. Someone has the wares if the buyer has the credits.

There is even a public bathhouse paid for by an industrialist to give back to the community. That, in his own words, "Allowed him to seize his dreams and materialize his visions." At least the plaque above the entrance says so. Everyone knows it's an attempt at bribing the neglected masses not to make a fuss about the horrendous working conditions in his factories.

Vyss is dirty, has no credits, and her apartment lacks running water. In the bathhouse, she unfastens her sword from her belt and puts it in the locker. She does the same with the gun and the holster under her arm. She prefers the quiet elegance of a sword. But it is better to have a gun than not to have it.

It takes her a while to undress. Her clothes have a multitude of zippers and clasps. She first removes the ballistic cloak. Followed by the body armor beneath. The undergarments. Revealing her pale body covered in intricate tattoos intersected by scars. She is thin and wiry but more muscular than one would have thought.

When she enters the showers, people look at her as people have always looked at her since she was a child. The other children used to call her Ghost because of her paleness. They constantly taunted her like that. It was never a day when they didn't. She learned to wear the name as a badge of honor and chose it willingly as a codename when being contracted by Xerïon. Vyss hurries to finish showering and dresses. She doesn't like being the center of attention.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

She goes to a staircase that enters the Third Circle and climbs it. Here the houses are nice. Some are even built out of wood. The streets are clean. And the beggars, she doesn't want to know what happens to the beggars. There are parks as a reminder of such a thing as living nature outside the confines of the mountain.

Only the richest reside in the Third Circle. There are no industries to pollute the living conditions. This is the home of the people reaping the rewards of those industries. Circle Two does the work, Circle Three gets paid, and everyone shits down onto Circle One. It had always been like that. And the Abyss, the Abyss is a different place altogether. The city is unique in its juxtaposed dystopian opulence.

The house is blue now. They must have painted it recently. It had been white last she saw it. As it had been when she lived there as a child. A happy little dream house with a happy little dream family. A dream is all it is for her now. She was not a good enough daughter for a father working for the corporations and a mother preoccupied with playing high society. They worried about how her life choices looked in the eyes of their peers. Their reputation meant more to them than their own daughter. It was easier for them to disown her than to help her. She is beyond redemption in the eyes of the fine folk.

It dawns upon her that she should feel sad over the sight of her childhood home, forever beyond her reach. For the life she could have had. She doesn't. The drug in her system has her feeling nothing. Nothing at all. The numbness is for the best. She watches for a while longer. When she sees someone in the window, she continues down the lane and gets on a tram towards the Main Street of the Third Circle. It's the busiest street in the city. Perhaps the busiest street in the world.

Exiting the tram, Vyss bumps into an old woman wearing an oxygen mask. She wasn't there a moment before.

"Sorry," says Vyss.

"It's okay," says the woman, her voice muffled. "The street is crowded today."

"Yeah," says Vyss.

"Don't jump," says the woman.

"What?"

The woman turns and disappears into the crowd.

Vyss sees Hypnagogia's luminescent green sign. A bell rings when she opens the door. Inside is a simple room. In the center stands a desk with a silver dispenser and a large book. There is a cupboard. On the walls hang heavy dark green tapestries with arabesque patterns. Ashra stands where she always stands if she's not leading someone through their dreamscapes. Behind the desk and waiting for customers. She is the queen of oblivion.

"Hi," says Vyss.

"Welcome to Hypnagogia," says Ashra with a smile. "What can I do for you?"

"I've been here before. We were working on my, problems."

"Aha," says Ashra. "I think I remember you."

"It was a while ago, but I paid in advance for three sessions. You thought that would suffice. I've done one already. I've been away for some time, so I haven't been able to come to visit you sooner."

"I see. What was your name again?"

"Vyss Äsemena."

"Vyss Äsemena," repeats Ashra, tasting the words. "It's not a common name in City of Slaves. May I inquire about your ancestry?"

"My family has lived in the city for generations, but our lineage is originally from the north. Do you know about Uzkarath?"

"That's the city on the Ymetherus Plateau, huh?"

"Yeah."

"From one mountain to another, your family."

"Mhm."

"Let's see," says Ashra as she flips through the notes from their previous session. More pages of notes than one visit to Hypnagogia should warrant. Yet Ashra has only scratched the surface of the haunted fresco of trauma painted on Vyss's mind.

"Are you ready?" asks Ashra.

"Yeah," says Vyss.

Ashra gets a glass from the cupboard and fills it halfway with a thick, opalescent liquid from the dispenser.

She takes Vyss's hand and leads her through the drapes covering a doorway to another room. More tapestries hang on the walls like those in the reception. The only light is that of a table covered with candles in different shapes and sizes, not unlike the people on the large cushions on the floor. Their eyes are closed, and their bodies are motionless. Faces twitching. Vyss sits on a cushion. Ashra hands her the glass. The liquid is ghastly radiant in the dim light and tastes sweet and metallic. Ashra whispers into Vyss's ear, and she leaves this world.

Where she goes? Only she knows.

Ashra watches the lifeless bodies with the lively minds dream and ruminate upon her words. Inside their modified consciousness, some are heroes of epic adventures or maybe lovers with their ethereal mistresses. Others simply choose to linger with long-lost loved ones or relive their better memories to forget the suffering of the present. The doorbell rings.

A sliver of light enters the room as Ashra slides through the drapes.