Arriving at the entrance of E-499, he let out a short sigh, immersing himself in how everything seemed to have changed. Even though he had finally put up with it, there was no way to adapt to everything in just the short period of a day.
The settlement resolved itself first as a series of low, humped domes squatting at the edge of a chasm, ringed with cables and mana conduits strung between angular pylons. Blue-white light rippled down each conduit in uneven pulses. Beyond, taller structures rose in tiers: research towers, civic halls, the blocky silhouettes of armories and granaries. And in the very center, a hive of obsidian glass reflected the last orange blades of sunset, a research facility, if the memories in his head were to be believed.
He approached with confidence, keeping his stride measured and the tilt of his head just so. At this hour, the front walk was crowded with cloaked figures, some hauling chests between their shoulders, others wrangling cages of glitter-eyed creatures. Two adolescent guards flanked the facility's mouth, their spears ceremonial but their hands steady. Varnok passed between them without a flicker of recognition.
The atrium beyond was a riot of activity. Floors of polished stone radiated in concentric circles from the entrance, bisected by moving walkways of black iron. The air inside was sharp with ozone, undercut with the metallic reek of burnt oil and the faintly sweet decay of spent mana. Everywhere, men and women in quilted uniforms and lacquered coats scurried from portal to desk, desk to storeroom, their voices low but filled with determination.
Varnok let himself drift with the flow, watching, cataloguing. Here, an adventurer argued with a receptionist over the price of a vial he had scavenged, filled with pulsing blue fluid, which he believed should be worth a lot. There, a courier slammed a rune-stamped box onto a counter, where a crystal-armed automaton accepted it with the indifferent efficiency of an insect.
He advanced to the main reception, where a polished black desk curved like a blade, manned by a woman whose face was adorned with light makeup and a bright smile. Her eyes, which were bright and accommodating, tracked him from several paces away.
"Hello, sir," she said, smiling brightly. "How may I help you today?" Her voice sounded sweet, like the morning spring breeze. It seemed like every receptionist at official organizations was trained to act as pleasantly as possible to their customers.
Varnok fished the twenty mana cores from his pouch, fourteen pilfered from the corpses and six from the adventurers he had killed. He placed them on the glass, letting their turquoise glow saturate the desk's surface.
"Trade," he said, making no attempt to feign the clumsy humility of the local dialect. "And transit."
She studied the cores, then him, then the cores again, observing that there were some of high quality in the batch. A few, it seemed, were from beasts of the demon rank.
Beasts in this world have two paths of evolution, one by absorbing pure mana in abundance from the atmosphere, and the other by absorbing corrupted mana, or in cases of mana deprivation.
The first three evolution paths of corruption are: Corrupted, Fiendish, and Demon.
(More about the evolution paths would be explained later.)
The receptionist, still bewildered, asked, "Their origin?"
"A few from the mythical rank dungeon. Formerly in the possession of a low-rank Adventurer Guild party, all deceased. The rest were hunted by me."
His delivery was matter-of-fact. The woman blinked once, slowly, and made several notations in a floating glyph that hovered above her palm.
"What about your ID, sir?"
Varnok arched an eyebrow. "Lost in the collapse," he said.
She smiled, having experience in situations like this. "Of course. You'll be given temporary credentials then. Name?"
She gestured, and a plated automaton the size of a child whirred to life, picking up the cores from the table and feeding them one at a time into a reader mounted on its back. The machine's light flickered with each core, lines of script spooling across a screen.
He hesitated, then went with something memorable. "Astaroth. Just Astaroth."
The woman nodded, then offered Varnok a single slate, wafer-thin and edged in gold.
"Transit to Beldam Sprawl authorized. Second ring privileges. Do not deviate from posted routes or attempt to tamper with the portal anchors. Offenses will be reported to the city watch and the guild."
She handed him the slate along with a bag of coins, her fingers soft and delicate.
"Have a good day, sir."
Varnok accepted, studying the data inscribed on the surface. The script crawled before his eyes, fragmenting into layers of meaning: permissions, restrictions, a temporary biometric signature encoded in the slate's margin.
He found the portal chamber by instinct, drawn by the huge mana flow. The room was spacious, with a circular platform of burnished brass set into the stone floor, ringed with pylons that levitated shimmering bands of glyphwork several inches above their surfaces. Two operators in dust-white coats adjusted dials, synchronizing the platform with a set of distant coordinates.
Varnok stepped onto the platform as instructed. There was a moment's vertigo as the runes flared, and then a tightening in his sternum, a sensation like being squeezed through a ring of white-hot glass. The world snapped inside out, color and sensation unmooring for a heartbeat.
He landed with both feet on the other side.
Beldam Sprawl was a wound carved into the side of the world: an endless tangle of cobblestone streets layered with the detritus of commerce and war. Stalls with striped awnings crowded the main avenue, their canopies flapping in a restless breeze. Banners in red and gold hung from wrought-iron arches, and lanterns swung overhead, casting jittery pools of light over faces lined with suspicion or drunken bravado.
Varnok took it in at a glance the market's rhythm, the predatory way merchants watched each other, the barely concealed weapons at every hip or thigh. He let the crowd sweep him forward, shouldering past a trio of cloaked figures in heated argument.
At a butcher's stand, two burly men were engaged in a shouting match, hands stabbing the air as if to puncture each other's lungs.
"Iron Tusk Mercs always deliver, you lard-bloated pig, and I'd sooner eat my own boots than trust a gutterborn like you to hold a line!" said the first, red-faced and spattered with what was probably not his own blood.
The second man grinned through cracked teeth. "That why you lost half your haul on the Outer Wastes last month? Word is, you couldn't even keep a goblin from pissing on your own banners."
Varnok paused, eyes flicking to the meat slabs hanging behind the vendor a variety of species, some still twitching with post-mortem nerve. He watched the exchange with faint interest and a bit of amusement before continuing on his way.
He drifted on, passing a cluster of uniformed watchmen as they dragged a manacled criminal through the mud. One of the watch, a captain, judging by the blue enamel on her badge, stood atop a crate, informing the masses that the bandit responsible for the series of kidnappings had been caught.
She locked eyes with Varnok as he passed, her expression momentarily sharpening.
Stepping down from the crate and telling her men to take the criminal away, she gestured him over. "Hey! You, white hair! Looking for work?"
Varnok considered her for a moment, then allowed himself to be drawn into the captain's gravity.
"No. I'm not interested."
Then he ignored her and continued walking.
The captain, who went by the name Cecilia, grunted in annoyance.
"Name?"
"Astaroth."
"I'll remember it. My name's Cecilia, and I'll be keeping an eye on you."
Varnok inclined his head and moved on, filing the exchange away. It was stunning how the world's systems continued even as they reinvented themselves. The guild system, it seemed, worked just like his clans had but with a few differences. Unlike the clans all working under one person, each guild was controlled by an individual and each with different goals and purposes.
He found the tavern by scent before sight, a fermented reek of spilled beer, sweat, and the thick, coppery undertone of old violence. The sign above the door read "The Greedy Boar," its emblem stitched in white thread. Inside, the room glowed with lanterns set behind colored glass, creating strange mosaics on every wall and patron. Every table was crowded; men and women leaned close, hands around drinks or dice, voices weaving together in a weird tapestry.
He slid onto a bench at the bar, ignoring the looks of derision his battered armor earned him. The bartender, a bald man with skin like old leather, wiped a mug and grunted.
"What'll it be, outsider?"
"Information," Varnok said. He dropped a gold coin onto the bar. The barman's eyes widened just a fraction, then he snatched the coin and poured a glass of something dark and viscous. Becoming more welcoming, he asked, "What kind of information, sir?"
"Who runs this city now?"
The bartender shrugged. "Depends if you mean up top or under. Guilds own the Sprawl, and the Watch keeps everyone honest. If you mean the big boys, Imperium's got their fingers in every trade, but the Church and Research Guilds answer to themselves, more or less. Whole city's just a fancy hub of politics and connections."
"And if someone wanted to become a player?"
"Join a crew. Prove you can survive. Plenty of upstarts think they're gods, but the market grinds 'em all the same."
Then he whispered, "You want a piece, you gotta bleed for it. But your best bet would be a guild, if you haven't joined one that is."
Varnok drained his glass, savoring the oily burn, and pushed away from the counter. "Thanks."
As he left the tavern, a few people followed him out, three in number. It seemed they had caught sight of him paying with gold. He decided to deviate from his path, leading them into an alley before abruptly stopping. The muggers came in after him, fully confident in themselves.
(Varnok would be called Astaroth from now on)
"Aye fella, it seems you have something we want."
"Yeah, if you don't want to get hurt, I'd advise you to drop it on the ground now."
"If you try to play smart, you'll find your..."
His words were abruptly cut off as Astaroth quickly arrived next to him, holding him up by the neck before crushing his windpipe and leaving him to die.
The other two muggers felt fear and wanted to run, but it was too late. A clawed hand found itself going all the way through the chest of one, while the other had his head forcefully ripped off his neck, blood spraying everywhere.
Cleaning his hands on the clothes of one of them, he spent the next hour drifting around, observing the sights and getting used to the town and how life worked.
As midnight neared, Astaroth found himself before the heavy timber doors of the Adventurers' Guild. He let himself in, the interior dimly lit and smelling of sweat and old parchment. A clerk looked up from her ledger, raising an eyebrow at his approach.
"New registration?" she asked.
He nodded, presenting the data slate from the trade outpost.
"Name?"
"Astaroth," he said again.
She eyed the slate, then him. "Provisional status. No references. No clan or house. That a problem?"
"Not for me."
She grunted and slid a battered signet across the counter, the surface engraved with the guild's mark - a wolf's head stabbed through with a sword.
"This grants you entry and access to low-level jobs. If you wish to get access to higher-ranking ones, then come back tomorrow for a test to measure your rank."
He pressed his thumb to the signet, feeling a brief, biting heat as it registered his essence. "Understood."
The clerk leaned back, eyeing him up and down.
"Don't die too quickly. This line of work is unforgiving to the weak."
Astaroth pocketed the signet and stepped back into the freezing night. He felt the weight of the coin in his borrowed coat, and the new ache of possibility. It would take time to rebuild, to navigate these new laws and pecking orders but power always found its way to those willing to take it.
Above, the lanterns shuddered in the wind. Somewhere, in the distance, a bell rang midnight cold and resonant, like the promise of chaos in the times to come.
Astaroth smiled, his true nature stirring beneath the surface.