As Lyle might have expected after the ease with which they tore through the first battle, the remainder of the floor was rather impotent in comparison to the Embers. He felt the rush of adrenaline during the quick and brutal bouts of violence more and more as his scant squeamishness faded, but the combat itself wasn’t challenging.

George and Liam must be pretty bored, Lyle thought, Since I think I’m learning more from talking with Trent and Liv than the actual fighting.

While they walked and during rests, Trent and Liv shared some of what they’d learned over a couple of very slow years of sticking to the low level floors. They told him about some of the different kinds of Embers they’d seen, lightheartedly trying to one-up each other. They’d both seen shifters like Liam, of course. They’d also seen plenty of mages and sorcerers, who could call to bear elements and use their power to directly affect the world they were in, though they usually needed to spend a lot of time getting stronger before they were worth anything significant. That made them quite rare in lower floors. They’d seen a couple illusionists, though never very powerful ones—the most powerful illusionists could create manifestations of their will that took a solid, physical form. Liv apparently knew one who could do that from her guild, but she’d never seen him in action outside of demonstrations and a couple of training classes. They’d also both seen enchanters, who enchanted themselves and others with powerful enhancements, augmenting their own and others’ physical and magical power. In the end, it seemed to Lyle like a draw, since the only upper hand Liv could claim was that she belonged to a guild that had strong Embers in it. She’d never fought with them herself.

A throughline was the physical fighters. Many of the people around them likely fell into one of the magical categories or another, but just didn’t possess enough power to be useful in that capacity. They could still become fearsome warriors, though, and even their lack of magical aptitude didn’t stop them from using their magic completely. It was apparently well known that if you channeled your power into your body without summoning it externally, you could increase the power of a blow several times over, or quicken your movements at a crucial moment. Lyle decided to try this while they were between battles on a break.

He imagined the light of his power remaining inside his body, but drifting out of the flame at his center and into his arm. When it settled under his skin, he dropped into a fighting stance and punched the air in front of him, willing the punch to be powerful but otherwise not forcing any commands on his otherwise inert magic.

He shouted in pain as his arm felt like it was seared from the inside out. He hardly noticed the rustle of the air that flew from his fist and collided with a tree, the leaves blowing in the heavy wind. He was kneeling and clutching his throbbing arm, with Trent and Liv kneeling next to him and a couple of onlookers frowning curiously.

“Lyle, what happened?” Trent asked in concern.

“Tried—to use body magic, or whatever it’s called,” Lyle grunted through gritted teeth. He squeezed his arm close to him, and the pain slowly began to fade even as the muscles continued to spasm.

“It shouldn’t hurt,” Trent replied. He tilted his head, confused.

“Let me—try one more time. Might have been a fluke, or I did something wrong.”

Lyle took deep breaths and stood back up, massaging his arm until the burning faded. He braced himself, and repeated the exercise with his other arm, to the same result. He kneeled over his arm and clenched his teeth.

“Well, I guess it wasn’t a fluke or just that arm or anything,” Lyle said dejectedly.

“I’ve never heard of someone hurting themselves using their power,” Liv said.

“Glad to—be so special.” He took longer this time to recover, and decided he wouldn’t use this power unless the circumstances were too dire to keep it in reserve.

The final creature they found in the microcosm was a monstrous bear with demonic horns sprouting from its head. It lumbered through the woods, knocking down trees with ease, and occasionally standing on its hind legs and sniffing for enemies. It must have been twenty feet tall when it stretched like that.

Liam, the shifter, took it on practically alone. Sure, the other Embers mostly got a hit in, but Liam held its attention the entire time as he tore the thing to shreds with the claws sprouting from his fingers. He didn’t even bother to let the more well-shielded members of their team distract it.

As it fell, Lyle let out a breath of relief. Regardless of the difficulty, as Trent had said, the violence was disturbing, especially being so up-close and personal. Ah, well. I’ll get used to it.

His first time in the Tower left Lyle feeling somewhat crestfallen, though, like he hadn’t really accomplished anything. He hadn’t felt a very necessary part of the team, with George and Liam killing more than half of their enemies on their own. He said as much to Abe once they were outside again after introducing Trent and Liv.

“Lyle, you gotta relax, man,” Abe said. “You’ve literally never done this before. Of course you start with some training wheels. They don’t let newbies above floor twenty or so, but I’m sure we can at least get you up there in no time. Well, maybe not all the way up there, since, you know, I like you alive, but close. Enough to satisfy your violent urges.” Abe chuckled and nudged Lyle’s side with an elbow.

“It’s not even that,” Lyle replied. “If this is all there is, then doing the lower floors is hardly even worth it. I think I got all I could out of it just today. I can do more. Maybe those classes would be better, even.”

"We all feel a bit of that,” Trent interjected. He, Liv, and Lyle had naturally stuck together for most of the Tower delve after their first battle. “Well, a lot of us, anyway. Comes with the power. Some psychologist said it has to do with feeling special and all that, especially if you’re not born an Ember.”

Lyle wasn’t completely convinced.

On the other hand, his jaunt into the Tower hadn’t been a loss. He’d at least gained some experience with actual combat, and he’d observed how others fight. He hadn’t found a Token, which was to be expected given how rare they were on the lower floors, but his share of the reward was a pleasant surprise, too. Once the bear had fallen, a quick search had uncovered a stache of a few pieces of Ember shale, which the group would sell to provide the Embers with monetary compensation. The material was highly desirable in an industrial context since it could be burned to release its enormous stores of energy, so none of the Embers really made a claim to the material, instead opting for the cash. Occasionally the shale was crafted into armor or weapons, too, but it was prohibitively expensive for most Embers, and there were few craftsmen that could confidently work with it, so it was more usual to sell it anyway.

Their small group started to leave, but Lyle remembered something he’d meant to do. He told them to wait a minute, then jogged back over to the mage.

“Hey, you’re a mage, right?” he asked abruptly.

“Yeah…?” the man replied hesitantly. He was a black man, thin and in his mid-twenties, with hair shaved close to his scalp.

“Can you help me with something?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“I just need you to summon a fireball.”

“Uh… why?” The man was looking at Lyle askance, and Lyle realized how odd this must sound.

“I want to see what the magic itself looks like,” he explained. “I got a quick glance earlier when you were fighting, but I’m trying to figure out how my magic works. It doesn’t seem to interact with… well, anything except itself, so I’m wondering if I can use it to touch other people’s magic.”

The mage furrowed his brow. “Oh, that’s weird. Yeah, sure. Here.”

He held out his hand, and an orange and red ribbon of power extended upwards from his palm. It drifted lazily through the air, curling in on itself around a foot above the mage’s hand and immediately bursting into flame. The fire became more dense and full as the mage continued to pour the power from his Emberflame into the flames. Heat emanated from it, warm enough that Lyle felt himself break into a sweat.

Lyle pulled on the power within himself, willing the waves of light to extend from the spark in his palm towards the fireball. As he touched the outer edge, he could somehow feel his power impacting something, like his mind had brushed against a wall. It was soft, though, as if the wall itself wasn’t particularly solid. There was no noticeable effect on the fire itself.

“Woah,” the mage said as he watched. “Not sure what that was, but I felt it. I also feel… Is that you?”

“Static, right?”

“Yeah. It’s faint, but it’s there.”

Lyle withdrew his power, then hesitated. “Can I try one more thing?”

The mage nodded, and paused in lowering his hand. The fireball, which had started to fade as he released the magic, returned to full power. “Sure.”

Lyle flicked the spark from his hand towards the fireball, willing it to do… whatever it was going to do. The spark touched the edge of the sphere, and with a sudden woosh, the fire retreated from the light, dispersing the power in moments as if it were a bubble that had popped, or like it had been hit by a gust of wind intense enough to split it into pieces that didn’t have enough fuel to survive on their own.

The mage gaped at him. “You—what—that’s possible?”

Lyle was shocked himself. He’d considered that it might cut off the power somehow, but he’d thought it much more likely to empower the other man’s magic. On the other hand, he was suddenly thrilled that he had magic that could actually do something. The Tower had been one thing, but now he felt like he’d truly taken his first step into the world of the Embers.

“I guess so,” he said as he allowed his own magic to dissipate.

***

Twenty minutes later, and after excitedly sharing his findings with his friends, Lyle, Abe, Liv, and Trent found themselves at a nearby restaurant that had been set up specifically to cater to hungry Embers. Trent and Abe seemed to be getting on pretty well. The big Ember was apparently an engineer for his day job, which piqued Abe’s interest. They shared an interest in hardware and data management, and that was the direction in which they steered the conversation. Meanwhile, Lyle wondered why the gainfully employed Trent was at the Tower in the middle of the day on a Wednesday.

Liv, on the other hand, actually worked for one of the guilds in the Twin Cities called Moonlight Sonata. Morgan Trelis, the leader, was apparently a Beethoven fan.

“I’m on the managerial side, though,” Liv was telling Lyle. “I work in finance and operations, making sure the guild runs smoothly. Can’t be going bankrupt if we want to actually keep those upper floors from breaking, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Lyle replied, trying to tune out the tech talk coming from Abe and Trent. “Do you know the delve team, then?”

“Of course! I mean, I’ve never been a part of it, but yeah, I know all of them. There’s, like, thirty five or so people total, all pretty powerful and most with a bunch of experience. They’re really solid.”

“Morgan is really powerful, yeah?”

The server interrupted the conversation momentarily, taking their orders. They all went simple and had burgers and fries, though Trent substituted his fries for a salad. Liv and Abe both ordered milkshakes as well.

“Morgan’s unbelievable,” Liv said once the server had left them. “Like, seriously incredible. She’s also a great musician. I don’t see her fight much, so my personal experience of her is mostly her inhuman musical abilities. She likes to do concerts and other parties and fun stuff to keep morale high. I guess that’s not to say she’s not really obviously strong, though.”

“Is she… a kind of mage, or a fighter, or what?” asked Lyle.

“She’s an enchanter. She gets up close and personal better than any other member of our guild, though. Definitely the lynchpin of the team on the higher floors.”

“Damn, that’s cool,” Lyle said wistfully. His magic was useful, but seemingly only against other Embers, which made its use rather limited inside the Tower, unless he encountered magic within. Outside, though… Abe had teased him about joining the tournament circuit, where he would fight other Embers, and that actually might not be as bad of an idea as Lyle had originally thought.

Lyle’s purpose wasn’t to become rich or famous as a kind of gladiator, though, and it certainly wasn’t to fight people. If he did join the tournament circuit, it would be solely to get stronger by fighting strong opponents.

“Do you want to meet her?” Liv asked, interrupting his thoughts. It took him a moment to realize she was talking about the members of her guild. “She loves to talk about music and her work.”

“I mean… I feel like it would be kind of weird for me to just drop into the guild office and be like, ‘hey, can I talk to Morgan?’ wouldn’t it?”

“Not like that,” Liv said with a laugh. “We’re hosting a party tomorrow night though—”

“Ah, thirsty Thursday after a long week with the nose to the grindstone,” Lyle cut in with a smirk.

Liv laughed again. “Kind of. Like I said, Morgan likes to host stuff. We’ve all got plus two, so I can bring you and Trent with me.”

Trent looked up from his conversation with Abe at the mention of his name.

“Who do what now?” he said intelligently.

“You want to go to a party at Liv’s guild?” asked Lyle.

“Moonlight Sonata? You kidding me? Tell me when and where! Is Morgan performing?” Trent’s eyes flew wide in excitement.

Apparently this is a well-known thing she does.

“I’m not sure,” Liv said, “but if you come you’ll find out.”

“Sounds like we’ll both be there,” Lyle said.

“Great!”

With that decided, they returned to small talk over their late lunches and eventually gave their phone numbers to Liv so they could easily connect for the party at eight the next day. Lyle couldn’t help but feel a little better, too. His new friends were very easy to talk to.