Awkwardness. Flawed fathers. Birds of a feather confess together. Treasure chest. The secret of their success. Pools of blood.

Sal breathed out a sigh. He and most of the New Astounders were still alive. And Gail didn’t seem to care that he had sneaked into the Tower. Or would she care when they all went to leave? He remembered how they had ceremoniously shouted out the names of the party before they entered.

That seemed like days instead of hours ago.

Sal found an empty chest to sit on, near the door. He wasn’t in that kind of combat shape anymore, and he was exhausted beyond belief. Then he remembered even with the additional point, his BodyWork stats were still so low.

Boomboom healed Theovanni, who’d had bad gashes on his arms. The kid’s armor was going to need to be repaired, and that was going to take some effort, since it was magical. Sal was just glad that the dragonrider and his dragon had survived. His bacon had a lot to do with their success. If Torta hadn’t been healed, Sal would’ve wound up a copper statue.

The turtle man, the priest, and the dragonrider chatted quietly as they went through chests scattered around the room. The real treasure was the Copper Key. That would unlock more riches above.

Kaixo came over, sniffling. She kept wiping her eyes. She sat down next to him. “I can’t believe you came.”

Sal was too exhausted to say a word. They sat in silence for a long time.

Finally, the sorceress spoke. “I can’t believe…you can take me to court…but I can’t believe you came to save us. I’ll never, ever forget this.”

Sal inhaled deeply and let it slowly. “All I ask in recompense is that when you go out there with the Copper Key, you say you simply could not have done it without the Champion Café’s Bacon Buff.”

“Recompense?” Kaixo knocked him with her knee. “You sure do like them big words. Look, Sal, I know it’s been weird between us since you, uh, and I, uh, did the thing.”

That made Sal laugh. The rest of the party was across the room, carefully opening boxes, and piling the treasure into one chest. “You know, if they overheard that, they would assume things about us of a very personal nature.”

Kaixo didn’t laugh at the joke. She looked at him, deadly serious. “I know you saw me, in Yanhome. Did you see me with Foible. He was kind of a father figure to me. He took in orphaned thieves and protected us while we did our thieving thing. He took a percentage, yeah, but he kept us safe.”

“His was Foible? As in a minor weakness in character?” Sal asked.

“Street kid here, buster. Vocabulary isn’t my strong suit. He was just Foible to us. Did you see…I mean, do you know why I was in court?”

Sal shook his head. “No, and neither did I see you with this Foible. I have been wondering, much to my dismay, what you have seen in my past.”

Kaixo turned away from him and her voice fell. “Something about your father. Did you kill him, Sal?”

The former Dark Lord cleared his throat. “No. I cast powerful magic and removed him from this world. It was a death, maybe. I do not know. But he is banish’d, as the old poets used to write.” It was perhaps Sal’s greatest sins, all to get the Deux Coin, because his father wouldn’t give it to him. And if he stole it, he knew that his father, Mickey, would come for it. Sal had grown up hearing stories about the gods, and how the Deux Coins bounced around them, going from one generation to the next.

That final night came back to him. Once he’d learned where his father, the Dark Lord Mickey had the Deux Coin, he knew what he had to do. He drew the banishment circle with trembling hands, and when his courage failed him, he remembered that in the pursuit of ultimate power, the ambitious were willing to make ultimate sacrifices.

Right then, as terrible as it was, he knew that his grandfather, the Dark Lord Mood, would’ve been proud of him.

Once the circle was completed outside on the back porch’s cobblestones, Sal had gone in, telling his father he was done working for his failing restaurant. He knew that would get his father concerned.

Sal had been ancient at that time, 1500 years old, and he’d spent a good portion of that time as an outcast, or in hiding, or working for his dumb father’s failing restaurant, which after a hundred years, was still a failure.

Sal’s wife had just died, and it was like he had nothing to lose.

His words came back to him. I am leaving forever, father, for I cannot stand the sight of you and your pathetic attempts at cooking.

No, son, wait! While my eggs have never been good, I have to stand by my cookies.

In the end, the Dark Lord Mickey had been right. Here it was, five hundred years later, and his recipe was still very popular in Caya Idle. According to Dergle, the demon had very little trouble finding it.

The minute Mickey’s feet were in the banishment circle, he was taken away, teleported randomly to someplace else, places distant or in-between.

Sal never saw him again. He took the Deux Coin and spent the next five hundred years conquering as much of the world as he could. In truth, he was able to conquer a good portion of it.

While Sal was tortured by his memories, Kaixo didn’t say a word. It was like she could feel his discomfort. Perhaps she could.

She inched away from him. “That’s rough, Sal, banishing your own father. I don’t need to know why. This stuff is personal, yeah, but I have to tell you why I was in court. I didn’t kill anyone, if you were thinking that. I robbed a whole bunch of people, though, but it was mostly just for small coinage. I did some pickpocketing, some simple scams, nothing major. Except this one house. Me and Carson broke in, and it was going to be a big score all right. We didn’t think the lord would be home. But then, Carson, he, uh, killed the guy. And we got caught. We were both going to be hung. Our fate was sealed, as they say. So I made a deal with the constable there. I would give him Foible, if he gave me a hundred gold and got me into the Sorceria Universitas. And if he spared Carson.”

Sal listened carefully to her voice, and he heard the pain in her words. He then realized that he had Betty in his pocket. She wasn’t saying anything, but she could hear every word.

It took several moments for Kaixo to continue.

“The police wanted Foible. I mean, he was a crime lord to them, and the constable had some kind of beef. So I betrayed him, turned him in, and I thought the constable would come through. That whole deal was a mixed bag. Carson went to a penal colony in the Rain Islands. That was kind of like murder in the end because word has it, he didn’t survive the trip. As for me, I got fifty gold, and a sorcery tutor, some dark-hearted Sorceria Universitas dropout. I thought the constable would bury my record. Nope.” Her voice dropped. “That’s why I couldn’t get in with the Old Astounders. My record wasn’t clean. Criminals can’t be Tower Climbers.”

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“So, we have walked a similar path,” Sal said quietly. “We both betrayed fathers who loved us. You felt the guilt. I never did until…recently. I would undo things if I could.”

Kaixo turned to face him, and she finally could look into his eyes. “Now you know, so it doesn’t need to be weird between us anymore. We both know each other’s secrets. And we don’t have to hate each other.”

“No, we do not,” Sal agreed.

He felt comfortable, looking into her eyes, and he knew that they could be friends now.

He nodded at her party who was piling the treasure into a chest, and then helping to strap it on the giant turtle warrior’s back. “Are you not worried that your team might betray you?

Kaixo rolled her eyes. “Boomboom would never do me like that. He’s like Fabrizio’s twin, a total goody-two shoes. But he legitimately worships math instead of the gods. Like, you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. And I probably should be suspicious of Testu because he’s shady as Abyssmuck at midnight, but Theovanni is there, and the kid is too young to do me wrong. Besides, because of his family, he’s just as painfully moral as Boom.”

Sal was about to question Theovanni’s heritage when the sorceress raised her hand. “Don’t ask. It’s long and painful like all family histories. Let’s just get going.”

“Do you think it will be a problem that I was not an original team member?” Sal asked. “I cannot lie if questioned.”

Kaixo shrugged. “Don’t know. But I can and will lie my butt off to walk out of here with that Copper Key. Too bad you can’t, with that whole Karmic Gauge thing going on.”

Then she fixed her eyes on him. “You still have more secrets, don’t you?”

That was when Betty climbed a bit out of his pocket, to wave at Kaixo. Luckily, the mouse didn’t say a word.

Sal shivered as he smiled. “And Betty is one of them. She’s my friend. Perhaps my best friend.”

“Why am I not surprised you have a mouse in your pocket? Is that like the banshee in your kitchen?”

Sal found some laughter. “I suppose both are very connected. You know more about me than I would have first thought. And yet, you continue to have more secrets, do you not?” His eyes went to the tattoo on her skull, the one with the hand impaled by the dagger.

She adjusted her scarves. “Yeah, buddy. Secrets. A whole buttload. Though I don’t have much of a butt left, not after all the fasting and no dairy.”

“Then we will get to know each other slowly and carefully.” Sal stood and reached out a hand.

Kaixo’s smile was slow in coming. “Yeah, slowly and carefully, like a day in court.” She took his hand, and he helped her stand.

Sal had a question for her. “I am surprised that simply possessing the key was enough when the other team started. Do you think the same strategy would work on other levels?”

“Don’t know for sure. Rumor has it, they all work a little differently. But I’m as surprised as you. I figured we had to kill the chicken dragon. Just glad you were here.”

Sal felt some pride right then. He’d shown up to help his friends. He didn’t need any kind of reward. How he was feeling was reward enough.

He and Kaixo joined the others.

With the Torta lugging the chest strapped to his shell, they left the Copper Coop and walked into the Copper Gate room.

Gail swept her hand out. The doors behind them shut, and they heard the hiss of the copper liquefying. There would be a great deal of smoke from the cages, though Sal couldn’t smell a thing.

Behind Gail was a huge wooden door with copper hinges and a big copper lock, the perfect size for the key in Kaixo’s hands. The floor had thick, rich carpet that Sal sank down into. There were a few chairs and tables with lanterns lighting things up. It might’ve been a lobby in a nice inn. A rather bare corridor branched off to the right.

Theovanni and Boomboom couldn’t stop talking.

The kid’s voice popped and cracked with excitement. “Oh my goat, but we have at least a thousand gold pieces, and too bad we had to leave some of that silver behind, but we couldn’t take it all. We found those eggs, in the carton, and I know they do something, but I don’t know what. They smell funny, not like rotten, but like something else. Then we have some magic ribbon, not sure if it’s magic or not, but I would hope it is. I dunno. And then there was the daggers, and we think you should have them Kaixo. There was the sewing kit, and wouldn’t that be awesome if it, like, was magic.”

Boomboom nodded. His voice was deep, and he talked slowly, with a big smile on his face. “You betcha, Sonny Jim. The sewing kit has to be magical. And the doilies. You forgot about the doilies.”

Sal had lived for thousands of years, and yet, in all that time, he had never heard of magical doilies before.

Gail shook her clipboard at them. “I’m sure you are all very excited. Now, when you turn in your TCR forms, we’ll need all the same information that was submitted before. However—and this is important—you’ll need to put in Silver Level, not level two, not the second level, not the one above Copper, but Silver Level in the Level Request Field. You’ll see it. And if you decide to change the name of your party, you can, though that might hurt you if you are looking for sponsors. If you do change the name, in the Party Tracking Number field, you’ll need to use the same number that you were assigned. For the New Astounders, that would be 652371. That’s important. And you’ll need the names of your roster. You have five, but I would recommend at least six. Remember, the max is twelve.”

“What is the minimum?” Sal asked.

Gail didn’t answer. Was that because he wasn’t an official New Astounder?

Torta snapped his beak, grunted, and shifted the chest around. “It would be one, sirrah. Just the one.”

Gail snorted. “Like anyone could run the Tower by themselves. We’ve had people try. Not recommended.” She then motioned to the door behind her. “That’s where you’ll use the Copper Key. The corridor back is through there. I’ll wait here. My new assistant, Mack Munchkibble, will be out front. There is quite a crowd. He will handle the triumphant proclamations.”

Sal appreciated her vocabulary. He whispered to Kaixo. “What does TCR stand for?”

“Tower Climb Request.” The sorceress sighed. “It’s depressing that I have resubmit all the same paperwork. It’s such a pain my flippin’ backside.”

In short order, he walked with his friends down the corridor which seemed to follow the outer part of the tower. It didn’t seem like it was this extradimensional space like the inside of the tower. They circled around, talking while they walked.

Testu Hemez grunted, “How much does the kid want?”

For a second, Sal thought he was talking about Theovanni. Then he remembered that he was only a few years older than the dragonrider. “Verily, I need no treasure. However, when asked, remind people of the Champion Café and emphasize the Bacon Buffs. Promote my restaurant, and we shall call it even.”

“No way, sir!” Theovanni erupted. “We would’ve died if it wasn’t for you. Please, take some gold.”

Kaixo jumped in. “Yeah, Sal, you have to take some gold.”

Sal only laughed. “Come to the café, spend it on food, and bring your friends. That will be payment enough.”

They followed the curving hallway, went down a small set of steps, and then opened a door, which Sal hadn’t seen when he’d hurried into the level before.

They left through the main archway, and when they emerged, the crowd cheered. It was night, and a cooling breeze blew in from the water. There was a bit of autumn in the air.

Magical lanterns hung on posts on either side of the entrance, giving them plenty of light.

A Yaniri man, very tall with a sculpted hair, and an unbuttoned shirt showing chest hair hurried over. He wore the purple and gold of the Yanir, and his large boots were exceptionally ornate. He was very thin, and yet, you didn’t notice that because of the height and complexity of his hair. It truly was a monument to fashion and personal grooming.

He hurried over. “The New Astounders? We are astounded! Talk about a last-minute surprise, we are all amazed at how well you did! Kaxio Allakarra, what was your secret?”

Kaixo settled the key on her hip, next to where her chain whip was rolled up. “Well, Mr. Munchkibble, I couldn’t have done it without the power bacon I ate from the Champion Café just down the way in Champion Plaza. It increased my Mana by ten percent. And you can take me to court if it didn’t.”

People cheered, and everyone wanted to talk with the four surviving members of the New Astounders, but Sal wanted to get back to his restaurant. And he didn’t want anyone asking too many questions about his involvement. In the end, he wasn’t a New Astounder, and so he didn’t feel comfortable standing with them.

He easily mixed in with the crowd, moving down Tower Road to his street and then hurrying into the plaza. There, he was greeted by Dergle, sitting on the restored statue of Kenny, the water burbling out of the sword to cover the heroic knight. Lanterns decorated the basin, and in that lanternlight, Sal saw blood on the newly laid stones and the fresh concrete.

The ash demon breathed out flames. “I know the truth, master. You are the light of my life and the darkness between my butt cheeks. However, you have been lying to me.”