There was a hunger that he had felt since he was young. He was born to the world, loved by obligation and cared for to a degree.

His parents were an expected couple, a Meister’s apprentice and a Fixer that specialized in dealing with the refuse that badgered the thick cement walls separating the Outskirts from everything else.

He was brought into the fold at a young age, and revels in the ability to hunt down monsters and keep the peace for power and profit the same way his progenitors did. It felt strange to be so invigorated and wild out in the Outskirts, lungs breathing in a sour mix of ash and air but he inhaled with veracity because it was air that was free. He toiled away with his progenitors but knew that their life was in service to something, always in service to a boss that cared only for bottom lines, a patron that sent you on increasingly dangerous tasks by way of lopsided contracts.

So long as they lived in the City, they would never be free.

His mother died in front of him to a pack of creatures that made a crumbling building their nesting grounds. Her bones were picked clean of muscle and flesh by gaunt entities that had an entirely different yet all too similar hunger for food beyond meager scraps, their fingers curled like jagged hooks for taking and take they did.

She did not beg for her life the way so many other monsters had. There was no fear in her face as she looked at him and yelled for him to meet their contractual obligations.

He was not allowed to mourn because the system did not allow it, her preoccupation with the contractor above reassuring her only son that things would be okay. He froze his heart, ache filling into the cracks for the first time in his life, and burned the building to a smoldering pile.

The contractor did not pay their dues. They had made a contract with his Mother and they were under no contractual obligation to pay him for his services, even with the job done. An oversight of being an independent contractor on her point, a remnant of that cold and overconfident callousness that her Mother was known for in the Fixer community.

He did not fight against the system. He knew of others that tried and that system chewed them up and spat them out or bent them back into the fold, one way or another. He simply accepted that no payment was going to be provided and moved to his father for support.

His father was decidedly an unambitious man, content working under a Meister with no storefront of his own so that he may revel in the coddled safety that came with the apprenticing position. He was not saddened by his wife’s or if he was, he never showed it to the young boy. Instead, he was content to make use of the boys extra hands to toil at the workshop.

The boy would spend long hours working at a bench with several esoteric pieces of equipment that would burn or shock him if mishandled, his father unavailable, spending their hard earned money on indulgences like drink or gambling. He often wondered while slaving away underneath the thin light that hung over him what had made his mother marry an unambitious and cowardly creature, an answer he acquired under slurred words and the intolerable stench of drink.

One day, the boy disappeared from the workshop.

He was confident in the skills he’d acquired over the years. His possessions were light; a bag with his clothes, a large journal he used to classify his observations of the denizens of the Outskirts during the planning stages of his operations with his deceased mother, a set of workshop tools stolen off his fathers desk to tinker with, and a staff with several functions carved into its compartments, the only possession his mother had left behind for him.

He walked out of his District willingly, flashing the Fixer license he had acquired in his early years to work with his Mother on a more official capacity, and left the City behind.

He could not beat the system, not yet. He would first drink in the freedom that came from being untethered to his past.

The years blurred for him as he struggled out there in the crumbling infrastructure of those ruined buildings. He hunted what he knew he was capable of hunting, traded with denizens of the Outskirts that had resources for trade, and lived a solitary life that he had once thought was free.

Those same years developed his palette, sharpening the kind of hunger he was feeling and had felt even while exploring the remnants of the old world. He was more free, yes, but there was no power to this freedom; he would be subjugated under stronger opponents if he wasn’t careful and the need to manage and maintain his resources under the backdrop of excess up there where the wings were made it painfully obvious that what he needed to feel truly free was power.

That need for power also gave way to his insatiable curiosity, the passive observations in his journals becoming more detailed with the poking and prodding of live subjects and the cataloging of specimens in his hidden bunker. There was also that threshold that he’d come up against again and again, that thick Maelstrom of swirling smoke and black thunder that defined the boundaries of the sandbox he played in. He wanted to see beyond the smoke and thunder and discover what new horizons would be revealed.

He began interacting with citizens of the City again, offering his skills as an Outskirts guide to Fixers that would need to dirty their hands with hunting monsters that dared to dream they could belong in the City. His notes on the many monsters made him an invaluable asset, the notes written in code so only he had the power to understand its secrets, a trick passed onto him by his father when talk of patents and trademarking blueprints came up.

His work as a guide in the Outskirts for militia groups seeking safe passage had landed him the opportunity he desired. A man with blue hair and a well dressed suit accompanying the group of mercenaries in the razed sands extended him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

He would work under this man and his Office as an Outskirts guide and train towards the work of a Ruins Delver. He learned that the Ruins were what existed beyond the perpetual storm at the end of the Outskirts and he poured himself into the task of training for the position just to get a glimpse of what was beyond all that smoke. He made friends with those in his field, with insatiable researchers like Milton or Delvers that taught him skills to survive against monsters more dangerous than anything the Outskirts had to offer.

He was reminded of the City’s cruelty and how it tantalized you with dreams when he returned from the Ruins and was forced to forget his excursion into the strange land beyond. Their team was fewer in number and he had acquired a number of scars and strange objects from his time there, but he could not recall what he had seen or dealt with. His notes on the matter were slightly more illuminating, cataloging new creatures and spaces that had an otherworldly feel to them, lands he wished to remember but could not recall because the City did not want them to. There were things beyond the storm that the City would prefer be left in the dust.

He ascended from his lowly hovel in the Outskirts to a pleasant home near the Outskirt walls, a compromise to his bosses to be close and accessible while giving him the luxury of being apart from the bustle of the City. His abilities were being recognized and although it felt good to feel pride in what he had accomplished, the feelings were empty; he was still bound to serve one way or another.

His passion and reclusive, gentle nature had attracted the eye of a Wings denizen, an academic he promptly fell in love with named Ana. It was serendipitous that she was a scholar in the history of the Outskirts and he was a bonafide denizen of that landscape.

Their courtship involved traveling from place to place out there, Ana protected and calm with the knowledge that she was safe in his arms, always and forever.

This love had dulled the ache in his heart, for freedom, for power, for curiosity, and for a time he felt happiness. He had a son and the joy in that was foreign but intoxicating. He had a family for the first time and the freedom he restricted himself from afforded the two under his care more freedom to live at peace and away from the struggles of the world.

But it just wasn’t enough.

His routine work at the Ruins and contribution to academia as a Delver provided him creature comforts, but not the power and freedom that propelled him to this position. That voice, it whispered sweet nothings to him, begging him to push forward and become something more than what he was. It was tangible now, a dark passenger that he wasn’t sure came from the Ruins or something else, but something alien that he did not entirely trust.

The opportunity to acquire power and freedom came knocking when Milton appeared at his doorstep, a line of Fixers beyond their picket fence. There was a genuine pang of agner that his connections now bound him to serve towards projects, especially with his expectant wife, but the back of his mind already knew he’d jump at the opportunity to acquire a power to rival the gods that toyed with him and every other citizen of the City.

He loved his family, and dedicated his time to them over and over, but it became clear that this hunger and ambition was too big for love, for tactics, for anything else. He would sputter out like Icarus if he did not find a way to resist the heat from the sun known to him as the Head.

He carved out a place for his family in his heart, a place for his indulgences, a place for tactics, a place for memories, until only the acute hunger for power, knowledge, and freedom remained.

He grew in strength, his experiments radical but yielding results that would surely give him the power necessary to overthrow the old world and usher in a new one. He had the strengths to overtake this world and be free from scrounging for resources, from dealing with the struggle down below, now that he had split himself into a well oiled group.

And even then it wasn’t enough.

His fingers clawed at the tunnel surrounding him, limbs feeling distant webbed like they were caked in half dried blood and gore. He could feel the world above him attempting to stamp down this desire run amok.

He did not ask to be born with this hunger. He simply wanted something the City was incapable of giving him because those in power had already taken the devices needed to behead the Head. The request by the City to reward those who committed themselves to their desires was false; people could live with whatever desires they wished so long as those goals did not harm or take power from those above.

The price for his freedom, true freedom, was incompatible with the system in place and he was all too familiar with what happened to those without power that attempted to destroy the system in place.

He felt his body contort and rumble above him and was uncertain with what was going on, the darkness he dwelled in being all that he wanted to know now. He felt pain, felt the digging of many needles into his skin, drawing blood from his bloated body but he did not yield to their demands because they did not have enough power to take his ambition away from him.

He swelled and grew, hoping that his would be the moment he would claim what he had always wanted, the power to overwhelm the City and ascend beyond the Head.

He looked up once more and saw a sliver of glimmering rainbow light descend into the darkness, plunging something sharp into his open heart.

“I’m sorry Foreigner. Good bye.” A voice whispered. He felt warm tears on his face. He whispered something back although his body had no lungs and felt the call of death come for him. He allowed himself to rest, a gift given to him by the friend he’d made along the way.

The hunger was over. He would find true freedom elsewhere.