“We’re going to walk straight forward from here,” Kur said.

He pointed at the final yellow arrow at their feet, and then raised his hand straight at the room ahead of them.

“Every time we stop, we’ll put down some clothes to mark the direction where we’re going. I know it’s not much of a plan, but it's the best I can come up with. Like I said, I’m still open to suggestions.”

“There’s none,” Gad said. “Let’s just go. We’re ready.”

Nods all around.

Kur however, hesitated.

“Our aura should cover us until we willingly make it stop, so obviously, don’t do that,” Kur said. “That means we should be ok, even asleep. I asked Cen to test it out for me yesterday during the first watch. Even after that crazy class change, she had no issues with keeping her aura up through the watch, so I think we’ll be ok.”

More nods. If there was any uncertainty or hesitation, nobody mentioned it.

“I know it's risky, and sort of dumb to rush into this like I am, but I…”

“We trust you,” Gad said, speaking for all of them once more. “So trust yourself too.”

Kur made a face, but nodded.

“We’ll stop as normal to rest today, but tomorrow, we’ll walk for longer… Whatever it takes to get out of that Pressure.”

He exhaled sharply. “Ok. Into formation and let’s go.”

Gad coated herself with aura and stepped through the barrier. Mul and Viy followed after her. Then Tuk, Cen, Kur and Jul, the center of their formation. And lastly, covered from head to toe in his bountiful aura, Nar stepped through, with Rel walking at his side.

It took them much longer than he had expected to reach the first set of columns. The scale of the place was even more enormous than he had thought.

He craned his neck backwards, to look up to the imposing, pressure covered columns to their right and left.

They were so wide that he wondered if his entire cubeplant could have fit inside the base of one of those.

He had no numbers or measurements to quantify such sizes, and could only describe the column by bits and parts. The base was thick, and after a bit, it came to a part where the column angled inwards. Then came the majority of the thing, a narrower part that climbed and climbed and climbed. Until it started to thicken again into a top part that mirrored the base.

I’ve never felt so small, Nar thought, humbled by the sheer size of the columns around him, and the endlessness of that room.

It was like getting his first taste of just how immense the Nexus truly was

“Holy Crystal,” Tuk whispered from up ahead. “Look at the size of these things.”

The orange light that coated everything didn’t even seem to touch his gray aura, and he

elbowed Jul, and gestured with his head towards the nearest columns. For a brief moment, the two auras stuck together, before they came apart again harmlessly.

“What do you think they’re for?” Tuk asked her.

“Me? I-I don’t know?” Jul asked, lost and confused at being the recipient of such a question in the first place.

“Yeah. Me neither,” Tuk said. “But what do you think they’re for, though?”

Their muted conversation drifted towards Nar, but he barely paid attention to it, so distracted he was in his own wonder.

The hours drifted by, in the stifling silence, and the corridor they had walked in from became slowly smaller and smaller. And yet, they had barely walked past two of the enormous columns.

“Our cubeplant felt so big,” Rel said suddenly. “Now look at this place.”

“We’re tiny,” Nar said.

“We are. And the Nexus is so big. I can’t even imagine it. The City Without End.”

“A city,” Nar said, tasting the word. “We don’t even know what that is.”

She gave him a surprised look. “Really?”

“Yeah. Why?” he asked in return. “Do you know?”

“Not a lot,” she said. “A tiny, tiny bit. I guess our cubeplant remembered a little bit better?”

“A place of color and light?” Nar asked. “That’s all we know? A place of true light and color.”

“Not a place,” Rel said, smiling. “A city. An infinite, never ending city. Where infinite number of people live in, with so much light, and noise, and things to be done and choices to be made like you could never imagine.”

“Wow,” Nar breathed. “Wait? Choices?”

She shook her head. “They say that in the O-Nex there are thousands and thousands of things available for you to do, and that you can never go bored. And they’re like happy things, not work stuff…”

“Crystal,” Nar said, trying and failing to wrap his head around the very idea of it. “What kind of things?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Nobody did. I never really believed it to be honest. How can there be thousands of things to do? Don’t people have to work up there?”

“There’s freedom.”

“Yes, but freedom to do what?” she asked him.

Nar frowned at her, confused by the question. “What do you mean?”.

“I mean, have you never stopped to think about it?”

“About what?” he asked again.

“About what you’ll do when you get up there?”

“Of course I have!” he said, somewhat offended by her question.

“Oh. So you have a plan, do you?”

Nar nodded, still unsure what she was trying to get at.

“I’m going to go into Labyrinth.”

“The place of horror and death?” she asked, looking surprised.

Nar felt a twinge of irritation. “I was told it was a place of opportunity. Where you could get strong and sail free, and do whatever you want.”

“Yes, I know that part. But how do you think it’s going to make you grow stronger?” she asked him. “And besides, my question was about the Nexus, and you replied by saying you’re going right past it.”

She waved at the party ahead of them.

“Look at us. We don’t know anything. We don’t know what we’ll do. We don’t even know what magic is used for, only that you need it to live above. We don’t even know what we’ll eat!”

“They say the food will be…”

“They say a lot of things,” she snapped. “And I bet that each cubeplant has their own stories. How do we know if any of it is even true? How do we know there’s even anything up there? How do we know it’s not worse?”

Nar stopped and looked at her. Her eyes shifted wildly, fleeting from column to Pressure laden ceiling, back to column, than to him, then…

He stopped.

“You never wanted to Climb, did you?” he asked her.

“What?” she said.

“You never wanted to Climb. If it wasn’t for the Yearning, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, looking away.

“Then?”

“Then what? Am I not allowed to question where we’re going? Aren’t you worried about it? Not even a bit?”

“Hey you two, keep walking!” Kur told them.

Chastised, the two of them ran after the group, and then once they had caught up, walked in silence.

“Can you imagine what it feels like, to want something so badly you would do anything for it? Anything! And then, as if that wasn’t enough, you don’t even know what that thing is?”

She looked at him, with a look between despair and incredulity.

“All the Climbers I’ve met always wanted the same thing,” she said. “No work. Freedom. Fun. Good food. And so on… They thought about what it would be like. Where they would live. Where they would sleep. What the people would look and be like. But you, you just care about shiny lights and pretty colors, and your path and growing stronger and your dad.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Nar stared at her. “I care about those other things too.”

“Do you?”

The question stunned him.

Now that he thought about it, did he not?

He knew he wanted to get strong and save his dad. He knew he wanted to sail the Labyrinth and be free. But what did that actually look like?

When he thought about it, he only saw light and color and a place where there was no pain. A place where no one knew he was an Unclean and no one cared where he came from. A place where he could find a healer for his dad. A place where they could be happy. But what did that place actually look like?

He didn’t know. He hadn’t really stopped to think about it.

“What do you think is up there?” he asked.

Rel shrugged with an angry and frustrated jerk of her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know it’ll be better. Anywhere is better than back home… But I don’t think it will be any less cruel.”

“Cruel?” Nar asked, surprised.

She laughed. “Look at us, and think of the people you left behind. How is there no cruelty in it? In any of this?”.

She pointed vaguely upwards.

“The people above us either don’t know or they don’t care about us,” she said. “Considering how many Climbers must have gotten up there, I’m more inclined to believe that they just don’t care. Shit… Maybe they even think we deserve it! If the Crystal says so, if even the workers accept it, why shouldn’t they, who live in the light, and the fun, and the freedom?”

“Would you have preferred to stay?” Kur suddenly asked.

Rel flinched, startled. She hadn’t intended for anyone else to hear their conversation.

“I do think about those things,” Kur said. “Especially after we almost became food for those Climbers who had failed and lost their minds… Even if you ignore the cannibals, we’ve met Climbers who wanted to steal from us. We’ve seen them kill for others’ rewards. Is that just us sinners? Are the people who live on the surface perfect? I doubt it. I doubt it very much. I expect I won’t be able to just trust anyone up there either. Like back home, there are nice people and there are those you avoid with everything you can. And that’s not all. We know that the Named Few are supposed to be powerful. That they command wind, and fire and electricity. But what are even these things? Wind is air, and fire is hot, but electricity is just a bunch of lines coming out of someone's hand in an icon. Or those things above us, I guess, whatever they are…”

Kur looked up, not at the ceiling, but at what he imagined lay beyond, Crystal knew still how high and far from their reach.

“I know this though, after all we've been through,” he said. “We get stronger by fighting. So what are they fighting up there? Is their life really that good? If it was, why would they need to become so powerful that they are called second only to the Crystal Itself? And look around us. How powerful do you think the Crystal is? It’s everywhere, all at once, and knows everything! And yet, they still need to fight. Why? I don’t know. Will we have to fight too, when we get up there? Maybe. What else do we know how to do? They don’t need aura up there, they have aether.”

“Kur…” Tuk said.

Kur took a deep breath. “We left because we hope that whatever’s up there is better than what’s down here. Being down here is supposed to be a punishment, remember? But, I’m not an idiot. You need to work, or the dispenser won’t give you food. Is that cruel? I don’t know. But I think that it will be somewhat similar up there. The Climb is just the beginning. Whatever happens after that, will be our real lives… Whatever that may be.”

“And we’ll find out together,” Gad said. “We’ll eat together. We’ll live together. And we’ll find out what you yearn for together.”

“Stuck together,” Mul said. “All our lives.”

“You have a problem with that?” Tuk asked.

“Only with you.”

“I know you love me, deep, deep, down.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Mul grunted.

Kur glanced back at Rel, ignoring the two of them.

“We’re in this together. So don’t worry too much,” he said. “Besides, there’s no point worrying about it before we even get there. Crystal knows what’s still above us…”

*********

The hours passed and night came.

Gad woke Nar up for the last bit of the watch, and Nar sat up, yawning.

Around and above him, everything looked much the same. Orange around and above him, and, thankfully, shifting gray still all over him.

He pushed his senses out, covering as much ground as he could, then he gave Jul a thumbs up.

She nodded at him and hid a massive yawn. Then, she lay down to sleep next to Gad.

He looked around him in search for his watch partner, and found her a few feet away from the party.

He got up, quietly, and carefully walked to her.

“Did you sleep?” he asked her as he sat down.

Rel shook her head.

“It keeps giving me nightmares,” she said. “Does it expect that by tiring me out, that I’m going to go any faster?”

Nar winced and didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve been staring at your lights,” she said. “Do you ever get tired of them?”

My lights?

“Hmmm. No, not really,” he said, looking up. “I would like to see other colors, sure. But I've dreamed of this my whole life. Well, and the other stuff too, of course.”

“Lights and colors.”

“That’s just about all my dad could tell me,” Nar said. “If there was more, it was forgotten by our people, and everything else was just too vague. Good food? What’s that even mean? But in a place of darkness and no color, you can tell what difference those things would make…”

He scanned the archer at his side, but Rel gave no indication that she had heard him.

“You should try to sleep,” Nar told her.

“I’m supposed to be on watch.”

“It’s fine. I’ll watch.”

She nodded and lay down next to him, staring up at the glowing ceiling, lightning flashes brightening her face as they crossed above them.

“Do you think the others are mad at me?” she whispered.

Nar looked up as well. “No, I don’t think so.”

“What about Kur?”

Nar made a face. “I think something’s going on with him. He’s picking up on something and it's bothering him. It might be some new attribute he’s close to unlocking. Or it could be just his gut. Crystal knows... I’ve stopped trying to make sense of things. Even our path is gone now, you know?”

A gentle snore was his reply.

He looked to his right and saw that she had fallen asleep.

Her mouth was slightly open, and her coarse, sparse hair was arrayed around her head. A hand was stretched out away from her, and the other rested upon her gently rising and falling stomach.

He looked away, almost holding his own breath.

In front of him, the pillars stretched, wreathed in Pressure, under that orange ceiling, into a distant blur of orange.

For some reason, he found himself without knowing what to think about.

Or perhaps, the last while had felt heavy enough that he didn’t want to think about anything anymore.

Aura? He had it now.

The end of the Climb? Nothing he could do about it but keep going.

His path? Nothing he could do about it but see where it went.

Magic? Nothing he could do about it until he found it.

His dad? Nothing he could do about him either.

It felt like he had come out of a long period of heaviness.

Doubts, guilt, fears, worries… All of it seemed behind him. All he had to do now was Climb.

He wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that his aura would easily carry him through it all. He had received massive boosts and gains before, only to be humbled right at the next fight. However, he didn’t feel as helpless anymore.

He was fast, and he was strong. All he had to do now was wait to see if it was enough to get him out. And that was about it.

“No… Please… No…”

Rel twitched at his side.

Her previously peaceful face was twisted, and she turned left and right, moaning in her sleep.

Nar reached out a hand to her, but he didn’t touch her. Would that make it better, or worse?

While he debated it, she opened her eyes, and saw the hand and shadow over her.

Before she could scream, Nar covered her mouth.

“It’s me! Rel! It’s me! Nar!”

The girl stopped struggling and looked at him with fury blazing in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, removing his hand. “I thought you were going to scream.”

“Of course I was going to scream! Do you have any idea how scary that was? What were you even doing?” she hissed at him.

“I… I don’t know. I just wanted to stop the nightmare, but you were finally asleep… Then you woke up. I… Wish I could help. Somehow.”

She blinked at him, her mind working in the back. “Oh. Well, there’s something that might help. But it might be uncomfortable. And embarrassing. For you, at least. I just don’t care anymore. I just want to sleep.”

Nar nodded. “If I can help, I’ll do it.”

The words had barely left his mouth, and Rel, in a surprising display of agility and health, had already flipped her body around and dropped her head on top of his leg.

“Wait! The aura!” he stammered.

However, unlike when he’d had to shield himself from Jul’s aura, nothing happened. The two auras shifted and swirled into each other, blurring the line where his aura ended and hers started. Other than that, he didn’t’ even feel anything from where the two auras touched. And he remembered then, seeing Tuk’s and Jul’s aura interacting earlier in the day, much the same as now, and nothing bad had happened then either.

“It's fine?” she mused. “Hmmm. Yes. I think this will work.”

“Rel?”

“You said anything.”

Nar sighed, still feeling his heart hammering away at his chest, and hoping she couldn’t hear it and misunderstand it. “I… Guess I did. I just didn’t expect this.”

“I can go away...”

“No!” he said, a bit louder than intended. “No. Just… Just sleep. I’ll watch”

“Ok.”

Nar tried to stay still, and to distract himself with the Pressure show.

What even was the purpose of it? Of that entire place?

Like so many other things he had seen in his journey, he just couldn’t believe that all that was there just to test and punish Climbers. Though, he couldn’t really discount it either…

“You don’t have to be so on edge, you know?” Rel said.

“I’m just trying to help you sleep. Close your eyes.”

“I don’t want to.”

“What? Why?” he asked, frowning.

“When I close my eyes, I’m back there,” she whispered.

Oh.

“I was lucky, I guess. They never really did anything to me,” she said. “They threw me in a cage and from there, I watched what happened to the others. They dragged them from the cages, one by one, and made us watch what they did… At some point, I felt like ripping my eyes out. I turned around and closed my eyes. I covered my ears. But I could still hear the sounds they made. And their begging and sobbing. Even when they killed them, there were still more sounds. More things they could do. How can anyone even come up with such things?”

Madness. Hunger. Lost in the dark… No hope to Climb. No home to return to. Is that what it is? And does it justify it?

Of course it didn’t. But again, he hadn’t been there. It hadn’t happened to him. He hated and pitied them in equal measures, though that pity would never stay his sword.

“One by one, they had their fun with us. And then, the boss came. Crystal. I thought that was the end,” she breathed. “I was so scared of the things he was going to do to me, that my mind just went blank. When I realized what was happening, I was agreeing to help him. I was shouting it. Screaming it. Begging for him to take me in. To let me join. To let me live! Promising that I would do anything. Tas and Wik just stared at me. And so did the boss…”

She gulped.

“He looked at me for a very long time. Like there was something he found interesting in me. Was it the Yearning? I don’t know, but I think he knew,” she said. “He was beyond any of us… I wouldn’t be surprised if he could even read minds, or something like that... Anyways, he didn’t speak a word to me, or Wik. All he cared about was Tas. He wanted party leaders, and he wanted Tas to be one of them. If he joined, he would spare all three of us.”

She heaved a heavy sigh.

“Tas didn’t want to do it. So, the boss told them to grab Wik. They tortured and tortured him. But Tas wouldn’t break. I begged and pleaded with him to just do it,” she whispered. “Was it the Yearning? Fear for myself, or wanting to spare Wik? I don’t even know anymore. I don’t want to know, to be honest. But eventually, the boss got tired and said he would torture Tas instead. And then, Tas agreed immediately. By the Crystal! Why didn’t he just do it from the start? Of course, Wik never forgave him for it.”

Well, that explains why he hated Tas’ guts, Nar though.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m saying all this,” she said. “I just see it, when I close my eyes.”

He felt a wetness on his leg and looked down. Her eyes were open eyed, glistening gray falling down the sides of her face.

“The faces of the ones we betrayed… How they cursed me. How they begged me for help. I know all their names, and Nar, there’s so many… And Crystal, how they suffered!”

She curled up and turned hide her face.

“Do you hate me, Nar? Do you hate me?”

Nar stared down at Rel. He had asked himself that very same question multiple times before. And he was still unsure of the answer.

He placed his hand gently on her head and she flinched. He stroked her hair, softly, and she relaxed again.

“Do you not hate me?” she whispered.

“Sleep, Rel,” he said. “There are no cannibals here. There will never be any cannibals ever again. You’re safe, and whatever was, was. It’s gone now, and left behind. So just sleep.”

He continued stroking her hair as she cried, and eventually she did manage to fall asleep.

Every time a nightmare came to disturb her, he would stroke her hair until her breathing eased and her body relaxed. But always she would start muttering and whimpering again when he stopped, her fists clenching so tightly they turned white and her entire body shook.

It was a very long watch.