(7) The Tower of Cilifus 7
"Hey! Wake up already!"
That was the hare lady who brought their rations in the evening, shaking him by the foot.
Francies had slept maybe a wink, if he was generous. In his dreams, he watched a sky as dark as shadow be devoured, a storm burning the horizon alive in lightning, so cacophonous he couldn't hear his own steps but never enough to drown that annoying, ceaseless rock slide that kept approaching and approaching until—
He didn't remember. Only that he bolted upright, drenched in sweat, gasping for breath, sheets balled so tight in his fists they had ripped. He spent the last couple hours trying to recall what should have been by far the most memorable part of that nightmare, but ironically it had been the first to escape him.
Francies yawned. "Why? Am I—"
"Ssshhhhh! There are people sleeping!" she said, not quiet at all. She tossed a bag onto his bed. "Here's your armor. Put everything on then follow me. Be fast, they won't be waiting for you forever!"
Inside the bag was the strangest set of leather armor he had ever seen. An interesting shade of pale blue that would make him look naked during hypothermia, padded on the inside with a spongy material that felt fibrous. It was elastic and comfortable though, and not too hard to put on, if a bit too through with socks and elbow length gloves of the same making,
He threw the curtains open, admiring himself. "Holy shit, what is this made of, it's—"
"Put that back."
He froze, following her pointing finger to his boar-spear. "Are you insane? I'm supposed to leave my only weapon behind?"
"The Endless Dote guild will provide your first true armaments upon entrance. Weapons made from mundane materials are less effective against Dwellers, so bringing them inside is forbidden by the Laws of the Tower," she rolled her eyes.
"B-but it's good steel! And I never heard about a Tower Law like that. Look, My friend gave it to me and she said—"
"No, you look." She got right up to his nose. "If you try to go on your first dive with that shabby little twig, your instructors are going to laugh at you, pull it out of your hands , and snap it in half. Once I saw my friend beaten so bloody I couldn't recognize his face for weeks because he got caught trying to sneak a steak knife inside. Put. That. Back."
No arguing with that. At least he wished he had somewhere safe to stash it, but nobody would try to steal a "shabby little twig," right? That reassured him a little. A little, because when his hands squeezed empty air, he felt like running.
The hare lady took him through a series of ever dimming corridors, dry and dusty and so devoid of life not even cobwebs were built there. they dipped under the earth until they reached an angled serpent of a hallway ending on a door of rusty iron grates.
On the other side, following a short tunnel, light. He could hear drunken cackling, conversation, brawling, delights countless. When she unlocked the door and showed the outside with a hand, she didn't have to wait long before he hopped out.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Caught completely off guard, by the time he turned he was already locked out. He jumped for her, but her dodge was so deft she had to be expecting it.
"H-hey, what gives?!" He rattled the bars. "This ain't funny!"
"Once you are done with your dive, you will no longer be allowed to sleep here. Thanks to our partnership with the Hearth Beat Guild, you will be granted your own apartment in the Under Town, within a short walk from the Abyss Town, but you may need to contact their offices first if no responsible personnel come greet you." She was counting on her fingers as she droned. "Oh, and don't worry about your property, we will have everything delivered once you have a set address."
Without proper explanation or goodbye, she twirled around and disappeared back into the dark, leaving him to shout after her. "I-I don't even know what an Abyss Town is! Is the Under Town the town under the Upper Town? C'mon, don't leave me here!"
Sighing, he stepped back. Nothing to it, he supposed. Only way left was forward.
His head started to throb.
He faced the light like the forests around South Lateno, one careful step at a time. It was deadly, treacherous, infested, outright malicious depending on your perspective, but he needed to eat and didn't want to be kicked off the only steady shelter he had over his head.
Sometimes, surviving was unpleasant, but you could live with your heart in your throat so long as you lived.
Crossing the threshold, commerce bloomed around him. He could hear food frying, the hammer of blacksmiths, breaking glass, splashing puddles—
His head hurt.
It should be easy to get lost on the myriad sights around him if it wasn't so damn demanding. Now that it had him ready at its feet, it begged in any way it could, desperate to make him move faster, desperate to make him look.
He didn't want to. He wanted to go bum some proper food from the vendors, play bar games for ale and rum, look around until his eyes fell off, kiss the dirt, anything, everything, so long as he didn't have to crane his neck up and answer the summons. Sadly, it was a losing battle, he was bold face lying to himself but he was just as starved. It hurt so bad.
Sheepish, a young heart seeing his lover bare for the first time, he peeked. Little by little, glimmer of brass by glimmer of brass, his terror faded, breath clogging in his throat, eyelids glued to his brow, heart slowing to a crawl, all involuntary movement halted, sound and smell and touch erased into nothingness, until all that lasted were two: the ethereal him and the gorgeous, gargantuan, godly Cilifus.
There were many names for it. Tower stuck the hardest, but it was a lie, no, an insult to the great countenance of the doomed continent. No folks could have dreamed of depicting the end of the world in such illustrious detail, the limits of imagination laying far below the acrid storm it so effortlessly penetrated. Gods wept at its might; saints saw their faith stolen and eviscerated; the church built in between its roots was by necessity a sham, a house of empty boasts and despairing death for idiotic cultists.
Within the serpentine folds of Cilifus, the uplifted worm who once feigned himself sentient saw all of creation creep and slither. The silhouette of climbing limbs, the tense grasp of bulging fingers, lines of skeletons strangled against its hide, tarsi scratching rough lines from underneath in a crazed search for hold, ridges and horns and sickle talons pressed to breaking in spaces so filled an ant could not push through. It was beautiful, how could it not be? It was totality, all that was, all that could have been digested under intestinal fevers, ever hungry, ever needy, begging for more and more and more and—
Something hit him in the back of the head, hard. His mind blanked, his eyes swam. He knew he should run, but his legs became wet clay under his weight. He went down to his knees.
The next time he looked the majesty was gone. In front of him laid the immense Tower of Cilifus, ever so slightly inclined, breathtaking in height but a lot thinner than expected, salient with serpentine ridges that disappeared into the sky, and glimmered with a metallic sheen not too unlike gold. Bizarre, striking, but without the veil of awe, just a sky-piercing pile of turds.
"Mamogon shine upon me always, we got one of those," a voice said behind him, high pitched and squeaky.
"I believed them a rumor, and cannot say I am too pleased to stand corrected." another voice said, gruff and severe.
"They're having a laugh at us! Filled the entire Party with oddballs, and for what?"
"Perhaps I should hit him one more time, see if I cannot shake it out of him before it becomes an issue."
"Maaaaybe we should check if he didn't get a concussion first. The way he wobbled, that was a nasty one."
The other sniffed. "I held back."
"Whatever that's worth."
He was shaken by the shoulder. A pretty hare with tan skin, short cropped tan hair, and creeping tan cutting scars on her face appeared besides him, squinting as she tugged his face this way and that.
"Pupils looking good, pretty eyes, not so pretty face..." She let go, crouching in front of him. "Hey, newbie, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"F-fingahs?" He couldn't even see a hand.
"Yup, just a skip away from gone."
"Goodness gracious, get him up already!"
Grabbed by the pits and pulled back to feet which couldn't hope to keep him steady, he felt like a puppet on strings. The next person to fumble him around was a Stone Skin man with light grey skin marbled white, an impressive steel colored mustache, and armored in brown and moss-green rock. He was very tall, as all Stone Skins he knew were, and handsome, likewise, but noticeably shorter and slimmer than Garces.
"Nothing morgue air cannot fix," he said with a satisfied nod. "The schedule shall continue as planned."
"W-what ar' ya' talkin about?" Francies tried to stand on his own and nearly fell again. "Ugh, Ah' can taste mah' brains..."
The Stone Skin frowned. "I did not hit you half as hard for that, please grow up. I will pay for any teeth lost, however."
He did a quick tongue swipe of his mouth. No teeth out of place, though he was pretty sure he was bleeding out of his scalp. He was about to spill out the mother of all rants when a fourth figure joined them with a flutter of wings.
Long Ears were, as far as he knew, among the shorter folks, but this lady took the crown with pride, not even as tall as his nipples. She, like the tan hare now that he had the faculties to notice, was dressed in a leather suit similar to his, modified to allow a pair of teal wings and a thin segmented tail freedom of movement, and from her face, plates of emerald green chitin protected jaundiced skin and large green eyes with no sclera.
Glass Wings were rare these days, travelers used to say, but so distinct it didn't take knowing one to identify them. They were the size of children, but not proportioned so, closer to shrunken down adults if anything. This one was the living proof, tiny but gaunt, over half leg in body mass with a tiny head that he could cup with both hands
"I-if one of our members is hurt, we should hurry him to a healer!" Her voice was high-pitched and as nice as nails dragged across stone. "It might delay the expedition, but its better than leaving him vulnerable inside, yeh?"
"Pssh, nonsense!" The hare said. "He can walk it out!"
"Besides, protocol demands we either summon the next Initiate in line or leave with five members," the Stone Skin said. "but never to delay the schedule unless one or both veterans are indisposed for whichever reason. And we are not, are we Menan?"
"Nope, fit as a fiddle, spry as the spring!" She bounced on the tips of her feet, and he together by necessity, but he almost didn't mind. How long had it been since the last time he heard that saying?
He shook his head. That really didn't matter right now. "Wha' did—I mean, why did you hit me like that, pal? Swear you knocked something loose up here!"
"You already had something loose up there. You were in the throes of madness, plain as day," the Stone Skin said.
"M-maybe I was feeling a little woozy, but how did you know a knocker to my back was going to fix things?"
"How did I know it would not?" he crossed his arms
Francies was speechless.
"I-if our comrade is suffering from mental debilitation, it would be very dangerous to bring him along! What if the... air inside Cilifus makes him go completely bonkers?!" The Glass Wing continued. "I volunteer to bring him to the nearest sanatorium for—"
"Buddy, you know at best you're getting me out of the expedition, right? They ain't stopping the cart, and I actually want to go!" Francies said.
"Wow! Fast on the uptake, ain't 'cha?" said the other hare, Menan, with a giggle and a wink. "We've been stringing that one along all morning, and she's still insisting!"
The poor Glass Wing looked at them like the floor had broken under her. No words, just a long, deflating exhale from the bottom of her lungs.
"Awww, don't be like that! Nobody is mad at you! If anything, it was really cool how you kept trying, perseverance is a great quality in a Guest! If it doesn't get you killed fast, which it very often does," Menan said.
The Glass Wing was instantly petrified, left pallid like a ghost.
The Stone Skin veteran interrupted. "Enough fooling around, once you get started it never ends."
"Like you're any better!"
"I take you are Francesto Lagos, correct? Last member we have been waiting since sunrise for."
"They just woke me up and—Ah, thanks for the help, I think I'm okay now," he said, tapping Menan on the back, receiving a slight nod as she let him go. "Just Francies is alright. Better, even."
He nodded. "Show me your Invitation."
"Why?"
"Do it."
Not wanting to upset a Guest that might be even stronger than Édipos, he summoned his Invitation right in front of his face.
Francies always had the paranoid impression other people could see it, which is why he made sure to never look at it in front of others. When the Stone Skin veteran yanked it right out of the air mid way through unfolding though, he still had no idea how to react.
Several seconds later, inured to shocking twists, Francies snapped. "H-hey, what in the Churn?!" He almost lunged for it, but instead found his solution already at the forefront of his mind: He just needed to reverse the conjuring.
Easier said than done, specially when it had never been either said or done before. The process was practically instinct to him, except it didn't work as he knew it should as it was pinned down to the physical world, no two guesses by whom.
"This is sufficient," he let go, and the Invitation blinked out of existence. "Apologies, we cannot afford our members hiding skills during an expedition, novices included, but we already suffered some lying fools this morning."
He gestured with a thumb. Towards his back was the tunnel Francies had arrived from, narrow and inconspicuous, cheaply roofed with worn sheets between rotting pillars. What he had failed to notice, caught as he was, were the two people sitting right by its step
The first, a colossus. A Stone Skin the shade of basalt, an incredible mane of silver around his chin, long hair tied into a ponytail flowing over his shoulder, expression thunderous. So tall it was obscene, far over two meters for sure, the breadth of a small hill with limbs so thick they bulged the old steel plates of his armor. Maybe it was just his imagination, but they looked far too snug on his frame. Uncomfortably so.
Second, a fox. Slender under pinkish leather armor, bronze skinned and freckled, auburn hair, eyes with none of the mischievous kindness he had seen in Tessan. No, those slivers in light green spoke only of extermination and hunt, and by the time he caught himself backing away, he was sure he had done something to offend and would be paying dearly for his crime. Would it be rude to lay down and beg for forgiveness?
A realization brought him back to reality. "Wait, where's Garces?"
"Who?" Menan frowned, hopping between the two groups.
"Y'know, Stone Skin, super religious, nice mustache, tall..."
"I know upwards of fifty people who match that description," The Stone Skin who was here said.
"But just that other one here, uh, sir..."
"You will know. And no, I didn't mean him, that type doesn't take facial hair seriously at all." It was his turn to frown. "Enough of that. You bunch! Gather around, let us get this moving!"
The fox slowly rose. The giant followed suit, always looming behind, a guardian too big for the shade he inhabited. The duo was defiant, meeting their veterans face to face as if their equals, superiors even. The Stone Skin veteran, over three heads shorter than his Initiate counterpart, glanced at each of the Guests in turn, either unaware or uninterested in the challenge.
"Today, our Party, the Nomad's First Step, welcomes four new novices to the end of their lives!" He yelled, drawing the eyes of passersby. "Today, the gaping mouth of death you were taught to fear since you first could understand your elders will become the center of all that you are and can be!
"All of you followed the call, but what is made of that remains to be know. Some of you are here to take every bit of power that fits within you grasp," he looked at the rebellious duo, who remained unfazed. "Some of you are here to escape an outside that no longer accepts you. Some of you are here because you are. All of you will seek Heaven and all you will learn a fundamental truth: Heaven does not want you.
"Cilifus has crushed better. The legendary warrior, the genius strategist, the dauntless general, even their litters of vengeful children! History became a quest of who would conquer its floors first until Levelas realized together the Tower transcended military might, political desire, national pride, even mundane dignity. The Tower never cared for competition."
"But folks are greedy! We want victory and spoils!" Menan took the center. A small crowd had gathered at a safe distance, watching with cheers and fond smiles. "But these are no longer the just rewards of the boldest invaders, the fools who thought they could threaten divine work into giving in to their demands!
"We are the Nomad's First Step, and we are the Endless Dote! You are, as of yet, babies struggling to comprehend what a Guest is. Maybe you think you know, or think that it doesn't matter, and we, under the grace of the Heavenly Piercer Mon Krant the Shallow Abyss, are to beat that dumbass idea out of your coconuts!
"A Guest is not a person with divine powers, nor some two-bit priest to some weird new god, and Mamogon protect us not the salvation of Levelas in folk form! The Tower of Cilifus created Guests, The Town of Cilifus was created by Guests, and through this process their fundamental nature was brought to light!
"A Guest is Cilifus, and Cilifus is its Guests."
A hush took over the crowd. Francies held in his breath.
Menan grinned from ear to ear, baring fangs as sharp as any predator's. "Today, we'll teach what thar actually means, and guarantee you make it to the other end. There will be no objections. Objections?"
From his peripheral vision, he could swear he saw the Tower squirm with delight.
There were no objections.