Grief, the planet, ended up being enormous. Aetheria didn’t have a built-in speedometer, but it turned out Libby could calculate velocity for her. Libby announced her velocity and altitude every thirty seconds. Traveling at an incredible altitude comparable to a jet, the massive blue-black dragon’s hypersonic flight saw kilometers pass below in less than a second. It blew her mind that she could traverse the distance from Duluth to Minneapolis in just over two minutes. If Aetheria’s quick mental estimates worked, she could cross the entirety of the United States in less than an hour. Yet the first continent she’d passed over had taken her three hours to clear, and the second had taken five, to say nothing of the long periods spent crossing oceans.

The Tower of Moros blazed in Aetheria’s mind. The so-called map Aetherius had given her in response to her wish turned out to be a set of sensations, an internal compass, rather than a paper map to find the Towers. She could sense others out there, but she’d promised Khaos to do the Tower of Doom after she completed the Tower of Aetherius. She crossed the world with hypersonic flight and guiding sensations. The niggling sensation of the Tower suddenly grew stronger and stronger. She decelerated to half the speed, and the Tower revealed itself.

Atop a plateau of dark rock, the Tower of Moros rose so far into the sky that it appeared to go into space. This tower had a gothic appearance to its architecture, sharp spires, and hard angles. It gave the appearance of a tower that would bring you doom. The fact that someone had carved a massive gate and an entire city into the stone beneath the tower surprised Aetheria. It surprised her so much that she overlooked the nearly invisible energy fields surrounding the tower and city, and her whole body slammed into the force field. A one-hundred-meter-long dragon going roughly three thousand kilometers per hour hitting something solid should result in much damage. Still, Aetheria had the authority and complete belief that she’d be fine.

It didn’t stop Aetheria from swearing.

“Uffda! That was a gosh darn surprise.” Well, her version of swearing, anyway. The words reverberated like thunder, but the only other being present who understood a word of what she said was her cat, Arkaziel. If she’d spoken in one of the languages of Grief, perhaps others would have understood her, but she had spoken in Ath, the Divine Language of the Transcendent, the Primordial, and the Godly.

The crash created a boom that could be heard kilometers away and a ringing effect inside the city and tower. The single entry to the city had many climbers, traders, and travelers waiting to get in, who all had a front-row seat to see the dragon bounce off the field and hang in the air for a few seconds while it swore. The incredibly colossal creature ceased to exist. The dragon instead became a human woman who dropped down to land on the sandy beaches between the harbor and the city. Aetheria offered a wry smile and a wave to the people waiting to enter the city.

Bringing up the rear of the line, a human trader went white as a sheet when he looked at Aetheria. Wondering why, she gestured, and an ice mirror coalesced before her. Aetheria looked the way she thought she should. At one-hundred-and-eighty-eight centimeters, she was tall for a human, with a lithe but powerful build. She wore a long black trench coat with a few dramatic flowing tassels, a long black scarf that always seemed to be doing dramatic flicks, a dark gray tank top, black cargo pants, and laced-up combat boots. A little edgy but perfectly normal, right? Her eyes were all mismatched, in any case. Her left eye shone aqua blue, her right eye gleamed with an ethereal red, and her third eye looked like a black hole. Aetheria’s Third Eye of Ein Sof was a powerful component of her cultivation that rested upon her forehead between her eyes, and the ornate platinum-looking settings that joined it to her forehead were forged of soul steel.

The glowing eyes matched Aetheria’s radiant hair. A luminous shine radiated from the aqua and red strands of hair she had bound in a ponytail. In more than a few scenarios, her hair had provided enough light to see by, and it glowed almost, but not quite, enough to normalize her eyes’ intense, otherworldly glow.

“That was embarrassing,” Arkaziel sounded deeply humiliated from his perch on Aetheria’s shoulder. The talking petite black house cat would have stood out much more with anyone other than Aetheria as his companion. However, Arkaziel only stacked up as a footnote compared to the chromatic shining Asura.

People in line did their best not to get caught staring at Aetheria. One older man even went so far as to whistle while he pointedly looked away. When she approached the back of the line, a terrified young man motioned for her to go ahead of him, then an adventuring party gestured her forward of them, and so on until she found herself before the large black gates. Multiple guards in the second stage of their cultivation paths worked the gates, and when one of them called out something in a language she didn’t understand, Aetheria sighed.

Aetheria’s pale skin caught the light when she raised her right hand. Complimentary to her white skin, a mesh of soul steel formed fingerless gloves around her hands. The soul steel had pieces of the crystalized knowledge of the Aetherials woven into it and connected to a ring on each of her middle fingers at the top and a bracelet at the bottom. The ancient holy symbols of Khaos and Chronos adorned the rings, while the bracelets bore the symbols of Nyx, Aetherius, Thalassa, and Ymir. These simple-appearing gloves were a legendary artifact called the Astrum Nexus. She had helped the god Vulcan forge it, and it was the closest thing to a weapon Aetheria carried.

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Yet when Aetheria passed a finger through the air and said, “Understanding be mine,” in Ath, a glyph work of complex spell-frames seemed to create itself in the air, glow, and the woman smiled at the guard as the spell form faded upon completion.

“Can you understand me?” Aetheria asked with a bright smile, proud of her ability to learn languages via magic.

“Name, point of origin, and reason for entering Inexoria.” The bored guard didn’t even look up from his clipboard. Perhaps because Aetheria’s aura was withdrawn, even though visible power manifested from her core and flowed into the Third Eye of Ein Sof, the intensity and nature of that power remained unknowable to those without thorough sensing abilities.

“Aetheria, Nova Azura, and I will climb the Tower.” Aetheria didn’t give the man a hard time. After all, she’d gone through enough TSA lines back on earth to know the squeaky wheel gets the pat down.

“Aetheria. Sounds familiar. Nova Azur---a? When did they find the legendary city of the Aetherials? Are you pulling my…” The guard finally looked up at Aetheria. Even with the Ethereal Veil Aetheria maintained, they were too close for it to stop the guard from feeling the Void and the Ethereal looking upon him. It proved enough to stop him from clawing his eyes out while gibbering with madness or going through a profound existential crisis, but it did leave the man with elephants walking on his soul.

“Well, I suppose there’s probably been some gossip about me. I am the Challenger of Aetherius. I still don’t know how to feel about the nepotism of giving your daughter the job between you and me. My beautiful companion here is Arkaziel.”

The guard stared at Aetheria as if she’d grown a second and third head, then blinked at the cat.

“We don’t need to take down information on pets or familiars.” The guard experienced a strange feeling after he said that. The world seemed to press in on him, the light seemed to fly far away, and his soul descended into the depths of darkness before a flare of aqua energy returned him to normal, but he now looked weak and so tired even his mana had depleted.

+I wasn’t going to kill him.+ Arkaziel complained through the telepathic bond he shared with Aetheria.

~Then you should have stopped sooner; you almost killed him. Be a good kitty if you want to eat in town before we start our climb.~

“Are you okay? You look a little dizzy.” Aetheria asked with concern, setting a hand on the man’s shoulder. There, she pushed a pulse of Aether into the man, which would slowly replenish the life force Arkaziel had stolen from the guard over the next hour.

“Yes, I just had a dizzy spell. It’s a common occurrence down here at the gate. So, back to your application. You’re the Challenger Aetheria, home: Nova Azura, here to climb the tower. Of course, of course.” The exhaustion of being drained and the numb shock of a Demi-God being before him left the guard dazed, and he didn’t know the half of it.

“I’m sure this will suffice.” A small cloth sack appeared in Aetheria’s hand, which she held out to the man. The weight nearly pulled him to the ground when he took it from her.

“What the hell in here?” The guard groaned and checked; his face froze in astonishment at the giant gold bar inside the cloth bag.

“Go on ahead, ma’am. Welcome to Inexoria.” The guard waved her in. So Aetheria walked through the only gateway into Inexoria, the city built into the stone under the Tower of Moros.

Aetheria and Arkaziel made it ten steps before a more ornately dressed guard, an officer no doubt, set himself in their path with an ingratiating smile and cold eyes. Cold since the man appeared to be a bipedal salamander with black skin and orange coloration, the cold-blooded reptilian seemed to sense the cold embodied by Aetheria even without her manifesting a domain, aura, or any form of power.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but hear you claim to have come from Nova Azura. Has the legendary lost city of the Aetherial race been found, and more importantly, do you have any of their great works for trade? I am Cyndor Swifttail, Captain of the Gate. High Climber Torane Highreach would be very interested in acquiring any artifacts you might have.”

Aetheria didn’t entirely know what Captain of the Gate meant, beyond the man was an officer and liked his title. Nor did she have the slightest idea who High Climber Torane might be.

“Ah, well, Oizys shook Nova Azura into the depths of Grief. I’m afraid its treasures will remain lost forever.” Aetheria didn’t feel the need to mention she’d flown into the depths of Grief, reversed time with the Flame of Chronos, and dumped the reconstituted city into her inner realm and all of its treasures.

“Ah, the Goddess of Misery must have her due. Well, if you change your mind, do keep Lord Torane in mind, and if you happen to come out of the Tower with any grand artifacts, he would be most interested in directly bartering with you instead of through the Guild.”

“The guild? What do they do?”

“Ah, yes. Like most cities with Towers, we have a guild that helps administrate the climbers, their loot, and its effects on Inexoria. They will also collect your fee to enter the Tower and assess how much to tax you when you leave.”

“You.. tax people’s gains from the Tower?”

“Of course, how else would we maintain law and order within Inexoria? Why, before the High Climber established the Guild and took residence in the House of Governance, Inexoria was a vile shithole full of cut-throats who would stab you for copper, then sell your kidney as a placebo cultivation accelerator. Now, we have this, the peace the citizens of Inexoria yearned for.” Cyndor’s description of a lawless hellhole sounded like a story to Aetheria, leaving her wondering how long this Torane person had been in charge.

“I hate tax collectors,” Arkaziel said quietly. “Their awful personality ruins the taste.”

“Are you clergy to Moros, then?” Aetheria wondered at the propriety of them taxing and collecting on goods from the Tower.

“Ah, no. We do make a tithe to Moros for the privilege of being allowed to administrate things on this side of the Tower. Again, if you have any items of interest, please visit the High Climber. All of us would prefer Inexoria to remain neutral in the quarrels of the Gods.”

“Oizys has tried to make my life difficult already?” Aetheria sighed. She’d hoped to go straight to the Tower, but it seemed she had something to deal with first. “Where’s this House of Governance at then?”