Bel’s eyes widened as Orseis flailed her tentacles in a panic.

“Okay, okay, we’ll get out of here. We want to go down, so…”

Bel spun around, looking for stairs or a ramp or even just a hole. The courtyard was crowded with so many sculptures that she couldn’t see much, so Bel quickly ran in opposite direction from the scrattes and the double-bodied man.

Hopefully they weren’t going down.

She pushed past a statue in the shape of a majestic bird with eyes on the tips of its feathers, shoved aside the branch of a tree that was sticky with sap, and emerged in a wide hallway that followed the outer edge of the pillar. The stone floor ended before the wall, leaving a wide gap that was filled with more glowing lava.

She chewed on her lip as she looked around, hoping to spot some other means of egress.

“Look,” she said, pointing at several large metal cylinders, “there are tubes running into the lava. I think that they’re piping it up to the layer above. That’s probably what was keeping the water so hot there.”

Orseis’ lifted her brow. “And? We don’t want to go up.”

“But maybe there are tubes going down too.”

Orseis jabbed her in the side. “We’re not jumping in, okay?”

Bel shook her head with disbelief. “Why would you even think I would suggest that?”

“Because you get crazy when you panic. Your little snake could convince you that the lava is nice. I don’t know.”

Bel harrumphed as loudly as she could and went back to examining the lava. She wasn’t even considering for a second jumping into it.

“How about we check out the center of the pillar? You know, the place that doesn’t have any lava?”

Bel tilted her head and took in the massive pipeworks that were transporting lava over huge distances. They were impressive, even if they weren’t immediately helpful. A bit like a massive, artificial volcano.

Bel shook her head. “Okay, fine, let’s go back to the center.”

Orseis breath a sigh of relief. Bel could only roll her eyes in response.

They made their way back to the center of the pillar, which was filled with an interior tower that looked like it ran all the way to the top of the pillar. Bel leaned back and strained to see the ceiling, but even with all of her abilities it faded to a point in the far distance.

“This place is really big,” she muttered.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s why we call them the pillars that hold up the world, right?”

Orseis waved a tentacle at the smooth surface of the inner tower. “But how the hell do we get down?”

Bel shrugged. She pointed to the right. “You go that way, I’ll go the other, and maybe we’ll find something.”

Orseis narrowed her eyes. “Bel. Look at this thing. It’ll take hours to run all the way around it.”

“Fine, then we’ll both go right.” Bel took off at a fast jog. “C’mon,” she shouted over her shoulder, “it’ll take us hours to go around it.”

It turned out that they only needed to run for a few minutes to find an opening in the inner tower. Bel shouted with delight when they saw it. With a burst of speed they dashed through the wide opening and entered a small waiting room.

There were rows of chairs against the walls, a small booth made of glass on the interior side, and metal plaques covered in tiny script all over the walls. The plaques were polished to a fine finish that reflected the light that shone from an uncertain distance above them, concentrating it into bright blobs on the interior of the room and lighting up several alcoves and doors. The doors were set into the wall near the booth and were mostly made of a dark, lustrous wood. Two stood out as different.

One was made of a shimmering wall of water and the other was a mass of tangles vines running over a squat tree. Bel wouldn’t have chosen to make her doors out of something so impractical, but after seeing the previous spirits blocking doorways she figured that these were similar.

“Okay,” Bel hummed, “maybe there’s some writing that we can understand on the wall in–”

The two-headed man’s voices startled her so badly that she nearly leaped into the wall.

“No token, no travel!” he shouted. His voice reverberated from the walls themselves. “Violators will be prosecuted and dismembered!”

Orseis changed color rapidly, switching between an angry red and a deathly pale white. Her tentacles danced through the air as she pointed at the doors. “Pick one! We need to run!”

Bel held up a hand, both demanding that Orseis calm down and also forcing herself to stop and think.

“The double man didn’t seem unreasonable. Even if he does come back, we can ask about these tokens. It’s not like we’ve travelled anywhere yet.”

She kept her hand up to forestall Orseis’ objections.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“We still have time to try to get down to the next layer though. Who knows what he would charge us to travel through.”

She stared at the doors. “There was a door with a fire spirit blocking our way in. If the spirit corresponds to the layer, then the water door leads up to the previous layer.”

Bel pointed at the tangled mess of plants. “So maybe that one leads down.”

Orseis ran to the door and began pulled on the various plants. She’d scarcely removed a single leave when a limb swung out from the gnarled tree, sending her sprawling.

Bel ran over to her companion, helping her up and checking her for injuries.

“You’d better leave this to me Orseis. My snakes can help.”

Orseis rubbed her ribs, wincing when she touched the place she’d been struck. “Sure. Do your snakey thing. I’ll just lie here, being miserable.”

Bel rolled her eyes, stood up, and strode confidently to the woody spirit.

“Hey there, sorry about that. Can we pass through?”

She watched the leaves expectantly.

Nothing happened.

She nudged her little lava snake. “Hey, you want to say something, Sparky?”

Her snake flicked its tongue hesitantly, but it slowly uncoiled so that it was reaching towards the plants. It hissed softly in the their direction.

There was a faint rustling of leaves. Her snake hissed loudly and the leaves shook in response.

“I will hunt down all trespassers!” the double man’s voice boomed out. “Give yourselves up and throw your starchy bodies upon the mercy of the asura!”

Bel grit her teeth with frustration and her little magma snake spit out a small, glowing pebble of almost molten stone.

The projectile struck the wooden wall with a hiss and the plant retracted briefly. Then several woody vines whipped out, wrapping around Bel’s arm and reaching for her snakes.

“Dammit Sparky, that was a dumb move!”

Bel struggled with the vines, but even as she tore some away more emerged from the spirit.

Bel clicked her tongue. “This is getting us anywhere!”

She grabbed a thick vine that was covered in moss and small white flowers and squeezed it with her left hand. Then she formed a snarp nail on her right hand sawed through the woody tendril. Her cry of satisfaction was cut short as she realized that her legs were being engulfed in plant matter.

“Hey Orseis, give me a little help,” she shouted.

The cuttlefish ran over and began beating back the onslaught of vegetation, whipping her tentacles through the air and smashing them into the vines and branches. Bits of green and brown rained through the air, pooled on the ground, and turned into small walking plants and meandered back to the door. Orseis tried shoving some away with her feet, but she was wary of getting too close to the door. Eventually she settled for clearing a small area in front of Bel.

Bel nodded when she saw things were under control and raised her stolen length of vine to her head.

“You’re not doing that thing, are you?” Orseis questioned.

“Yeah, I’m doing that thing. I can’t communicate with it right now.”

Bel shrugged, grasped the writing tendril in her hands, and put it on her head. She activated lesser incorporation and got ready for a mental fight.

…except that would be silly. Who would want to fight? That was an inefficient use of resources. Once you find a nice, bright place with plenty of water you should just sit around.

“Hey Bel.”

Of course if someone tried to steal your sunlight you would have to smother them, but that was just obvious, right? Bel nodded. She had plenty of light though, so things were fine.

“Bel, snap out of it.”

Water though, Bel didn’t have a lot of that. Her brow wrinkled with consternation. Orseis smacked her in the face, her suckers pulling on Bel’s cheeks until her face was stretched comically wide.

Bel smacked at the offending limbs. “Stop it. We’re doing serious stuff, why are you playing around?”

Orseis jabbed a tentacle at her. “Because you’ve been standing around drooling for the past minute, ever since you stuck that thing on your head.”

“Ah! It worked!”

Bel reached up with excitement, feeling around for the new snake on her head. She grabbed it in her hands and pulled it down into view. It was… like a snake, but also like a moss and flower covered bit of wood. Its wooden mouth opened slowly and a green tongue flicked out. She got the impression that it was mechanically going through a snake motion – maybe her other snakes were telling it what to do.

“Well, whatever, as long as it can get us through the door. Okay, new snake, tell the door to open up.”

The snake stared at her.

Bel waved it at the door. “Do the thing, dammit! Open up!”

The snake flicked its tongue again, but didn’t otherwise move.

“Not working, huh? Who would have thought that grabbing bits of spirits and sticking them onto your head wouldn’t be the way to go.”

“Oh, shush.”

Bel quickly looked around the room, hoping for inspiration. Her eyes landed on one of the bright, reflective plaques. She looked back at the door, then back at the plaque.

“Hey, do you have anything messy in your bag?”

Orseis’s mouth dropped open a bit. “This isn’t another weird headsnake thing, is it? You don’t want to plant your head in the dirt, right?”

Bel grabbed Orseis by the shoulder and pointed her at the plague. “No, I want something to make the plaques less reflective. The plant spirit wants light, so maybe it’ll move if there isn’t any light reflecting over her.”

Orseis’ eyes lit up. “Oh, that’s an actual good idea! Amazing!”

Bel smiled proudly. Wait, was she being sarcastic?

Before she could sort that out, Orseis pulled out a couple of rags. “These are all that’s left of my clothes.”

Bel grabbed one without hesitation, although after catching a brief whiff of it she held it at arms length.

She and Orseis rushed wordlessly to the far side of the room and began to smear the charred clothes over the nearest plaques. There were an incredible number of the curved pieces of metal, but with the two of them smearing gunk at their fastest rate things moved quickly. Bel glanced at Orseis, who had ripped her cloth into six pieces which she used to simultaneously wipe down six separate plaques.

Okay, maybe she’s doing way more work that I am.

Bel had worked herself into a heavy sweat when she heard a heavy stomping from the other side of the room. She dropped her cloth and spun, her hand reaching for her weapon as she prepared to confront the pillar’s guardian.

Unluckily, she had once again forgotten that she had lost her weapon. Luckily, it wasn’t the two-faced guardian returning. Instead, the tree spirit was very slowly moving out of the now dim doorway, slowly creeping its way into the light.

Bel tapped Orseis excitedly on the shoulder. “Now’s our chance!”

Orseis glanced sadly at the last wisps of her clothes. “I really want a new shirt.”

Bel glanced quickly at her companion – her chest was wrapped and she had about a third of a pair of pants. “You’re fine Orseis. Who’s going to judge you down here? The scrattes?”

Bel shook her head. “This isn’t the time for that anyway, we need to run.”

Orseis dropped the scraps with a sigh of regret, and the two of them slipped behind the creeping tree and into the darkened doorway. The cuttlefish almost immediately tripped down the first step of a long, spiralling staircase, but Bel caught her at the last moment.

“Why don’t you let me lead if you can’t see in the dark.”

Orseis waved her tentacles forward. “Sure thing, spirit lady. Lead us to the next layer. May it be filled with handsome humans.”

Bel huffed. “There won’t be any humans down here. Stop being silly. It’ll probably be filled with nothing but plants.”

“That doesn't sound so bad.”

Bel nodded in agreement, but stopped suddenly. “They'll probably be carnivorous.”

"Oh, hagfish," Orseis groaned. "You're probably right."