I'd be hard pressed to name a day worse than that one.

Hauled out of the building, my hands cuffed behind me, I was half thrown into the back of a black van. Dumped is probably a better word for what happened, landing on the side of my face. I managed to right myself and take a seat, just as the elf clambered in behind me.

He sat across from me, fiddling with his redwood pipe as he did. I started down at it, to avoiding looking at him. Despite being full of tobacco, he had not yet lit it.

"Poor Lord Royston Ethelbert Theorode Allwick. To meet such a fate in such a place."

I didn't answer.

"Shame about the other one as well."

That did catch my attention. I looked up from the pipe to the elf. "Other one?"

The smirk I had seen early on his sharp features intensified. 'The one upstairs. I am afraid that in the struggle to arrest you, a fire started." He gestured with the pipe out the back of the van. I could make out the ogre leaving through the front door and behind him the first flicker of flames. "Sadly none of us knew that there was anyone else inside, and the flames caught so fast that we could not check."

I stared hard at the elf. The condescension never left his face. There was something else there as well. A hint of victory. Of having won.

I schooled my features, trying to project an image of horror. They thought that Hanes still remained inside. They didn't know that he had gotten away. And that they were prepared to let him burn to death, trapped in his room, to cover their tracks. I looked away again, down at my feet. I couldn't afford to give them any hints that Hanes was free, least they hunt him down and finish the job.

The back door to the van was slammed shut by the ogre, rocking the vehicle in the process. The engine started up and we headed off, leading the ogre behind. No doubt to stop people trying to put the flames out if needed. We drove along the backstreets of the district, headed inwards. Upon reaching the main thoroughfare, instead of turning onto it as I had expected, we instead cut straight across it, continuing deeper into Spire.

My first thought was that they would take me to the main constabulary house in Heathpool, there to be processed and charged, but that was now out of the question. We had gone passed the route to it. Instead we headed for place I really didn't want to be making for, a way up to the very top of Spire, to where Them Above lived. Driving would take far too long, a journey of many hours. Which meant they planned a journey up through the centre of Spire itself.

It is not until you reach the base of the central column that supports the entirety of Spire that you get an appreciation of just how monumentally large it really is. For the most it remains hidden away in the mists and the cloud and the rain, with only the occasional glimpse of it caught, and then only when you are closer in towards the centre. When you stand at the bottom, it fills your entire vision, a colossal structure a couple of kilometres across, stretching away and up as far as they eye can make out. It is simply too large to make out either side of it in Spire's weather, or where it meets the district above.

The surface of it looks as if it has been made of some form of metallic substance that takes the form of curved bricks. Beneath your hand it has a slick and cool feel, almost oily. The surface can not be marked or marred by any means or substance tried upon it. If it can be broken, none have yet discovered how.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

You'd have to be crazy to even consider that though. Without the central spire that gives the city its name, the whole structure would crumble into ruins and all who lived there would die.

The van came to a halt at the base of the column. The two constables left the front, came around the back, opened up the door and hauled me out again. The elf joined me after a moment. With none too gentle gestures, I was forced to walk a short distance, to where a large set of metallic doors were set into the wall of the spire. Through them was a place that few ever ventured, or even wanted to. Except it appeared that we were.

With the constables keeping a firm grip on me, the elf opened up the doors. Through them was a chamber flooded with light. In each of the three walls of the chamber were a pair of doors. Glowing buttons could be seen in the wall beside each of the doors.

I was escorted in by the constables, across to one of the sets of inner doors. They opened up onto the great elevator shafts that ran through the length of Spire, from the highest heights of the sun drenched parts where Them Above lived, to the utter dark of down below. Sure, you could go down there but those that stepped out never returned. I suppose you could ride all the way down as far as it went, if you wanted to, but I wouldn't, and nor does anyone else with a modicum of sanity. That is for a very good reason. People go missing simply riding the elevator. They enter and are never heard from again, vanishing between their point of departure and their destination. And the further down that you go, the greater the risk of it happening. For the parts where most of us live, the risk is minimal. It just remains too much of a risk for most to gamble their lives upon though.

And now there we were, going to be riding the elevators. Sure, I was concerned about that but always at the front of my mind was where it was going to take us, up to the tops of Spire. I doubted I was being taken up to the top for my health.

The elf pressed one of the buttons beside the doors. A low chime came in response and the button lit up in a virulent green.

It took a few minutes for anything more than that to happen. We stood there, in silence, me in a cold sweat and with dread coursing through me, until the doors slid open with a hiss. The constables shoved me into the cage beyond.

The elf followed and pulled a lever inside the cage, closing the doors. They clanged shut with a particular finality to them and then the cage jerked upwards, beginning the long ascent. The silence continued as we rode it, broken only by the odd clang that came from the cage and the shifting of the constables. The elf lent back against the cage, his eyes shut. He wasn't asleep, as he continued to play with his pipe, turning it around and around in his hands. He still hadn't lit it and the action seemed more out of habit to me than anything else, as if he wasn't even aware what he was doing. He just stood there, placid, waiting.

For how long we rode up on the elevator I could not say. Time no longer had much meaning. No matter how long it took to ascend, it was certainly far faster than having to drive all the way up, looping around and around the central column of Spire. Besides, I had far too much on my mind to worry about the time. Unless I could somehow talk my way out of my predicament, I had a fairly good idea as what was likely to be my fate. The Drop. The killing of one of their own was a classic example of what Them Above felt warranted such a means of execution.

I will say this about Them Above, they certainly don’t waste any time. When at last we arrived, I was bundled our and away, not into a cell as I had expected, but brought up before one of their judges immediately. The trial that followed, if you could call it that, was quick and brutal. I was given no chance to speak for myself, to offer a defence. The elf who had escorted me up simply related his view of events, ones that I knew he was lying about. Possibly the judge did too, but that hardly mattered. An example had to be set.

"Mister Stone, I sentence you to the Drop."

And so it was that I received the sentence I had been dreading. The sentence to be carried out immediately.

Strange, I had not had the chance to even give them my name.