Xander glanced back as Mr. Wyvern yanked back the Monarch, wondering whether this man was really out to kill him or help the heroes. 'How confusing,' was all he could think as he darted through alleyways, landing on the edge of a railing and climbing into an abandoned house, tearing down the curtains and moving the cupboard, revealing a trapdoor that he opened and slid then jumped down, pulling a lever that closed the trapdoor and opened another one next to him; and instead of going through it, he reached behind it and flipped a hidden switch, swapping the tunnel route, then crawled through, entering an old-fashioned mine elevator, cranking the wheel as it churned and descended.
Once the elevator stopped, he walked out and down an old mine shaft, twisting and turning. Most would get lost, but he knew every square inch. Walking past stalagmites and squeezing through a small gap revealed a giant cavern, and by giant this was not just a cave—this was big enough to be its own kingdom. No, it was bigger than all four major kingdoms combined. This was the world's criminal underground, land of thieves and the kingdom of crime, known as the Underground, and to most, The King's Gambit.
He jogged and jumped, grabbing a pole, sliding down to the bottom of the ground, and journeyed past shops and casinos. The King's Gambit was known as the only illegal but also legal gambling site on the planet. The King of the Gambit ran a fair underground gambling zone to cover up the other crimes he committed.
Engraved on a stone in the central plaza of the Gambit were the Commandments of Thieves, a set of rules that prevented the Gambit from becoming a shithole of scamming and robbery and kept it a functional black-market economy.
Xander walked past street slot machines full of food and drinks. You had to gamble for food, and the rules of the Gambit made it clear that these community machines worked by chance and were not rigged. Because the main rule of the Gambit was: Chance is humanity's greatest freedom.
Xander raised his arm at a street, and multiple men riding transport snakes stopped by, offering him a ride.
"Holy shit, it's Xander."
"Wait, he's back."
"Xander, come to my place for dinner."
"Xander, have you considered marrying my daughter yet?"
"Xander, what did you think of my wife's pie?"
"Xander, come onto my snake."
"No, come on mine, I'll get you to where you need faster."
"Forget both of them, I'll get you there free of charge."
Xander sighed but couldn't help but smile a bit. "I'm doing fine, and no, I'm not a freeloader, so I'll pay." He got onto the back of one of the giant snakes that the underground used as taxis.
The snake slithered down the road fast, passing carriages and cars, towards the gate post of the underground.
"So where you headed after the gates?" the snake rider asked, making a sharp right as his snake rode up a building.
"Eastern branch, then head up to the surface and stay in the eastern kingdom for a bit."
"That sounds nice. Me and my wife were planning a vacation there. When you're back, recommend a nice restaurant for us to go to, ok?"
"Sure," Xander smiled softly as the snake made its way across building tops, then back onto the road and down towards the gates that led to the eastern branch of the underground.
The Kings Gambit was one kingdom, with four branches allowing it to spread as far as the four major kingdoms but underground. It housed common criminals and bounty hunters who lived in fear of the law up above. Officially it was not recognized as an official kingdom, resulting in its many titles: The Underground, King's Gambit, and Hell's Haven. To the people, though, it was still the seventh kingdom of the world and had the power to back the claim.
Xander could still remember his first day: beaten and bruised, covered in blood at the age of 9, running down the dark alleys stealing food, scared, believing he had been taken away against his father's will, running to the train station, clawing through people, seeing his father holding his sister at the train door. And when his father turned, his face fell, and he screamed, "STAY AWAY FROM ME AND MY DAUGHTER."
The words echoed through the platform as people stopped and stared at the man holding his daughter as his bloodied son watched him leave. They didn't know what he had done. No one would know. Parents covered their kids' eyes and hurried away; some turned in disgust.
A small hand reached out for him but was pulled away. A small boy with dark hair stared at him with pity as the boy was hurried away by another boy, and he was alone, eyes staring from all around at his starving body.
He turned and ran. He blamed himself. Why had he done what he did? Why did he ruin everything? His father's train left. From the window, his baby sister watched him run away. Not even a month old, she would never get to know him. At best, she'd hear stories.
Nine-year-old Xander ran. It should've been impossible for such a weak body to still be running. He climbed over walls. It should've been impossible to climb with that weak body. Tears streamed down his face as he ran through alleys, tripping and falling. It should've been impossible for such a weak body to keep going, his knees and arms getting scraped and damaged, stinging with pain. But this was Xander Kortez, the one boy destiny would not let die.
He ran, and ran, and ran. This boy ran. Was it fear, or hatred? He would never know. He stumbled and fell down a small hill, rolling into a freezing creek. The cold water sent a sharp jolt through his body. This weak body shouldn't survive. It should've been impossible. But this was Xander Kortez. His hands clawed through the water. He could not swim, but he could grab. Even if it did nothing, he could still do it. The cold felt like fire on him, the dirty water flooding his mouth and eyes, but he kept reaching. And he reached. His fingers wrapped around a small cylinder, and he tugged, he pulled, he yanked to pull himself up, but the cylinder turned. It was a lever, old and rusty.
The water pushed against him, but he held on. Under the water a panel slid open, dragging him deep below as the panel closed and the lever locked back in place.
The darkness broke as Xander fell down tunnels and pipes, his body ragdolling against the back of a building underground.
He gripped the side of the wall and picked himself up, limping onto the street of what would one day be his home.
Lights flickered above as a lamp died out, streets barely lit, quiet. A man in rags jogged past and nodded in his direction. "Evening."
The word seemed strange. The situation seemed strange. In his current state, where he had been looked at with disgust up above, down here he looked like a regular passerby.
He walked down the streets, lips smacking. Hunger and thirst were the two main things on his mind, but at the end of it all, he fell to his knees. Not a tear shed this time. He looked up at the nonexistent sky, his lips quivering. At that moment, all he wanted to do was die.
"HALT. STATE YOUR NAME AND REASON FOR PASSAGE."
Xander's eyes snapped back to the present. Glancing up from the snake, he saw the eastern gates, and in front stood a giant man of stone the size of a building complex, leaning on his stone sword.
The snake rider turned the other way. "Stay safe." And he was gone as Xander stood opposite the stone guard.
Xander glanced up. "My name is Xander Kortez. My reasons are none of your concern, stone of the east."
Other people who had been entering in and out, as well as those who passed by, turned at the sound of Xander's name. Then all looked up as the Stone Guard straightened and raised his sword, leaning it over his shoulder.
"Xander Kortez may pass," the Guard announced as Xander walked through the gates. The guard's sword moved back into the ground after he was through.
As he walked down the path to the other gate, a second stone guard raised his sword and allowed him through into the eastern zone. A marble path led the way into this part of the underground: short stalls and small businesses, a few houses here and there. The further you went in, the bigger things got.
Xander held out his hand once more, and more snake riders came his way. Using the service, he rode deep into the eastern zone, where he entered a café. The people inside instantly lit up when they saw him, but he kept walking and made his way through the back door and up a flight of stairs.
"Maria! You awake?" he called out as he reached the top of the stairs.
"Don't come in!" a female voice screamed from behind the door to his right, but he opened it anyway.
On the floor was a dead man's corpse, and over it was a 17-year-old girl, picking at his insides, her bare hands extracting organs.
"WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN? NOW THE SMELL WILL LEAK OUT." She darted behind him and shut the door. "Do you know how hard it is to cover the scent today? Not much food is being made downstairs."
"Why do you never wait for me to get back before you do this stuff?" he said, taking a seat on the sofa opposite the body. "Who is this anyway?"
Her smile increased violently as she got on her knees, messing with the body's insides further. "I think his name was Berwick, some half-elf from the Moser district." She pulled at the body's intestines, tearing them out and wrapping them around her arm.
Xander grabbed a box of sweets from a coffee table and tossed a toffee into his mouth. "Check the liver. It's probably there."
"Ooooo, good idea." She dug her hands down and tore the liver apart, placed it on a plate, and scurried over to a workbench in the corner of the room, messing with it.
Xander got up and knelt down to the body, running his hand over the throat. "Huh, seemed to be suffocation… Who did this?"
Maria called back from the bench without looking. "Yuno. He said this guy started freaking out and breaking stuff after escaping, so he wrapped a towel around his neck and strangled him."
"Tch, of course he did." Xander took a seat back on the sofa and sighed. "Can you not drink the blood if you're gonna keep doing this, or it will just make the tests take longer."
"But then what will I drink?" She glanced back, tossing him a tablet. "Also, look at this. You were right—this one got affected in the liver."
Wind coiled and floated the tablet up to Xander as he glanced at it. "Drink water like a normal person. Also, why are his levels so high? He might have been an elf, but you said he was a halfling."
She just yawned and laid her head on the desk. "Water's yucky. Also, he had the surgery done with another halfling. Seems someone wanted him to be a full elf, or maybe part dragon as well. He has weird chunks of DNA in him."
Xander yawned as he flicked through the pages on the screen. "So his parents sold him to make him a full elf? Sounds like bad parenting."
"You would know, wouldn't you?" She got up and grabbed a hammer. "Also, no—it was his wife. His parents didn't mind halflings, but his wife did."
Xander watched as she knelt over the body, raising a hammer. "You done already?"
"Yes." She slammed down, crushing the dead skull, then moved onto the arms and legs.
"At least wait for me to change the air pressure, idiot." Xander waved his hand, and the air pressure in the room lowered everywhere except around their bodies, reducing the potency of the dead body smell and the sound of the hammer.
"Where'd you learn that?" she said as she tore off an arm and swung it around. "I could make a nice stool out of this."
"A bear almost drowned me." Xander walked around the room, pushing the blood and pieces of the body into a lump on the tarp mat.
"And you learned how to nullify sound? How many more secret moves do you got?" Maria grabbed a box of cigarettes from a drawer and a lighter.
"None of your business, is it?" He grabbed the box. "Also, you're not smoking."
She stomped her foot and tried to grab it, but he spread out his palms and made a barrier between them out of air. "JUST GIVE IT PLEEEEASE." She smacked the barrier, then gave up, turning around and lighting the body bits on fire as Xander removed the air a bit from around the body.
"Good, it shouldn't spread now," he said, tossing the cig box in the flames while opening a window to funnel air out with concentrated wind tunnels.
"My cigarettes," Maria fake-cried. "You never let me keep them."
Xander sighed as the last of the smoke left, and he wrapped up the tarp mat filled with ashes. "You're not even old enough to smoke."
"You let me dissect people and drink blood. What's with a little smoke?" She tidied up the workbench, putting everything into a bag.
"I only let you drink blood beacuse of the half vampire shit, sadly, and I don't mind you doing your detective stuff or whatever excuses it is now to still be doing this, but I won't let you cough out your lungs." He slid open the door and headed down the stairs back to the café.
"How caring," she jogged after him. "Can we get sushi later? Oh, and pizza, and lasagna, and I want mashed potatoes."
"If you promise to stop trying to smoke," he said as he walked through the café and out the back, tossing the tarp wrap into a small pit.
Maria grabbed a shovel and filled in the pit while Xander used a hoe to plough the dirt and plant seeds. "I'm not going to stop, because I know you don't like it." She smiled, watering the seeds.
Xander tossed the equipment into a corner and headed back inside. "Just don't forget the bag this time."
She followed him in, and they headed back upstairs to clean out any missed spots before leaving the café and making their way down the street to food vendors.
"Oooo, look what's this." Maria sprinted down to a vendor, looking at small animals in cages. "I want one. Xander, can I have one?"
Xander walked over, glancing over the cages, then glanced at the vendor. "Where did you get these? Last I checked, the chances of finding an animal without the gene are low, yet you seem to have many, and selling on the street at that."
The man's grin widened. "Trade secret. But for you, sir, I'll tell you this: I'm the only one in this region that sells at such a fair price. So why not buy your girlfriend here a nice pet?"
Xander glared at the man. "She's my sister." He looked at the cages again, and his face darkened when he noticed a golden cage with a baby monkey inside.
Xander's hand twitched as wind coiled around his fingertips. Maria noticed and followed his gaze to the monkey's cage, gasping. "Wait, that's…" Before she could finish, Xander clapped his hand on her shoulder, smiling, and glanced at the vendor. "Sorry, sir, we won't be buying." He pulled Maria away as they walked off.
The two sat inside a different café, glancing out the window at the vendor. "Guess he's one of the few who doesn't know who you are," Maria said, drinking her coffee.
"Seems so," Xander glanced back around the café. "We'll have to keep tabs on him." Wind coiled around his arm as he walked outside and flicked the air, sending a controlled blast into the eye of a snake. The rider lost control, rampaging through the street. The path wasn't completely random, being guided by thin wind tunnels, causing the snake to slam into the animal vendor, toppling his cart and cages, freeing a few animals who ran into alleys.
The vendor screamed as he tried to lift his stand back up, ultimately failing, and then tried to capture the animals. "NO NO NO, GET BACK HERE!" His voice loud and clear, causing people to turn and stare.
In the back of the cart, a rattling sound broke through the chaos, sending a sudden silence. The back of the cart shook as the monkey in the gold cage climbed out, dancing on the cart. "Ooh-ooh-aah-aah." It danced and spun on the cart happily as the vendor shook violently, charging at the monkey.
"COME HERE!" He lunged, and the monkey leaped over him, grabbing onto a lamp and spinning. "Eek-eek." The monkey climbed up the pole and leaped over to the vendor, grabbing a broken part of the cart and spinning it like a staff. "Ooh-eek, EEK-EEK." The monkey slammed the stick down onto the vendor's head and pole-vaulted over, spinning round and bashing his ankles and knees. "OOH-OOH." Pain surged up the vendor's legs.
Xander and Maria watched from their table as the monkey beat up the vendor and freed other captives before eventually climbing up his back and clawing at his eyes as the vendor screamed, running around slamming into other stalls.
By the time the underground guards arrived, the vendor was left screaming and shaking on the floor as blood gushed out. The captured animals were now gone, and only broken cages remained as the monkey climbed away, getting lost into the rooftops.