The Undercity is a pit of despair set alight with neon and gunfire. It hasn't felt the touch of the sun in generations.

Brontes' Requiem is a city built on the bones of the Undercity, it was bright and magical. Literally. Runes were the norm above ground, giving their users abilities straight out of fantasy. Well, most of them. Joy's Rune never met the standards of her noble bearing. An embarrassment, she was cast down with the rest of the unblessed heathens to the Undercity itself.

Left there, she festered for five years. She was unwanted. Unneeded. There wasn't a soul that she didn't envy.

Finally, after a bad of work, she sees something that makes her snap.

Someone wasting their potential. Wasting their magic.

All her life, she had been compared to her peers. Compared to her ancestors. And she was always found wanting.

Comparison was the Thief of Joy, so why shouldn't she steal it back?

Advanced technology, a twin universe, and a war spanning generations. How will someone with a new and dangerous power affect the precarious balance of the current era?

I wasn't happy with the way the first arc turned out on the original, and I kept reworking and reworking until too many things were different to continue on in the same story. Oh, well.