It was impossible to tell time in the labyrinth. The sky overhead shifted and changed constantly, with no variance in the level of light. They alternated walking through the bare labyrinth, occasionally climbing through particularly thick drifts of sand, with sitting in clearer stretches and practicing their cycling. After the third cycling break, Chang-li handed out some of the dried meat rations. He passed the canteen around.

"Be careful with it.”

They had not seen any water, though they had passed two corridor junctions where a long-dead fountain jutted up, dry as bone, filled with sand. Hiroko took a sip, held it in her mouth, and then swallowed. "What about the purification ration?”

"They are supposed to be eaten once a day,” Chang-li replied. “I don’t know how long we’ve been here.”

“Perhaps ten hours,” Joshi said. “How is your cycling coming?”

“Better.” He had the pattern of the cycling technique that Joshi had taught him down now, and could do it while walking, though he usually broke the pattern if he had to wade through sand or stepped over a heaved-up paving stone. "I'm starting to feel a difference between lux, but I can't tell which is which."

"There's very little indigo here,” Hiroko said. "So whichever you feel the least of is probably that. Red and yellow seem to be the dominant ones for me.”

"They hum," Joshi said. "If you're attuned with them, you can tell. They have different pitches." He hummed. "That's green.”

Hiroko cocked her head to one side. "I never noticed that, but you're right.”

“I attune to this note." Joshi hummed again. The tone was different than the first.

"Red?" Hiroko asked.

"Yes."

She nodded, as if that made sense to her.

Chang-li closed his eyes. He held his hands just below his navel, as Joshi had taught him, and concentrated on feeling out his core. He was supposed to fill that with lux, then push it out to the extremities of each limb at the same time. He had mastered one limb at a time. He could only really manage all four at once while sitting still.

He felt the different lux flowing about inside him, like pools of different liquids that would not quite meet as they swirled around inside a container. Instead of trying to see which was which, he focused on sensing each of them. And they did begin to emerge as seven distinct, different flavors. There was only a faint hint of one, which felt as though it resonated at a very high note. That must be violet, like Hiroko had indicated. The next note in tone down, then, should be indigo.

Yes, yes, because then green did indeed match the note that Joshi had said. None of them felt quite right to him. He continued down the scale, past blue, and then hesitated. Yellow called to him, but so did orange. Now that he felt it, he could tell the difference between their two notes. They both wanted to enter the deepest swirling pit of his core.

The first stage in progression would be to solidify his core so that only his chosen lux could enter. That was the root of every more complicated cycling technique he’d heard of, and of learning how to use the lux he did attune.

He opened his eyes. His fellow travelers were staring at him.

"Well?" Hiroko asked.

"I think I've learned to tell them apart."

She clapped. "Good!"

"That was fast," Joshi said. "The amount of lux we have here to work with is incredible. Even with the help of the monks, who were much better teachers than I, it took me weeks to learn to tell the flavors apart.”

“The notes were the key. Once I realized I could hear them, it was easy to tell them apart. I'm feeling a pull to orange and yellow both."

"Then you should be able to choose either," Joshi said. "Remember, your first attunement is just about what comes most naturally to you, what it is you want to start with. As you continue your progression, you will branch out further. But your base lux will determine so much of your path forward."

"Orange is weapons," Hiroko said. "Most of the emperor's soldiers attune either orange or red lux.”

“That cultivator along on the trip up the mountain was using orange lux," Chang-li mused.

Joshi spoke up. ”Yellow is elemental manipulation. It's much less common, but elemental wielders are powerful. But I don't know if it's something you can learn on your own. It's not like body reinforcement." He held up a fist. Streams of red lux coated it, pouring down his arm like a bleeding gauntlet. The effect vanished after an instant. "I'm barely beginning to learn. I can't hold this for long, but it feels natural, like part of me. I think it's because I'm using the lux to enhance myself. Trying to do anything outside my body would be more difficult. I don't know if it's possible without a trainer."

Every cultivator Chang-li had ever heard of was part of a sect or some other group. Elders taught juniors secrets and techniques. Those were jealously guarded. There could well be techniques in the cultivator journal he carried buried under the sect's script, but that didn't do him much good.

He deflated. "So, I'm attuning orange lux, but I have no weapon. And yellow, but we don't know what to do with it.” He thought about his dilemma. "Yellow," he declared. “I’ll figure it out. Yellow feels right for a scribe.”

"We could give you the knife," Hiroko suggested.

Chang-li shook his head. "Scribes are not allowed to use bladed weapons. The hand which wields a sword must never wield a pen. That is the Scribe's Creed. How is it you're doing that?" he said to Joshi as the bald barbarian once again coated his hand with glimmering red lux.

Joshi formed his fingers into a fist. He punched against the wall beside him. The air shivered with the force of his blow. He held up his hand, looking at the unmarred knuckles.

"It's a refinement of the cycling technique I taught you. Instead of trying to push the lux to every limb at once, you make sure to cycle it through your core, siphoning out the red lux from the rest, and then pushing just that out to the tips of my fingers. The rest is a matter of using my mind to control the form I want the lux to take. I'm not there yet."

He sounded disappointed with himself, as though this were something he had been working on for days or weeks, not hours. Chang-li closed his eyes again, thinking about what he said.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

He tried to push yellow lux into his core, but the orange wanted to come along. He imagined his core being a ball with small holes in it, holes that would let out only the yellow lux. The orange continued to build up inside his core, but he extruded a small bit of pure yellow lux. He pushed the lux through his channels in his right arm, out to the very tips of his fingers.

He held up his hand, opened his eyes, and for an instant he thought he saw something shimmer on the palm of his hand. Then it was gone.

Hiroko leaned forward. "Did you do that on purpose?"

"I did.” He couldn't help grinning.

"A good attempt," Joshi said. "Keep at it, but don't push yourself too hard. The next time we rest, I think we should take one of those purification tablets. Let's keep going. We need to find water, and we need to determine what this floor's challenge is."

"Challenge?" Hiroko asked as they continued along the blank corridor, pressing ever onward. Chang-li longed to hear a bird cry overhead or smell something besides his own sweat. How could this place be nothing but empty corridors and a vast, aching sky? This was a cultivation tower. It was supposed to be full of wonders.

"Every floor of a tower has its own guardian, and the guardian sets a challenge. Only the worthy may pass and proceed to the next floor," Joshi said.

"Not the Emperor's tower," Hiroko replied. "I've climbed from the first floor to the second several times. There was no guardian, no challenge."

"What the Emperor does in the tower he has tamed and re-sculpted is his own business," Joshi said. "I am telling you what the monks shared with me, how climbing towers are meant to function."

"What sort of guardian?" Chang-li asked.

Joshi shrugged. "Sounds like they vary. I should ask you, not me."

"Oh, right." Chang-li dug the cultivator's journal out of his bag. He stopped trying to cycle. Instead, he kept one eye on Joshi and Hiroko in front of him, and flipped through the journal, looking for entries from this first level. He skimmed, passing the description of entering the tower, and then found what he was looking for. He read it aloud to his companions.

A vast expanse of sand stretching ahead of us for miles, with oases dotting it here and there. Each oasis seems to have a guardian. Kang has defeated each with ease. To my surprise, there is a great deal of indigo lux here, and I have been able to properly cycle for the first time in years. There is violet lux as well, though not much. My old friend would have been excited at even this much of a possibility. He was forced to ascend because he could not access the violet lux he needed to become a Prism. The Emperor would not permit it.

“If we do find an entrance into this vast desert, we know to expect trouble at the oases,” Joshi remarked. “Good. Keep reading."

Chang-li continued. There was a pyramid half a day's journey in, and I suspected it must be some part of this floor guardian's challenge. But we broke into its chambers and found only cobwebs and broken pottery. Kang says, "Sometimes a floor challenge can change, and pieces remain that were once part of the challenge."

"Well, that's helpful," Hiroko said grumpily as Chang-li read the entry. "We don't want to know what it wasn't."

Chang-li flipped past a few pages in cultivator script, hoping that the secrets weren't hidden beneath that incomprehensible scribbling.

“Here we are.” This place has an odd, timeless aura. There's no way to mark the passage of hours. At first, I thought that was just an oddity. Now I am convinced it is the secret to unlocking this floor's guardian. If I am right about the nature of violet lux, that would explain why there is so much, relatively speaking.

"Go on," Hiroko encouraged as he read that entry aloud.

"That's all there is on that page,” Chang-li said. “I’ll keep —”

Hiroko froze. She put out a hand and grabbed Joshi's shoulder, halting him in place.

"Wait," she whispered. "Do you feel that?"

Chang-li tensed. He listened, hearing nothing. He reached out with his newly energized lux sense, but felt nothing. Joshi crouched, taking up a stance with his feet shoulder-width apart, one arm raised, one arm at his side, hands curled into fists.

They were standing in one of the wider places that marked the branching of ways. The corridor ran along ahead of them, but also off to the left. The path to the left was full of a great drift of sand.

"I can feel something," Hiroko whispered. "I can feel its life force. It's…"

She shrieked, pointed, and stumbled back into Chang-li just as the sand began to move, bubbling and spitting upright. A moment later, creatures emerged, three of them. They were the size of small dogs, but they were definitely not dogs. Their green-gray chitinous husks dripped with dark venom. Their tails arched up over their backs, great stingers at the end of each. They raced forward toward Joshi, crab-like claws clacking.

"Don't let them sting you!" Joshi shouted, leaping to the side. "They're viper crabs. Their tail drips venom!"

Chang-li stepped forward, blocking Hiroko as one of the viper crabs rushed at him. He had no weapon, no idea what to do, but as it got close, he pulled his pack from his back. In the excitement he fell back on old habits, grabbing it with his left hand and swinging it.

His aim was good. He hit the viper crab right in the head, knocking it backward against the wall. It hit, chittering, and fell to the ground.

The other two venom crabs were pressing in on Joshi, coming at him in a pincher movement. The barbarian edged sideways and then, as one lunged at him, he moved to meet it and kicked it hard. It flew back and smashed into a fallen slab of stone.

Joshi's right hand glowed red. He raced in toward the other viper crab and punched it right in the head. The viper crab exploded. Fragments of shell and flesh flew everywhere. Chang-li raised a hand defensively in front of his eyes.

"Look out!" Hiroko shouted, as the viper crab that he had knocked against the wall was back up and came rushing at him.

Chang-li swung his bag again, but he missed, and the viper crab was there, inside his arm length. It stabbed. Its tail barb plunged into his midsection. Pain exploded through his body. The world went woozy. He stumbled backward, swinging the bag again. Somehow, he connected with the viper crab's midsection, smashing it against the wall. The crab chittered and lay still. Chang-li stumbled back against the wall, sliding down as his eyes lost focus. His hand went to the wound on his stomach. He raised it to his eyes. Blood and purple ichor ran down his fingers.

"No, no!" Hiroko shouted. She knelt, putting a hand on him. "Joshi, wait! Don't kill that one!"

She stretched her other hand out. Through hazy eyes, Chang-li could see that Joshi had halted just before punching the last remaining viper crab. Instead, he backed away. The crab turned on him. Hiroko began to hum a single note, the same note as blue lux.

Something touched him, wrapping him in an embrace that was gentle and strong, like being tied up with silk. He tried to focus on it to keep from slipping away. Blue light glowed between him, through Hiroko, and out to the venom crab. As he watched, the venom crab fell to the ground. It thrashed and chittered. A moment later, it rolled over, legs in the air. And then, impossibly, it melted away into dust.

Chang-li's vision began to return. He took a deep, ragged breath.

"Is he all right?" Joshi was leaning over him, a hand on his shoulder, looking worried.

Chang-li coughed. "I'm all right, I think."

Hiroko sat back. She looked exhausted. Chang-li looked down at his midsection. Blood stained his tunic. He forced himself to look under it, at the wound. There was no wound, just a small pink mark, like a faded scar.

"What was that? You did something."

Hiroko's brow was covered in sweat. "I didn't know if that would work," she murmured. "I've never done that before. My teacher told me it could be done and warned me not to."

"What was it?"

She smiled weakly. "Blue lux lets you feel the minds and life force of others. It can let you touch life force as well. Drain it from enemies. In this case, I took all the life force that creature had and gave it to Chang-li. It wouldn't have been enough to save him, but when you do it that way." She paused to catch her breath. Her hands were shaking and she folded them together. "It can transfer some of their own essential powers at the same time. I was hoping those viper crabs were immune to their own poison, and it seems they were."

"You saved me.” Chang-li stared at her.

She gave him a wan smile. "It seemed like a good idea. You saved me from the monster outside."

Joshi straightened up. He looked around at the viper crabs. "I don't see any more. But we should be on guard.”

"I don't feel any more," Hiroko said. "I'm going to need to rest."

"Yes," Joshi nodded his head. "You and Chang-li both should sleep. I will stand watch."

Chang-li was torn. He wanted to rest more than anything. He still ached from the burning venom that had so recently been in his veins. But if he slept, what was to stop Joshi from taking his bag of rations and leaving them both here? Joshi met his gaze, and he knew the barbarian could tell what he was thinking.

"I will be here when you awake," Joshi said quietly. "You have my word."

Somehow Chang-li knew that was good enough. He lay back against the wall of the corridor and slept.