Riley knew she was being pulled into the divinatory trance but was helpless to stop it. She only vaguely understood how Divination worked, and this inexorable dragging from Therese’s mind was not something she was prepared to shut out. And then it was too late, and she was in the Tree.

Through Therese’s eyes, the place was a beautiful cathedral of glittering white light in every direction. The few times Riley had seen the Tree herself, it had looked like fire, filling her vision.

That’s because you were being possessed by a Sigil when it happened. Also, shit; didn’t expect you here.

Riley found Therese’s presence in the celestial space. Uh, sorry about that. Didn’t exactly get offered a choice. Your eyes closed, and then I was here. She hesitated. Do we stop? Go get Suliat, maybe?

Technically we should. This definitely counts as magic, and we did sort of promise. But I don’t want to start over, honestly. Therese paused in thought. Oh well. I’m guessing if you’re in the room with me, it’s probably unavoidable that you get dragged in. Let’s keep clear of the distortion this time, okay? No harm, no foul.

Riley shuddered. Yeah.

Therese’s mental voice was reassuring. Don’t worry. I’ve got a lot better grasp on the positioning of everything around here, now. If you start to feel yourself drifting, just grab hold of the link. That’s going to be way stronger than anything else here. She paused. And, uh. Let’s not mention we skipped the cadre member thing, okay? We’ll make sure to bring one of them along next time.

They began to drift into the strange cradle of light. It was like a cup picked out in strings of Christmas lights, like vertical ribs of the chalice, and they were floating through the middle of the cup’s bowl, with only sparkling cobweb drifts of stardust here with them. They brushed against them, and aside, and each little cobweb strand tugged at Riley, trying to whisper a name to her, and then they were past. The pull of Therese’s purposeful navigation was sure and confident.

This is Maia, Therese thought, and Riley heard the whispering voice as they approached.

What’s it saying?

The Sigil I’m using to anchor us here. Don’t call it, or we’ll have to start over.

The Midwife of Minor Unrest, the words sprang into her mind unbidden, and she was able to see the shape of—

Whoops. Backing off. Riley concentrated on not thinking about the Sigil, which was extremely difficult.

Yeah. Therese’s mental voice conveyed her concentration, which lay elsewhere. Okay, focus, Therese.

Riley watched as they swept towards the bright strand of starlight. Above them, she could feel an uncomfortable, itchy sensation, but she focused on Therese, refusing to look up, and soon the strand was filling her vision. Close enough to touch.

Don’t. It would pull us in just like calling the Sigil we’re using to get here. Then we’d have to break it and ground the power and start over.

I wasn’t going to, Riley insisted indignantly, but still felt her mental presence recoil back from the strand.

Therese laughed. It’s not dangerous or anything, just tedious. Common problem for Diviners in training. You’ll get to experience it next year when you have to take the class.

Riley’s thought was both interested and worried. Will you be the one teaching it?

I hadn’t thought about it, but… probably not. We’d mess each other up. Still, if it ends up being my boss teaching the class, she’s fantastic and there’s no better teacher I can think of. Therese’s affection for Diviner Rajavi glowed through the link. Then she thought, Focus, Therese!

Riley watched as they began to slowly work their way up the strand, and when Therese finally stopped, the unpleasant itching horror from above her was right on the edge of being actual pain. Then they swept out and away from the strand, seemingly diving right towards the distortion—

Calm down, Riley. We’re not going into it. Just near it.

Riley struggled to get herself under control, and then they entered the prophetic whirlpool that had been Therese’s actual target.

After watching the vision of the attack on the Tower, she retreated with Therese to a vantage point above the dream. Can we see that again?

Probably. It’s really unpleasant, though. Why would you want to?

There’s something weird about it. About the defenses. She couldn’t entirely pin down what she’d noticed, or why it had bothered her, but there was something in that final confrontation.

They watched the Tower’s energies reach out like arcs from a Tesla coil to touch Gaveny and the Magisters. They watched them tear through each of them in turn, leaving them a crumpled, smoldering heap. They watched the Tower fall as its energies flickered out.

Over and over.

What are we missing? Therese thought. What are the lessons of the dream?

Riley’s thoughts had a patina of exhaustion to them; staying in the divination dream-space was a new kind of mental effort for her, where Therese had been doing it almost daily for years. I don’t know. Something bad is going to come from the south and it’s going to tear down the Tower and then the world is going to end.

You left out the part where the Tower fights back.

Yeah, but it doesn’t work. We already saw that, with the Weapons thing. That was a temporary fix, you said.

Therese projected agreement at her, and went silent, considering.

I mean, except for whatever the thing with the Headmistress and the council of terrifying old people was supposed to be. The Magisters were a brand new experience for her, and she had developed a kind of dread of meeting any of them in person. There was something uncanny about them, like they were someone’s idea of what a human ought to look like, drawn from real life models, but reconstructed inexpertly. They get electrocuted every time, and it’s kind of horrible. Like, is that the Tower doing that, or the distortion?

Therese became abruptly alert. That’s the Tower, and that’s an excellent point. I had been summarizing the dream’s lessons as ‘the Tower’s defenses are going to fail’, but that’s not accurate, is it?

It’s not? Riley was confused. Sounds pretty much spot on to me. I mean, look, they turn into little piles of ash.

First, all the Armory’s toys are brought out and those fail to stop the distortion. And then the Tower tries to do something magical with the Headmistress and the Magisters. But look, that doesn’t exactly fail, does it? Therese was excited now, and kept dragging the dream back to the moment when the energies first struck Gaveny.

I don’t get it.

Look at what happens first: the distortion Bane starts to burn. It gets turned to ash.

They both watched as arcs of celestial fire, bolts of the same energy that cascaded out of celestial storms that accompanied the Tower’s wakeful irritated periods, leaped down from Gaveny’s thrashing body. Where they touched the mass of dark, seething corruption, it evaporated, turning to a blue-white cinder that was instantly whipped away by the wind and the pressure wave from each strike.

The monster stopped. It was being eroded by the celestial power, trapped in place by it, being scrubbed out of existence by it.

It was working. Therese was eager, and sending that coursing down the emotional link. Whatever the Tower does with Gaveny and the Magisters, it works.

But then it uses them up, like it’s blowing fuses, Riley pointed out. It might have the power but it doesn’t have the, I dunno, the throughput. There’s probably an electrical engineering term for that but I can never remember the difference between watts and joules and volts.

So all we need to do is to give it more capacity, Therese thought.

Great, so what, we just recruit a bunch of Magisters? How does that even work? Is Gaveny a Magister?

Therese shook her head. No, not that I know of. She talks about them like they’re something distinct and separate from her. From humanity, really. They scare me, to be honest.

Gaveny scares me, Riley thought, but I get what you mean. Maybe that’s it. Maybe she’s supposed to do whatever they do to become Magisters. Maybe the Tower is asking us to give it a bunch more Magisters to burn up. The thought was morbid, but the dream had left Riley in a dark and morbid kind of mood. Watching the world die, over and over, wasn’t much of a light springtime entertainment.

Therese radiated uncertainty as they moved away from the dream vision and back out to her study. I don’t know. She continued out loud as reality reasserted itself. “That fits what we saw but doesn’t feel right.”

“What does ‘feel right’ mean?” Riley stood and stretched, her aching arms throbbing from the inactivity.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. It’s a Diviner thing.” She chewed her lower lip. “I should take this to Diviner Rajavi, see if she has any ideas.”

“Do you need me to—”

“No, but I know her, and I know she’s going to tell us to get back into the dream until we have something more solid than a feeling. It’s one of her lessons: prophetic dreams will always, if you keep after them, give up all their secrets.” She sighed and stood, and Riley could see her wobble.

Therese held up a hand as Riley stepped forward to try and catch her. “No, I’m okay. Just, muscles still not really all there, yet.” She smiled. “Maybe I should go train with you and Himari.”

Riley groaned. “No, you shouldn’t. She’s never tired. She’s always ready. Sometimes I just want to rest, you know?”

This was, at best, a partial truth. Riley was tired, always tired, but resting meant thinking, and thinking meant thinking about being a girl, about transition, and as much as she might like to imagine she was out and everything was moving forward, the actual truth was that she was terrified most of the time. If I were doing this in the real world, I’d be able to meet other trans people. Talk to them. Find out what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing here, with all this. Hell, even one trans friend would be pretty fucking great.

Instead, she was alone, and the only way she’d come up with to deal with that was to work. Constantly. Every moment of every day. Training with Himari, but also reading her way through the Index Overview and following up on her notes in the Archives, and committing as much of the Goetia to memory as she could. When she could lure the others into it, building some of the simple Workings they’d been given the tools to handle — mostly creating short single-sense illusions or moving small objects around.

Therese laughed at Riley’s dramatic re-enactment of her exhaustion. “It’s just as well Himari’s persistent. It’s good for you to stay active, and stay engaged with your cadre. They’re not getting hands-on Divination tutoring, after all.” She looked down at the clutter of her desktop, and began shuffling through the papers there. “Anyway. While all that’s still fresh in my mind, I need to write everything down. The Diviner will want to see my notes, and she’s particular about the format.”

Riley didn’t realize she was being dismissed, at first. Therese gestured more pointedly to the door. “Get out of here. Go, I don’t know. Go have a conversation with Suliat.”

“Oh hell,” Riley said, and it was only partially performative. She put on an expression of mock pleading. “Maybe we could spend a few more hours in the nightmare world instead?”

“Go, get. Shoo!”

Laughing, Riley left the study, closing the door gently behind her.

# # #

“Himari’s annoyed with me for skipping the gym tonight.” Riley was sprawled in one of the armchairs, legs out and arms sticking out to the sides, her entire body a careful study of indolence. “I told her that I’d report her to Gaveny for trying to kill me.”

Suliat was being more industrious, taking notes and leafing through a book on the table. “I thought you enjoyed all that running about and hitting each other with swords.” Her focus was clearly elsewhere. The book was Analytic Geometry of Workings, which meant she was doing math, and Riley knew she hated the math involved in magic. It didn’t come naturally to her, she said, not like people did.

Riley sighed with an excess of melodrama. “I guess I do. I mean, it feels useful. Unlike, for example, yet another trip through really gross divinations.”

“Still nothing?”

This had been the fifth afternoon Riley had spent in Therese’s study, trying to make sense of the visions. Today Himari had been Riley’s divination-buddy, though Himari complained that divination dream-space was completely incomprehensible to her. “It’s just a bunch of stars floating around, and then you two stop talking for ten minutes. It’s so fucking boring.”

Eve had more luck, and was able to at least see the prophetic dream vision, though she only managed to recall flashes of coherent images, still frames of ominous portents with no meaning attached to them.

Suliat had not yet tried the shared divination trance.

The results were not promising. So far, all they’d managed was a ‘keep looking’ from Diviner Rajavi, and a bad headache for Riley, who was beginning to suspect she wasn’t cut out to be a Diviner. Of course, that was assuming she was cut out for something, which remained to be seen. It turned out that intuitive magical ability wasn’t something the Theory department was prepared for, and she’d been chased out of Nora’s office more than once by the exhausted Adept.

“Still nothing. Except that I think the headaches are migraines. I threw up once,” she said, and rubbed at her forehead. “And my vision got blurry.”

Suliat looked up from her book. “You idiot. Why didn’t you stop sooner?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t want to be a disappointment, I guess.”

She snorted, shook her head, and closed her book. “I was right. You are an idiot.” Her voice was warm and she was smiling, but there was also something implacable in her tone. “You’re doing all the same work the rest of us are doing, and you’re spending evenings in the gym with Himari, and you’re dragging yourself through daily divination sessions you’ve admitted give you headaches and make you vomit.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Riley. “A reaction, I will note, that neither of our roommates have reported. It’s you, not the work. You’re exhausted.”

“When you put it like that—”

“Riley. Look at me.” Suliat rose, came over to her chair, and knelt down in front of her. Their eyes were on a level now, and Su reached out with both hands to take Riley’s face between them, holding her at arm’s length. “Your eyes are dark hollows in your face. You are going to burn yourself to ashes. You need to rest sometimes.”

Riley was caught between the pleasant sensation of Suliat’s hands on her skin, the desire to turn into that touch and kiss her palm, but the simultaneous awareness that she’d interrupted Su’s study, in a subject she thought of herself as weak in. “I’ll be fi—”

Before she could finish, Suliat covered her mouth with one of the hands on Riley’s face, and with the other, she pointed directly at Riley’s face. “You. Quiet. No more from you. You will sit right there and wait for me to come back.”

She released Riley, who sat up from her slouch. “Come back? From what?”

“Letting Eve know not to wait up for me. I’m putting you to bed and keeping you there.”

Riley sat in silence as Suliat ducked into Eve’s room, and then a moment later emerged. Eve peeked out from her doorway, caught Riley’s eye, and waved, her face pink with what was clearly the aftereffect of a thorough kissing.

Then Suliat seized her hand and dragged her out of the chair.

“Wait, where are we going?”

“My room. I’ve seen yours, and it’s depressing and empty. Mine, on the other hand, is comfortable, warm, and smells nice.”

She pushed her door open, and dragged Riley after her. The room beyond was lit with candle-globes that drifted in the corners, bobbing up and down for maximum shadow drama. A heavy woven rug covered the floor, in reds and browns, and the bed was piled with blankets and pillows, all of them in colors that mirrored the rug, with accents in a forest green that also dominated the wall hangings.

“Whoa.”

Suliat smiled. “You don’t have to live like a hermit, Riley. You can ask for things.”

She pushed Riley towards the bed, not to either of the comfortable-looking wicker-and-cushion chairs. Suliat didn’t have a desk in her room, and occupied that space with seating and—

“Is that a plant? Like a real houseplant?”

Suliat laughed. “No, it’s not real. There isn’t enough light in here to keep a houseplant alive. It’s just decoration. But I needed more green than what the wall hangings could offer. I come from a living place, a green place, and this dark gloomy castle nonsense is tiring.”

Eve opened the door and came in, carrying a tray with three mugs. She brought it over to the small, round table between the chairs, setting it down and then climbing into one of the chairs and tucking her feet up under her.

“Hi, Riley. We’re drinking hot chocolate and teasing you, I think?”

“Wait, what?”

Eve smiled. “Sorry, was I supposed to wait before I started?”

Suliat laughed as Riley stammered in reply.

With the hot chocolate in hand, Riley sat with legs half-crossed on the edge of Suliat’s bed, hoping she wouldn’t spill any of it onto the nice comforter and piled blankets. Su had dragged one of the chairs out of the corner to position it next to the bed, where she could reach out to put her hand on Riley’s leg, which she was doing right now. Resting lightly on her left knee, which was bent and folded under her right leg.

Riley knew she was blushing.

“I think…” Eve trailed off, looking over at Suliat, who nodded. “I think I know what your problem is.” Eve tipped her head to the side as though considering her from a new angle. “I used to think you didn’t know how to relax. Like, do you even have hobbies?”

Riley shrugged. “Not really. Nothing ever felt worth doing.” She blinked. “Used to? You don’t think that anymore?”

“No, I still do.” She hesitated, like she was working up the nerve. “I think you’re too used to being bored.”

Su said, “You’re checked out of your own life.”

Riley shrugged. “Up until recently I didn’t even have one. A life, I mean. At least not one I wanted.”

Eve nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I thought, because of… you know, what we felt together?” Eve’s cheeks flushed. “You didn’t want to be old-Riley, so you were just…”

“Coasting,” Riley finished as Eve trailed off.

“Right. But then I was thinking, why is she still that way?”

“I dunno,” Riley said. “Habit?”

Eve shook her head. “No, I think… you’re so used to being alone, you don’t know how to let anyone in.”

Suliat squeezed her knee, then went back to her light touch.

“We’re all trying to be a part of new-Riley’s life,” Eve continued, “and you’re filling every moment of it up with…” She looked over at Suliat, searching.

“Stress. Catastrophe. Obligation.” Suliat said.

“Right. Like you don’t want time to find out who Riley is.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. They’re not wrong. If I’m exhausted and terrified and stressed, I don’t have to think about how to be her, me. Girl Riley.

“Anyway!” Eve stood, and then leaned down over Su to kiss her. Then, with a broad grin at Riley, she said, “Don’t keep her up all night, Suli. You’ll just give her more excuses to skip hanging out with us.” And then Eve left, taking the tray and the empty mugs with her.

Suliat climbed up on the bed next to her, and leaned against her. Her hand took up position on Riley’s knee again, and she stroked it gently.

“What did she mean, excuses to skip hanging out?” The sudden change in the dynamic, from a group chat to one-on-one time with a girl she’d only just recently gotten comfortable enough with to kiss was alarming. She felt abruptly nervous, and the nervousness was creeping towards terror, and she was drifting into deep and uncharted waters.

“Idiot.” Suliat bumped her, shoulder to shoulder. “We keep trying to invite you to join us for dinner, or go exploring with us, or even just spend time together talking.” She squeezed Riley’s knee again. “Himari was the first one to come up with anything you’d agree to do with us, and we’ve all been talking, trying to figure out how to manage that trick twice.”

“Wait, Himari’s in on this uh, whatever this is? Intervention?”

“Obviously.”

You are alone in Suliat’s room with her, and on her bed with her, and she’s pressed her shoulder against yours, and her thigh against yours, and she’s—

As though she heard Riley’s thought, Suliat’s hand had slipped off her knee, and slid around behind her lower back. “We talk about you pretty often. All of us.”

Riley’s hysterical thought was, What do you say about me? But every idea she had for the answer to that question seemed more frightening than the last, and so aloud she only said, “I feel like the victim of a conspiracy.”

“How about ‘mascot’?” Su grinned wickedly.

“Hey!” She tried to be offended. “That’s worse.”

Su giggled, and shoved against her again. This time, with her arm looped behind Riley’s back, she was able to topple the two of them onto the pile of pillows and blankets, still laughing.

You’re lying in Suliat’s bed with her, and she has one of her arms pinned under you, and she’s turning towards you.

And yet, even with her heart thudding in anxious excitement, Riley couldn’t help but grin at Suliat’s laughter.

After a moment, Suliat’s other arm looped over Riley’s stomach, so that as Riley lay on her back, diagonally across the bed, Su was on her side, her arms enclosing Riley in a loose hug, one over her, one under her. She pulled herself close, letting her lips rest inches from Riley’s left ear. The whisper, at that range, sent waves of shivers and goosebumps down Riley’s body.

“I don’t know why, Riley Hawkins, but your smile makes me weak, and all I can think about is how to bring it out again.”

“But,” she began, and then had to sort through a whole library of reasons why she, Riley, newly minted girl and lifelong outcast, was not worth that sort of effort. The pause as she tried to find a way to express her self-doubt was long enough that she felt the tickle of air as Su started to take a breath to say something.

“But, why me? You have Eve, and you’re— I’m just— I’m a—”

Her voice was low, intense, and serious, and as she struggled for words, Su kissed her ear, which made the entire exercise nearly impossible to continue.

“Suli, I’m, I— I don’t—” I’m not worth this. I’m an ugly freak. I’m not really a girl. I’m not pretty like you and Eve. I’m trouble. I’m dangerous to be around. I bring unhappiness to everyone around me. I’m a burden. I’m a monster. I’m never going to be okay again. Why would you want anything to do with the disaster of my life? “I’m—”

Suliat pulled her lips away from Riley’s ear, and interrupted her with a whisper. “You’re the girl I can’t stop thinking about. You’re the girl I cant look away from whenever you’re around. You’re the girl who keeps pushing me away and breaking my heart.”

Riley shuddered.

“You’re the girl I’m going to kiss now, Miss Riley Hawkins, and I’m going to keep kissing until you tell me to stop.”

With that, Suliat was somehow above her, her arms straight down to pin Riley’s wrists, her knees on either side of Riley’s’ hips. The lights of the candle-globes dimmed, and Su’s skin was almost blue in the darkness, shadowed, hovering above Riley, and then her lips descended in a kiss that cut Riley’s breath and made her heart thrash inside her chest.

Endless, aching time passed with their lips locked together, their tongues fighting and probing.

I want to be the girl you want me to be, Riley thought.

I want to be the girl you want.

Then their lips broke apart, and just inches away from Riley’s face, Su whispered. “Riley? Take this dress off me?”

Riley was frozen in place by fear. She felt her awareness try to lift up and out of her body, dissociating. Then Su’s voice came again, in the darkness. “Please? Let me touch you?”

You’re about to miss this, and you’ll regret that for the rest of your life, the voice of inner Riley came to her. You’re about to hurt Suliat in a way you will never make amends for.

She loves you, idiot. Why are you running away?

And Riley’s awareness snapped back into her body, feeling the weight of Suliat’s legs against her sides, Suliat’s breasts pressed against her chest, Suliat’s left cheek pressed against her left cheek. And she slipped her hands down to the waist ties of Su’s dress, and tugged at them.

They came untied instantly, loose and falling. Su lifted one leg, and then the other, pulling the skirts of the dress loose from her knees.

Riley pulled the skirts up, lifting the dress up to Su’s arms, then over her head. Su giggled as her upper body was engulfed in the layered fabric, and then it was pulled free and tossed aside.

The light undershirt she wore beneath strained at the weight of her breasts. Su flattened them against Riley’s chest again, as she dove back in for another deep and wandering kiss, one that lasted so long Riley started to wonder if this wasn’t actually just a dream.

Then, faintly, deep within, she felt a calm reassurance and love from her empathetic link, and then… silence. Therese had withdrawn her awareness as completely as she possibly could.

Riley’s hands came to rest on Su’s hips, at her waist.

“Suli, I, I’ve never—”

“Shh.” She dropped her mouth to Riley’s ear again. “I want you to touch me. I want your skin on my skin. I want your hands on me.”

Riley shivered again, her whole body this time, and at every point that she touched Su, her skin became hyperactively aware, her whole consciousness narrowed down to just those points of contact.

Then Suliat’s right hand arrived at Riley’s waist again.

“Riley. Can I—”

She almost froze again, but the inner Riley voice shouted at her, screamed at her, and finally just took charge entirely. “Yes. Oh yes, Su. Please. Yes.”

Su’s brilliant smile was a beacon in the room’s darkness. “Riley.” She fell to one side, her hands tearing at the waist ties of the dress. “Riley. I love you, Riley.”

She loves— Riley couldn’t even complete the thought. She gasped, and together the two of them somehow pulled the dress off, and then they were together, Su’s body concealed only by panties and an undershirt, Riley’s in only the panties.

“Riley. Riley, where can I touch you?” Su’s voice in her ear again, her hand on Riley’s face, stroking.

Riley felt the shiver down her body again. Oh god. Oh fuck. I’m such a freak. I’m such a monster. She’ll touch me and I’ll revolt her. She’ll touch me and I’ll die of self-loathing.

But the voice that had taken over spoke for her. “Anywhere except. Except.” Her breath came in shuddering gasps.

Su put her finger on Riley’s lips. “Yes. I understand.” She exhaled, hot and slow, into Riley’s ear. “If you need me to stop, tell me. I never want to hurt you. Never.”

Riley turned towards her, now each of them on their sides, and Riley’s hand was on her collarbone, and it lingered there. She’s so soft. Then Su took Riley by the wrist and moved Riley’s hand decisively down her body, and Riley was holding Su’s breast, marveling at the softness of it, feeling the gasp and shiver in Su’s body as Riley’s fingers brushed her nipple.

And then Su’s hand was on Riley’s chest, and then her fingers were at Riley’s nipple, and Riley felt an explosion like white light in her mind. Oh my dear goddess, she thought. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.

Riley’s left hand clenched in the blankets under Su, and she felt it, and levered herself up to straddle Riley again. “Touch me,” she whispered, and Riley did, and Su moaned at the contact. “Kiss me,” she whispered, and Riley’s mouth found her breast.

And the feeling, the explosion of white light, it just kept crashing through Riley’s mind, and every word left her, and the two of them were tangled one into the other, their hands and mouths on each other, their bodies becoming one, melting into each other. Identities blurring, ego boundaries flexible and permeable.

“I love you, Riley,” Suliat gasped.

Say it. Say it, Inner Riley snarled. You fucking say it right now.

“I love you, Suliat.”

And she meant it.

And much later, in the dark, curled together and quiet, she said it again, and again, and again.

# # #

The morning came with a grim, awful certainty, and Therese dragged herself through layers of sleep and dream and unconsciousness, struggling to claw her way towards the light. Therese was not a morning person, but this was an extreme of exhaustion she hadn’t encountered before, and it took several long minutes of willing her body to move before her weakened muscles would obey her.

She was trying to escape the undertow of the dreamscape of divination, she knew, and that made the whole awful morning her own fault. Spend too much time divining, and a strange resonance could begin. She thought of it like the phenomenon of ‘Tetris effect’, where you’d see the world around you as the shapes of the game Tetris. Your brain wanted to use the interpretive framework of the game for everything. You dreamed in Tetris, or whatever game you’d been obsessed with. For Therese, it had been Stardew Valley, years ago.

This was a problem when your interpretive framework was divination, though. If your dreaming brain saw divination as a pattern it could impose on the dream experience, that created all the necessary conditions to actually engage in divinatory dreaming. She’d been sleeping, but she hadn’t been resting.

She’d worked all night, through her own dreams, involuntarily. And now her brain was demanding restful sleep. Active meditation was mentally exhausting even when you weren’t still withered away from a horrible parasitic illness.

The dreams, though. They’d been frustrating and elusive, skipping around in directions her conscious mind wouldn’t have attempted. Visions of the Tower from afar, thrust improbably out of the City; visions of the celestial storm swirling in a vortex over the Tower; visions of the bleak and empty wasteland that the Tower had shown her when speaking to her and Riley.

She had the thought, eventually, that the whole thing looked like the Tarot card. She tried to avoid the Tarot imagery when divining, because it was seductive: once you saw things in terms of The Hierophant or Justice or whatever, you couldn’t easily get that picture out of your head, and you’d fall back into the rut of Tarot interpretation whenever you were unsure. There was just too much cultural baggage associated with those images, in their classic forms.

But somehow she’d gotten trapped into the vision of The Tower, number 16 in the Major Arcana, and she couldn’t shake it. All the rest of the night, she saw variations of the classic 1909 Tower art by Pixie Smith. Sometimes the figures falling from the Tower were recognizably herself and Riley. Sometimes they were Gaveny, or the Magisters. The lightning striking the Tower’s crown sometimes came from the celestial storm, and sometimes it was the Tree itself, inverted, looming above the black wasteland. Sometimes the City was present below, burning; other times it was scoured basalt with other upthrust prisms of black rock clustered around the enormity of the Tower itself.

And then, over and over again, the image returned to the Tower split down the middle by the stroke of lightning. Cracked in half, each half pulling away from the other, falling, molten rubble falling in showers of fire all around. The Tower destroyed and the order of the world overthrown.

The Tower, cloven.

She struggled, rubbing her eyes. Gesturing at the room, she muttered ‘Lights,’ and the candle globes drifted up into the corners and began to glow. The window’s vague gray light wasn’t clearly dawn or dusk, but that interminable dim dullness that demanded more sleep. She looked at her watch, saw that it was improbably mid-morning, and slid her feet over the side of her bed to find her slippers.

The knock came again. Again? Had there been a knock?

There had been. That’s what woke her up. It was a faint knock, barely a tap. “Come in,” she said, her voice still thick and hoarse with sleep.

Nora stepped through the smallest crack of open door she could manage, trying to keep the waking world and its noise and light separated from Therese’s gloomy space.

Therese said, “Door, give Nora entry permission.”

Nora smiled from under her fall of concealing hair. “The key to your apartment.”

Therese blushed, but in the dim lighting it was all but invisible. “How long were you out there?”

“I had just arrived, Tee. Stop worrying.” She crossed the room to stand over Therese, and leaned down to put a kiss on her forehead. Still seated, Therese wrapped Nora in her arms, and leaned her head against Nora’s stomach. “Sit with me while I wake up?”

Nora nodded and slid down onto the bed, leaning back and inhaling deeply. “I like your bed. It smells like you.”

“Oh no,” Therese said, wrinkling her nose. “It probably stinks. I need to change the sheets again.”

Nora put out one finger to touch her on the end of her small, round nose. “Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t turn my happiness into your insecurity.”

Therese made an effort to move fast enough to catch Nora’s finger in her mouth, failed, and then struggled to her feet. “Divination dreams all night. Involuntary ones.”

“You need to rest more. You’ve been working without a break for the past week, since returning to the Tower, and you’re still recovering.” Nora frowned. “I will intervene, you know. I will make you rest.”

Therese stretched and found a robe in the pile of clothing next to her wardrobe. “I’m trying. I mean,” she quickly followed in response to Nora’s skeptical look, “I want to, but I’m pretty sure whatever Riley and I are onto, it’s big, and it’s important, and—”

“And if you’re collapsing from exhaustion, your efforts are largely going to be wasted.”

“It’s urgent, is what I mean. It’s something that’s going to happen, and soon.”

Nora held her arms out from the bed, and Therese obediently came over and fell into them. She began to work the mess of Therese’s hair, separating out the waves from the tangles, her long, thin fingers deftly working through the rumpled mess.

“Mmm, that’s so nice. Maybe I could just rest right here.”

Nora laughed softly. “Maybe you could.”

Therese turned so she was looking up from Nora’s lap. “It didn’t help that Riley and Suliat spent the night together, either. I did my best to cut off the link but god damn that was exhausting. I couldn’t relax for fear they’d, uh. Keep going. Again.”

Nora brushed Therese’s hair back from her forehead, and then stroked her fingertips along Therese’s scalp, right at her hairline. “Poor thing. Kept up all night by thoughts of sex. As for me, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

The gentle sarcastic tease in Nora’s voice was almost too slight for Therese to pick up on it, but when what she’d said actually sunk in, her eyes widened. “Nora! Are you admitting to lewd thoughts?”

“Hmf. Hardly. I have not spent any nights at all imagining what might happen if the woman I love were not exhausted by her constant work and toil. I have not imagined her spending the night in my rooms. Why would I do something like that? It’s so out of character for me.”

Therese opened and closed her mouth, shocked, trying to find words.

Nora smiled down at her. “You look like a fish, dear.”

Therese tried to push herself up off Nora’s lap. She’s been thinking this and I’ve been… have I been missing signals? Oh shit, I have, haven’t I? “Nora, shit, I—”

“Hush. I’m teasing you.” She frowned slightly. “Well, mostly teasing you. I am serious about forcing you to rest, though.” The intact corner of her mouth quirked up into a small and secret smile. “The only question is the methodology.” Her good eyebrow raised slightly.

“Nora!”

Nora slipped her arms around Therese’s neck, kissing her firmly. So the knock at the door was extremely unwelcome, and could not have been timed worse. They untangled from each other, Therese tying her hair back before calling “Come in.”

It was Key. “Something’s hap— uh. Hi, Nora.” She waved. “Good, now I don’t have to come find you. Something’s happening. Out in the City.”

Therese was on her feet. “What?”

“Easier if you just come see. Allie and Brynn are on the South Pavilion, on the Ranger level.”

Around the Tower were the many structures of the Peripheral Tower, which clustered around the base like a hundred meters of early twentieth century office buildings, as though the City were a wave crashing into the base of the Tower, except the wave was made of architecture. On the flat rooftops of those  buildings were entrances back into the Tower itself, so that you could walk out of the Tower and onto a deck that overlooked the City in whatever direction you liked.

The largest of these rooftop observation decks were called the Pavilions, and they formed a kind of public social area for Adepts who really wanted to get out from under the oppressive pile of the Tower’s looming structure, and its endless claustrophobic warren of dark basalt corridors.  It’s where the Surveyors did their work, and where people went to breathe what passed for fresh air in the City. Scattered clusters of tables and chairs, and the occasional table umbrella for the rare instance of a genuinely sunny or rainy day, typically held a few dozen Adepts chatting or eating a meal or reading.

But today a crowd, much larger than usual, was clustered at the south end of the Pavilion, where its edge was demarcated by a wrought-iron railing that circled the entire broad rectangular space. The crowd was murmuring and shifting, looking off to the south, perhaps fifty people all pressed up against the edge.

Therese gasped as she emerged from the main Ranger corridor from the central shaft into the gloom of sunset over the City. She instantly saw what had everyone transfixed, and it brought her so abruptly to a halt that Nora nearly toppled her from behind.

“Tee, what is— Oh.” The shock in Nora’s voice was mirrored in the open-mouthed expression on her face.

The horizon to the south was glowing orange, as the sun sunk towards the skyline of office towers and art deco skyscrapers off to the right. Against that fire-infused sky the new structure to the south was no more than a black shadow silhouette.

It looked like a knife blade thrust upwards from the City tangle.

“How far is—” Therese started to say.

Key stepped to one side, so that they didn’t block the archway that led out onto the Pavilion, and pulled Therese and Nora along with her. A steady trickle of people continued to emerge behind them, here to see the thing to the south. From the crowd, Allie spotted them and waved, and made her way over to them. She had a notebook out, a pencil in hand, and had been sketching geometric diagrams of the thing on the horizon.

“Tee. Nora.” Allie nodded at them. “I’ve been talking to the Surveyors. They say that thing is eighty kilometers away.”

“Bullshit,” Key exploded. “That’s not possible. There’s no fucking way. That would make it…” She started to do math in her head, and Allie turned her notebook around to show the pages to all of them. The trigonometry was simple.

“It’s four kilometers tall.” Allie’s voice was quiet and certain.

In the silence that followed, Riley emerged from the Tower, and immediately joined them, unerring as she tracked Therese down in the flux of people. Therese felt her presence through the link as a jittery electric worry. “Therese, I’ve got a feeling like—”

She nodded. “Me too. It feels just like the distortion. Every time I look at it.”

Riley was emanating a low-intensity fear, radiating down the link despite the obvious effort she was making to dampen it. “I’m getting the migraine aura, too. Like in the visions.”

Therese looked away, finally, somehow able to pull her eyes off the thing. She looked at Nora, whose usual calm composure was shattered into breathless fear, and then at Riley, whose wide-eyed expression was naked terror.

She slipped her hands into those of both women, squeezing for comfort.

It’s a Tower.