Chapter Text
As you look on from Top Side, feeling the warm evening sun wrap around you as its orange and purple streaks in the sky warn you of the night's cold, you see the iron titans of Undercity architecture break through the gray smog that plagues them. Their dark steel limbs force and break their way through the rocks for support as they grow ever higher. While their tops are only at the same height as Piltover's lowest, the green hue bouncing off the reflective walls call for attention, crave for it, acting as a warning and a reminder, that despite the disadvantage they are cursed with, they can rival Piltover when given enough time and ambition; which there certainly is no lack of down below.
You look at the finer details of the city, the metal bridges simply reaching straight across the canyon with no particular sense of design in mind, prioritizing function over form, a necessary mindset to live below, yet with how many there are, they create an ironically complex web of pipes and steel supports that overlap and cross over each other. Shops sprinkle the sides, selling only the highest quality of respirators and air purifiers for high-ranking Undercity dwellers and Chem-barons to enjoy. Said Chem-barons wade at their own pace across the pathways, commanding respect from the ones that hurry and bustle out of their way, making sure not to anger them.
As the touch of the sun turns into a tickle and the night encroaches over the gulf with the moon climbing the mountains, the green glow grows brighter as it shines from below and battles Piltover's street lamps, the balcony you're standing on acting as no man's land. In reaction to the moon's appearance, the elevators that dictate the way the web is formed bustle into over time as they take the rich into Piltover above and the dishonest below into the Lanes. You fail to follow the elevator with your eyes any further as it disappears under the smog; The only hint of its existence being the green lights that surround its outside and soon those disappear as well as it travels deeper. You begin to wonder how anyone could live down there, with the stories passed along the darker corners of Piltover about acidic water that burns the skin and poisonous air from the mines and fissures that scratch and rip apart the insides of your lungs. Not to mention the brutal Chem-barons, the same ones that enjoy the air above right now.
As you wonder and try to wrap your head around the conditions of the Undercity, a small firelight valiantly breaks through the gray below and lands on the back of your hand, tickling you as it takes a break from its busy day of the flight. Its green glow envelopes your hand as you bring it upwards for closer inspection. As you become mesmerized by its light, you think of the infamous group of the same name, the Firelights. Their desires and success to be a pain in the backsides of Chem-barons, fighting for freedom while at the same time being discredited as nothing more than domestic terrorists by Topsiders. Yet they still fight, for they have no other choice. Watching their friends and family work for scraps just to be thrown away at any moment's notice, who wouldn't fight? The same way the firelight on your hand shines despite the smog that steals light, the Firelights shine despite the Enforcers in front of them and the Chem-barons behind them. With such determination, you can't help feeling anything but respect for them, even if Piltover propaganda wants you to think otherwise, for if Piltover is the City of Progress, then the Undercity, then Zaun, is the City of Perseverance, of the human spirit.