Hiroko was relieved when their next destination also proved to be a challenge and not an oasis. The longer she had to cycle and work on her skills before she was forced to face combat again, the more prepared she would be. She wanted to reach the same level as the two men, fighting fearlessly, holding her own, not being completely useless at the end of a battle. If the fight with the Hydra had gone on longer, she would have been at the limits of her strength. If she had collapsed — Joshi and Chang-li would have killed the beast.

She didn't want them to take care of her. She wanted to stand on her own two feet.

The conviction had been slowly growing the longer they spent here in the tower. It was so unlike the Imperial Tower she had been escorted through years ago. During her adolescence in the Imperial Gardens, she and some of the other young nobles of the court were taken into the tower, escorted by soldiers who protected them from any danger, allowing them to gather lux and work on their cultivation. That tower had been utterly unlike this place, filled with towerbeasts and dominated by red lux. The soldiers slaughtered towerbeasts, freeing up the lux they contained for the young nobles to cycle.

The idea was that they should each begin to work on their Bodily Refinement, acquiring enough lux to reach the first condensing of their core. The others had managed that fairly quickly. Hiroko's progression was complicated by her attunement with blue lux, which there was little of in the Emperor's Tower. She had felt like a real cultivator, stepping inside a tower and cycling lux. Every trip she had made — four in all, a few hours at a time — had felt like an adventure. After that she had made her first core condension and not been allowed to enter again.

She had sometimes allowed herself to pretend she was a true cultivator on the Heavenly Climb, though now she knew just how far that was from the truth. It was as though she had combined broth and noodles and already prepared meat and vegetables in a bowl and then acted like she had made her own soup. Any true chef would have laughed at her. So would a true cultivator.

But now, now she knew what it meant to cultivate. She would be a cultivator spouse unparalleled anywhere in the empire. She understood the challenges that a cultivator faced. She would be more able to respond to his needs, raising herself along with him. And perhaps, perhaps they could find a way to gain approval for her to progress past Bodily Refinement. After all, by the time she was done here, she would already be near that mark. Such an achievement was worth noticing, surely.

Hiroko banished the thought as they plodded along toward the dark blotch on the horizon that was now resolving itself into a pair of towers stretching skyward. One thing at a time. She needed to survive here, and she needed to reach Bodily Refinement. She could feel she was close to having her core condense a second time. Already her lux was becoming stronger, more dense. She could manage her cycling techniques for longer before losing them. She was working now with a technique Joshi had shared with her, cycling the blue lux through her body in two different directions: up and around on her right side, down and around on her left. Like swirling two cups of tea at the same time, but in opposite directions. It took a great deal of concentration but already she could see its benefits. If only she were able to target more than one towerbeast at a time, then she would be much more useful to the group.

Her companions continued to surprise her. Chang-li was well-educated, politely spoken, and had great flashes of insight. He spent precious hours of their rest and cycling time poring over his cultivator's journal, looking for secrets that would help them survive, sharing that knowledge freely with her and Joshi. When they escaped this place, she resolved to see that he was rewarded. Perhaps she could have him assigned to her new husband's sect as their cultivator scribe. Some scribes did, after all, continue their own progression. Chang-li was a talented young man. Nothing should be allowed to stop his climb.

And Joshi… her eyes found the back of the bald man's head and slid away. He was marching across the sand, shoulders back, like a proud oak tree striding across the land. Such strength in a barbarian and a slave surprised her. If only he had been born a servant of the emperor, how high he might have risen. His drive and intensity reminded her of her own father, the great general of the West.

Were Joshi an imperial subject, she had no doubt he would have been a soldier rising high in the ranks of the army. But as it was, she wasn't sure how she could help him. Perhaps if she told the camp officials that he had not run off, but rather followed and protected her from the ravening towerbeasts. Yes, surely that would earn him at least a pardon from the death sentence hanging over his head. With that brand on him, there was nothing she could do about his slavery. Only the emperor himself could remove that. But death, at least, she could spare him.

As they approached the towers, it became clear that the farther tower stood on the other side of a vast gorge. The trio trooped all the way to the edge, looked down. The walls fell away beneath them, and after a few dozen feet, the space began to fill with a thickening rainbow-colored mist. It was impossible to see what was at the bottom, or if there was a bottom at all. The nearest tower had an arched opening, and stairs spiraling upward.

"Let's climb up and see," Chang-li suggested. "Perhaps the challenge will reveal itself there."

They trooped up the ninety circling steps and emerged onto the top of the tower. A breeze rustled Hiroko's hair. She rebraided it after every cycling session, keeping long black locks out of her face.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The landscape below was undulating brown and tan curves under a yellow and blue sky, rent by a long chasm stretching as far as she could see in two directions. She had almost gotten used to this place, almost stopped expecting to see the sun or moon overhead when she looked up.

The tower had a low wall around its top, except for a two-foot-long gap closest to the cliff's edge. She stood by the gap, one hand against the wall, staring outward. The other tower stood perhaps a tenth of a li away. She squinted and thought she could make out a similar break in the wall at the top of that tower.

Chang-li was pacing the top of the tower, head down, scrutinizing the floor. "I don't see any hint this time. Spread out. See if you find anything that looks like a clue."

Hiroko ran her hand all along the top of the wall, making a circuit of the tower. Nothing. She fetched up again on the other side of the gap and stared out once more. Something nagged at her. This place had the same feeling as the cube of being designed and waiting for lux and cleverness.

"Perhaps we need to have someone in the other tower at the same time," Joshi suggested.

"I didn't see any way to cross that chasm, did you?"

Joshi shook his head. "It was at least eight spans across. Much too far for us to jump, though perhaps a cultivator who has reached Bodily Refinement could do so."

"Then we'll be sure to come back here when we've climbed that high," Chang-li snapped. He was on his hands and knees now, staring down at the roof of the tower.

Hiroko didn't think the answer would be found in a hidden scribe's message. Not this time. She stared out. The two towers were paired. She was sure of it, even if she didn't understand how or why.

Hiroko sent the tiniest trickle of lux through her palm down into the tower. It ate the lux eagerly, draining it away. She clung tightly to the lux, following it the way she did when she had made a connection between herself and whatever towerbeast they were fighting, sensing the flow of the lux, feeling how it wished to go and shaping it.

The lux was flowing out from this tower right along the gap toward the other tower. "It wants to make a connection."

"What was that?" Joshi stepped closer to her.

Chang-li was still busy with his search. She looked up into the frowning, worried face of the escaped slave and found herself doubting her own intuition. Joshi knew so much more about cultivation, about navigating these towers, about the nature of lux than she did. She felt foolish suggesting, but she was trying to contribute. So, pushing away her fear of looking like the ignorant, noble girl she was, Hiroko cleared her throat.

"I'm cycling just a little of my own lux into the tower, and it's flowing out there," she pointed with her free hand, keeping the other pressed against the wall, "like it's trying to make a connection over to the other side."

Joshi frowned. He set his hand down on the other side of the gap, and he shook his head. "It's rejecting my lux. Maybe it likes blue?"

She paused. Blue was on the higher end of the lux spectrum, the first of the spiritual lux. Red, orange, and yellow were the physical lux. Green represented life and was the pivot around which all lux turned. The three highest colors, blue, indigo, and violet, were the spiritual lux. Blue representing the life force that existed in every creature. Indigo for manipulating space. And violet, whose secrets were known only to the emperor and his chosen.

"Wait." She was thinking aloud now. "What if it's accepting the blue because it's closer to what it really wants? Indigo. Indigo is the lux that manipulates space."

Joshi looked at her, eyes narrowed. "I think I see what you're saying, but none of us can channel indigo."

"I can if I wrap it like a dumpling." She'd grown quite adroit with that technique, using it effectively to spread red lux throughout her body. Now she plunged deep into herself, identifying what little indigo lux was in her. She opened herself up to the lux all around and cycled, collecting as much indigo as she could, wrapping it in her own comforting blue lux, and then pushing it out into the structure of the tower.

She knew she was right. As soon as she felt it leaving her, the tower hummed and vibrated, sounding in the note of indigo, and a pale purple surface extended out from the opening in the tower, arrowing straight toward the opposite tower. It was narrow, narrower than the opening, perhaps only wide enough for someone to stand.

Hiroko cycled. "Be careful," Joshi said, studying her intently. "You're pushing yourself hard."

"I can do this."

This was easier than fighting an enemy because they had life force to fight back. Even a dumb animal would instinctively struggle against her when she tried to wrest its life force away. These towers were mere receptacles for lux. Her cycling was like trying to push a heavily laden gardening cart up a steep hill. But at least there was no one trying to push it back down on her.

A moment later, she felt the connection on the other end click into place. She cycled for another three heartbeats to be certain, and then released it. The indigo path remained.

Hiroko gasped for air. Chang-li was still crawling around, muttering. Joshi glanced back over his shoulder. "You can get up now," he told the scribe. "Hiroko has solved the puzzle for us."

Chang-li got to his feet. He stumbled over to the opening and stared out. "What is that?"

"A bridge," Hiroko said.

And before she could think twice, she stepped up to the opening and stepped out onto the bridge. It was like walking on solid stone; the bridge neither flexed nor swayed under her. Keeping her eyes fixed on the other side, arms extended for balance, she set off. She didn't dare look down, focusing on one step after another until, heart still pounding, she stumbled off onto the opposing tower.

Joshi was ten steps behind her, with Chang-li just a little past him. In a moment, they all three stood on the other side.

A dark indigo gem sat on the floor of this tower, just in front of the exit of the stairs. Hiroko picked it up triumphantly. She held it out to the men to see. Chang-li took it from her.

"We've had blue and yellow already. Perhaps the hydra's heart is red. Do you think the colors mean something?"

Joshi shook his head. "You would be able to answer that better than us. What do your cultivators say?"

"They mentioned the number, but not a color," Chang-li shrugged and stowed the stone away in his pack. "Well done, Hiroko."

She smiled as both of the men bowed their heads in respect to her. It felt good to have done something herself, to have proven that she was able to stand on her own two feet.