At least the silence was gone. Not a return to normalcy, but an improvement. Vella didn't take that for granted. 

They were making good time navigating through the Liminalities, headed for Ximore. They'd already found the first Waystone, so the random, luck-determined portion of the trip was over. All they needed now was to follow the map laid out, which wasn’t the most comprehensible thing, scrawled out onto a four-foot-tall slab of stone.

A Beginner's Guide had touched briefly on Liminalities, but only on the pragmatic aspects, leaving speculation for texts with greater ambition. For good reason. Even to the most studied of scholars, the Tower and its origin was an enigma. In some ways, it was so neatly organized: Cascades of certain groupings flowed into Liminalities of certain groupings, and the powers the Tower offered followed such a regimented, discrete system. Levels, stats, skills: it was impossible not to see some kind of intent behind its design. 

But in other ways, so chaotic. So much frivolous waste, if one assumed some kind of careful creation. What use were these desolate half-worlds, these Liminalities? Functionless. Places to rest, perhaps, before embarking to the next Cascade – a safe floor, rather than a safe room – but then why so many? And most of them half formed, empty. Eerie in their stretching vacancy. Connected and disconnected, the gods’ patchwork of discarded, half-finished creations.

Like somewhere you’d end up when you died, awaiting judgment. A Limbo.

They were, at least, guaranteed to be safe.

Environmentally, Vella meant. People remained as volatile as ever, and now that they’d found a Waystone – the delving society’s crude attempt to map the nearly unmappable first-tier Liminality-groupings – and entered onto the more well-traveled pathways between dimensions, bumping into a hostile delver was more than possible, even likely.

Katia had warned her of Waystone robbers: higher-level delvers who prowled the paths between cities, looking for easy marks. Besides criminals, nearly everyone traveling between Waystones were first- or second-level delvers, recently emerged from their first Cascade, and thus impossibly outmatched by their predators, who had often cleared through second- and sometimes higher Cascades. It wasn’t the most lucrative of careers, especially when held up to completing Cascades, but it was also safer: levels, while not the ultimate factor in determining a fight, could certainly grow insurmountable, should the gap be large enough. Even to someone as skilled as Katia.

Katia had told her not to put up a fight if they were unlucky enough to bump into one such of the groups. Not only were they likely to be outnumbered and out-leveled, for the most part, the robbers were only interested in their belongings: in the essence and items they’d collected from the first Cascade. While tragic, a robbery was far from the worst thing that could happen.

Especially as two young women travelling alone. Assault of that nature was a less common occurrence, as Katia had said that while the guilds weren’t likely to seek retribution for theft, harsher crimes had no such guarantee, and most of the wandering bands of thieves simply wanted to keep their lucrative peace.

But still a threat. And retribution was only possible if word of such crimes survived to make it back, Vella knew. So if someone approached them with less-virtuous intention than a robbery … their survival was very much not guaranteed, even if murder hadn’t been their goal.

So the threat lingered in the air through the tail-end of their journey. Set Vella on edge in a way even the later floors of the Cascade hadn’t. 

Reminded her of home, funny enough.

People … somehow more disquieting than the actual monsters.

All told, it took seven hours of travel from the end of the first Cascade until they’d stepped through the sparkling black portal, arriving at the Liminality housing Ximore. Without incidence, thankfully enough.

The original founders of the city hadn’t chosen this pocket dimension arbitrarily, hadn’t picked at random the place to seed what would become the largest of all settlements inside the Tower. 

If all Liminalities were equally as inhospitable, they might as well have chosen the one with the best sight.

The night sky bulged under the weight of its load: a thousand thousand brilliant speckles of white, dozens of sprawled nebulas and spiraling galaxies stained against a backdrop of navy. So close, like she could reach up and brush her hand against the canvas, smear the starmatter like fresh paint.

All the universe, crammed directly above.

And in the far distance, past the sprawling plains of stone, the highest of the buildings nearly doing just that: the towering spires of Ximore. As tall as anything she’d seen in the Serenity.

The City Under the Stars. 

Breathtaking.

The construction of such a city … she couldn’t even begin to imagine the logistics. Almost as impressive as the sight itself. Every inch of material needed to be extracted from nearby Cascades, or somehow lugged from the Serenity. How had they done it? How long had it taken?

And how did district fourteen live in such abject poverty, when this kind of wealth existed?

Not a new or prominent observation, but one that burned somewhere in the back of her mind, made her fingers start to itch.

“It’s really something,” Vella said quietly.

“So it is."

 

---

 

Every single person here, Vella thought, could probably kill me.

The streets of Ximore were flooded in a way even downtown district fourteen never was. Packed, nearly to the shoulder. And by such a colorful motley of peoples -- almost every race was accounted for, and not in small amounts. Humans, elves, orcs, al'aranids, golems, beastkin, peoples so rare to see in district fourteen, now as common as her own. 

A strange sight, but Vella was growing more and more accustomed to unusual, and so it didn't stumble her.

And not just that, but no two individuals seemed to be dressed the same. Like Katia and Vella, they wore the armor, accessories, and clothing the Tower had coughed up. With each piece offering unique advantages, plainclothes and mundanely crafted armor were near-pointless to wear over the Tower's counterparts: and so, a crowd of truly disparate individuals.

The only unifying theme, which while not obvious at first glance became impossible to miss, was everyone's general vigorous, youthful appearance. Which made sense. The Tower was no place for the weak, adolescent, or infirm. The vast majority of faces that passed looked in their early twenties to thirties, and the exceptions, the rare ones in their forties or fifties, had at least aged exceptionally well, and were no less healthy looking for the fact. 'Tough and weathered', in the absolute worst of cases, not hindered in the slightest by their creeping-forward age.

Which brought her back to her original thought: everyone here could probably kill her. Or at a minimum, put up a damn good fight.

It was weird, bring reset to the bottom of the totem pole. Back home, Vella might not have been any kind of prodigy, but she'd been more than fair in a fight -- and being healthy, well fed, in-shape, and a good hand with a knife, that'd put her ahead nine-tenths of the game.

But here? In the best case scenario, these faces streaming past were those fresh from their very first first Cascade, and thus in the same general ballpark as Vella. And that was being optimistic. Ximore, while located in a first-tier Liminality, played host to far more than beginners. Instead, delvers of all ranks. To the highest echelons.

It was, Vella knew, even fairly common for delvers to settle permanently within the Tower, never, or only infrequently, to return to the Serenity. Vella understood that urge, at least in part. She could get used to a sight like this, the cleanness and wealth she'd seen so casually displayed as they'd traversed through the city. The frequently-posted guards on ever street corner. It took a lot to make Vella feel safe in such a crowded environment, but here … 

Well, still not safe, but close to it.

Their destination was Katia’s guildhall: Cornerstone.

The part that didn’t make sense?

“You’ll need to go in without me,” Katia said.

“Huh?”

“I’d be too easily recognized. Too much of Cornerstone knows me, at least by reputation, if not actual association at the Academy.” Katia pursed her lips. “Which means word will get to Moshe if I show my face. But I want to talk to Cheri first.”

“Why?”

“So I can discuss some things with her.”

Vella almost asked what, but suspected the answer: Vella, her place in the team.

Considering how polarizing her class was … that was fair. Even if things worked out compatibility-wise, there might still be problems by merit of what Vella’s class required to function.

One of the reasons she wasn’t looking forward to being rejected, either. Trying to a find new party, if things didn’t work out?

Gods … it would be so awkward, even just explaining. And going solo wasn’t even an option either, because her class was designed primarily to benefit others. Katia might refer to the first and second Cascades as ‘jokes’, or ‘barely more than training grounds’, but from Vella’s perspective, the end of the first Cascade had been no such thing. Katia was just on a different level – and not even just from the perspective of a non-generational, Vella suspected.

“Okay,” Vella said. “What do I do? How would I find her?”

“Just ask reception. They’ll fetch her if she’s there, and if she’s out, we’ll have to wait.”

“And if she’s not finished with her Cascade?” Vella assumed they’d entered the Tower at the same time; not explicitly stated, but seemed to be inferred. So if Katia and her had taken this long, it was possible Cheri would have, too.

“I doubt it,” Katia said. “She’s very competent, and wasn’t … distracted in the way we were.”

‘Very competent’, huh? Coming from Katia, that was no small endorsement. Cheri must be no slouch.

 

---

 

The inside of Cornerstone’s guildhall was … gaudy.

Overly fond of marble.

Dripping wealth from every inch of its construction, it was more or less what she’d expected from a guildhall that played host to generationals, sponsored its own delving academy. Likely, Cornerstone’s history went further back than most lineages. Certainly further than Vella’s; she didn’t even know her own grandparents.

“Hello,” Vella said to receptionist, feeling more than a little out of place. “I’m, um, looking for a Cheri Mentet?”

(Vella briefly wondered how they managed to employ day-to-day workers in Ximore; while an organization could guarantee safe passage out of the Tower, in was a different deal altogether. So even this gangly-looking boy had to be an adequate fighter, since he’d made it through the first Cascade, possibly unassisted.)

The brown-haired boy gave her a polite up-and-down, making some kind of judgment Vella would never have access to. “Your name, ma’am?”

“Vella. Um, Valentine.”

“Your message?”

Conspicuity was key here, so if she could get Cheri down without anything looking too suspicious, that would be ideal. “Just that I want to talk to her.” It might not be enough to draw Cheri’s attention, and she might be ignored, but she hoped not.

“Please have a seat.”

It only took a handful of minutes before the boy returned with Cheri in tow.

Vella’s image of the girl, prior to seeing her, had been more or less a second Katia: severe, haughty, and confident, as Vella’s idea of any generational hailing from a delving academy would be.

The assumption turned out to be entirely incorrect.

Cheri Mentet could be described at first glance, if given a single word as budget, as cheerful. Even her resting expression was explicitly welcoming: bright and optimistic in a way Vella didn’t often see in district fourteen. On locking eyes with Vella – despite not knowing who she was – she grinned in greeting, dimples appearing in a way that made Vella think: It’s not fair how cute some people are.

In contrast to her friendly demeanor, her dress and appearance was vaguely punk in aesthetic – black leather jacket, studded boots, a pink t-shirt (that left several inches of midriff exposed), and a streak of neon blue running through her short, cropped, otherwise glossy black hair.

And not human, either, Vella noted at seeing the two white-tufted feline ears poking out from her hair. A beastkin … some kind of cat. That shouldn’t have surprised her, since delving academies hardly only accepted humans – it was just that in district fourteen, anything besides human only popped up occasionally, so Vella had some built-in expectations for meeting new people.

Vella wondered briefly how had she managed to pull together such a coherent outfit. Surely the Tower hadn’t produced it: too many separate parts that fit together too perfectly. And none remotely practical-looking. She’d gone shopping, here, in Ximore? Or, Vella supposed, it’d been what she’d worn into the Tower, or had packed – not everyone had their belonging and even clothes stripped away upon entry. She needed not to conflate her experience with the typical delver’s.

All in all, definitely not what she’d expected from Katia’s roommate.

“Hey,” Cheri said brightly. “Vella, you said? What’s up?”