—note, this may not be entirely accurate plotwise/canonically wise, this is just my own interpretation, an interpretation of Pearlescentmoon12335's applyfic's world that is most likely incorrect

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The sun had begun to set below the walls of Skidas, shadows overtaking the streets and buildings like wildfire and casting out the hazy light. From a smoggy orange to a dulling purple the sky went, dusk calling upon darkness whose fingers stretched out to take hold of the outskirts.

And dusk only meant danger.

"You're going?" Sylver's green curls appeared around the doorframe, their glasses sliding down the bridge of faer freckled nose.

"Yes," I replied, flexing my hands within the sleek black gloves I had pulled on, tightening the straps a little further. If they were too loose, my brass knuckles would get caught on the bunched up fabric, and then I'd be in trouble. "I'll be back in the morning."

"Why can't I come?" Fae asked, straightening up in the doorway and crossing their arms with a stubborn scrunch of their nose. "I'm perfectly capable."

"Sylvie, they're starting to realize that it's an inside job. Two people would make it easier for them to trace." I said softly, fully turning to my younger sibling. And it was dangerous. Very, very dangerous. I'd lock every single window, door and vent in this house if I had to, to stop them from going. Fae'd hate me for it, but if it meant keeping them alive and safe I would do it even if it meant that they'd never talk to me again.

Fortunately, they didn't push it. "Fine." they said, clearly unhappy about my answer, following me towards the cracking window as I began to open it. The cracks and the peeling paint and the rusting metal felt like home, here in Skidas. "Don't die."

I slipped through the window, heat from the outdoors pressing on my every side as I braced my feet against the sloped shingles of the roof. "I won't, promise." I said, leaning forward again to ruffle Sylver's hair before completely sliding outside, pinching the windowsill between my fingers to make sure I didn't fall.

The thought worried me sometimes. What would happen to faem if I were killed? Would they be taken for being affiliated with me? What I was doing, what I kept doing, over and over again, was the highest form of treason and death was certain if I was caught. If risking my life every night finally resulted in my death, what would happen to Sylver?

I had settled my worries ages ago, when my fiancée Rain, and my friend Indigo, had promised me that they would care for them if anything were to ever happen to me. And I was grateful for that, so, so grateful. But still the thought plagued me.

"I'll be back." I promised again as Sylver began to close the window, their lips pinched together. We didn't say I love you. That was never something we had done, that wasn't what our family would do. But the look we shared said it all.

Fae waved to me the slightest, before closing the window just as I pulled my fingers away. I waved back, before letting myself slide down the roof slightly towards the gutters lining the edge. They were in no way stable, but there was a drain pipe running up the side of the building right by them that I could use to slide onto the flat roof a dozen or so feet below the window.

I felt Sylver's eyes on me as I took a small leap, hooking my fingers around the drain pipe and pressing my body tightly against it to slow my fall. As the heels of my boots hit the lower roof, I looked back up at the window. Sylvie was gone.

I pulled up the hood of my cloak, and the mask strung around my neck up over my nose. If I was seen at all I was in the worst trouble of my life. But at least if my features were obscured I would have time to get out of here, with my sibling, my partner and my friend, before a price was placed on my head.

It was easy, traversing the city from the rooftops. Additions to houses and extra stories were everywhere, rickety buildings rising towards the sky. A heavy result of overpopulation. Wooden and metal supports alike holding up tipping apartments and businesses scattered the flattened roofs, canopies stretched across three-foot-wide alleyways. The jumps from building to building were hardly a challenge, and I made my way towards the center of Skidas with my nearly unbroken pathway, one that I took nearly every night, that I knew as well as my own name.

Off I was to break the law again and put my life on the line. It was ironic, considering my job was to enforce the law and also put my life on the line. A true double-life, you could say.

The air reeked less and less of smoke, weed and rotting garbage the further into Skidas I traveled. Me and Sylver didn't even live too far outside of the inner circle, reserved for the wealthy and privileged, but the difference in a mile or so was stark.

I could already see the dark shapes of the guards patrolling the top of the wall. It was only twenty or so feet high, much smaller than many of the buildings in the area, but it was effective.

Well, effective against anyone but me, really.

Being a guard myself was very useful, when it came to memorizing blindspots and patrolling patterns and timings.

I slipped into the cover of the shadows, where the light from the rusty lamp posts of the streets didn't reach.

One of the buildings here was practically built into the wall like many others, inches of space separating the cracking and ivy-covered stone of the home and the metal-mortared flat grey brick of the inner circle. And here I knew of a moment passing, just a split second every sixteen minutes, where both guards' backs were turned, and I could slip over the wall.

Everything could be ruined if I made a sound, if one of the guards decided by chance to just glance behind them.

It was like walking the edge of a knife with a gun to my temple, asking for them to shoot.

I had climbed this rotting building hundreds of times by now, knew every single chip and chink to use as a foothold, everywhere that the light could glint off the blackness of my cloak and give away my position. Still my heart raced every time I began my ascent.

I wrapped one of my gloved hands around the ivy, hoping and praying that the leaves wouldn't shake and alert the guards along the wall. Just one noise, just one slight look of unease from one of the patrollers, and I wouldn't be able to go tonight. One mistake and lives would be lost, lives that I had endangered in the first place.

But thankfully the gods were with me tonight because I climbed silently up to my perch, watching from the perfect blindspot for the right moment.

One minute, two minutes...

My forearms burned from holding my weight, legs shaking the slightest against the chips in the stone that my boot toes had found safety in.

It should just be thirty more seconds... twenty...

Perfect.

Just as the guards' heads turned I swung myself onto the wall, touching down lightly on the perimeter. I had mere seconds, but with a few long, silent strides I crossed the wall and leapt over the opposite edge.

My stomach dropped as I fell feet first several feet, the wall's top disappeared overhead. I clenched my jaw to stop a gasp as I hit a canopy, the same canopy I hit every night, and slid down the angle (I was very thankful that this was not one of the outer circle's tarps, and instead it was cotton).

I tumbled onto the ground, trying my best not to stumble. I winced as gravel crunched beneath my boots, dammit, before diving beneath the canopy. I looked up. No guard peered over the wall to see what the noise was. There were no sounds of alarm, no whispers asking what that was.

I was safe. Well— I was far from safe. But I had made it this far.

The Undertaker had struck again.

At sixteen I was named a guard. For three years I had spent my days capturing rebels with my companions, traitors to the government. And for three years I had spent my nights releasing the very captives I put into their cells.

At first the government just thought that the rebels had found ways to escape the jails. But that was proven wrong when even after changing the material of the bars and the security of the prisons they still managed to become escapees and completely disappear from the streets of Skidas, and from all the cities of Selenite.

That's when the Undertaker was born.

And recently they've begun to realize that it must be an inside job...

I slipped into the shadows. Guards patrolled these streets too, just like the outer circle. But it was much easier to avoid them here on the ground, and much riskier to travel by rooftop.

I knew exactly which alleys they never checked, which lamp posts needed a light bulb change the next day and gave me the perfect cover.

I got to the center unseen.

It was an intimidating building, the barracks. Large pillars rose from the ground to encase the steel grey walls, the windows small arrow slits from the ancient times now filled with a film of bulletproof glass.

I had a room here, along with Sylvie, for militant emergencies.

But right now I was here for the prison beneath it.

I dug my fingers beneath the grooves of a sewer grate. I used to have to use my crowbar, but I had opened and closed this particular grate so many times it was no longer needed. These roads had been repaved and redone since the original sewer system was made, and this particular grate was perfectly off center beneath the lip of a roof, out of sight.

I slipped inside, holding my breath and beginning to breathe through my mouth as I pulled the cover back over the hole and climbed down the ladder quickly. I had a very short time to get into the prison and get out with the rebels.

My gloves slipped against the metal rungs but I kept my cool and kept my grip, dropping onto the floor. A river of muck flowed in a stream just below the platform I had landed on, a platform that followed the sewer line all throughout the city. There was very little lighting, just the burning oil lamps that had begun to get low. It was muggy down here, humid and disgusting. It may be a smelly passage, but it was a passage.

Here was where my crowbar was actually needed. I pulled it out of the strap holding it to my back, jamming it into the side of a metal panel. Once upon a time long before I had become a guard here, there was an escape of prisoners who had been placed here for holding a public murder during a riot in front of the Senate. They blew a hole through the walls, and tried to escape through the sewer system but almost all were ultimately recaptured.

And here was where they had patched it up.

The metal wrenched beneath the combined force of the crow bar and my weight, bending upwards, just wide enough for me to slip through after grabbing one of the lanterns from the low ceiling. The prison side of the hole had been built back up by brick, but now I was in the walls. This passage was narrow, and I pressed my back to the dirt and faced the bricks, edging my way along.

It was suffocating. I had done this thousands of times, but it was suffocating and every time I could hardly breath, like I was being crushed beneath weights that kept getting piled higher and higher on top of my chest.

Or maybe I had just been wearing my binder for too long.

The "floor" of this small aisle was set at a sharp incline, but finally I came to an alcove. I exhaled a breath I didn't know I had been holding. I set down my lantern, the light glinting off of the golden sheen coming from the frame braced against the back of the alcove.

I waited... and waited...

Then I pushed against the frame, the painting set as decoration in the barracks swinging open like a door.

I hopped lightly down onto the floor, rolling my brass knuckles over my hands, clenching the handles tightly in my palms.

The hall was built from sandy-colored slabs of stone, the wooden floor in desperate need of a polish. There were very few lights here, just a few braziers replaced with new electric lights here and there, which played heavily into my advantage. No one checked this hallway. Ever. But guards heavily patrolled the entrance into the prison.

I stalked the hallways, checking each corner before entering a new one. My heart raced, several steps ahead of my own feet. I could not get caught, I could not get caught, I could not get caught.

Every night I had a rebel to rescue it was the same thoughts. What if this was the night? What if I didn't make it to the morning? I silenced them, instead focusing on staying unheard, keeping my breaths quiet and low.

I just needed to wait for the guard rotations. A split second of time. And then I had two hours to get the rebels out and to the wall barricading the inner circle for the wall's rotation.

A dull chime went out throughout the barracks. Rotation time.

I threw myself out into the open, just as the guards disappeared, towards the prison doors. I had seconds, only seconds, I had to make every one count. From my sleeve I pulled a key. Had I consulted my mage friend Indigo to create an exact replica of the prison door keys? Possibly. I despised magic with every ounce of my being but in times like these it was the most useful thing I owned.

I slid the key into the lock, slipped through the doors, and closed them.

I was in.

---part two coming soon :>