Book 3, Chapter 59 (Patreon)

Averin sped through the options on the interface, growing more and more excited as he went. “This is fantastic,” he muttered. “There are so many possibilities here the normal interfaces are missing.”

“Care to share?” I asked.

“Huh?” He looked up and blinked in surprise. Apparently, he’d forgotten I was here. “Just looking at the floor connection options. If we can find these on every floor, we could have the run of the tower – bypass every checkpoint and strike anywhere, at any time, then disappear. And we could move between floors faster than the official responders.”

“That just helps you do what you’re already doing, but better,” I pointed out.

“Oh no, that’s just one of the possibilities. These things control so much of our city. From here, I could alter the day and night cycle, dry up fountains, infuse the whole floor with mana, create new buildings. If I wanted to hole up in this room, I could basically be the god of the floor forty-nine.”

“I’d hope your ambitions are a bit higher than that,” I said dryly.

“We need to find more of these,” Averin said. “There has to be one on every floor, and I think I can find their locations in here.”

“You do that. I’m going to get a few questions of my own answered while you’re busy.” I looked over at the still-masked escort. He met my gaze, then shifted over to look to his master, who waved us away and went back to manipulating the interface with his mana.

“What would you like to know?” the man asked in a low tone.

“How about a name, for starters.”

“We… don’t generally share our names,” he said hesitantly. “I’m known as One-Twenty-Two among our order.”

“Huh, okay. So why did he?” I asked, jerking a thumb at Averin. For that matter, Nelgith had volunteered his name as well.

One-Twenty-Two shook his head and shrugged. “It’s not my place to speculate on his motivations.”

I didn’t miss the subtext there. Not to outsiders. Whatever game Averin was playing, his subordinates either didn’t understand it or knew better than to talk about it and potentially give away clues. I wasn’t all that worried about it, truthfully. If I could get what I wanted out of the operative, I might end my association with the Breakers of Chains tonight.

“Moving past that for now, I want to know a bit more about the tower. How old is it? How big is it? How was it created? Why does mana surge up through its core, only to pour down its outside?”

“In that respect, I think I can tell you a bit more,” the operative said. “We do know that the tower is at least two-thousand years old, though we do not have the exact date of its construction. It was built to shelter the people of a broken empire in the aftermath of a magical cataclysm, though even its immense size wasn’t enough to hold the entire population.”

“An empire, huh? Did it have a name?”

“Ralvost,” the man said.

“Interesting. History books I’ve read refer to Ralvost as a kingdom.”

“I am not a scholar, but my understanding is that Ralvost started that way, but absorbed many neighboring kingdoms throughout its history until it grew into an empire of the same name.”

That didn’t fit with what I’d knew. I suspected the answer might actually be that the kingdom had shattered following Ammun’s mistake, and someone had attempted to gather the fragments back together into something they merely called an empire. Technically, if the original kingdom broke into a dozen separate countries that were then reconquered, I supposed the result could be called an empire.

I also wasn’t buying the timing, that the tower had been created after the breaking of the world core. There was no way something like this hadn’t been constructed without an immense amount of magic. Even now, the only thing holding it up was the constant stream of mana running through it. I had a theory that the mana was more of a side effect than an intended purpose, however. I suspected I’d find the very top of the tower that was meant to collect the mana into a beam of destructive energy broken, and all the mana that was pushed there merely spilling back down the sides.

“And the size?” I asked. “How big is it really? I’ve seen it from the outside, but the top reaches past the clouds and the bottom is lost in darkness.”

“We don’t know either,” the operative said. “There are one hundred and fifty floors our people have settled into. Nobody is able to find a way below or above those floors, not to my knowledge at least.”

“Not true,” Averin interrupted. He didn’t look up from the interface, but he added, “We have records of service floors that aren’t really habitable below floor one and supposedly the Great Houses know how to access them.”

That tracked with what I knew about constructing something like this, especially if it was in fact the weapon that had shot a moon out of the sky. There could be dozens of floors below what the people living here thought of as bottom floor that were nothing but complex rune structures made out of hallways filled with mana. The entire base of the building was probably an enormous spell form.

“Anything live down there?” I asked. “You know, guardian constructs like golems? Maybe an undead or two?”

One-Twenty-Two snorted. “If there are, they’ve never bothered anyone.”

“Might be a different story if someone goes down there,” I said.

“Might be,” he agreed. “I have no intention of being the guy who has to find out.”

I didn’t blame him. That was a lot of risk for basically no reward. It was extremely likely that the only thing on those sub-floors were defensive measures and control rooms for the tower. Nobody would even want to go down there unless they were driven by simple curiosity or were looking for a way to take over the whole Sanctum of Light. Though, now that I thought about it, that might be exactly what the Breakers were trying to find.

The topic shifted from there to the inhabited floors, and I got a crash course in the population—a few hundred thousand people—and their economy — some kind of weird government-merit program where all goods and services were routed through them to distribute again. It seemed wasteful and convoluted to me, but it had apparently been running that way for as long as anyone could remember.

If the Breakers had their way, the whole system would grind to a halt very, very soon. They were extremely interested in breaking the government since it mostly functioned as a mouth-piece for the council, which was itself nothing but a way for the four Great Houses to play politics with each other. I could see why the average person might not be happy about living under such a system, though I was sure for those lucky enough to live on the upper floors, life was just fine.

The floors themselves were segregated by magical ranking, with various schools and academies scattered through the tower that supposedly educated every single person. Of course, the schools on the lower floor were mere shadows of the rich-floor counterparts, further widening the gap between the rich and the poor. But they were all united against the ‘dirt people’ who were forced to live outside the tower and were good only for growing food.

Personally, I thought everyone might just be better off if the whole tower fell down around them.

“Done,” Averin announced. “There’s too much security to get a full list, but we can spread from here. I’ve got the locations of the fiftieth and forty-eighth floor control rooms. As long as we can keep going, we’ll eventually make it all the way to the top.”

I didn’t love that plan, since it meant I’d be hunting down fifty or more of these rooms to let the Breakers in. I had no intention of spending that much time helping them, but when I voiced that concern, Averin just said, “I saw how you got through. I can just do it myself. Don’t concern yourself with that.”

I doubted it would go as easily for him, but that wasn’t really my problem, so I didn’t bother to argue it. “You mentioned there are records of service floors below the first,” I said instead. “I’d like to know where to find access to them in exchange for the help I’ve given you.”

“It might take a few days, but I think that can be arranged,” Averin told me. “In the meantime, we’ve got a few safehouses available on the lower floors where people will be less likely to notice you or report anything unusual. They won’t be as nice as the places around here, but I suspect you’re not motivated by luxury furnishings.”

“You would be correct,” I told him. “How will we get there, though?”

“One-Twenty-Two will guide you to the floor one safehouse. It’s not going to be a straight route, but we’ve got enough people in place to bypass or bribe our way through all the checkpoints on the lower floors.”

“Understood,” One-Twenty-Two said. “We should probably go now before the mana lights start brightening for the new day. It’ll be much harder to hide that you’re not from here then.”

“Let’s not waste time then,” I said. “Are you ready for me to seal this place back up?”

Averin cast one last, longing glance at the interface, then sighed and nodded. The three of us walked out and I tied off the wards that blocked the hallway. Once again, there was nothing but a smooth tower wall between two houses, completely unremarkable. Averin immediately excused himself and rushed off to the north, but One-Twenty-Two led me the other direction.

We crossed what could have been the square of a normal town if not for the uniformity of the buildings and street and the fact that the soft glow of the giant glass column of mana had replaced the sun. It was dim now, but my guide had been right. It was already significantly brighter than when we’d first arrived.

“The drop-floor checkpoint is just up ahead,” One-Twenty-Two said. “Just keep your face covered and let me do the talking. We don’t fully control this one, but one of ours should be on schedule right now. If not, we’ll have to turn back.”

One-Twenty-Two led me to what appeared to be a hole in wall of a ten-foot-wide column with three sentinels standing around it. A metal grate blocked off the hole, but I spotted a set of hinges on one side that indicated it could be opened.

One of the sentinels approached us as we walked up. “Passes,” she said.

My guide handed over a small metal card with something stamped on it. The sentinel looked down at it, then back up to One-Twenty-Two. Her hand came up in a similar salute that I’d seen from other Breakers, hidden from the other two sentinels by her cloak, and she handed the metal card back. “Proceed.”

One of the sentinels gestured with a hand and the grate shifted off to one side. I got a curious look from the sentinels as I passed by, the cut and style of my own cloak different enough to warrant notice, but none of them tried to stop me. We dropped into the hole and levitated down through a chute.

“How far down does this go?” I asked.

“Five floors. Then we’ll have to walk a quarter of a mile to floor forty-four’s drop and repeat this.”

“Oh. That sounds like a pain.”

“It very much is, but the main tower drop-floor that spans all hundred of the bottom floors has far stricter security measures in place, so we can’t use it.”

We passed a few more grates as we dropped hundreds of feet between floors, but none of those sentinels so much as glanced at us. Once we landed, we started the trek all over again while I silently grimaced. I would need to find a better way to get around inside this tower if I was going to be here for long.

“Say, how would you guys like a teleportation platform network of your own?” I asked. If I could convince them to finance and house the platforms, it would be worth a few hours stone shaping them.

“Uh… I’ll ask?” One-Twenty-Two replied.