Vedka's grandfather had once referred to it as a microcosm. A reality that no longer made sense with the absence of the divine presence that once shaped their corner of the underrealm with its guiding hand. All that remained now was an imperfect imitation; like a broken puzzle trying to piece itself together, still trying to manifest an illusive past from distant memories and half-formed dreams.

It was a warped reflection, at best.

But it had made for fantastic adventures for a young tiefling with far too much curiosity and far too little sense of self-preservation. And why wouldn't it? Vedka had always marveled at how tenuous one's own perception of reality in Ataxaticoatl could be, growing up.

Like how a garden she stumbled upon could be meticulously tended to one day, but withered and transformed into something utterly unrecognizable the next. How an entire street could exist in the morning, yet somehow disappear into a wall of granite come the afternoon.

No doubt it provided a wonderful kind of mystery to a curious youth.

The same bewildering inconsistencies that would come to define her own outlook on life in the years that followed was an intoxicating challenge for her then; the constant state of flux, without rhyme or reason, was the strangest of playgrounds to her.

And Vedka had reveled in it, feeling a perverse kind of kinship when it came to her own disordered personal life.

After all, those that called the city their home were rarely indulgent of children, and they sought knowledge rather than anything as quaint as domestic bliss. They were outcasts and academics and cultists and occasionally even demons, served by their tiefling brood. Her family wasn't an exception to this trend.

Of course there were the other denizens of Ataxaticoatl; the unfamiliar faces that she encountered during her explorations, from time to time. They were usually friendly enough, and always seemed like such a curious contrast to the people she grew up with.

They laughed more often, they smiled freely, and they even gave her the time of day - telling her all manner of strange stories, and listening to her own in return. They were as eager to learn from her as she was them.

Obviously this was Ataxaticoatl, so she quickly learned not to be too trusting of strangers in a city that only possessed a handful of actual, living residents. But it was still a nice change of pace to talk to new people.

She simply learned the hard way to have a reliable method of escape, just in case. Oh, and not to stand too close to any of the chasms. That was always good advice.

One might've guessed how this affected her trust in others.

Ultimately though, her youth was left deliberately vague and undefined.

Of course she was happy to allow others to speculate, but rarely validated any of the explicit details. The only detail of her childhood that could be confirmed by anyone other than herself was the fact that she made her way to the surface at around fourteen years of age, escaping from the depths of the underrealm with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a few personal possessions.

And one of those possessions was a book - a grimoire to be precise - that would also go on to become a diary of hers. She was rarely questioned as to how she was still writing on it to this day, and it wasn't like she would've offered an explanation even if someone had bothered to notice. The most they'd ever get was a blithe, dismissive smile.

Anyway, from the point that she escaped from the underrealm, everything that came after was always a matter of survival; she rarely stayed in one place for long, nor was she often permitted to. Whether that was from very real prejudice, or as a result of her own actions, was difficult to say.

Probably a bit of both, if she were being honest with herself.

What little was known of her history after her emergence from the underrealm was that she had an odd way of attracting the wrong kind of attention. This, above all else, seemed to be one of the few constants in her life. And while those hunting her rarely had a singular name or physical description that matched, it was evident they were only ever after one person. From the Vakovfke inquisition to odd, moon-masked cultists.

Not that Vedka seemed to pay a great deal of attention. She enjoyed life. She lived day by day.

When it was time to move, she did so without the faintest hint of regret; familiar places and familiar faces were only ever a fleeting, abstract thing to her. They existed for as long as she cared to notice, and they could disappear from her mind like a morning mist as soon as she lost interest in them.

She was never a very sentimental person, truth be told.

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