"Are you sure nobody will recognize us? I mean, don't you all know each other out there?"

  Calen rolled his eyes, a smile piercing the scoff. He and Thane were walking through the alley behind Brazz Lane in The Yards, the industrial district between The Merchant's Ring and The Gutters.

  "Do you have any idea how many people are in The Gutters? You'd have a better chance at finding someone you know there than finding a bargain in that shop of yours."

  "Hey! Our prices are fair and meet public demand." Thane objected, crouching behind a stack of old crates. Calen strolled past him.

  "Uh-huh. And how much is your lamp oil these days? 4 silvers per pint?"

  Thane eyed the ground at the foot of the boxes.

  "6 silvers," He said, dragging his words before hurriedly adding: "But we just started importing it directly from Courtbridge. It's much better than just normal oil. It's..."

  Thane stopped. Calen had turned towards him, arms crossed with a lifted eyebrow and a smile tugging on the corners of his mouth.

  "Shut up!" He said, getting up and pushing past Calen. "So what if my father charges a little extra from those rich assholes in The Row? None of your people would ever buy from there, even if we only charged 6 coppers. From what my father says, they don't even pay your father for the things he does. How does that make any sense?"

  "That's different." Calen shrugged, following the teenage orc as he continued through the alley. "He keeps the community united. It's not about making a profit, it's about solidarity, and cooperation, and looking out for each other."

  "You can do that while creating a profit, too."

  Thane stopped at the corner of a warehouse, peeking out into the street. He eyed Calen, who sauntered past him and crossed the road to the next alley. Peering both ways, Thane followed him, head down.

  "Do you know how much money my father has sent back to The Gutters after he got us out of there? All those harnesses of your father's. I know for a fact that he takes a loss on all those supplies for him. He couldn't do that if he didn't make up for it on the other wares."

  "I guess," Calen shrugged. This alley was narrower than the one before. Darker too. Thane looked up towards the ceiling. He couldn't even see it here. In the gap between the buildings above, all he saw were the pillar structures of The Gutters. He dashed to Calen's side.

  "We're here? Why didn't you say so?"

  Calen turned, looking at Thane with narrowed eyebrows. He gestured behind him.

  "I thought it was obvious."

  Glancing over Calen's shoulder, Thane's eyes widened. He pushed Calen to the side and walked to the end of the alley. The sight that opened up before him was like nothing he had ever imagined. He'd heard that The Gutters were massive and cramped. But this was...this was something else. His eyes followed the pillar in front of him all the way to the top. The actual pillar wasn't even visible. It was covered with dwellings. Cramped, dilapidated, and crooked dwellings running along its entire height. They actually reached the roof. It even looked like the rafters were covered with them. Between the pillars, gangways, plateaus, and wooden structures connected them all. A net of countless layered, interwoven streets crisscrossing between rope bridges and zip lines.

  He looked ahead. He knew the lowest streets were the poorest, dirtiest, and most cramped. But what he saw in front of him wasn't a street. It was a dark corridor leading into the giant mess of a megastructure. Thane hesitated. Calen waited inside the corridor and turned to him.

  "You're the one who wanted to see The Gutters for yourself. This is it."

  He then turned and went further inside. Thane watched him being enveloped by the darkness inside. Looking over his shoulder, he took a deep breath, then followed.

  Once inside, the corridor wasn't as dark as it first seemed. He was able to make out his surroundings as he traversed the narrow passage. Everywhere he looked, there were more dwellings. In fact, the corridor wasn't one single structure but rather a passage between and under dozens upon dozens of homes, all built differently and with different materials. All impoverished and dilapidated. Every so often, the passage turned and twisted along the outer walls of the homes. At one point, it even went above a home. Rickety stairs went up the sides of a small hovel, where you would walk straight on its roof to a stair on the other side.

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  The air was thick with the smell of people living. Laundry, cooking, body odors, waste, fungus, campfires, and smoke. He passed windows and open doors, which allowed him to look inside the homes. Small one-room living spaces with only the most basic of amenities. He even got the district feeling that to access some of the homes, you'd have to go directly through the living space of others. There were people everywhere. Sitting along the corridor, being inside the homes, and walking along the passage. The sound of life around him was a cacophony of oddly muted sounds. Babies crying, clattering cookware, people coughing, talking, yelling, and sleeping.

  He weaved and ducked through the mess of people, often apologizing for bumping into some of them. Most didn't even look his way. He followed the passage around a corner and almost walked straight over an old halfling lying on the ground, only a thin blanket underneath him. As Thane jumped to avoid him, the halfling reached out to grab him. Thane leaped backwards and collided with a woman, knocking something out of her hands. It hit the ground, and something foul-smelling splashed out onto the floor. Covering his nose, he dashed further along the corridor to avoid any confrontation. Behind him, the woman shrugged, picked up the chamber pot, shook it, and walked off.

  This had to be a set. A prank the Gutterfolk used to pick on Centrals every time someone visited for the first time. It had to be like that. No one could live like this. He sprinted past people, twisting and turning to avoid more collisions. In front of him, he could finally see the end of the passage. Calen was waiting for him just outside. If he could just reach him, he would tell him it was all a joke... a prank... a... a...

  As he emerged and looked past Calen, he saw something that twisted his insides. Turning back to where he had emerged from, it finally dawned on him. The passage he had just spent the last several minutes walking through was just the ground floor surrounding that single pillar that he had looked at before. He spun slowly, his eyes taking in everything. There was another pillar, then another, and another. Row after row of pillars, just like the one beside him, stretching further than he could see.

  Calen exhaled audibly.

  "Aaaah. Good to be home."

  —

  “But I just don’t understand it. Why isn’t anybody doing anything about it? Why are you not rebelling? Do the people in The Pillar know about it?”

  Calen snorted, almost choking on his spearroll.

  “Know about it? They orchestrated it. How can you not know that?”

  Thane sat on the edge of the walkway, feet dangling over the side, twisting his untouched spearroll in his fingers.

  After Thane’s initial shock, Calen had led him further into The Gutters. He had paid a grimy-looking elf 2 copper pieces to use a lift that took them up one of the pillars. They had to power the lift themselves using a turncrank. When they had reached the 43rd floor, Calen had bought them each a spearroll, skewered rolls of bread layered with a salty grime paste.

  “I don’t know. I guess… I…” Thane dropped his hands in his lap, staining his pants with the paste from the spearroll.

  “I just never knew it was this bad out here.”

  Calen dropped beside him, looking from Thane out over The Gutters.

  “It’s not so bad.”

  Thane lifted his head. His eyes surveyed the surrounding pillars. They hadn’t gone that deep into The Gutters. He looked up to where the pillar met the roof. He’d never been this high up before. He could actually see the individual beams. Apparently, other cities didn’t have roofs covering them. He couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t. How would that even work? What would the pillars even support if there weren’t a roof?

  Looking past the pillar, his eyes then fell on The Yards. He had been there plenty of times with his father over the years, delivering supplies, picking up orders, and such. He always knew it was bad, past the barrier. The air alone was enough for you to cough for a week. But in The Yards, it had made sense. That was the industrial district. Foundries, and mills, and yards were supposed to be dirty and chaotic. Weren’t they?

  He looked further, through the smoke and smog, he could still see The Merchant’s Ring, his home. The barrier surrounding it shimmered, and the glare from the artificial light inside made it difficult to see details. It was like looking at a fuzzy painting of what was on the other side. He’d never thought about that before. When looking out from the inside, all you saw was a shining, magical barrier that glinted and sparkled. You weren’t really able to see what was in the darkness beyond. He’d thought that was just how it looked. But from the outside, you saw a world that was different than yours, but fuzzy and just out of reach.

  He squinted. It was difficult, but he was just about able to make out the two inner rings, The Velvet Row and The Promenade. He had been there plenty of times, too, especially as his father had begun getting some more connections and deals within the upper classes. The manors and estates in The Velvet Row had always felt opulent and ostentatious, but looking at them from out here, they were downright grotesque and vulgar. The thought of the casinos, and theaters, and ballrooms in The Promenade made him downright sick.

  Then his eyes fell on the blurred outline of Cliffhaven’s centerpiece. The First Pillar. The Historic Core. The Founder’s Sanctum. He did not know why it had so many names. According to history, this had once been all that Cliffhaven was. Just a single-story meeting hall in the middle of a bunch of scattered houses. Now it was a 120-story behemoth. The center of the city and the main support for the roof, surrounded by the five other districts, like the rings of a tree.