“How many more of these damn things are we going to have to fight?” Jasmine asks. “I feel like we’ve already scrapped over a thousand of them, and there’s no sign of the assault slowing down!”

“I told you!” I say, blasting another [Golden Soldier] in the small gap between its helmet and breastplate. “All we can do is keep fighting and try to outlast it!”

Jasmine takes a split second to flip me the universal gesture of contempt as she twirls my sword about, cleaving it through a pair of soldiers. Her attack splits them each in twain, their now-unanimated corpses disintegrating into [Ether] so as not to take away room for the others to continue to assault us.

The one saving grace is that we’re fighting with our literal backs near the wall at the end of the hallway, meaning we only have to defend from a single direction. But with so many of the diminutive spear-fighters attacking us in close quarters, more than a few of them are able to breach Alana and Jasmine’s defenses, getting to me and Chloe in the backline.

“Sidestep now!” Chloe shouts.

All three of us scramble toward the side walls, just in time to avoid a devastating [Scouring Light] that obliterates everything that passes through the generous radius of her spell. Even now, it’s a little disconcerting, the quiet, demure healer letting loose with a huge beam of destructive light energy that vaporizes matter. Even that buttressed by Skills and a high [Vitality] only resists the spell’s namesake to a modest degree.

Her spell doesn’t manage to eviscerate every construct in sight, but it does buy us a crucial second or two to catch our breath and buttress our defensive positioning before the wave continues.

And they don’t stop coming! Another one dead. Another System notification popping up in the corner of my vision for a tenth of a second before I dismiss it. Individually, none of them are that difficult to take down. Their levels are between 35 and 37, and they don’t have large [Health] or [Vitality] pools. Even Jasmine, the lowest level of the four of us, can dispatch them with only a pair of strikes, while a single hit from Alana’s broadsword can crumple them from full [Health].

Another two dead. Another bullet through a helmet. I’ve even resorted to ripping one of the thin pikes out of one of the construct’s hands to use as a melee weapon, so as to preserve my limited [Ether] for what seems to be a marathon battle. The weapon is weak— gold is hardly an effective material for a piercing weapon, though its high density means it bludgeons somewhat effectively. But it doesn’t cost [Ether] with every swing like my bullets do, and so I’m forced to alternate between weapons to make sure we can survive the fight.

The only reason there are no corpses is that they disintegrate within a second of being destroyed. It’s been three minutes, but with my supercharged [Mind] stat and apparent time being slowed further by the rush of adrenaline, it feels like closer to thirty. My lungs feel like they’re about to burn, my blood feels a few degrees from boiling, and my palms, forehead, and everywhere else are drenched with sweat. I’ve even got the rankness of underboob sweat going on, which even now is still very much the worst!

“Sera, got any ideas?” Alana asks. “We’re not going to be able to hold out forever!”

She reaches into her pouch and pulls out an [Ether Canister], drawing the contents into herself while the majority of her focus remains on bisecting as many constructs as she can. She’s graceful and elegant with her movements despite her bulky figure, twisting her body about with a lithe grace one wouldn’t expect possible with such bulging muscles, stepping back and forth with Jasmine in a display of coordination that’s somehow even better than mine and Chloe’s

I rattle my head for ideas, any memories Madison might have told me about these Towers or any similar experiences I’ve had in my past life. I’ve got memories going in the Tower, and memories coming out, but while I’m inside, it’s a total blank, like… Like the memories were stolen from me? Or just that they’re still sealed away.

I shake my head as I throw the now completely blunted spear into the mass of constructs, following up with a [Repulsion]-powered bullet. It lacks the piercing power of my normal blasts, but the concussive wave is much larger, knocking several of them flat on their faces. Better still, the small wall of piled up constructs is causing the others to slow down to get around or over it.

Think, Seraphina! There’s an odd Ether flow in this whole floor, monsters are swarming. The System doesn’t have to obey the laws of physics; spatial screwery is happening all around us. No way in any world a giant ostentatious palace fits within a skyscraper of any size without it. But there’s just too many to fit in… here…

“Oh… Oh…shit.”

“Speak to me, Sera! What is going on here?” Alana asks. “What do we do?”

“These doors? They aren’t hiding the monsters. They’re creating them! Not sure if the Tower is constructing them out of Ether or summoning them from somewhere else, but they’re just going to keep coming until we manage to shut the damn things down!”

“Well, how in the hell do we stop them?” Jasmine asks. “I don’t have infinite stamina out here!”

“We’ll have to make a break for it and try to get back into the main hallway. As for destroying the rifts or generators or whatever we’re dealing with? I’m guessing they’ll go down to sufficient damage.”

“You guess?” Jasmine says. “Whatever, it’s a better plan than standing around here.”

Chloe’s charged up another [Scouring Light], though is merely holding the spell in her fingertips. She and I seem to have the same plan even without needing to mentally coordinate— make a break toward the corner, then Chloe and I fire our strongest attack spells toward the oncoming horde. With any luck, that’ll give Alana and Jasmine enough time to do… whatever it is that they can do. The only question is how to make that initial break.

That, and what spell to use. Lightning is right out— too much conductive metal all around, and there’s always the risk of another blowback hitting me and Chloe. I don’t think doubling up on Light is good, either. My spell won’t have nearly the potency of Chloe’s System-granted spells, and I’d rather not double up on that element; just because Chloe’s spells are effective doesn’t mean there aren’t even better options.

Earth and Darkness are both out. I’ve had very little practice with either, and I expect, by intuition, they’ll have a resistance or worse to both. But Fire seems good. I activate the base [Fire] glyph with but a thought, creating a cone of flame from my palm. Sure enough, the flame manages to melt the golden armor a bit and slow their movements down by maybe ten percent. Good enough. At least, it’s something to work with.

“You two both ready?” Alana asks. “I’m about to make a break for it, but I’ll be incapacitated for a few seconds after my ability finishes!”

I turn to Chloe; I sense her readiness— almost eagerness— through our bond, but sometimes, seeing her face and her resolute eyes crackling with power does even more than a verbal assent. We share a nod.

“Ready,” I say flatly. I infuse my words with just a bit of my [Ether], enough for my words to carry a certain presence. Not nearly the same level of presence that Madison carried just by… well, existing, but enough to be heard over the maelstrom of battle.

Alana sprouts her wings, radiant swan-like appendages that sprawl nearly the width of the hallway. As she leaps a couple feet in the air, her wings begin to glow with a radiance that nearly outshines a new car headlight, a fierce blue-white shine that forces me to avert my eyes. Jasmine steps back, shielding me with her own body as explosions ring out in front of me.

“[Featherstorm],” Jasmine whispers. “That’s what Laney said it was called.”

Considering the attack, its name seems accurate. Thousands of snow-white feathers fly in front of Alana, each of them striking at the various constructs in front of her. The sharp shafts— each with thickness on par with the tip of a sewing needle— dig into their targets almost as though they have homing properties. And upon impact, they explode with a burst of flame and light energy. Each explosion isn’t inordinately powerful— maybe a bit weaker than my [Ether Bullets]. But with so many of them flying about in so small a space, the overall effect is devastating.

Chloe wastes no time, charging through the battered suits of armor the second the explosions stop and even before the smoke begins to dissipate, using her [Ethersight] and her heightened [Speed] to leap through the rubble. I follow just behind, already mentally slotting together a [Magmatic Beam] out of [Fire], [Straightness], [Compression], and [Intensity].

Unlike my previous attempts with four-glyph arrays, which were hodgepodge messes with the bare minimum of linking runes to keep the spell from destabilizing, I now know better how to link everything together properly. [Compression] and [Straightness] are used to modify one another, the two of them together forming something akin to a massive arc welder, and [Intensity] is expanding that range outward. I also have the idea to use [Intensity] akin to [Compression]’s opposite— [Expansion]. While using a glyph and its inverse both in the same array leads to instability, the same way that two elements does, using a related glyph with a similar but not diametrically-opposed meaning works just fine.

It doesn’t always make intuitive sense, but that just means my model of how the formal logic works is wrong— not the rules of [Glyphcasting] themselves.

All of this happens in barely over a second, my supercharged [Mind] letting me mentally construct the array in the time it takes for me to run down the hallway, scout the long hallway, pick out the optimal place to fire, and let my spell rip. My [Magmatic Beam] and Chloe’s [Scouring Light] incinerate hundreds of constructs. Maybe thousands— the hallway is long and it’s hard for me to perceive exactly how many creatures succumbed in the split second I have available to assess the situation before it’s back to fighting.

In the instant before I do return to the fray, Jasmine launches herself at top speed toward the nearest opening, throwing two constructs back inside before slamming both parts of the double door shut. The [Ether] again shifts around the door, and to my surprise, the door actually stays closed. Not missing an opportunity, she then rushes to the opposite side of the twenty-foot-wide hallway in the blink of an eye, slamming another door shut before the monsters continue with their relentless assault.

“Looks like you were right,” Jasmine says. “About damn time we made some goddamned progress on clearing this fight.”

“How are you holding up?” I ask her as I brain the two constructs nearest us, doing my best impression of a frontline fighter while Alana takes a precious few seconds to recover after using that impressive [Featherstorm] of hers.

“Been better,” she says. “You?”

I’m tired. I’m sore. I’m aching and hating life and just want this battle to be over and done with. I want those stat points and a chance to sit down and make my lungs feel like I’m not inhaling pepper spray with every breath.

“Ready to get this goddesses-damned floor done with!” I groan.

“You better be!” Jasmine thrusts her blade right between the visor of another construct’s helmet, lifting the creature up and then flinging the whole thing like a bowling ball into a ten-pin array.

“We hold them here until Alana is ready to jump back in, and then we break through and get these damn things closed at all costs.”

Jasmine grins. “Sounds like a plan. Ready when you are.”