“You wash first, Omega. That rotten smell will make the air here fouler than it already is.” The guards on the either side of the entrance to The City Under scowled at me.

“Where the hell should I wash?!”

The one with a scar on his cheek answered, “It’s not our problem.”

I inhaled a sharp breath and refused to move where my feet were rooted.

Giving up, the same guard pointed to a small brook behind a wall of stones. The City Under is carved beneath a mountain, sloping downward until the ground to where my feet right now becomes the ceiling.

The other guard said, “Just by the...