I admit to a bit of vertigo. Even standing on solid ground, the churning, lightning struck sky around us was...disorienting. For once I didn't have some glib remark about our surroundings. I was just too blown away. "Stick close." I said to the rest of my group.

Luckily, the stairs were big enough for even Randall, so we didn't need to leave the biggest member of our party behind. Approaching the steps at the end of the rock we were on, I noticed something else unusual. The stairs were spiraled. They looked like a DNA helix. It was hard to see from a distance because of the strange warping effect around them (which was what had caught the lightning) but up close it was painfully clear.

The first section, at least, was oriented right, so stepping onto the thing wasn't an issue. Once we mounted the stairs the space started to sort of list to one side, and after a few steps it became clear WE were spiraling along with the staircase. It was a weird sensation. It also didn't make a ton of sense. "Why the hell would they waste power on doing this?"

Nat shrugged as we continued our climb. "It might be an incidental result of the way they altered space here. Sloppy spatial warping can have odd effects. Or it could be insurance to prevent people from breaking the shields around the staircases. If they're tied to the effect then smashing them could drop us into oblivion. Hard to say really, there are just too many possible answers."

I rolled my eyes. "There are shorter ways to say that you don't know." She glared at me and I shrugged. "What? It's true."

"Never admit ignorance, cousin mine."She said loftily. "We live in a world where perception is reality. If you act like you always have the answers, that's how people will perceive you. Instead of saying you don't know, give educated guesses and state them with conviction."

"That explains so much about you." I said dryly. "But I'll take it under advisement." We chattered on about mostly nothing as we walked, following the compass as best we could. Unfortunately it pointed us straight at our target, but apparently didn't account for elevation...or depths, as the case may be. Since none of us felt like jumping into an endless void of lightning and clouds we did our best to follow it while sticking to the steps.

It didn't help that at the top of some of the steps were doors that appeared to lead nowhere but in fact came out on other landings with more steps. Not every landing had a door, some were connected to each other by stairs, but it seemed to be mostly random and it made trying to track anything in the whole mess impossible.

Which was why when we reached the top (bottom?) of the stairs where the first door was, I wasn't surprised to find the compass pointing out into the nothingness to the left of us. Looking up I could vaguely see a rock island in the clouds off in that direction, high above us, not that it did us any good.

Deciding it didn't really matter since we only had one exit available, I pushed open the door (a surprisingly large one that Randall was able to squeeze through at an angle given how tall it was) then stepped inside. The other side of the door didn't drop us over the side of the stone and into a bottomless plummet like it should have, instead it brought us to an entirely new place.

Past the frame we stepped onto a polished floor made of multicolored tiles. The tiles appeared to be made of gemstones fit together intricately to create squares of color that blended into a beautiful mosaic. Some squares were one solid block of gems, some were a variety, and the effect reminded me of nothing so much as puzzle pieces. I could see that they were F-ranked gems too, but when I tried to touch them my hand stopped above the floor like it was hitting an invisible pane of glass.

Callie was almost drooling. "Those are ALL gems with naturally occurring runes in them. Whoever made this was...rich. Also a genius. I don't know if you could call this a formation, because it WAS crafted, but it's not quite an enchantment either. No chance we can take any though. I'm pretty sure this is a force field, and based on what Nat said about breaking those in here it's not worth the risk."

I nodded. "I think it's some kind of node eye. I'm betting there are more rooms like this, probably at strategic points up and down the tower. This whole thing is a massive three dimensional construct." At their looks I shrugged. "I still know the odd bit about Enchanting, even if I can't really do it anymore. This is...impressive. The question is which way do we go?"

Gesturing up from the floor, I waved at the four closed doors identical to the ones we just came through. The walls between them were black stone, smooth and unblemished, and all the light in here came from the floor, as the ceiling seemed to be a mass of writhing black clouds, though thankfully not one that discharging all the flickering blue white lightning.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The mosaic itself was no help, it appeared to depict a beautiful woman in a green dress dancing across a rainbow, followed unknowingly by shadowy demonic forms. Callie gestured for me to hand her the compass, which I did, and help it up. "Well...compass says that way, but since we know that it doesn't take into account elevation and this place has literally turned us upside down a few times...I'm not sure how much it'll help."

"Better than nothing." I shrugged and headed for the door on the western side of the room. Pushing it open, we emerged onto another staircase. I sighed and then got climbing, following it up to another landing with another door. Inside THIS door though, wasn't just a room with more doors, it was something infinitely more interesting. A library.

The mosaic here was different, a picture of a female knight locked in combat with a massive grey skinned demon. I noticed her hair was the same strawberry blonde as the woman in the dress, but she looked older, and she had a scar marring one cheek. I made a note of the images, which seemed to be different points in the life of one person. Turning away from that though, I took in the walls filled with rows and rows of BOOKS.

Grinning, I made to step forward and then stopped. The others kept moving and I held up a hand to stop them. "Hold up. This is too easy." Flipping on my Eye of Revelation I scoured the place for any clues or traps. I frowned as I settled on the glowing forms of mops and brooms leaning against the tables in front of the shelves. Reaching into my ring, I pulled out a random rock I had lying around from somewhere (it was hard not to be a pack rat when you had spatial storage) and tossed it.

One of the mops leapt up, spinning around in midair and every tendril of the mop head lashed out separately like a whip, cracking the air as they reduced the rock to dust particles under a flurry of blows.

"Well...I think we can confirm that they didn't end up here." I said glibly. "Either the mop trap would be gone or there would be a body...unless...do you think the mop trap cleans up after itself?" I mulled it over. "Nah, better to assume we just took a different door. The compass points to where they are not where they were. So these traps should be bypassable." I hummed in consideration. "Abel, can you grab a book from here with your ability?"

He shrugged. "Maybe." Reaching out, he warped the air, creating a trail of lubricated space. It took him a minute to do since he was trying not to trigger the traps, but finally it reached the shelf. He reached out, and the space warped his arm, letting him grab a random book. It was still weird watching him work, and the mental glitch of the space just...coiling, as he pulled it back made me pause for a second before he handed it to me.

"Cyringian Table Manners, fiftieth edition, third appendix." I said with a sigh. Flipping it open to make sure it was what it looked like, I sighed. "Ok, so not all of these are winners. Fork ordering, dish size...guest execution methods? Okay that's a world of no." I snapped the book shut and dropped it where I stood. There had been pictures. "Let's try another one, shall we?"

My teacher chuckled, reaching out again and coming back with another book. This one was bound in blue leather. "Tributaries of Power:Sources of the water tribes." I flipped it open. This one seemed much more academic, and did NOT have pictures of people being murdered. "This is functionally useless to me." I finally declared. "But it might be a nice present to Anna-Marie." I stowed it away. "Again."

So we spent the next two hours slowly clearing books off shelves. Encyclopedias, history texts, instruction manuals, geography books, local fairy tales, books on boatbuilding, books on boat DESTROYING, books on building boats to COUNTER the books on boat destroying (this wizard had been VERY fond of boats), books on music, art, culture, cooking (which I kept), shoemaking, and any number of other things.

We did find exactly TWO spellbooks, one for a Skill called Cumulo Nimbus, which let you summon lightning clouds, and one called Fire Whip, which did exactly what the name suggested. Two out of roughly four hundred books on the one wall we'd already gotten through. Eventually, Abel just got fed up.

"Enough!" Snapped my tired looking mentor. "We have stuff to do. We can hit the other walls when we come back through, AFTER we find Renaldi's team." I noticed he was out of breath and sweating, and was grateful my mask covered my smirk. He was right though. Besides I was pretty sure the spell books had been left here by accident, this was most likely just a normal library.

"Fair enough." I pulled out the compass, holding it up to figure out where it was pointed. "Everyone get ready to go, we're headed north." That got groans from various members of our party still combing through the piles of books we DID have (none of them were spells but there was some interesting topics, Jessie found one on local flowers). Everyone stashed the books they wanted or that seemed useful in their rings, tossed anything that seemed weird or murdery with the table manners book, and we moved on.

There were doors in each of the walls of books, so we headed through the one the compass pointed through, following the stairs up to another stone island with another massive door. When we went through THIS one though, we were pleasantly surprised to find a group of people The exact group of people we were looking for, in fact, at least based on the descriptions.

The leader, a tall bronze skinned man with blue eyes and wavy black hair, looked up from where he was sitting in the middle of the empty room. "No wait don't it's a tra-!' His warning was cut off as the door slammed shut behind us and the wood of the barrier melted into a solid sheet of stone matching the archway around it. Renaldi sighed miserably. "A trap. Oh well, welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives, I suppose." Looking around, I realized there was no other way out...well shit.