A light rain has just expired on the husk of Rekkenmark; having failed at washing away the oil-slick of corruption that coats the city's underbelly.  Past swollen gutter-streams and drooping awnings, black on black on gray in the sultry night of the city, Ithi'Ka cuts a silent path, a traversing shadow in a city of shadows.  She is as precise and efficient here as in the sprawling knots of jungle she knew as a girl, as comfortable in the city's schizophrenic corridors as in the full-flowering madness of Xen'drik's consumed terrain.<br/><br/>At one turn, a huddled mass of thugs is splitting open the canvas side of a stolen satchel with thick-knotted half-orc hands, cursing in hushed Common at the meager take for the night.  They don't notice her when she skirts the pool of their torchlight on the flagstones, nor does a cadre of rats the size of raccoons as they scrap over the remnants of a canine carcass a few alleys up.  Here a woman weeps, intoxicated on potent liquor and alien drug-tar, her mournful keening flexing through fevered pitches.  There, a vagrant-- a wraith-like human made of bone and grime-- haunts his way through the alleys, spared from harassment by the virtue of his poverty.  This is the barrens; this is the span of city where none can thrive for long, and Ithi'Ka slinks through it unseen.<br/><br/>Soon, lanterns appear more frequently, and the smell of rot, burnt wood, and stale water is muted, subdued by more encouraging smells of sourmash cooking, industrial smoke-- signs of life.  Here and there are raucous voices, cacophonous conversations in tongues Ithi'Ka does not comprehend.   Underneath one window, where lace curtains shimmy out from the small slat in the summer breeze and candlelight filtered through red glass gleams invitingly, the muffled sounds of lovemaking can be heard over the spittering patter of water from a broken downspout.  Behind a barricaded, abandoned guardhouse, a handful of dwarves-- brothers, perhaps-- are squaring off in an alley with a pair of genassi-blooded thugs, discussing trade rights in a tone not unlike typical dwarven business-- which is to say partially restrained hostility mingled with bawdy humor.<br/><br/>It's down this path that she has chosen to proceed.  Here, where her keenly dark-attuned eyes pick out shapes of lurkers and streetwalkers, lingering monsters and whispering revenants that wander from shack to shack, tower to tower-- among the crumbling masonry and wicked-strutting spires of iron and brass-- the warrens of need, the chambers of lust.  The red-light district.  Merchants' wagons careen by to escape recognition, pimpts lurk with greatclubs and pouches full of god-knows-what.  The smell of burning intoxicants, tinged with magic and malice, creep with her down dark alleys, cling to her darker cloak.  The shadowy enchantment of her armor wisps behind her like a trail of black fog, and she emerges, intentionally, into a pool of crystal-shed red-light at the front door of a "tavern" she knows well.  Its proprietor, Ithi'Ka's contact and ally among thieves, has taken great pains to secure this foothold in the shifting sands of power.  With so many desperate souls in Rekkenmark, there is no short supply for what her fence sells, be it items of special properties or bodies of special appeal.<br/><br/>Ithi'Ka allows the security guard-- more frightening than any bull-nosed pimp with a waraxe, this warden stands with empty hands folded neatly into the insides of a gray, shapeless cloak, his eyes invisible in the shadows of his hood where the red light cannot bleed in.  Ithi'Ka doesn't want to surprise<i>him</i>unless there's no choice, because doing so would result in one of them meeting death, in all probability.<br/><br/>The suffuse glow of red light reads to that soldier her properties, her artillery.  That she carries magic, and blades, and deaths cling to her like briarthorns after the woods.  The enchantment of it carries this information inside as well, to the guard's honcho, who watches unimpressed, and will decide her entry or banishment.<br/><br/>She's been here before, but... there's no way to be sure.