Therese didn’t feel like waking up. It’s not that she was particularly comfortable or warm; she just had that low tide feeling, her body treating orders from her brain as suggestions to perhaps be obeyed later, if they still seemed important. It was an awareness that this sleep was deep and restful, and any nagging signals that it might be time to rise through the layers of unconsciousness back to the waking world were muted, distant, and easily ignored.

“Hi, you.” The voice was soft and close to her ear. “I can tell you’re waking up. Just wanted to let you know that when you do, you’re going to be in a dream space, okay? You don’t have to panic or anything. I’m here.”

Riley’s voice.

She let her eyes flutter open, prepared to squint against uncomfortable light, but instead there was just a dim, directionless ambient glow. Above her was a glowing arc of white, which after blinking her eyelids open fully, she realized was a complete dome overhead made of soft white light.

“Where,” she attempted, and a cool hand pressed against her forehead.

“Shh. Focus on making it back to being awake, then questions.”

From somewhere there was a thrum, a long slow bass rumble that she could feel in her body and hear as a dark, deep vibration. It was rhythmic, pulsing. She realized the light pulsed in time with it.

Riley’s face drifted into focus. Girl Riley, inner Riley, so this was in the dreamscape. She was smiling. She was also crying, or had been recently. Her hand was still resting on Therese’s forehead.

“The answer is, we’re in my mind right now. In the deep inside part.” She pointed up without looking. “Out there is the Sigil you used to make your linking. It’s currently running the show for me, while I hide in here and talk to you.”

Therese felt the Sigil name trying to reassemble itself in her head, and with it a whole set of memories that, as the first of them began to return, made her muscles tense and then lock and her throat closed over the scream—

Riley stroked her hair and said, “Shhhh,” and she quieted. The memories were there, waiting to be looked at, but whatever Riley was doing to her was keeping them at a distance.

“Why?” She didn’t manage to get more than the one word out, but it carried a variety of implied context that Riley seemed to pick up immediately. We’re in her mind, she thought. Of course she picked it up.

“Because I needed to reach you, and when you were knocked out, you lost control of the Working that linked you to Brynn and everyone else.” Riley smiled, looking down at her face. “So I did something stupid, and asked the Sigil to take control of the Working for me. And now we’re in here, safe, while it manages the connection and lets the rest of the team Work through it.”

Therese thought she was forgetting something, and her mind struggled to find it without allowing the full flood of memories in. “Team,” she finally managed.

Riley’s smile faded, and she looked up and away. “Five down, not including you. Four dead. I’m sorry. Yue Ling was one of them.”

Therese felt her eyes flood with tears and her breath hitch. This is a dream space. I’m not really crying. I’m not really having trouble getting air in my lungs. This isn’t physical.

Then a cold horror filled her guts, and she managed to whisper, “Nora?”

“Shhh. Nora’s fine. She’s fine. Therese, Nora’s okay. Stop panicking.” Riley’s smile returned. “You’re freaking the Sigil out, and it’s busy right now.”

She sagged, the tension finally starting to drain from her. Four deaths. Four deaths because she was too fucking stupid to interpret a dream. Because she was so fucking sure of herself that she let herself believe she was the best Diviner in the Tower. Four deaths that were absolutely, without any question, her fault.

She closed her eyes, and cried, and somehow time passed.

When she opened them again, the noise was quieter, and the light was softer. Riley noticed her shifting position, and sat down beside her. “You’re more awake than you were. That’s a good sign.”

Therese tried to sit all the way up, but managed only to prop herself up on one elbow. Which was absurd, of course, because this wasn’t real and in theory she could imagine herself running a marathon at sprint speed, but even just thinking of the example made her sag with exhaustion.

“How am I here?” She paused, and then added, “Wait. Why am I here?”

Riley gently eased her back down to the ground, which was oddly soft and warm. “Shh. You’re here because you… were dying, and your own head is completely full right now. I couldn’t think of any other way to keep your mind separated from the stuff going on over there, so I pulled you through our connection into me.” She looked embarrassed. “I uh, I didn’t exactly get your consent for it. I’m sorry. It was kind of an emergency.”

She shook her head. “Pretty sure I’m going to forgive you,” she whispered. Then, stronger, “What’s happening in my head? Wait, I’m dying?”

Riley nodded. “Or you were, anyway. I don’t know if you still are. It’s hard for me to tell what’s happening outside; the Sigil is very noisy. How the hell did you pick ‘The Grief Shared Between Hunter And Prey,’ anyway? That’s a mouthful and sounds like some kind of esoteric Theory project.”

She tried a smile, and it sort of worked. “Pleiades Sigil. I know them all, pretty much. I’ve been hanging out there since I found you there.”

“Huh. Well, it’s loud and very impressed with itself and it took me way longer to talk it into helping me than I was expecting. It’s a lot harder to do this stuff consciously, you know. And letting one of those things into my mind is terrifying.”

Therese said, “Thank you.”

“Let’s find out if you’re going to survive before you get too free with your gratitude, huh?” Riley rose and walked over to the faintly glowing dome. Laying a hand on it, she closed her eyes.

Therese remembered everything up to the moment they crossed into the dark place, and then everything after that was a smear of horror, fear, and despair. What had happened in there? What did I do?

Riley came back over and sat down again. “Okay, I peeked out through Grief Shared’s eyes, and it looks like you’re still in the City but there’s a Portal being opened. A big one.” She chewed her lip. “Bad news is, you’re still dying.”

“What happens if I… you know, if I’m still here and…”

“I don’t know. You’re the Adept, you tell me. I’m guessing it won’t be good, though.”

She finally found the strength to rise to a sitting position. “Okay, how do I get back to my own body?”

Riley’s eyes widened. “Whoa, wait, no, that’s a really bad idea. You were getting ripped to pieces by the sensations there. Your brain is basically just one big flare of pain right now, okay? I’m blocking it so it doesn’t break either one of us, but…” She gestured, and Therese saw a flickering red light in the near distance. “That’s you over there, and it’s basically just agony in there.”

She shook her head. “I need to know.”

Riley put her hand out to grab Therese’s shoulder, but then hesitated. “Fuck. I can’t actually stop you, and even if I could, that would be a fucked up thing to do.” She looked worried — no, that’s not just worry, that’s fear — but finally let her hand fall back to her side. “Okay. Can I pull you back when— if— things get bad?”

She nodded. “I just… want to look around.”

Riley stood and led her over to the red flickering light. “Just reach out and touch it, I think. But give me your other hand first.”

Holding Riley’s hand, Therese reached out to touch the spark of red fire, and

something convulsed through her, all her muscles locking up, her back arching and her joints creaking.

“Clear!” came the shout again. What’s wrong with her voice, she thought, and then immediately on the heels of that thought, Oh, that’s a man’s voice.

—convulsion—!

Insistent beeping, now steady and constant, no longer spasming around. More shouting, more masculine voices. She was bouncing a little, rocked up and down, her body rumbling.

i’m in a vehicle
ambulance, right

The pain was incomprehensible at first. It didn’t feel like a sensation to her. Synesthesia had swapped it for a color, a dancing purple, vibrating through nearby shades on the spectrum, dipping to blue, back up to intense almost-black. She tried to chase the color, to get a better look at it

oh

and then she recoiled from it. She was on fire, her guts burning, a terrible gnawing in her abdomen, and radiating out from there a sensation of something working its way through her, moving, crawling.

synesthesia too

but that was a hopeful thought, a lie she tried to tell herself, because she was actually feeling hundreds of tiny things crawling inside her body

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” Riley said, and Therese was back in the dreamscape.

“Wh-what did I—” Therese gasped, certain she could still feel the crawling things even here. She could feel the complete thought trying to form, what did I do, what did I lead them into, what happened out there, but she couldn’t get it through her mouth.

Riley got the sense of it, regardless. “No idea. I wasn’t there. I know something attacked you, and Brynn seemed to think it was pretty awful, and I know that Nora did a massive Working and saved the day. Everything else? Either you’ll remember eventually, or someone who was there will tell you.”

Riley fell silent and looked off into the distance, as though she were concentrating on something else.

“Something happening?” Therese tried to read her expression but was drifting in and out of awareness far too much to focus.

“I think the Sigil is arguing with the rescue team about being allowed to go with you to the hospital.” She laughed. “It really, really wants to get loose and wander around unsupervised in the Primary. I’m probably going to have to go evict it soon.”

“Why not now?”

“Because it’s letting me sit in here with you and talk and reassure you without having to pay attention to stuff like ‘moving a body around’ and ‘breathing’.” Riley grinned. “And it’s really funny to hear it try to talk like me, try to convince Ianthe that it’s not really dangerous at all. She’s not buying it.”

Therese had a persistent knot of fear at the idea of being so completely casual about demonic possession, and couldn’t imagine ever losing it. Sigils scared her, and no amount of time spent wandering around in their realm had ever cured her of that fear. The thought of losing volition, of not being in control—

Then again, look at me now, she thought.

“Okay, I’m going to go take over, because I really do want to be in the hospital with you when you wake up. That means you’re probably going to pass out again, once I’m gone. You’ll still be safe in here, but when I’m not sleeping, there’s not a lot of… I guess, motivational energy, here?”

Therese tried a weak smile. “So I can’t go digging in your brain?”

Riley laughed. “Like I have any secrets to hide at this point.” With that came an unexpected memory-flash of Riley’s lips on Suliat’s throat, and Riley flinched, her cheeks flooding red.

“Nothing to hide,” Therese agreed.

“Okay, well, listen.” Riley looked away, sheepish, but a smile had crept onto her face.

Oh, she’s caught you, hasn’t she? Therese thought. Completely and utterly.

She wondered if she was jealous, but that really hadn’t ever been a part of how she’d understood Riley and her relationship to her. The involuntary nature of the link between them didn’t help, but even without that dubious avenue of non-consent, she mostly just felt a kind of warm protectiveness towards the girl. Not like—

Oh shit

She went cold.

Did I really tell everyone on the mind link that I loved Nora?

Riley snorted, softly. “Therese, uh, you know I can hear you, right?”

“I— shit, I mean— um, all of it?”

Riley nodded slowly. “All of it.”

“Fuck.”

“And with that thought,” Riley said, standing in a flourish, “I’m going to go kick the Sigil out of my body. It’s starting to do things to it that I don’t really want.”

“Do things?”

“My weirdly accelerated transition. It’s not just the Tower.” She shrugged. “Anyway. I’ll see you in the real world. Get some rest.”

# # #

The first sensation was a hand on her forehead, cool and feather-light.

The second was a voice, a familiar woman’s voice. “Adept Lasalle, you are perhaps the most troublesome person in my care.”

Headmistress Gaveny.

“Taken as a whole, that is. Cumulatively.”

Therese couldn’t speak, because there was something in her mouth, but she made a vague groaning sound. A miserable ache coursed through her, coming in waves, rolling up from her feet and hands until it met, crashing, in her chest, before receding once again. It felt like tooth pain. It felt like something chewing on her insides—

And that thought brought her up from her drifting dreamy state, and the pain slammed into her like a collapsing building. It was everywhere, every bit of her crying out as every nerve in her body announced its trauma to her overwhelmed nervous system. She choked down a scream, and Gaveny leaned across her to thumb a button.

Almost immediately, drifting wooziness overtook her awareness once more, and Therese felt time passing.

The routine quickly became: Therese would wake up, and when the pain came, someone would give her drugs, and she would drift off again, and time would pass.

Eventually, there were more noises in her room. Or outside her room. The Headmistress was there again, this time; she knew it had been Ianthe once, and it had been Key once.

It hadn’t been Nora, ever, and that worried her.

And it hadn’t been Riley, but that didn’t surprise her because Riley was a Novice and Novices couldn’t return to the Primary whenever they liked. In fact, they weren’t supposed to return to the Primary at all.

But now the noises outside her room were distinctly Riley-flavored, and eventually Gaveny sighed and rose to her feet. “I believe you have a visitor. A very insistent visitor who has made some very alarming demands.” The note in the Headmistress’s voice was dark and ominous, and Therese couldn’t tell if it was meant seriously or not.

She opened the door to the hospital room, and after a low conversation, stepped aside to let Riley in. Then, wordlessly, the Headmistress stepped out of the room and quietly closed the door behind her.

Riley was wild-eyed and looked disheveled and messy. She clearly hadn’t slept much recently, and her hair had become somewhat ragged and uneven, which only added to her unhinged appearance.

Her voice was steady, though, as she took Therese’s hand. “Sorry I didn’t make it here before you woke up,” she said.

Weird to hear her voice without the feminine modulation, she thought. Same voice, just filtered oddly.

Aloud, she said, “S’okay. You were here,” and she tried to gesture at her head but discovered her arm wouldn’t move, so she nodded her head instead. “Felt you worrying.”

Why does my voice sound like that? she wondered, and then why can’t I move my arms?

Riley could feel her curiosity turning to worry, she realized, because the novice leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re really early in recovery still. It’s going to be a while. Maybe a couple of weeks, they said. The Healers from the infirmary, I mean. The Primary doctors thought you were going to die, and were just planning to keep you comfortable till it happened.”

“Why the Primary?” she managed to ask.

Riley looked around at the very non-Tower hospital room. “Well, uh, mostly because you weren’t going to make it all the way back to a Tower-connected Portal from where you were in the City. The closest one was hours away from where we came out in New Mexico, and you didn’t have that long.” She made a pinching gesture with her thumb and forefinger. “That close to not making it. Anyway, the other thing is that they’re Working at a magnitude that would probably piss the Tower off if they did it in the Infirmary? Here in the Primary, they can do as much Working as they like. As long as it’s, you know. Carefully monitored.”

Therese gradually became aware of several decidedly non-standard pieces of equipment around her hospital bed. Poles topped with adjustable clamps held a variety of Worked objects of mysterious purpose above her, and suspended directly over her head, floating unsupported, was a tapered prism-shaped crystal flooded with faint red light.

Riley looked up at it when she noticed Therese’s gaze directed overhead. “You know what I think this thing looks like?” she said. “You ever play The Sims?”

Therese tried to laugh, but couldn’t find the energy. Riley smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Shh. You don’t have to laugh out loud. I can feel it, remember.”

Right, she thought, permanent empathy.

She felt assurance through Riley’s side of the connection, in response to her own involuntary sense of guilt and apology. But there was something else, something dark… what was that?

Horror, she thought. Riley’s horrified by something.

“See,” she said, and coughed.

“What’s that?”

“Let me see,” she managed.

Riley went still. Then she said, “See what?”

But they both knew what Therese meant, because they couldn’t lie to each other. And Therese was insistent, pushing hard against Riley’s reluctance, demanding.

Finally Riley took her hand out of Therese’s, and nodded. “Yeah. My fault for not guarding that emotion better. I’m sure I’d get yelled at if they knew I was about to do this, but fuck it, they’re already going to expel me, so whatever.” She concentrated. “Here, use my eyes.”

Therese felt dizzy as the connection between them expanded, and then she was looking down at a

A fucking skeleton, really.

That isn’t me

The shapes of her joints were clearly visible under her paper-thin skin. Any muscle she might have once had was gone, and the veins stood out in blue and black on her arms. Her blanket was rolled back from her chest because there was a valve of some kind a handspan above the shriveled remains of her right breast, and from it two tubes ran off to bags of fluid hanging from a rack.

That isn’t even alive

Her face was peeled back on her skull, her teeth exposed by lips shriveled back and gums receding from them. Her eyes were milky and blurred, and her hair had fallen out in patches.

I look like a corpse

Riley was pouring reassurance into the connection. “Therese, you look alive. Everything else, the Healers can fix.”

I’m not human anymore

“Bullshit. Do you know how hard I fought to keep this body alive for you? You’re getting it back, just how you left it. I promise.” Riley’s voice was choking with emotion, as she tried to pour love into Therese remotely, by sheer force of will.

There’s nothing left of me

“Do you believe that I’m a girl?” Riley asked, and the incongruity of the question shocked Therese back into her own eyes and her own perspective.

She wasn’t sure how to answer, and could feel her confusion radiating down the connection.

“Look at me. Am I a girl?”

Therese nodded. “You’re girl,” she croaked.

“I have stubble on my face. I’m broad shouldered. My jaw is heavy. My brows are heavy. I sound like this. I’ve got a dick, Therese. How am I a girl?”

Oh.

“No, I know it’s not exactly the same,” Riley said. “But you’re still you. Nothing essential has changed. You haven’t lost anything that makes you Therese.”

“Hate that you… know what I’m thinking.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not super great for me, either,” Riley said, but she was holding Therese’s hand again and smiling.

“You’re… so girl,” Therese said.

Riley inclined her head in acknowledgment. “I think I will be. Eventually. We can both become who we are together, okay?”

Exhausted by the effort of keeping her emotions controlled, Therese could only nod in reply. Fuck you, Riley Hawkins, she thought. Who said you were allowed to become a good person?

“You did.” Riley grinned. “Blame yourself.”

Can’t even be fake-irritated with you in the privacy of my own head.

There was a throat-clearing, and Therese realized that the Headmistress had re-entered the room. “Novice Hawkins. Adept Lasalle. I’m glad you were able to share this moment, but it’s time for more Working. Unless you don’t wish us to rebuild your flesh, Adept?”

Gaveny clearly knew that Riley had given her a look at herself, and so Therese shook her head from side to side to indicate her assent.

“Excellent. Novice Hawkins, you will have to leave the room to give the Healers space to set up.”

Riley turned to leave, but Gaveny continued. “Do not think that I have forgotten the means by which we are able to celebrate Adept Lasalle’s continued existence. We will be having a long and serious conversation about demonology.”

Riley hesitated at the door. Then shrugging, and without looking back, she said “Fine. It was worth it.”

She closed the door behind her, and Gaveny turned her attention back to Therese.

“Idiot child. I understand that Riley is, in fact, a girl?”

Therese nodded.

“That is both simplifying and also concerning, given that we have never thought to check apparent boys for magical talent. How many have gone on to make terrible untrained nuisances of themselves, I wonder?”

She shook herself out of her reverie. “Regardless, I’m inclined to agree with Miss Hawkins. You are worth the trouble and effort, Adept, though I occasionally need to remind myself of it.”

She held up two fingers. “I have two things to tell you, and then I too will leave so that our Healers can perform all their little miracles.” She frowned. “Or their large ones, if necessary. They’re very much enjoying the opportunity to Work at this scale.”

“First, and most importantly to my mind, your plan seems to have worked. The devices did, indeed, cauterize the anomalous area of the City. Whatever was on the verge of emerging there has been pushed back, though the Rangers assure me the corrupted region is still hostile and still active. Still, it seems as though we will not be invaded by… whatever those things were, at least in the immediate future. Well done.”

She’s not mentioning the deaths. She’s not talking about the cost. Therese knew that the Headmistress was counting those deaths, knew that she was keeping a tally, but she also knew that the woman was iron and cold and absolutely willing to pay a price in lives to protect the Tower and the Academy.

She may think that it was a good trade, but I fucking don’t.

“Second, and likely far more important to you, is that Theoretician Nora is awake and is asking for you. We have told her that you are not in a position to receive her,” Gaveny quickly continued, as Therese felt herself fill with terror.

I can’t let her see me like this, she thought, in a slow burning panic that was still coursing through her even after Gaveny’s reassurance.

“But she insisted that I at least pass on her message, which I am now doing. Quote, ‘Me too.’”

Therese felt her cheeks flushing, or doing their best attempt at it given the state of her skin. Gaveny looked insufferably smug, and Therese realized that likely everyone in the Tower had already heard about what she’d said to Nora over the link.

The Headmistress stood and brushed her skirts for imaginary dust. “Consider this incentive to focus fully on your recovery, Adept.”

# # #

The coffee was somewhere between ‘bitter’ and ‘sour’, and Riley wanted to spit it back into the cup and empty the whole thing into a toilet and find some actual coffee. But this was what was available without leaving the hospital. Instant coffee. Powdered creamer. It wasn’t really drinkable, but it might have caffeine in it, and fidgeting with the cup gave her something to do with her hands.

She was sitting in an otherwise empty office, where a Logistics Adept had directed her. The Adept was weird; she was dressed in what Riley guessed was professional office clothing, a blazer and button-up shirt and mid-length skirt and stockings and heels. And yet she was definitely an Adept, because she kept calling Riley ‘Novice’ and kept calling Gaveny ‘Headmistress’.

Riley was keenly aware of her own rumpled and sloppy appearance. She wasn’t exactly doing much for her presentation under calmer circumstances, and now she had two days of fitful sleep and no changes of clothing to add to the overall disheveled vibe. She’d have gone back to pick up a change of clothes, if she wasn’t absolutely certain that going back to the Tower would require her to then have a huge argument with the entire Logistics department again.

Novices aren’t allowed out of the Tower, especially first-year Novices.

On the other hand, extremely menacing Sigil demons that were also the reason the Adept in the hospital bed was even alive? They sometimes, as it turns out, were allowed out of the Tower.

She didn’t want to even think about the Sigil, though. Just remembering the damn thing made her head pound. You try to be friendly, you try to compromise with them, but demons? They just make a huge mess and leave you with a crushing days-long headache.

The Headmistress entered the office, and circled to stand behind the desk. She waited, her hands folded motionless behind her back, looking up at the bookshelves that lined the wall she faced.

A long, frozen pause followed. I’m guessing this is supposed to be intimidation, Riley thought. It was working, but she wasn’t going to break first. She waited.

It was Gaveny who spoke first, still without turning around. “I am trying to decide how to approach this conversation. There is a part of me, the part of me that has successfully run this Academy for twelve decades, that is demanding I shout at you. That I rake you over the coals, that I expel you, that I Seal you and put you on a flight to Seattle today. That part is extremely loud, and very convincing.”

Riley’s hands tightened on the arms of the chair. Then fucking do it, she thought, but she recognized this as bravado. She did the right thing, and saving Therese was worthwhile, but she didn’t want to leave the Tower.

“The obvious counterarguments, of course, are that you personally saved one, possibly two, of my Adepts. That you did so with no apparent lasting harm to yourself or the Tower or anyone else. That the Adepts that worked with you to effect this rescue insist that you were in control of the situation the whole time.” She turned, then, and her eyes were flat, and her expression unreadable. She put both her hands on the desk, her fingers splayed to rest on just their tips. “Pragmatic, outcome-based arguments. All’s well that ends well. No harm, no foul.”

She let herself sink down into the office chair.

“I’m choosing not to listen to either of these positions.”

Riley waited, as a moment of silence extended into several.

“I want to share with you a bit about the nature of Sigils, and the reason that magic works the way it does. I think it’s important that you understand this principle, before we continue our conversation. I will be brief.” Gaveny looked up, made eye contact. There was no humor in her expression. “Sigils represent a way the universe could be. Magic exploits the distance between that possible universe and the actual universe in which we live. The potential power that a Sigil can provide is an expression of that distance. The more improbable the universe represented by the Sigil, the more power is available for Working.”

Riley nodded. This all made sense so far, and was essentially what she had been learning in class.

“We describe the process as ‘breaking’ a Sigil, because we’re holding it up to reality and removing each part of it that does not correspond to reality. We’re gradually releasing the potential energy held within those failed correspondences.”

The Headmistress slammed both her hands down on the desk, with a bang that Riley was not expecting, and she squeaked a little in surprise.

“What remains is reality, Riley Hawkins. Do you understand what I am saying? The net result of our Working is a correspondence with reality. That’s the bargain we make with the Tower, with the facts of existence, with the celestial realm itself: when we are done, what remains is the actual, real world.”

She didn’t precisely raise her voice, but it gained a kind of drilling intensity, an inexorable piercing punctuation, each word driving Riley back into her seat. And then her voice returned to normal, quiet and confidently aristocratic.

“Do you see the problem with what you’ve done — what, according to Archivist Keshia and Academician Alexis, you have done more than once — when I describe magic in those terms?”

Riley swallowed, and nodded slowly.

“Say it.”

She hesitated, then tentatively began. “It didn’t leave the universe the way it was before I let the Sigil take over.”

“Precisely.” She folded her hands in front of her. “We call this ‘demonology’ because, strictly speaking, that’s what it always was, throughout recorded human history. But we also call it that because it’s a scary word, and we intend for it to frighten you. So that you will hesitate before doing what you’ve done.”

She sighed, and rubbed at her temples. “But I can see by your expression that you either do not understand, or you do not agree with the magnitude of the danger. Everything worked out for the best, you think. All is well. You were able to control the demon, after all.”

She’s not wrong. This is a lot of yelling for something that’s maybe theoretically bad but seems to be okay so far.

“Your facility with manipulating demons is not unheard of. It’s a rare skill, but one that was once cultivated by the magically inclined, in antiquity. It inevitably ends in the death of the demonologist, of course. And if that were the only risk, I would likely give you a stern warning, mostly for the benefit of the many young women who would be absolutely crushed by your death, and then continue to ignore this. But that is not the only risk.”

She tapped one finger on the desk. “At the Magister level, the Tower is sometimes referred to as the Anchor. This has a specific meaning. The Tower’s function is to anchor reality in such a way that it continues, regardless of celestial meddling, to be a place that humans can exist.” She traced a line down the desktop, and at its end, tapped again. “Here. In the present. In the Primary.” She gestured towards the windows of the office, which overlooked a courtyard, bleached by sun. “All of that. The people, the buildings, the world, everything we think of as ‘reality’. The Tower ensures that continues to exist.”

Riley could see where this was going, and a cold feeling had settled into her stomach.

“When you give a Sigil control, and you let it do what it pleases, what it does is rewrite the rules of reality to match itself. Everywhere it goes, everything it does, everything it touches, is rewritten to no longer match the actual underlying universe.” She moved her finger back to its starting position. “It creates, at least locally, a point of deflection. A branching where the universe should be one way, but is instead another way.” She brought her finger down in a line again, but halfway down the desktop, she scribbled it wildly off to one side, stopping at the limit of her arm’s reach. “Another way that may or may not be inimical to human life.”

Riley swallowed, hard.

“Ah, it is starting to come to you. Let me add one additional complication, then. The purpose of our Academy is, as I’ve already told you, to protect the world from unexpected uses of magic, from the untrained making a mess that will require competent Adepts to clean up and restore things to their previous state. Logistics is very good at this task, and the vast majority of our efforts are in Logistics.” She let a smile touch one corner of her mouth. “No, the Academy is not our focus. It largely exists to train Logistics agents.

“The cleanup tasks they perform are possible because the Primary is very malleable. It’s why the cleanup is necessary, really. Any halfway intelligent girl with the talent for magic can, with very little effort, scrawl her desires onto the Primary. A trained team of agents can neutralize and revert her scrawling before it causes any real problems.”

Gaveny leaned forward, and Riley braced for another desk-slap, but instead the Headmistress just folded her hands, locking her fingers together like a wall between herself and Riley. “The Primary is malleable because it is downstream from the Tower. Far, far downstream. Potentially many tens of millions of years downstream. The Primary is moving towards the Tower, inexorably, following the cruel dictates of thermodynamics. Time passes and gradually the universe evolves towards its ultimate destination.”

Riley saw the entire picture now, and her skin crawled with goosebumps. Oh fuck.

“You see it. I can tell by the expression on your face. So finish the thought for me, Riley Hawkins. What happens when you allow a Sigil to perform its tricks in the City?”

“It. It’s rewriting the rules of. Um. It’s changing the destination. The end goal of reality.”

Gaveny sank back into the chair. “This is why I am not expelling you. Because you both grasp the problem, and the magnitude of the consequences. You are bright, Riley Hawkins. You are talented and clever, and given sufficient guidance you seem likely to do the right thing.” She gestured up and down at Riley, indicating the whole of her physical form. “And now that you are established to be a girl, there is no other reason to consider expulsion.”

Riley’s mouth went dry. “You— I didn’t—”

Gaveny raised one eyebrow, and Riley fell silent. Of course she knows. Even if she didn’t have the ‘I know everything’ vibe, I told Brynn.

“But this, and I need to emphasize its importance, is an immutable rule. You must never, ever give a Sigil control in the City. Do you agree?” Riley’s pause was a fraction of a second, but that was too long for Gaveny, whose hand slammed down with a ringing crack. “Do you agree?”

Riley nodded vigorously, stammering. “Y-yes, yes!”

“Very well.” Gaveny let her breath out in a vast sigh. “If I didn’t make it clear before, let me do so now. You did well. You acted quickly and competently. You took decisive action when that’s what was needed, and you have earned the trust of your cadre and even some of your instructors. Your instincts were correct, and I don’t propose to blunt them.” She rubbed at her eyes, then continued. “You just happened to make an extremely poor, ill-informed choice in this instance, and the rules that should have prevented you from making that choice were insufficiently explained to you. Now they have been, yes?”

Riley nodded again, silently.

Gaveny paused for a long moment, and Riley wondered if the interview was over. Then she said, in a normal, quiet, conversational tone. “Are you in love with Adept Therese?”

Where did that come from? “Um. No, I don’t think— I mean, I love Therese, at least I think I do? But not like that. Not like, um, a lover.” Riley was flushed now, stumbling over her words.

“Good.” Gaveny nodded. “It would worry me, given the empathetic bond between you, that one or the other of you had been brought to that point under coercion.”

“No. I mean, I’m as close to her as you can be to anybody, I think, but…” She shrugged, some of the tension beginning to finally evaporate from her shoulders. “I think knowing someone that well would make it hard to fall in love with them. It’s like we’re sisters. We’re too close, too inside each other’s heads.” She thought, then said, “We don’t really have any surprises for each other.”

Gaveny smiled. “Oh, that’s a lovely way to phrase it.”

She considered Riley, eyes moving across her face, appraising. “I have no such suggested restriction for the members of your own cadre, of course.”

Riley thought she was blushing before, but now she felt her cheeks burn.

Gaveny laughed, and it was such a rare, musical sound that Riley was momentarily startled. “Oh, dear, I seem to have leaned too far into the cruel schoolteacher persona. Don’t worry, Novice Hawkins. I will not pry into your personal life, and trust you to care for your own emotions, and those of your fellow Novices.” She looked away, towards the window. “You will be startlingly beautiful, and you will hold their hearts in your hand. Try not to break them.”

Riley was trying to formulate some sort of reply, as Gaveny looked out the window.

That’s why Riley’s head was down, and Gaveny’s was not, when the shockwave struck and the windows exploded inwards in a driving hail of shattered glass.

persenche

It looks like Therese and Nora will both survive, though neither will emerge unchanged by the experience. But, of course, things can't just settle back into some kind of easy, casual school story, can it? No, just as we're getting things under control, everything has to get worse.

In the second half of Escalation, we'll see why the windows of this hospital are so prone to abrupt explodings, and we'll meet some mysterious bad guys. And also a dashing young Logistics agent!

Remember that your comments, your likes, and your word-of-mouth are the primary way I have to find more of The Tower's audience and give them a chance to meet Riley and Therese. If you're enjoying this story, please do share it with your friends, post a link in your Discord, or tell someone about it on your favorite social media platform.

See you on Wednesday for the second half! <3 all of you!