"It should be here," John said, staring at empty space.

  In the game, there'd been a fountain. Large and ornate. A perfect landmark. It wasn't here.

  "What should be here?" Zara asked.

  "It doesn't matter." Either they'd taken a wrong turn, or the city had shifted more than he'd thought it could. Neither option was great.

  "You have no idea where we are," Zara said.

  "No. I just—" John stopped. Ahead, where there should have been a bridge, there was a wall. "It's not laid out the way I expected."

  "How did you expect it to be laid out?" She studied him through the mask. "You've never been here before."

  John didn't answer.

  Above them, the sky churned. Then lightning tore across it in branching veins, illuminating the city in stark negative light, and for a single heartbeat John saw the buildings moving. Expanding. Contracting. Breathing, like the whole city was alive beneath its stone skin.

  The lightning faded. John blinked away the afterimage.

  John looked down the nearest street. "Let's try here." The city wasn't matching his memory? So what. Time to improvise.

  As they moved forward, light began to bleed from windows that seemed more like paintings than openings. Sounds came from them. A repeating garble that set his teeth on edge.

  In the middle of the street stood a figure. Its skin was gray, stretched taut over a slender frame. Tattered layers of fabric draped from its shoulders, leaving most of its skin exposed. Where a face should have been, only a blank canvas of skin remained, except for a shallow indentation that suggested a mouth. The woven basket in its hands swung with a gentle, hypnotic rhythm.

  Wisps of dark smoke bled from Zara's hands as she dropped low. But the figure simply sidestepped John and continued down the street.

  She straightened. The smoke thinned to nothing. "Did it even see us?"

  The thrall halted mid-step. Its featureless face swiveled toward Zara, the shallow mouth-indentation twitching slightly. Seconds passed. Then it continued on, steps unchanged.

  Zara lowered her voice to barely a whisper. "Those things. What are they?"

  "Slaves," John said. "Tools that can walk."

  Two of them stood beneath a stone awning ahead, passing a single stone back and forth between them. Endlessly.

  Rising behind them was a tall tower. It was narrow, with a spiral of windows running up its side and a dome that crowned its peak.

  The Astrologer's Spire.

  Relief flooded through him. Finally something he recognized. A useful landmark for navigation. And inside, some good loot.

  "There," John said, pointing.

  Weaving between the worker thralls, they approached the tower. Not one of the blank-faced figures acknowledged them at all.

  They reached the tower's entrance. An open archway carved into the stone. Inside was a single room with nothing in it but a staircase spiraling up the wall. The steps were worn smooth, and no two were the same height.

  John drew his sword and entered without a sound. Zara followed left, pressing her shoulders against the cold stone wall, her eyes fixed on the spiral staircase that disappeared into darkness above them.

  Neither of them spoke, neither of them made a noise. It didn't matter.

  A sound echoed from above. Footsteps. Heavy and deliberate. Coming down.

  John stepped back. Zara's whips formed instantly.

  They waited.

  The footsteps grew louder. Closer. Then stopped.

  Silence.

  Their eyes met in silent communication. Zara gave a single nod.

  John started up the stairs, placing each foot carefully. Behind him, Zara's shadow-whips coiled around her fingers, her gaze fixed on the gloom that waited above them.

  At the top of the stairs, a figure stood waiting. This one wore robes, not armor. Stone carved so thin it looked like it might actually move. Its face was a featureless pyramid, with an eye embedded in each corner. The three that faced forward were already locked on John.

  It held a long staff, and the stairwell lit up in waves of violet.

  John dove sideways as a beam of energy tore down the staircase, missing him by inches. Stone exploded where it hit, chunks flying.

  The figure began descending, staff still raised, those three eyes never blinking.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  They retreated to the ground floor. The guardian followed, Its robes flowing impossibly, defying physics, stone moving like fabric. Each step it took resonated through the stone, a deep thrumming that John felt in his chest.

  It raised its staff again.

  John rolled left. Another beam tore through the space he'd occupied, leaving a glowing scar on the wall.

  Zara's whips lashed out and struck the guardian across the chest. Stone cracked, deep fissures spider-webbing outward from the impact point across its torso.

  The guardian froze.

  For a moment, nothing moved.

  A sound came from the guardian. A grinding, gurgling noise from deep within the stone.

  It charged Zara.

  Zara's whips struck again, hitting its arm. More cracks spread. But the guardian didn't stop. Didn't even slow.

  It sent a beam toward Zara's face.

  She ducked, whips striking the guardian's legs. Stone cracked. The guardian's knee buckled but it stayed upright, staff already swinging back around in a wide arc toward her head.

  John circled behind it, looking for an opening. But the guardian's back eyes could track in all directions. It knew exactly where he was.

  It just didn't care. Only Zara mattered.

  The guardian's mouth opened—a crack spreading across its smooth face. That grinding sound intensified, becoming something else. A call.

  Stone shattered as a creature burst through one of the narrow windows. It had a serpentine body with a single rotating eye, its wings spread wide. It dove at John immediately. He barely got his sword up in time, the creature's stone body slammed into the blade and the momentum carried it past him, crashing into the far wall. It launched itself back into the air immediately. Another came through a different window. Then another.

  The guardian advanced on Zara, ignoring everything else. She backpedaled, whips striking repeatedly, each hit spreading more cracks through its body.

  The staff swung and a wide beam tore toward her in a flat sheet of violet light. Zara came apart at the edges like smoke, and the beam passed through the space where she'd been. She solidified two steps to the side, already striking again.

  A flying creature dove at John from behind. He spun and slashed, but it was already past him, circling wide before folding its wings and dropping.

  John watched its trajectory, calculated the angle, and moved. Two steps left. The creature adjusted mid-dive.

  John pivoted with his sword already moving in a horizontal arc at chest height, and the creature flew directly into the blade. Its head separated cleanly from its body, both pieces crashed to the floor and shattered.

  Across the room, Zara had her back against the wall. The guardian loomed over her, staff raised, the violet light nearly blinding. Her whips shot out and wrapped around its damaged chest — and then she pulled herself toward it instead of away, shadow coalescing around her feet and legs until it looked almost solid.

  Her boots hit the guardian's chest where the cracks were deepest.

  The chest caved inward and exploded out the back, stone shards flying across the room, and the guardian toppled backward with Zara riding it down, boots still planted on its ruined chest.

  A creature dove at her from the side. Her whip snapped out, wrapped around it, and redirected it straight into the floor. It shattered on impact.

  John tracked the final creature as it circled overhead. He waited, counting its wingbeats. On the fourth, when it was fully committed to the dive, he moved one step to the side, sword rising in a clean arc. The blade caught it under the chin and continued through, splitting its head from its body, and both pieces tumbled past him and broke apart on the stone floor.

  [Level Up] X3

  He put everything he had into agility.

  Zara looked around the room as she stepped off the guardian's chest. Rubble scattered everywhere, burn marks on the walls, shattered windows open to the roiling clouds beyond.

  She laughed.

  Stone fragments crunched beneath their boots as they climbed the spiral staircase to the observatory chamber above.

  An immense telescope dominated the room, dark metal aimed at the domed ceiling above. Someone had painted a sky up there. Silver and gold stars scattered across black, so carefully rendered they almost glittered.

  But the painting wasn't finished. It ended abruptly, giving way to bare stone and faint outlines — a sky half-mapped. A scaffold leaned beneath the unfinished edge, a bowl of dried pigment still balanced on its highest rung.

  Zara tilted her head back. "I don't recognize any of them," she said quietly. "Not one constellation."

  "Their sky belonged to different gods," John said.

  Zara was quiet for a moment, still looking up. "It was painting them from memory."

  A low, rhythmic hum came from the telescope. John's gaze fell to its base where a violet gem pulsed with light. He approached cautiously, extending his fingers toward the gem. The instant he made contact, the humming ceased and the telescope went dark.

  He worked the gem loose with his fingertips and slipped it into his spatial ring.

  Zara watched him. She didn't say anything, and the mask hid her face, but the slight tilt of her head was enough.

  "It's valuable," John said.

  "I'm sure it is."

  He moved on.

  Beside the telescope sat a squat pillar of stone. Someone had spent a long time on it. The sides had small rooms carved into it, linked by narrow corridors, detailed down to archways and ledges.

  A doll sat inside. Carved from white stone with rough, simple features. It was palm-sized, and had been placed facing the telescope. As if whoever put it there wanted it to see the stars too.

  Zara knelt beside the stone, fingers hesitating before lifting the doll from its resting place. She examined it with careful turns, her gaze shifting between the figurine's crude face, its empty home, the silent telescope, and finally to the half-painted stars that would never be completed. John waited for her to say something, but she didn't. She slipped the stone figurine into her pack and rose to her feet.

  "That's enchanted," he said. "Skill enhancement."

  "Mm."

  John moved to the nearest window. The city sprawled beneath them. And from up here he could see how it curved. The streets sloping inward as they moved toward the center, bending downward until the inner ring disappeared entirely from view.

  Close by was a gap. The only clear path forward he could see.

  "That way," John said, pointing at it.

  Zara stepped up beside him. "How far is it?"

  "An hour if the streets keep changing." He glanced at her. "How are you feeling?"

  "He was just painting his ceiling, John."

  John was quiet for a moment. "Let's move. Before the city is finished and wakes up."