Vella might actually die before they finished the first Cascade, and not from the Tower.

Rather, by Katia.

By mental overload, an aneurism. Overheating.

It was, at least, an excellent exercise in willpower.

One she was losing ground in, inch by inch.

And the scariest part? She couldn’t afford to lose. Katia had made her distaste of this whole situation clear – she’d play her part as necessary to facilitate Vella’s class, because efficiency within the Tower mattered above everything else, but she was not interested in anything more.

So Vella had to suffer through the constant use of {Empowering Gaze}, and she couldn’t afford to break, do anything more than Katia had permitted. Because her life might literally depend on it. Lose her will, even for a second, and Katia would be far less inclined to offer a spot on her team.

Which couldn’t happen.

Both for her own survival, and therefore, Dad’s freedom.

It was a very unique torture she’d been subjected to. 

She wondered which of the gods was laughing at her, because she’d been made a believer: it was the only explanation for this. She’d been put here for their entertainment. The Dawnfather stared down from his golden throne, cackling at her in specific. She could hear the peals, the sadism in them, echoing through the dark hallways.

Her only saving grace was, funny enough, the Tower itself: the endless distractions it offered.

But then again, it was the reason she was in this mess to begin with. So actually, no savior at all.

Especially since it hadn’t coughed up any fucking clothes yet. What the hell was up with that? Did the Tower expect them to crawl into the first Liminality with not even underwear to cover themselves with? Seriously. She’d grown more comfortable in her own nudity than she’d like to admit, but the charm Katia’s body had over Vella remained as potent as ever.

They’d found plenty of accessories in the chests from floors one to three – rings, bracelets, a necklace, a few jeweled hair clips, even a belt and sheath, which Katia used to hold her rapier in the rare moments she didn’t have it drawn. It resulted in an amusing kind of aesthetic – stark naked, but geared to the teeth with random odds and ends following no particular theme. 

But no clothes or armor whatsoever. And they hadn’t found any in the environment, either – old and crumbling fabrics, sure, but her reasoning for not fashioning impromptu coverings from them remained as in place as ever: a hack-job with clothing resulting in an unfortunate trip-and-impaling would be the dumbest way to go.

Gearing themselves hadn’t been the only progress they’d made in the past day of delving. While Vella herself hadn’t, Katia had leveled to two earlier this morning, barely a few rooms into the fourth floor. While not as quick to share the details of her skills as Vella was – not necessarily out of distrust, Vella took it, but as a matter of how she’d been raised, to offer as a matter of principle as few vulnerabilities as possible – she still gave Vella the jist: her level one skills allowed an amplified strike every few seconds, the ability to redirect an opponent’s attack for increased damage, and a passive ability to better read attack patterns – something she’d referred to as ‘quite unintuitive to use’, going against the trend of the Tower’s skills being instinctive.

Her level two skills, of which she’d received two, were both mobility focused: the first, a burst of speed that could only be used for repositioning, and the second, the opposite: a burst of speed used only for striking. The second had a far smaller cooldown, around three seconds, to the repositioning skill’s fifteen.

Vella wondered what it would be like to have such convenient, normal skills. And how not normal her own second level’s skills were bound to be.

At least she had spellcasting: a regular way to contribute to a fight. And her staff and fighting wits – though those would fall off in usefulness the further through the Tower they got. Certainly, by the third Cascade, they’d be all but peripheral.

Even now, on the fourth floor of the first Cascade, they were fading. Katia had started insisting Vella stay further behind, outside of the melee, and casting ranged spells, not bashing faces in with her heavy wooden staff, which Vella’d grown quite fond of. She reluctantly agreed – Katia knew best, and though Vella’s proclivities lay in a brawl, she needed to adjust to the role she’d been given.

“What do you think’s at the bottom, anyways?” Vella asked.

“Of the Tower?”

Well, that too – but not what she’d meant. “The Cascade.”

Katia shot a quirked eyebrow backwards at her. “A boss.”

“Well, yes.” She’d be offended, but there’d been a few instances where Vella had lacked some basic knowledge about the Tower; Katia wouldn’t know where the holes fell, so she sometimes answered literally. “But what kind of boss?”

“Something undead? A bonelord? A wraith? Some matter of amalgamate? Speculation seems pointless.”

Well, the question hadn’t been entirely for practicality’s sake – Vella just liked to talk. A trait she clearly didn’t share with Katia. “How much harder will it be?” This might be Katia’s first entry into the Tower, but she had her family’s experiences to pull on. Vella only had a few weeks of cramming A Beginner’s Guide into her brain.

“Notably. Perhaps I’ll come out with a few scrapes.”

Which made Vella blink in surprise – coming from Katia, that was a pretty heavy admittance. “But still handle-able?” Was that a word? “Not too bad?”

Katia sniffed. “Of course not. It’s the first Cascade.”

A recurring phrase, whenever Vella prodded about what dangers might lay ahead. The confidence was both assuring and annoying – it made her doubt the accuracy of the claims. Was it confidence, or overconfidence? 

“It kinda creeps me out how they’re growing more … real,” Vella said.

“The undead?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course they are. But it’s not like they can be mistaken for people.”

Vella wasn’t so sure … well, she meant, yeah, the black fire burning behind the monster’s eyelids didn’t leave much real doubt, but the things were starting to look seriously human – or orc, elf, al’aranid, whatever form they took. Besides the pallidness of their skin and rare necrotic patches, with their eyes closed, she might have mistaken the things for a person on their deathbed.

A lost, sick delver, maybe.

“Still unsettles me. Dunno,” Vella said. “The Tower doesn’t make sentient beings, right? We won’t ever have to worry about … killing someone?”

Katia slowed to a stop, turned and faced her. “Yes,” she said slowly, “and no.”

“It can make sentient beings?”

“No. Sentience is the domain of the Dawnfather, whom even the Tower can’t transgress.” She rattled it off scoldingly, like reprimanding a younger sibling. Vella politely didn’t express where her beliefs, or lack of them, on the gods fell. “I meant ‘no’ to not having to worry about killing someone – there’s more than a possibility of hostile delvers, should we arrive in a non-instanced Cascade.”

Oh.

Well … yeah. If someone tried to kill them for their valuables, then Vella wouldn’t have a problem retaliating. She lived in district fourteen. She’d meant more of an innocent … a creation of the Tower, somehow? Which didn’t make sense. She didn’t know where was going with that … just a pointless, idle concern, she was sure.

“How common are those, anyways?” Vella asked. “Non-instanced Cascades.”

“More, the deeper we get,” Katia said.

‘Instanced’ was delver shorthand for Cascades with only one clear entry and one clear exit, in which odds were exceedingly high you’d never bump into another delver. Not all Cascades were like that: some had tens, hundreds, thousands of entrances, and were absolutely gargantuan, and with just as many exits into the next Liminality. A miniature world of its own. While instanced Cascades were so numerous as to their cataloguing being a task in futility, some of the larger world-Cascades were such a common occurrence delvers had inventoried them. The Guide touched on a few.

The same for Liminalities: while near-infinite, some were large and common enough to have been established as de-facto ‘safe-cities within the Tower’, with policing forces ran by the Serenity’s top guilds and a variety of services offered: stores, inns, blacksmiths, and so on. Vella presumed one such would be where Katia intended to meet her friends … she should ask which. She only knew a couple, but naturally, the big ones: which she assumed would be the organizing point for a generational.

Pivoting the conversation in a bit of a non-sequitur, Vella asked, “Is it normal to not level up at the same speed?”

“No."

"It isn't?"

"It's highly irregular."

"Am I -- doing something wrong?"

"Probably not."

"Huh?"

Katia gave her a flat look. "Don't tell me you haven't figured it out by now."

Vella grimaced, then looked away. “I mean … I have a guess,” she mumbled.

“Patroness, Eros,” Katia prompted her.

“Offers divergent progression opportunities,” Vella sighed. "You really think that's it?"

“It's the obvious culprit. I assume your typical means of leveling are dampened, but with a trade off of having additional methods.”

A silence.

“What … kind, exactly? Um. What 'divergent opportunities'?”

Katia leveled a look at her.

“Surely not …" Vella started.

"Sexual encounters?" Katia said. "I think it likely. Your patroness is Eros, Vella."

"That's -- that's  --"

"Disgusting, yes. And also your problem, not mine," Katia said pointedly. "In case you were getting some absurd ideas about … my assisting you."

"Of course not," Vella protested vehemently.

Which, somehow, was the wrong response. 

Katia turned sharply on her, hands on hips, and leaned forward. "Of course not? Of course not?"

"Uh."

"Hadn't even crossed your mind, had it? Not remotely interested in that kind of thing, not with me. That's why it took so long to bring up?"

Vella didn't understand what was going on.

"Even constantly fantasizing over me, I'm not nearly enticing enough to actually do something with. Downright trivial to keep your composure, isn't it?"

What the fuck was happening?

"Um. Yes?" Vella asked. "I mean - I mean," she backpedaled at the widening in Katia's eyes, "not that you aren't, um, attractive? But, like, I wouldn't ..."

Katia crossed her arms, adopting a truly disdainful look. Vella felt like something scraped under a shoe.

"You know, seeing how you aren't interested …" Vella said, gesturing helplessly. 

"Of course I'm not interested. We barely know each other. What kind of woman do you take me for?"

"Exactly. So …?" Vella was clearly missing some very crucial line of reasoning. But she'd never been good when blindsided … or with girls in general. "I would never ask you to do something like that. Not if you don't want to."

"And now you're propositioning me?"

"What? No!" How the fuck had she come to that conclusion? "I said only if you wanted to."

"Hmph. And I don't."

"Exactly!"

"The only chance of me doing something like that with you would be out of necessity."

"I -- what?"

"So if you think falling behind isn't going to hamper you, then clearly I wouldn't suggest doing anything so untoward. Only if it was an absolute necessity, and you were the one to suggest it, would I possibly consider it."

Vella's brain ground to a halt.

Now, don't get her wrong, she was absolutely a massive idiot when it came to girls. But even Vella could read between the lines when it was bigger than the text itself, and when Katia had become so visibly flustered she hadn't met Vella's eyes for ten seconds straight.

"Uh," Vella started. "I mean, I wouldn't call it a good thing if I fell behind. And the Tower's a dangerous place. It would definitely be, um, beneficial, for all of us I think, if we focused on the practicality of the situation. However distasteful it might be."

"Hmph." Still not meeting her eyes. "Such an improper thing … it’d take way more convincing than that.”

Which made Vella pause. It very much wasn’t her thing to pester someone into doing something they didn’t want to. But … she didn’t think that was what was happening, right now. Almost like … Katia just wanted an excuse; for it to be Vella’s idea. “A real delver does whatever’s necessary, right?”

“I suppose that’s true,” Katia said, sniffing.

“And you’re the only person here to help me. And nominally, we’re working together.”

“It would be my responsibility as a good teammate,” Katia agreed reluctantly. She uncrossed her arms. “I suppose if it's my delving partner begging for help, I can hardly refuse. I entered the Tower ready to sacrifice anything. Anything. And I suppose if that includes my womanly virtue … that's just the life of a delver."

Was this actually happening?

"But only since you’ve begged me," Katia said. "And don't think for a minute I'll do anything that improper. Just my hands." She cleared her throat. "So - So I guess … I'll take care of this problem of yours."