The Undercity [II]

The undercity emerged from depths deep below, rooted so far down that Edric could barely see where it began. 

It was a masterpiece of architectural chaos, sprouted from need and necessity. A metropolis of earthen houses, junk and steel pipes.

The houses were stacked upon each other creating pillar-like megastructures that rose from the dark depths towards the cave ceiling. The houses and buildings on each floor of these pillars were linked to others on the same level by earth platforms, creating a sort of spiderweb design on which normal life could be hosted. 

The city in its entirety was but a collection of these spiderweb levels, stacked one on top of the other like shelves in a massive cupboard.

At the centre of this city -like a great tree that used the spiderweb levels as its branches- was a massive vine stalk, thicker than a whale and taller than a mountain.

It looked to be covered in some sort of luminescent algae that changed colour every few seconds. One moment it was blue, the next green, then yellow, then pink and then the process started all over again.

Steel pipes surrounded the houses, all of them sprouting from the stalk, perhaps carrying the odd algae that covered it. Which would explain why the city was practically glowing, with all sorts of different contraptions emitting the same sort of light that the algae was.

This allowed each level to have its own primary colour, making the entire city look like a rising rainbow... dirtied beauty at its purest form.

"Magnificent," Edric whispered to himself. Although he had spent much of his life living in luxury, he had not forgotten the days when he still lived in the slums with his mother. If this was how the slums had been back on earth, perhaps he wouldn't have been so motivated to find a way out.

Quickly snapping out of his enthralled daze, he caught a glimpse of a dark figure making its way down the spiderweb of platforms that linked several houses to each other.

The figure moved with a practised posture, making leaps and bounds from some of the higher buildings, down to platforms several metres below them.

Although there was a great amount of light -owing to the glowing algae and numerous lamplike contraptions- the shadows of the great junk buildings made it difficult to properly see some areas, making the descent all the more dangerous.

Edric was confident that he was faster than the figure, but he was not going to risk his life trying to follow that person like a madman.

~Well, this is going to be a problem,~ he thought to himself, before making his way back to the fallen gangsters.

As he was looting their bodies, he noticed that each of them had the same symbol tattooed to their left hand. It was the symbol of a fish and dagger, no doubt a token of their gang affiliation. He took note to watch out for this symbol, in case the figure that had escaped alerted others from the organization.

Most of what the gangsters had on them were make-shift weapons rusted from the blood of their victims. There were even a few of these weapons that still had chunks of flesh stuck to them.

If not for Afina, Edric would've killed these guys and saved himself from the trouble of them seeking revenge.

However, he was doubtful the little girl would view him the same way if he murdered them in cold blood. Forget morality, he simply needed her to think of him highly until he could strike a deal with her father.

"What's this?" he asked, pulling out a handful of blue crystals from one of the gangster's pockets. They were oval-shaped and shone with the same colour as the deep blue sky.

"Those are lapis coins," Afina replied with a curious look on her face.

"I don't see them too often either. Papa usually works with silver or gold coins," she continued, reaching her hand out to touch one of the crystals on Edric's palm.

"Coin? But these aren't coins, their crystals," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else.

"But they are, you can use them to buy things... although I don't think you can get much with these," she replied, still staring at the shining crystals in awe.

~You know what, I won't argue with the logic of another world. Still though, this is an odd form of currency,~ he thought to himself, inspecting one of the crystals.

It seemed that some sort of high precision machine... or magic, had been used to perfectly shape the crystals, as they were all the same size, shape, and colour.

"Can you use them for anything else," Edric asked, after inspecting them for some time.

"Besides buying things? I don't think so," Afina replied.

~Hmm, interesting,~ he thought to himself, suspecting that they had some sort of magical quality to them, what with their glowing and all.

"We should get moving," he announced, pocketing the lapis coins before getting to his feet.

"And what about these guys?" Afina asked, pointing towards the still unconscious gangsters.

Edric quickly tied them up, using some rope that he had looted from them -no doubt tools that they had used to tie up their own victims countless times- before heading back towards the undercity.

There were a flight of earthen stairs at the edge of the massive cave along the walls, that spiralled around the city, leading down towards the unseen depths. 

"Were those men there the last time you passed down here?" Edric asked as he and Afina made their way down the stairs.

"No, but last time I was with uncle, he seemed to be friends with a lot of people down here, so nobody approached us," Afina replied, staring in awe at the glowing vine stalk at the centre of the undercity.

"Uncle? You mean Andre?" Edric asked, a sort of annoyance filling his tone. The girl had been the guy's niece, and still he left her to die.

~Can't blame him though, the situation was... not promising,~ he thought to himself.

"He's dead, isn't he?" Afina asked blankly, still staring at the massive stalk through the rows and columns of houses that stood around it.

"Probably, yes," Edric replied just as blankly, having neither the energy nor the kindness to incite any sort hope within the girl.

After walking for a few minutes, the two of them came upon the first of many earthen platforms that led onto the main city.

Although Edric wasn't an engineer, he could tell that there was something off with the physics of this place.

For instance, this platform stretched over at least a hundred meters from the walls of the cave to the outskirts of the city, yet it did not seem to be under any sort of strain from the force of gravity. Never mind the multiple platforms of junk and earth within the city that was the very foundation of its many levels.

The two of them were currently headed for one of the higher levels. Here the buildings looked to be made of more junk than earth, their primary colour blue -made possible by the algae-powered lamp contraptions.