A tower of incalculable engineering grows through the cold darkness, one brick at a time. A thunderous beat heralds its rise. Its intricacies are many; its architecture held aloft by pillars ricocheting wildly off their burdens – too thin and few to sustain the spire’s weight. Neither genius nor endurance are what keep it upright. Just good fortune and the lack of wind.

Clack. At its peak, a brick is layered atop another. Chipped hands of wood tremble in the space around it, anticipating a fall. No mortar binds them; all materials are spent moulding new masonry. The line between this incomplete wall and a pile of bricks scattered over the earth is measured by seconds. Yet somehow, its swaying stops.

Next to it, a sculpture’s chest heaves with relief, small eye-sockets still fixed on the tower it builds. Its limbs are thin and delicate, made more so by the divots carved into every inch of its body. These scars are methodical enough to hold a clear pattern, despite how obviously damaged they leave it. Even blunted by time as they are, none have grown shut. Only the tower has grown, higher and higher, one brick at a time.

Behind the scarred statue, a figure strides up a stairwell and idly passes its shadowed eyes over the work being done. It stares at the bricks for several long moments; runs a blunt palm over the wall, apparently ignorant of the way it makes the structure shake. A hand removes the brick, considers it, then places it elsewhere. Without a word of encouragement, it vanishes into a shadowed alcove, leaving the worn sculpture to stare at its work undone.

A chipped finger traces the length of a scar. It gets back to work. Brick on brick, one piece at a time.

There is a tug upon one of arms. While it was occupied with the science of creation, another approached. It gestures downwards – lower in the tower – where sheltered from the cold of its apex others converse with others, speaking and eating and touching and laughing and weeping. At times, they are audible. Even here.

The scarred fusion of bark and flesh turns away. The other departs.

It continues.

Unlike many of its fellows, there is an insidious suspicion within it that none of this is as it seems. Not one borne of any insight, but spun of the lullaby the bricks sing as they clack together endlessly. Of the quiet that hangs in the air whenever the figure dismantles its work and forces it to begin anew. Of the limitless setbacks that dog its work. Of the cold it lives in and the warmth denied to it – by choice or by chance. These string together a low blaring coincidentally parallel to the blankness of its supervisor’s face, the nonexistence of the floors beneath, and the tower that grows every day but never comes closer to an undefined goal.

And it labours nonetheless because there is work to be done, and something must do it.

The tower begins to collapse without much warning. Maybe a threatening creak or two – no more than has become usual for it. After that point, there is little that the scarred sculpture can do. Its long, bone-white shape lists to the side as bricks slide from it like flesh from bone – an uncomfortable angle gradually growing untenable. Whole sections simply slip away. Then the entire structure becomes a mass of disparate bricks and fall.

As the air whistles past it, the sculpture’s gouged mouth splits into a brief, barking laugh. There is an irony in effort amounting to ash. When it hits the ground and the bricks begin to bludgeon it into the ground, that humour has vanished as if it never existed.

The rubble impacts against the worn bark of its face; corners diving through its surface as their heft beats its head into a different shape. Impacts force it deeper into the flesh and wood that form the earth as the falling bricks attempt to bury it. The deluge slows, then ceases, leaving it newly scarred and buried in its own destroyed work. Quiet reigns once more.

The sculpture pulls and tugs and strains against the force entombing it to no avail, refusing to acknowledged the way its battered form is further broken by its efforts. Yet the greater part of its efforts can be found in its screams, directed at the wreckage that entraps it. Its curses are vicious and heavy with malice; emerging between bared teeth in a deluge to rival the storm of rubble that beat it. They are addressed towards the absent tower. They find no purchase on that disparate pile of bricks.

Its head swears and flails and attempts to release the rest of its body and finds its efforts unrewarded. Grunts carry far in the heavy silence, and are unreturned. With the remaining air within it, the sculpture releases a final, furious howl: wordless; directionless; pointless.

Then it goes limp. Its head falls back, to rest on its cage.

There are few things to feel, in such a place. The rough press of ground and stone. An occasional scrape as the movement of a distant object or figure echoes through the empty expanse. The sight of ubiquitous shadow: as rich or featureless as imagination demands. The coaxing of a few gritty droplets from behind the eyes. A thunderous peal from the vast orb of divinity hanging above, at the centre of it all.

The scuff of the amalgamate’s roots as they drag them towards the scarred head sprouting from the earth.

The buried sculpture scoffs.

What is it? they ask.

Come to peddle snake oil, I suppose.

The amalgamate caresses the hilt of their blade as they take in the surroundings. Afterwards, they settle on a mound of stone nearby. They do not deny the assertion.

I knew it was going to end like this. That’s simply the way of the world: build something, and it will inevitably be taken.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

A fatalist sentiment.

A true one.

Plenty of people have retained their riches – whatever form they take – until the end of their lives.

Yet not until after they end.

The amalgamate pauses, strange fingers running over their limbs. That seems a childish thing to say.

No child can see decades vanish between the fingers. That is exclusively the domain of adults.

Then that seems a childish thing for an adult to say.

The scarred figure barks an empty laugh. Really? I have spent my life building; invested it all into it. I have disappointed others; forsaken countless other paths for that singular road. For what?

…

For this? This hoard of nothing? Yet if it remained standing, would it still be worth the price? That small, mishappen thing?

And you never gained anything?

Its visage crackled as it shifted. What could I have gained? What is the point of trying – of newness – when every attempt tastes of blood? Each and every one of us inherit the sum total of our forebearers: a mountain of failure, with us as the crown jewels.

Even if that were true… it doesn’t anger you?

Does it matter? Does it make these questions any less futile? Who can rail against a tornado? A storm? They may as well tear their veins from their skin. To build a tower is to embrace hubris.

Even so. Wouldn’t it be nice if it stood?

Its teeth grind together. Moisture trails from hollow eye-sockets.

Why can humans long for the impossible? What is this fluke of nature, that we can see things that can never exist? It’s cruel.

The amalgamate drags its kneeling form closer, until its knees almost touch the sculpture’s damaged form.

That is hubris, is it not? You indulge yourself by claiming to know what is possible and what is not. You indulge yourself by claiming to have nothing. You indulge yourself by denying any other thought or path.

…Too little, too late.

The amalgamate reaches down. You have your hands still. So BUILD.

They pull its hand up, then both are dust.

***

Tully stands on a precipice. Wind shatters against the side of the cliff-face, sending gusts spinning upwards to steal blood from her face. One of the scars on her face has opened, and weeps freely. The rest of her remains rigid. She doesn’t dare blink.

Mistakes brought her here. Armour inspected poorly; compounding errors in calculations; nights full of leering shadows that can’t be real – each and every failure chipping away at Heltia’s army. No one except Bina has noticed that the Spiderblood’s sharp, reliable focus has been shattered in exchange for scars. Her greatest mistake was surviving the Jackal’s knife.

The logistician’s uniform weighs heavy on her narrow frame. Time weighs heavier. Within her skull rattles a desperate, manic kind of prayer: that the seconds stand in place; that the minutes won’t pass; that the hours remain a theory; that tomorrow never comes. Skulking, malignant things lurk there. But wishes unbacked by action never bear fruit.

There’s a long drop in front of her. Terrifyingly long. Yet still shorter than the days in front of her. One step is all it would take. But then she would have to move.

Too scared to live. Too afraid to die. The phantom sensation of icy dirt clings to her body. Over forty years of life, spent for this.

There are footsteps behind her. Tully feels herself stiffen.

A young voice speaks. “Quartermaster Graves’s over there, General.”

“Dismissed,” Bina commands.

A pause filled by a salute, then a single set of boots fading into the noise of the encampment behind.

Bina attempts to speak. She fails. Always too clumsy to know the right thing to say.

“They call me Graves, now,” Tully hoarsely whispers.

“Tully,” the Lizardblood pleads. “Come over here.”

“I’m ruined.” And as she says that, she feels the truth of it try to surge into tears behind her eyes.

Hesitantly, her general takes a single step towards her. When it is unmet by resistance, she takes another. Finally, her rough hands close around Tully’s shoulders and draw her into an embrace.

For all her muscle, Bina is shorter than her. Realising that is always a surprise.

The pair return to her tent. The general sits Tully down without releasing her hands.

“Go home, Tully,” she says. “Heal.”

The scarred woman chuckles hollowly.

“It’s okay. Take a break. The world will spin whether we win or lose.”

After decades of service, Quartermaster Tully is left behind at the Spires of Heltia – a home made foreign to her by the passing of time. There, she is given light work evaluating Heltian inventions. When the Houses ally themselves for deicide, her request to reenlist is denied.

It’s the night after she learns General Bina valiantly fought and died to defeat the Raven. Tully watches from high above. Once more, she stands on a precipice. This time, she is alone.

The Spiderblood watches the bridges beneath, where scented candles are lit as stalls distribute food and throngs of people collide in music and dance. It is a festival, but one mixed with a funeral. A weary mix of relief and grief hangs over the Heartlanders. They have survived the Raven’s Cult. The people they sent away have not.

Through the night, Tully thinks about Bina and the things she said.

Despite everything, the crowds remain. The city is alight. In the morning, the sun rises upon a world irrevocably altered, but a world nonetheless.

The middle-aged woman traces the scars spread across her face. For a short span, she wanders the towers and the slumbering city – a dream-like monument to the dawn light. Then she goes home and sleeps.

***

Rubble layers the lightly pulsating ground. For a very long time, it seems lifeless. Yet despite how it seems, moss comes to crawl over the bone-white pieces of the tower. Strange, crimson and black flowers seed across its expanse, and come to bloom in that lightless place. Eventually, the remnants of the structure shift, and a sculpture pulls themself from the wreckage.

Shattered pieces of the brick now stud their body. Ubiquitous scarring disrupts the lines of their visage. When they rise, it is with great effort. But they do stand.

Absent eyes survey the barren land they stand upon: a manifestation of divinity, both recognisable and terrible. There is something monstrous about this lightless place and the shapes it twists itself into. Neither malevolent nor hateful, but insidiously hellish. That recognition sets their hands quavering.

Slowly, these shaking fingers raise upwards to chart the map of wounds across their face; placing and categorising each. The other palm closes around the sword, the bell, the wing. The silver artwork across the sheath is marred by scratches.

The amalgamate gets to work filling these marks; mending them with the power available to them. When they are done, it is not the same as it was. The silver gives way to ivory and dark bark. But it is whole. A tower is etched within the scabbard, where before there was nothing.

They caress these lines briefly, then raise their shadowed visage to the path ahead. Their body creaks into motion. The destruction fades behind.