Entry 3:
The wounds begin in the firmament, and, golden as the dragon’s scars, they cross the horizon, ending at my feet. The blackened stone cracks like frost under my weight; its fragments, freed from the whole, elevate like playful butterflies with each step I take. The diary is hanging from my belt, encased in a protective rubbery cover, even as it is being written. I need no pen to mark its pages, not yet. I have one. I use it when the fancy strikes me. To be closer to a man, perhaps.
And Ilucaris pokes her ugly head out from the foundations of the shattered world. This time around, the tower is a pile of blades melded together. I cannot recognize a sword, a dagger or a Halberd. Not even a kitchen knife. They shift in shape and position, edges that exist briefly, created out of the red heart of a volcano. This is a menacing tower. An angry one.
It tapers on and her image contorts if I dare to look higher. She doesn’t want my admiration. She inspires awe in me, still, and I can feel it: she hates it. I had forgot, until now, that Ilucaris has such a strong personality. Perhaps because when I ascended the tower showed herself as mostly benevolent, if harsh with her trials. How could I forget that on the fourth floor I found a couple of siblings, no older than fifteen, with her eating his dead flesh raw, not minding my approach? Or the bird that spoke to me on the seventh floor and declared to not want to go higher, for she had already attained what she was looking for? And something I couldn’t forget is the statue in my tenth floor, the one of a crying woman cupping the globe in her hands. I didn’t understand what the weirdly-textured sphere was back then, for my people didn’t know the world to be round. Yes, people went mad in it, but the fantastic lights, the ascended animals, the refined statues, the luxurious halls and the windows behind which worlds that are not could be seen…. I yearn to see them again.
But I won’t. The Ilucaris I ascended was cold, and is gone. This one exudes the warmth of fresh bloodshed, and is only for me. Every incarnation of the tower is unique, tailored to the climber that beholds or traverses her. Sometimes, men and women can meet its equals in some floor, just to never see each other until they come out at the top… if they come out at all.
The dragon (Whose name I won’t write out of respect) is hidden, I cannot even sense her presence. But she is around. She wouldn’t leave her sister alone. I wonder now if she can even climb the tower, up or down. Other deities have taken the forms of dragons for extended periods of time, but that was the norm: we can control out shape at will, and as such, it is natural some gods or goddesses are drawn towards those of powerful or gentle creatures, mundane or mythical. Well, except for the “eel god”. He likes morays, which I don’t consider neither gentle nor powerful.
But that’s not the point. The tower’s sister (oh how difficult you are! you who I may not name unless I wish to summon thee!) never, to my knowledge, changes her aspect, or her genre. I doubt her humanity—not regarding her attitude or actions, but her origin. She dares, after all, call Ilucaris a sister: sibling relationships imply a level of equality that calling immortals “the tower’s children” does not. And if it were just the caprice of a haughty deity, I would ignore the subject. But we are talking of one that constantly lives around Ilucaris, perches on her, and guards her roof forever. This is not something that, in my heavily biased opinion, would be permitted to a child of the tower.
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This is me, nearly omniscient, making conjectures. Useless, but refreshing. Uncertainty holds a particular appeal for a child of the tower. You may not know what you will eat tomorrow. I do. I know what you will dine every day of your life. I know how you will die. However, anything related to the tower… all of it is barred to me.
Maybe that’s a good reason to descend, too: novelty.
But that’s too long of a rambling already.
I am floating, scouting the outer surface of the tower for a window or crack that would allow me to peek inside. It shows none: under any gash on the wall of blades there are only more walls. The tower is hollow from the inside. Sometimes, also from the outside. But not now. Now, it is massive. If I attacked it, maybe I could blow some holes in the structure, but none would give me access. It would, however, denote me as a moron, and perhaps anger the dragoness.
It seems the only way I am getting in is through the exit at the top. I suppose the dragoness won’t be there to break my delusion, to spirit me away from the tower once more. I shouldn’t even be writing, for the state of mind is frail and to write about it is a defiance of the aforementioned. I’ll stop for now, ascend to the top, and then continue. Maybe after entering.
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Entry 4:
Inside the tower there’s a floor most gods came to despise. We gave it the agreed-upon name of the Halls of fictions: for most, it’s a library. For those who didn’t know how to read or were born before written tongues were a thing — like me — statues of people you know or knew appear lined up along the walls, and when you stand in front of them, they tell you a story about your life. The first statue you face or book you pick up tell you that only by finding the one story that isn’t a fiction you can leave the floor. At the end of the main hall, into which the infinite side halls eventually loop into, a statue of a grinning jackal stands. Or an old librarian with a beard or without it. The guardian varies as does the floor. The fact of the matter is: you are told you have to tell the guardian which story is real. Books have numbers, and for statues you can just describe their appearance — or if you remember it, say the name of the person they represent and the attire they wear.
The thing is, the halls contain not a single truth. While having one, ten million or a thousand true stories would still net a zero percent chance to find them among the infinite possibilities, the halls are determined to always lie. It’s not always big lies: some stories deviate from the truth by a word, by the number of grapes you ate a certain day, or by how many people you killed on the battlefield. Or they may change a letter in the name of your dog or cat or pet parrot. Silly, pointless numbers, letters. But wherein does fiction survive, if not in details? Truth outside the tower is absolute, memory imperfect. No person can ever tell a true story when enough detail is involved. The best they can do is to remain unaware of the lies they innocently tell.
So, how do you move beyond this floor? You ask the guardian to let you through. Nicely. And he (or, for some people, she) lets you, for everything in the halls is a fiction: even the instructions on how to beat it. The exit was always open to you.
This isn’t the case for immortality, but now that I see Ilucaris maw...
Carved out on her roof, like a cave bored in a formation of jutting out rocks or swords, a cold breath comes out of her entrails, not as wind, but as a march of invisible ghosts of men ascending the wet, weathered steps one by one. It’s cold that crawls on and about and through you. It’s cold that I can feel, and that alone makes it a source of elation for me.
This cold grave should be mine. I want it, the death the tower threatens me with, the strife that only in her entrails I may find. I am going to rush inside. And once I am, I am going to write that which I really want to, but can’t as long as I remain outside.
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Entry 5:
I am descending the decrepit spiral stairs that lead to the top floor. Karerak Karerak, Karerak, Karerak, Karerak. Karerakarerak. Ka-re-rak.
There. Screw her ability to be summoned with written text. She cannot make Ilucaris vomit me out now. I think. I hope.
Karerak.