Cevraya tensed at the bell’s toll. Paruvec Tower’s daily chime sounded at midday precisely, its peal ringing from the spires of New Prahv to the austere halls of Orzhova. Each day it tolled, a constant reminder of the omnipresence of the Nine Guilds, much like the tower itself. Of course, it was one of the few indications Cevraya had of time; day and night spiraled indistinguishable with each other in the endless dark of the Undercity. But it made her tense nonetheless, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. 
	
	What came after, though, was serene emptiness of sound, of sight, and of mind. Personal meditation was ill-regarded among her peers, but to Cevraya it offered a rare moment of peace in a world full of noise and commotion. The rumbling of the stone overhead stirred her from brief respite and coated her unkempt black hair in a thin mat of dirt. It was likely the result of a typical Izzet ‘malfunction’. Cevraya sighed and started washing off herself with one of the few unsullied rags she had. Shaking her head and stretching, the elf rose from her seat to prepare for another hard day of work. Or night of work. It made no difference.
	
	Cevraya was a member of the Golgari, one of the guilds that governed and influenced the city-plane of Ravnica. Her fellow guild members were responsible not only for providing food and agriculture to sustain life on the plane, but also for dealing with the dead, usually in manners the other guilds found it best not to inquire upon. They embraced the endless circle of life and death, and were well known for exploiting it. The Golgari embraced the powers of death and decay to carve a place for themselves in the city. It was tedious and unfulfilling work at times, but there was no shortage of death and thus a full supply of duties for her to take on. Besides, her own 'duties' didn't require the mana, or talent, that the battlemages and necromancers used. She scoured the rot farms for junk and other refuse that couldn't be decomposed and removed them.

	The shaman brushed her hood off and retrieved her oaken staff, looking it over to ensure its readiness for her daily duties. The thick, time-worn shaft branched out at places with unpruned branches, one such twisting back into the wood and curling around a small spiral along the crown. The lower end was eternally tinted with black and brown from years of pushing through muck and debris, its edges worn and frayed but still firm. Its wood-wrapped crown held a faintly luminescent crystal, a memento she salvaged from the corpse of a Selesnyan evangel. It might have been a source of great magic to its owner, but she mostly just used it to light her path in the dark tunnels.
	
	Brandishing the staff with a usual sense of caution, Cevraya began her daily rounds through the partition of sewer she called her home. A soft squelch accompanied the pat of her bare feet with each step. ‘Odd,’ she thought ‘must have been a heavy bit of rain last night to drench this deep.’ As she moved beneath the ground of the city – and the ground sometimes moved beneath her – she became lost in thought. And a few minutes later she realized she was just plain lost. She had lived in the sewers all her life, but even the most adept of Golgari didn’t have a solid navigation of the endless tunnels and caverns of the Undercity.
	
	Just as she was beginning to collect her bearings, a loud crash echoed down the westward tunnel. ‘Sounds like Vig’s latest failure has been flushed.’ She allowed herself a short laugh, but fell silent when the crashing continued. The din was prolonged, like a series of blades scraping on stone. 
Rotwurms.
Cevraya picked up her pace, jogging briskly in the direction of the noise. She had no interest in becoming wurm food, but they always left behind scales for smithing and occasionally casualties to loot. As she neared a turn in the tunnel, the scraping and crashing subsided, and the rotwurms could be heard departing with a nearly inaudible grating. 
	
	After a few minutes of less than graceful stumbling through the unfamiliar region, the shaman’s staff illuminated the path of destruction carved by the rotwurms. As far as the new tunnel suggested, they burrowed clean through the stone. The wurrms left debris around their exit point and a shallow series of indentations where their long undersides pushed through the floor of the cavern. Cevraya walked in the paths warily, well knowing how a rotwurm attack was liable to attract scavengers in their wake. But as she came upon the site of their attack, she stopped. What she first noted were the bodies, four humanoids lying mangled and still in the ground. There had likely been several more. They were covered in dirt-stained armor and blue robes, and the sigil of the Azorius was emblazoned on one’s shield. She briefly wondered what a group of Azorius would be doing in the Undercity to begin with, but the prospect of several months’ worth of salvages lying before her put it out of her mind.
	
	She took the blade of a rather wizened soldier first, noting its masterful craftsmanship and simple, efficient design. If she didn’t keep it for herself, it would certainly fetch a good price in the markets. Gleaming medallions and shining charms caught her eye, and she cursed herself for being so easily distracted by pretty things as she stuffed them into her robes. Still, perhaps they had some magical capabilities that someone would barter eagerly for. Next her eyes turned to another lying face down, spear in his hand. The blue skin and hairless scalp marked him as a vedalken, and Cevraya knew they often held the most profitable armor and outfitting. Taking what gauntlets and greaves she could carry, the elf resolved to come back for the rest later as she moved onto the third meal ticket. 
	
	This one was a human, and looked by far the youngest among her peers. Her white skin was remarkably unsullied by the sewer’s muck, concealed in knee-length metal shin plates and brown leather boots. A white robe, lined in two successive rows of blue embellishment, draped out from her chest plate to fall upon her unarmored thighs. The chest plate itself was a simple steel affair, lined on her shoulders with flat pauldrons bearing the Azorius mark. Her face was narrow and accentuated by locks of straight blonde hair cropped in neat layers at her chin line, looking almost peaceful in its expression. Finished with her appraisal, Cevraya set to the task at hand - trying to unstrap the pauldrons for future use or sale. 
	
	As the first one was freed from its holding the body stirred, and a low groan escaped the girl’s lips. Dropping the pauldron with a loud clang, Cevraya started and fell onto her back in the grime. ‘Shit, this one’s still breathing!’ The woman slumped her arm across her torso, apparently trying to pull herself back into consciousness. Her eyes fluttered, and Cevraya frantically grabbed for the pauldron, bringing it down onto the soldier’s temple with a swift strike. 
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	Iusta’s mind whirled in a daze. It was the worst headache she’d ever had, and it was almost enough to send her back into sleep. But she broke through the fog, her eyelids slowly rising to grant her sight. She was lying down, on a rather uncomfortable mat lined inside with straw. A slightly damp blanket was draped across her, but its ragged state did little to keep out the chill of the cavern. Occasionally a faint dripping emanated from somewhere deeper in the cave, but more pressing to her was the sound of feet padding across the tunnel and towards her. She pivoted her torso, trying to sit up. This movement was rewarded with a lancing pain through her hip. Groaning, she put a hand to her abdomen and slid back onto the mat, waiting for the sensations to subside.
	
	The footsteps drew closer, and she could barely make out a figure approaching in the dim light. It was a woman, her form draped with some sort of cloak and a wooden stick in her right hand. She rested the stick on a rot-eaten wooden table covered in various pieces of metal and stone whose purposes she felt best not to think of. The stranger knelt, and a lantern flashed into life, its dusty panels illuminating the cavern walls. For the first time she caught a glimpse of the woman. Green eyes looked coldly from her brow and her mouth seemed locked in a perpetual pout, the wraps and rags covering her concealed the finer details of her body. Her hips stood out among her otherwise thin frame, and well-formed cheeks were obscured by what she assumed were some form of tattoo. The woman must not eat often, she looked very lean and wiry. Her hair was matted back into her hood, frayed and dirty braids dangling just behind pointed ears which marked her as an elf. Likely one of the devkarin, or perhaps from the clan of Deep Shadow. Iusta's mind instinctually went to the partition decrees for devkarin territory, listing in her head addendum and legal code on the various laws this woman was likely breaking simply by being here.
	
	These thoughts were waylaid by another jolt of pain in her hip, eliciting a hiss through clenched teeth that attracted the elf’s attention. She set down the lantern and hurried over to the mat, bending down and bringing her face level to Iusta’s.  “Oh, you’re awake! Wasn’t sure how long you’d be out of it in the state I found you.” Water steamed and whined in a pot outside her view, apparently boiling over a flame. The woman dipped in a shoddily crafted canteen, swirling around the liquid and adding some dark concoction to it. She held the container to Iusta’s lips. “Drink.” Iusta kept her mouth shut, unsure of just what it was she’d be putting in her. The elf offered a sharp-toothed smile. “Come on, it’ll make you feel better, help with the pain.” Reluctantly, Iusta allowed her lips to part, and the canteen tipped down. 
	The mixture was extremely hot, yet it soothed her throat as it went. It tasted bitter, like crushed chicory, but the aftertaste was almost sweet. She almost felt sad when the last of it passed her lips, whether missing the taste or from a lingering thirst she couldn’t say. Even as the heat of the liquid subsided, a warmth spread through her body, leaving a pleasant buzz in her head. Feeling the canteen empty, the elf laid her head back onto the mat and tossed it to the table. “Good, that should have you patched up faster. Name’s Cevraya by the way. And you are?” The woman coughed, as though getting used to her own throat again. “I'm Iusta.” The elf sat down across from Iusta and reclined, holding herself on an outstretched arm. “I gotta say, you’re pretty lucky I found you. A few more minutes and who knows what would have come around?”

	Iusta stared at her unconventional rescuer, thinking back to that tunnel… the wurms… her company. The beasts had appeared from nowhere, erupting around them from the tunnel itself like some gruesome animation of the rot-clung walls. They had fought back, Magorus cleaving the beasts apart with his blade, Eniurias trying to keep their hungry maws at bay with runic barriers. There were cries of conviction and shouts, and then… nothing. She must have been knocked out at some point in the fight. Cevraya, apparently sensing her wondering stare, placed her hand on Iusta’s shoulder. With a start, the Azorius looked back to her, brows turned up in a face of worry. “You found me, but the others…?” Cevraya said nothing, but lowered her head solemnly. Tears clouded Iusta’s eyes, welling up and running in rivulets down her cheeks. Her chest felt hollow, like all the air had left her lungs. Eniurias, Sivern, all of them… memories of her first years at the academy, seeing Anthus laughing and clanking empty glasses as Nelev recounted one of his many epics, training alongside them before her first assignment, the summer they had spent on patrol in Utvara…
	The soldier fell upon Cevraya, her physical pain suddenly forgotten as she wrapped her arms around the shaman and cried, her despair echoing along the cave walls. Cevraya was taken aback, unsure how to respond. Finally she rested the soldier’s cheek against her shoulder, letting her exhaust her tears and offering a moment of silent sorrow, as if in solidarity. After what must have been several minutes, Iusta’s cries quieted. She raised her head to meet Cevraya, eyes still reddened with her tears.

“Thank you.”