Nora was quiet, thinking. She’d motioned for silence once Riley had finished her retelling of the prophetic dream, and had been staring off into the middle distance ever since.

“Every divinatory dream has a lesson to teach us,” she finally said. “Without exception, they’re all intended to convey something meaningful. Our task is to filter that meaning out of the noise.”

Riley nodded. “Therese said she hates Tarot dreams because they’re mostly noise.”

Nora smiled. “I’m familiar with this take.” She folded her hands. “You’re certain you don’t want her present for this conversation?”

Riley shook her head. “The link is. Um. Distracting.” She didn’t want to explain to Therese’s girlfriend that having someone live-streaming your emotional responses was always challenging, but having them do it while you were trying to explore a dream about your own death was pretty much impossible.

Nora shrugged. “She’s much more clever than I am about this sort of thing, but we’ll do our best.”

Riley briefly wondered, given everything Therese had said about Nora, what it meant when she was describing someone else as ‘more clever’.

“Okay, well. Uh, the main thing seems to be that I get crucified on the Tree.”

Nora frowned. “I don’t know if it will be helpful to call it ‘crucifixion’. That will bring quite a few implications along with it, and I’m not sure they’re all applicable.”

Riley shrugged. “It all kind of tracked, to me. Crucified, save the world with my sacrifice, the whole ‘father why have you forsaken me’ treatment.”

“That’s not really what happened, though. Let’s step through the actual events. First, there’s a celestial fire that touches down on you.”

“Right, the bolt that otherwise destroys the Tower.”

“The Tarot symbology that Therese despises. But in this instance, it touches you, and you survive.”

“Therese seemed to think it had something to do with the specific Sigil from Atlas being all about endurance and defense?”

“Possible. So let’s say, the bolt strikes you and you endure it. What next? What’s the next specific event?”

Riley thought through the sequence. “Next… the Tower collapses to the ground. And the storm gets bigger.”

“We can likely suppose that regardless of what you do or don’t do, the Tower doesn’t survive in its current form. Else we wouldn’t be shown the collapse even in a victorious scenario.”

“Right.” Riley wasn’t sure that necessarily followed, but she was well out of her depth and had been since the divination project had started. “Uh, then I kind of turn into celestial fire.” She flinched a little when she said it. And it fucking hurts. And it hurts to remember. “And the face from the dreams about the Spike appears in the storm.”

Nora nodded. “This is the part you describe as crucifixion. What specifically happens?”

Riley shivered a little. “It’s um, it hurts all over. I don’t know how to describe the pain. It’s even worse than— it’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt.” No, I am not going to get sidetracked into talking about the accident. “The gold fire comes up from the ground and out through my arms and my face. It feels like I’m being scrubbed out, like with a bottle brush. Turned into a hollow tube. I lose my sense of who I am. I become something else.”

Nora waited for a moment in Riley’s silence, then prompted: “What do you become?”

Riley’s mouth formed the words without her mind engaging. “The Tower in the Final City at the End of the Universe.” There was a pulse of Celestial energy that grounded immediately. Nora’s hands had tightened one around the other, where they were folded on her desk, and her eyelids fluttered.

“I see.” Her voice was even and calm.

“What… what was that?”

Nora looked up at the ceiling of the office, where the hanging light fixture was swaying very slightly, and the bulb’s intensity was pulsing, slowly, a sine wave of illumination. “That was a very powerful Sigil attempting to enter you, and being grounded by the rather extensive Working I built around this space before you arrived for our meeting.” She smiled, faintly. There was very little humor in it. “Just in case it should be needed.”

Riley swallowed hard. “You thought I would do something.”

“I thought something might happen. Let’s leave it at that, without assigning motive or intentionality.”

This feels like when everyone was walking on eggshells around me. Like I was a box of sweating dynamite. I hate feeling like a threat. Riley rubbed at her mouth, and then pressed her aching eyes into her face. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll uh, I’ll try not to—”

“You don’t need to worry. It’s under control. I do know what I’m doing.” She smiled, and this was a genuine smile that tugged at the corner of the Sigil-scar that marked her face. “Let’s continue? You’re, hm, occupied by a Sigil.”

“Sort of the Sigil, you know? The entire Tree as a single Sigil.”

Nora nodded. “Very well. I’m not sure I’m convinced of that yet, but let’s say you’re occupied by the Tree.”

Riley fidgeted. “Then we fight.”

“You and the Spike.”

“Or whatever it is. The Voice, the face, the Spike, I don’t know. It’s the distortion. It’s the rot. It’s whatever’s wrong out in the City, and in the world. Yeah, the Spike, I guess.”

“What kind of fight is it?”

“I, um.” Riley struggled to find the right words. This would be easier if I could just say ‘fight’ the way the Tower does, and have all these concepts all rolled up into one word that conveys them all. “I don’t entirely know. Part of it felt physical, like… slinging bolts of Celestial fire around, smashing into one another like action-figure battles from a Marvel movie. Just empty brutality and special effects.” She rubbed her temples, where the abortive Sigil-calling had left her with an incipient headache. “But part of it was conceptual? Like, an argument, I suppose, between the Tree and the Spike.”

Nora leaned forward with interest. “You hadn’t described it like this before.”

“It just came to me. The metaphor. Just now.” She shrugged. “It’s really confusing. It’s a lot of things all at once. One of them was kind of a philosophical debate. The…” She hesitated. “The Sigil we’re calling the Tree on one side, and something else on the other.”

Nora held up a hand. “One moment.” She muttered something under her breath and gestured in a complex series of finger and hand motions. “Very well. Just making sure nothing was damaged by the last event. Now: What was the ‘something else’?”

Riley frowned, concentrating. “I. I can almost.” It’s on the tip of my tongue, and it tastes foul there. I wish I could just say it and get it out. “No. I can’t remember. It’s something vile. Something like an infinite ocean of filth, or a lethal plague, or a torture that never stops but never kills the victim, either.” She shivered. “If I could talk about things like the Tower does, I could describe it to you, but the only word I’ve heard that makes sense is, um. ‘Them’.”

Therese had clearly told Nora about ‘them’, because Nora recoiled slightly.

“And um, it was also kind of a magical fight? I think I was Working, and the Spike was Working, and we were both trying to do something really big, something that would change everything around us, or complete something, or fill some kind of hole, or. I don’t know. It was like we were racing to fill in a blank page in a longer book.” She looked up at Nora, hoping for some kind of guidance there. “I can barely do the simplest little Workings, like houses made from wooden blocks by children. This felt like, on that scale, like two gods building universes out of first principles.”

Nora sat with that for a moment, digesting. Then, she said, “What happens after that?”

“Uh.” Riley shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “I um, I die.”

“How?”

Riley shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s like the fight. It’s a lot of things all at once.” She tangled her fingers into each other. “I think the main thing is, it uses me up. The, um, the Tree. Like there’s just enough of me to finish up whatever this Working is, and then I’m gone and there’s this new Tree and Tower where I used to be.”

“That doesn’t sound entirely like a sacrifice, the way you’ve been describing the process as a crucifixion.”

“I suppose not, not exactly, but it’s kind of the same thing either way, isn’t it? I mean, if I get killed because I have to die to fix everything, or I get killed because I’m only an ordinary person and not a Magister or whatever, I’m still dead at the end.”

Nora’s face had gone still. “Huh.”

“What?”

“You’re not a Magister.”

“Uh, yeah? I know?”

“I’m thinking about another dream Therese had. The one that led to the expedition into the City.”

“I’ve seen it. What has that got to do—”

“In that dream, the Tower is trying to burn the, what did you call it, the rot? It’s using the Headmistress to do it, but it’s also using the Magisters. The Magisters are channeling its power, and each of them is getting used up, burned out. And ultimately it fails. They’re not enough.” She paused. “This sounds remarkably like what you just described to me, with one exception.”

It only took Riley a moment to catch up. “In this case, it works.”

Nora nodded. “It seems that the missing component of the defense Therese witnessed is… you.”

Riley shuddered.

“The Tower, or the Tree through the Tower, needs a channel to strike at this rot, represented by the Spike and its Voice. If it uses who it currently has available to it, the defense fails, the celestial fire isn’t enough to do whatever it needs to do to erase the rot before the Magisters all burn up and the fire goes out.” She pointed a finger at Riley. “If it has you…”

Riley finished the sentence. “Then it has enough to finish the job. I’m the channel that’s big enough to let this happen.” Her voice was bleak and hollow. “But it still burns me up just like the Magisters.”

There really wasn’t anything to say after that.

# # #

The wall was the problem.

Therese could make it through the obstacles before it, the uneven jumping section where you had to run on angled platforms spaced just a little too far apart, the various climb-over obstacles and the part where you had to jump from the top of one low wall to another. But the wall was defeating her.

She’d seen it done by one of the Rangers, when she’d first arrived, and it looked easy. The base of the wall was a slope, and you ran up the slope, and then you jumped or ran or bounced somehow and caught the lip of the wall with your fingertips and then levered yourself up on top.

The wall had two sections, one where the slope rose up further towards the top, and at a shallower angle, and another where it was steep and abrupt. The Rangers did the latter obstacle. Therese was trying to do the former. The easy mode. The one that should be doable even for her.

So far she could catch the edge of the wall, but when it came time to pull herself up, the best she’d managed was to bend her elbows a little before losing her grip and falling.

She knew what she was supposed to do: the wall could be gone around. You skipped any obstacle that wasn’t in your current skills or strength. You went around and continued to the long balance beams and the agility circles staggered on the ground and the stepped corner-jump.

Therese had been trying to climb the wall for the last thirty minutes. With running starts, with a standing jump, after stretching, after resting, nothing helped. She jumped, she grabbed the edge, she pulled, she fell.

At some point, she’d lost track of time, and herself, and sometime after that the sweat pouring off her face had mixed with tears.

She had to climb this wall.

She could not climb this wall.

She leaped at it, and caught, and this time her feet scrambled for purchase on the wall’s implacable surface, and found nothing, and she fell, and landed hard. Too hard; she felt a shock of pain in her leg and had the wind knocked out of her, and she laid on the floor mats gasping, trying to draw breath.

“Tee? Hey, what— Tee, are you okay?”

Brynn. Great. Nothing like a little more humiliation.

And then Brynn was kneeling next to her, hand on her shoulder and hip. “Hey, can you talk? Can you tell me where you’re hurt?”

It took almost a minute before Therese could reassure her that she wasn’t badly injured, but when Brynn helped her to her feet, Therese was walking with a limp and wincing.

Together they made their way to one of the benches. “What were you trying to do?” Brynn asked, all concern and no judgement.

“Wall. Wall climb.”

Brynn looked over at the course. “If you couldn’t make it, why did you keep—”

She stopped, because Therese had started to cry.

“Oh hey, Tee, no, it’s okay, it took me months to be able to—”

“I can’t save her. I can’t fight for her. I’m not strong enough,” Therese sobbed.

“You can’t— who?” Brynn took Therese’s left hand in her left, so she could put her arm around Therese’s waist and pull her close.

“Riley. She’s— she’s going to—”

“Tee, slow down. Hey. Listen, we’re all here to help, too.”

Therese shook her head, aware of her sweat-soaked clothing pressed clammy against her side and against Brynn, aware of the ache in her lower back and hip and thigh, aware of how tightly she was gripping Brynn’s hand, curling her fingers to pull Brynn’s around hers.

“I’m so weak. I’m so useless.”

“Tee, stop it. Stop.” Brynn pulled her head in close, against her shoulder. “Stop. Come on, that’s enough working out for one day.”

Therese tried to resist as Brynn pulled at her arm to bring her back to her feet.

“I’m cutting you off. It’s my gym, and I’m kicking you out for the rest of the day. Come on, you need a shower.”

It took Brynn very little effort to move Therese from the gym to the showers. She waited in the changing room while Therese stood under the hot water, feeling bruised and aching all over, but especially in her right leg.

If only I could climb that wall, I could save Riley. It made no goddamn sense, but there it was. If she was stronger. If she was fitter. If she was faster. If she was smarter. She thought about the empty feeling she’d been receiving from Riley for the past few days, and the agonized look on Himari’s face when she’d begged Therese to save Riley, and she felt helpless.

Hanging on that wall, she felt helpless.

“Tee? Hey, come on and finish up. I’m not letting up till I’ve put you in your own bed to rest.”

Brynn’s voice was so careful and kind. Brynn was strong and fast. Brynn wasn’t helpless. Brynn could fight. All Therese could do was run from the things that came out of the portal. Run, because she could, deep down inside, still remember what that swarm of parasites had felt like, burrowing through her flesh. Laying on the ground. Waiting for the wasp creatures to come eat her. Helpless. Helpless.

She slid to the ground, sobbing.

She had no memory of Brynn coming in to turn off the water, wrap her in a towel, get her into a terrycloth robe. She had only the vaguest sense of shame at being naked and useless on the ground at Brynn’s feet. She couldn’t remember the slow and careful walk back up to her room.

It was dark, because she always kept her room dark. It was a mess, because she rarely cleaned, especially now that she slept over at Nora’s so often. It was quiet, and it was calm, and Brynn took the robe and put a nightgown over her head and put her into bed.

And then she turned to leave, and Therese felt a surge of panic. Brynn couldn’t leave her. Not now. She needed her. She needed her for. Something?

She caught Brynn’s hand as the woman started to walk away.

“What’s up, Tee?”

“Would you.” Too quiet. Brynn couldn’t hear her.

“Hm?” Brynn leaned down.

“Stay?”

Brynn’s eyes widened fractionally.

“Would you stay?”

Brynn looked around. “And keep you company? You don’t have a chair, but I could sit next to you while you—”

“No,” Therese said, and pulled at Brynn’s wrist. But Brynn was like stone. She was immovable.

And yet she leaned in, just as though Therese had the strength to pull her closer.

“Stay and kiss me. Please? Stay and kiss me?”

Brynn’s breath caught, audibly. “You talked to Nora—”

“Weeks ago. Just so busy. Please stay, please stay and—”

Brynn sighed, exhaled deeply. “No.” Her voice was dark with regret.

The noise that came out of Therese’s mouth was, she decided, a whimper. Involuntary, embarrassing, but definitely a whimper. I need you, Brynn. I need you.

“You’re hurting, Tee. You’re tearing yourself apart over Riley, over the expedition, over the attack in the Mountain. You’re… you’re hurting yourself on purpose.” She leaned down to put a kiss on Therese’s forehead. “And you can’t say ‘yes’ to me when you’re like this. Or I can’t believe you. Whichever.”

Therese had started to cry, softly, but her eyes were already so swollen with tears that it just made her shudder a little. Brynn reached out and stroked her hair.

“But I will stay and put my arms around you while you sleep.” Brynn pulled her wrist loose from Therese, and then pulled her shirt over her head, leaving her in a sports bra. She shucked out of her leggings, leaving her in high-cut thong panties. She was beautiful in ways Therese couldn’t even begin to process. When she moved, her muscles rippled. “You’ll be safe with me.”

“Yes. Yes, please, Brynn, stay and hold me.”

Brynn climbed into the bed with her, slid up to her back, and looped her arm around Therese’s waist. Big spoon to Therese’s little spoon. She slid her other arm under Therese’s pillow, curling back around to stroke her hair, gently and carefully.

“You have to sleep, though, or I’ll leave. You need to take a nap.” She hesitated. “When you wake up, if you still want more than to be held, we’ll talk about it.”

“I will. I will. God, Brynn, I will.”

“Shh. I’m not listening to you until you rest.” Brynn brushed her hair back from over her ear, and kissed her temple, and tightened her grip with her left arm.

Therese felt the aches draining from her as she began to drift in the woman’s muscular, soft embrace. And she slept, falling into complete oblivion, dreamless and empty.

She stirred awake some unknown black hours later, feeling Brynn’s hand on her side, just under her breast, tucked around her stomach and then under her, holding her close. Brynn’s body was warm against her — no, it was hot against her, like the woman was a degree hotter than everyone else, a glowing radiant furnace. Therese shifted, rubbing her aching face against the pillow.

I’m probably disgusting, all boogers and eye crust. The motion made Brynn stir and loosen her grip, and Therese took the opportunity to roll all the way over.

And looked directly into Brynn’s eyes, which were open. She was awake, and from the clarity of her expression, she’d been awake for a while. Maybe she hadn’t slept.

“Mmmm. How long was I.”

“About an hour and a half.” Brynn brushed Therese’s now-tangled hair back from her face. “How do you feel?”

“Better.” She burrowed in towards Brynn, tucking her head down against the bigger girl’s upper chest and shoulder. “Comfy.”

“I’m glad.” Brynn had begun to stroke her hair, and Therese made a little hum of satisfaction.

“Oh, that feels nice.” She tipped her head back, still resting on Brynn’s right arm, using it as a taut and muscular pillow. Her eyes slid up along Brynn’s face, lingering on her lips. Her mouth was small and her full lower lip gave her a perpetual pout when her face was at rest. Her usual easy grin hid the pout and replaced it with mischief and confidence. Right now, though, the pout.

Then she found Brynn’s eyes, and Brynn was looking down at her, and their gazes locked.

“Tee, I—”

Therese lifted her face up to intercept whatever Brynn had been about to say, catching her lips with her own, tentative and soft.

“You said I could ask after I woke up.”

Now the grin came out. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Brynn, will you kiss me?”

“I sort of feel like we already—”

“Shut up,” Therese said, and kicked with both feet to push herself up to where Brynn couldn’t pull back from her lips. They locked together, and again Therese tasted the spicy musk of her, the hint of it on her lips, in her mouth. She reached out, and her hand found Brynn’s hip, and then her ass, which was round and soft until, abruptly, it wasn’t; tensed, it was pure muscle, and Therese moaned into Brynn’s mouth at the feel of her.

She started to slide her hand up Brynn’s waist, heading for her breasts, eager, when Brynn’s own left hand lashed out to catch Therese’s right wrist.

“Oh no you don’t.”

“But—”

Brynn’s fierce smile broadened. “You asked me to kiss you, and so that’s what I’m going to do.”

Therese’s breath caught in her chest. Oh. Oh fuck. For a moment she realized how like iron Brynn’s grip on her wrist was, and how little she could resist anything the Ranger girl wanted to do to her. She can do whatever she likes. I can’t stop her. Then, immediately afterwards, the thought: I don’t want to stop her, and her abdomen and crotch flooded with warmth and she felt herself begin to soak her panties.

“You are an idiot, Therese Lasalle, so I’m guessing you don’t have anything like a safeword. So I’m about to give you one.” Brynn pushed Therese onto her back, using her wrist as leverage, and then in one feline pounce she was on top of Therese, and her other wrist was caught too, each of them pinned up and above Therese’s head. Immobile. She couldn’t even struggle.

Brynn’s head dipped down to put her lips only inches from Therese’s ear. “If you say ‘red’, I’ll stop right away. Whatever I’m doing, I’ll stop. Got it?”

Therese nodded. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew what a safeword was. It had just, you know. Never come up. That’s all. She blushed hard at the idea of what Brynn might be about to do to her.

“Now, with that out of the way.” Brynn rose back up to look Therese in the eyes again, looming over her, pinning her with hands and her weight on Therese’s hips. “I’m going to kiss you, and when I’m done kissing you, you’re going to feel it for a few days.”

Therese shuddered and nodded. “Please. Please, Brynn. I want you so much.”

Brynn’s smile widened again, showing her teeth clearly, her canines prominent. “Oh, you’re going to get me, little Diviner.” Her mouth descended, fastened on Therese’s neck, and the hot sensation blossomed into something like pain, something that felt so ecstatic it was almost intolerable.

And then her mouth moved, down and across, towards Therese’s throat. She was still pinned, still unable to move, but then Brynn did something and now both Therese’s hands were held together in the fingers of the Ranger’s strong left hand.

And now her right hand was free, and it cupped Therese’s cheek, before moving to her throat to loosely encircle it.

“You’re thrashing around under me like you want something, Tee. Like you need something.”

“Yes, oh fuck, yes,” she gasped.

Brynn’s thighs were like iron, and she moved to slide one of them between Therese’s legs, forcing them open easily.

“Oh, yes, Brynn, please,” she moaned, trying to lift herself up into Brynn’s leg, to grind against her.

“You needy little slut,” Brynn said, making the word into a hiss. “You’re so fucking desperate, you’re trying to fuck yourself on my leg.”

“Yessss—” Therese was quickly losing her ability to use words coherently. She thrashed and writhed in the implacable grip of the fantastically strong woman above her.

Brynn’s hand moved down from her throat to her breast, lingering just long enough to deliver a very abrupt and intense pinch, before she had it against Therese’s hip, pulling her up against her thigh, which she slowly pressed down and into Therese’s crotch.

Therese was panting, now, gasping, trying to find the breath to do more than whisper, “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” like a broken recording. She squeezed her thighs around Brynn’s, but it was like squeezing a tree trunk. The heat and pleasure radiating up from her clit each time Brynn pressed her leg down once more, thrusting Therese back down into the bed, was almost too much for her to stand. She saw stars. She felt like she was about to black out.

Then Brynn lifted, and her hand slid across to find Therese’s soaked panties. “Oh, it seems like someone’s all wet and ready. Is that you, little slut?”

“Please take me, Brynn. Please. Please, I need you so bad.”

Her long fingers slid under Therese’s panties. “You need it, huh? Oh, I can tell you need it. You’re making that pretty obvious.”

Therese moaned as Brynn’s fingers slid up and down her vulva without touching her clit, rubbing her own fluids all over herself, until she was slick and hot and wet with need. Never touching her in the one place that was throbbing and desperate to be touched.

And then Brynn’s mouth was on her chest, between her breasts. And then it was on her stomach, and she released Therese’s wrists, which ached from the pressure. And then it was at her crotch, and as Brynn’s tongue found that aching needy spot, Therese began to scream.