Ryan wore a rare genuine smile on the other side of the portal and Micah asked, “Is this it? The Ant Hive?”

“Yeah,” he said. “And we’re in luck. Normally, you have to walk for a bit before you find the yellow road.”

The earth was stony and mostly grey here. Glowing specks of yellow lit up a rough outline, but hollowed-out and crystals in the ground seemed to do most of the work. Despite their yellow color, their light was almost white. They looked like a trail of shells leading inward.

The yellow road, Micah assumed.

Right under his feet and all around him, however, the floor, walls, and ceiling walls were all made up of Tower stone, as if the Ant Hive only really began a few steps in. It was the first time Micah had seen something like that. Usually, the floor began the moment you stepped inside.

Why the difference?

Near the end of its length, the tunnel bent straight down. Micah couldn’t see where it led. He almost went to check, but Ryan stopped him. He took him by the arms and shifted him back so he was a few steps away from the tunnel proper, then got something out of his backpack behind him while Micah awkwardly tried not to buckle under the rummaging weight.

“Watch this,” Ryan said as he walked around and held a flesh crystal high into the tunnel. He let go.

The crystal fell up. It hit the ceiling and stayed there.

“Uhm … what?”

“Ryan, I thought you were going to do something cool,” Lisa spoke. “Like a flip.”

Ryan scratched his head and looked embarrassed. “The last time I tried that, I hit my head and … uhm … made a little mess.”

“Oh. Let me then.”

Lisa handed Ryan her staff and stepped into the tunnel. For some reason, she didn’t fall up like Micah had feared. Instead, she turned to him and said, “Watch this.” Then she jumped.

Only then did she fall upwards, spun in mid-air, and landed on the ceiling with her arms outstretched, saying, “Tadaa!”

Micah clapped. “How?”

“Up and down is relative in the Ant Hive,” Lisa explained. “If you step off the yellow road. As you might imagine, it makes fighting in there a little bit … chaotic.”

Micah nodded and carefully placed one foot onto a crystal shell. Nothing happened. He took two more careful steps, both of them on solid ground, and still nothing happened.

Above, Lisa jumped again and stretched her hands out to grip two of the shells in the ground. It looked like she was doing a handstand on her knuckles then. Instead, Micah knew she was actually hanging there even though she was touching the road.

“The crystals go inwards a little,” she explained. “So you can use them as handholds.” She pulled herself up a little more. As soon as half her body was closer to the ground than the ceiling, she fell and rolled to a crouch. Whipping a stray strand out her face, she said, “And now you.”

“Uhm...” Micah didn’t know if he could do that.

“C’mon, try.”

“Just a second.”

He carefully placed a foot outside the road to test the boundaries of the effect. Something tugged on him there. Not a force, but a feeling. It was that same certainty Micah felt when he stood on one of the walls over the river in Westhill. You knew you would fall if you leaned in. But here, there was ground just beneath his foot. The sensation seemed somehow out of place.

No other option but to try it out. Micah stretched his foot out a little bit further and suddenly it did fall. Up.

“Argh!”

Ryan pulled him back with a weak chuckle. “You see now why helmets and gloves are necessary?”

“Pads for elbows and knees aren’t a bad idea, either,” Lisa added.

Micah nodded vigorously. “What about the Honey Ants?”

“They don’t care,” Ryan said. “They can walk on walls.”

Oh, so just like most monsters then. At least here, the floor evened the playing field a bit. Although Micah suspected that just made things worse.

“Wanna try doing a flip?” Lisa asked him.

“You don’t have to,” Ryan added, but Micah shook his head.

“I want to.”

“Jump and raise your knees up high,” Lisa told him. “That should do the trick.”

Micah stepped away from them, took a deep breath, and braced himself. Then he jumped. Everything lurched and spun. He landed on his heels at first, but then slipped and landed on his butt. He grimaced, but still stuck his arms out like Lisa had. They wobbled.

“It takes some practice,” Ryan explained. He glanced up at Micah, handed Lisa her staff back, and jumped as well. He spun just like she had, but his entire equipment lurched. He landed next to him.

“Hey,” he said, raising a hand. “Hive-five.”

Micah gladly gave him a high-five.

Lisa raised her hand, too. That was a little more awkward because she was upside-down.

“Now take my hands,” she said next and Micah did so without question. He thought she might pull him down or herself up. Instead, she started running and Micah had to run after or she would tug him along.

They were running on opposite sides of the same tunnel, he realized. Halfway through, Micah started laughing. He loved the Ant Hive. If they’d had a park like this in the city, he would have spent every day of his childhood playing there. That made him wonder. How did this work?

They came to a halt near the end of the tunnel. Before he could ask, Lisa said, “What do you see?” She meant the curve. It sloped down, so Micah could see farther than she could.

“A Honey Ant,” Micah answered.

It was just the one. A clean, yellow ant the size of a small dog. It looked like it a moving candied apple rather than a monster, but the vendor had been right; Micah really could see through it. Just barely. He sought its crystal, remembering how Ryan had pulled out Sam’s. If you could do that to unmade, there was no need to waste time fighting them at all.

It wasn’t shaped like an actual honey ant, though. It didn’t look as long as normal ants either and its middle segment was just one oval shape instead of two. Its legs seemed sturdier, the front-most ones were shorter and ended on a point instead of a flat stretch. It was using those to do … something to a crystal indent in the floor. When it noticed Micah, it stopped and stared at him with a darker shade of yellow eyes. Its small antennae twitched. Then it clicked its mandibles and charged.

Instead of running straight at him, the monster looped around the ceiling above. Micah had to stretch his head up to follow it.

Ryan stretched to swipe at it with his sword, but the monster just moved around to where his swipe began and kept on running, effortlessly dodging without stopping. It met Lisa, who was on the ceiling along with it, and ran right into her sweeping staff. There was a crack as the strike connected and the ant fell off the yellow road to Micah’s feet.

He tried to jump it, but it already twisted itself back on its feet and scuttled on. It never stopped moving. It circled Ryan and him twice. Micah twisted around to keep an eye on it, his dagger ready. His slingshot wouldn’t be effective at all, he suspected, if even Lisa’s strikes could only crack its shell.

Instead of attacking one of them, though, the ant ran back the way it came. Near the end of the tunnel, it disappeared in a small hole and was gone.

It took Micah a moment to realize it wasn’t coming back.

“What the—?” He pointed. “It ran away!”

“Yeah, they do that,” Ryan said. “They can heal themselves with their ... spit? They’re basically half-slimes on the inside, so if they’re damaged and can’t win a fight, they’ll retreat to find a place to mend.”

That was … actually kind of smart.

“Do you see that smaller tunnel it ran into?” Lisa asked. “That’s what I meant earlier. They’re everywhere but the yellow road. The little ones use them as their primary means of getting around.”

Oh, great. Another source of ambush.

Despite that, Micah sort of … liked the ant. It had seemed crafty in a way similar to the rats but didn’t just blindly throw itself at enemies. They were supposed to taste sweet, too, Micah knew. Along with their supposed healing and strength-giving properties, he had a much easier time imagining that he might eat one.

“You should totally mimic them,” he told Ryan. “Maybe you’ll get a healing Skill?”

“Huh?”

“I doubt he would,” Lisa said. “Healing is rare. At least, ever since y— we got rid of all our [Priests]. Dumb move, that. And Ryan would probably get something pattern-like anyway. Like healing spit.”

Micah stared at Ryan and whispered, “Healing spit.”

Ryan wore a mixture of blush and scowl. “I’ve tried to mimic them,” he said. “I just don’t— I didn’t think I understood them. Now that I know I might not have had enough mana, it might be worth trying again. That gives me more options than just Honey Ants, though, so I might try something else first. Sorry.”

“But healing … Skills?” Micah tried again.

“It’s a great idea, Micah. But just, give me some time to think over my options, alright? I also want to talk to some people to see if I can quantify my mana someway and figure out more.”

“Mm … alright.”

“And anyway,” Lisa added with a smile. “If Ryan got healing Skills, you’d be kind useless, right? We might just dump the extra weight.”

Despite her teasing tone, Micah felt worried. He was not useless. He could fight. He could make different potions for them. And his essence sight—

Ryan ruffled his hair, interrupting his thoughts. “We’d never do that. At least, not until you graduate and open an alchemy shop. Then you’d be too busy to care about us anyway.” He walked off and Micah was left feeling lost.

“Uhm...“ I’m not sure I’ll ever work in an alchemy shop.

He left the words unspoken, though. The others seemed in a good mood and he just didn’t want to bother them with something like that. Plus, it was kind of rare to see Ryan genuinely happy. He often seemed like he was treading barefoot on broken glass: overly careful, or he would cut his foot and scowl.

Here, he’d done a flip.

Micah hurried after.

Lisa kept walking on the ceiling as they made their way down the next tunnel and Ryan took the lead. If they kept on walking like this, Micah wondered, wouldn’t they reach the first floor? Unless the entrance itself was upside-down ...

There were also slight twists in the ground that told Micah where “effective down” was, but the yellow road didn’t mirror them perfectly. Eventually, Lisa was walking sideways and headbutted his shoulder.

Micah jumped and pressed himself to the wall so she could pass.

“How does this work again?” he asked, looking at the crystalline handholds. He squinted his eyes and brought up a question he’d forgotten to ask. “Wait, do those cause the effect?”

“No, they just show you where—” Lisa started.

She was too late. Micah already knelt in front of one of the shells, trying to pry it free with his knife. The handholds looked more stable than the crystal veins in the Salamander’s Den, even though he could barely see any essence inside of them. Or maybe because of that? Whatever theirs was, it was so little that it was drowned out by their light.

“—the effect is.”

“Wait up a moment,” he called when Lisa didn’t immediately notice. Ryan was already headed back.

The shell didn’t come out as easily as Micah had hoped, clinging to its mold. And though it seemed tough when he gripped it, it broke apart the moment it cracked. He plucked out the brittle shards and tried to put them back together a little.

“Not worth it,” Lisa commented above. “That stuff’s the same as the goop inside the Honey Ants, but dried up so it’s not as useful. It’s easier to just hunt them down than to mine handholds. Not that people haven’t tried.”

Micah had come to the same conclusion already, even if he hadn’t known about that dried-up-goop bit. What else could he do with these, then? “Hey, wanna see if Sam will eat them?” he asked, trying to catch two birds with one stone.

Lisa stared at him and Micah thought he might have made another mistake. Was she still upset about Sam? But then she shrugged off her pack and brought out the patterned crystal, saying, “Good idea.”

He glued his eyes to the stone to take in every detail about the summoning process, but there was hardly anything to see. The air around the crystal shimmered so little, it might as well have been Micah’s imagination. Equally fickle white lines that looked like a mixture of pink and blue formed threads, then thin roots and bones. But even though Micah saw them, his mind was silent. It didn’t have any thoughts about the process, unlike when he looked at essence doing things.

Was that mana? He wondered for himself then. Could he see it? Why did it shimmer in and out of sight with every other motion? One last flicker and the beast was suddenly whole and staring at him from the nook of Lisa’s arm.

“...Do you use fire essence?” Micah asked. If it was made in part of essence, he should have seen something. But the process looked like it had skipped several steps along the way.

“Yeah, why?”

“I can’t see that.” And apparently, he could barely see mana as well. Although that didn’t come as a surprise.

“Oh.”

Sam looked at him, then glanced down both ways of the tunnel. Checking for enemies already?

Micah held his hand up, commanding it, “Eat.”

The Salamander did nothing. Lisa smiled mischievously.

“Hey, Sam. Eat.” Nothing. He glanced at her. “Why isn’t it listening to me?”

“Because it’s mine,” Lisa said. She leaned down and whispered, “Plunder.”

Sam immediately leaned forward and snatched the panes off Micah’s hand with its tongue. Then it threw its head back, chowed down a little, and gulped. Micah didn’t see where the light went. Lisa was already walking off, grinning.

“Unfair, Lisa,” he called after her, a little bit worried. “Make it listen to me again.”

“Nope!” she called back.

“...Please?”

“No, Micah.”

“Can you at least tell me what it did with the essence?”

Ryan gave her a look when she came closer but said nothing.

“Don’t worry, I can still cast spells,” she assured him and set Sam down on the floor. It ran in circles around the tunnel like it was happy to go for a walk. When it hit a spot that must have been a ceiling, it promptly fell to the ground. They all stared at it lying on its back.

“Huh,” Lisa mumbled.

Micah wasn’t sure if he should laugh.

Just then, a Honey Ant poked its head out of a nearby fissure in the wall, saw the Salamander lying on its back, and ran for it. Two more followed and fanned out.

Lisa mumbled something under her breath and jogged up to meet them. Just as the first ant tried to bite Sam, she smacked it away, then tried and failed to hammer a second to the ground. Ryan nudged Sam back onto its belly with his heel and positioned himself in front of it, his shield ready.

“Micah?” he called. “Get over here.”

He would have loved to, but … again the second ant that had dodged Lisa’s strike kept on running straight ahead instead of stopping. It was headed for him. The first two hadn’t even burst or been maimed from Lisa’s strikes. It clicked its darker mandibles with every other step.

Micah took a step back.

When it reached him, it surged to bite his leg. Micah drew back like he had with the Salamanders, intending to press his knee down again, but it was larger than those, had twice as many legs, and still kept on running. Micah worried if he pressed down on it, it would just rip him off balance.

So he widened his legs into a half-splits instead.

Surprisingly, that worked. The ant just kept on running through his legs. Were they all this linear-minded?

“Does this mean I have to buy it beer?” Micah asked no-one in particular as he turned around and slashed at it. Or at least, he’d intended to. The ant wasn’t where it should have been if it had kept on running. It was behind his leg, ready to sink its mandibles into his calf. Micah threw himself away as quickly as he could and rolled into a crouch, just barely in time. He thought he’d felt something brush his leg.

From one moment to the next, he was breathing heavily. That was close. Maybe he should be taking this more seriously?

The ant strained its head up for a moment like it was listening to something before it followed him.

“A little help, guys?”

Micah tried slashing at it, but it just kept on running and clicking. His strikes didn’t even pierce its carapace as he danced around it in choppy circles, always pulling his limbs back before it could bite them. His knfie left thin marks not much worse than scratches on glass. Not even light leaked from those.

When he glanced behind him, Lisa had one hand on Ryan’s shoulder and was, presumably, keeping him from helping. It didn’t look like she was using any force, though. Ryan frowned, but leaned back and whispered something to her without taking his eyes off the fight.

...Were they judging him?

“Guys!”

“You got this!” Ryan called.

Micah took a deep breath, grit his teeth, and glanced up. Okay. If they wouldn’t help him, he’d just do it on his own.

He cut a few more slashes into the Honey Ant, deepening the ones he’d already made into an “X.” He knew he should be aiming for its legs, but its mandibles were right there. He worried if he overextended himself, it would crush his hand like a cracker.

So when the Honey Ant next tried to bite him, Micah jumped and spun to grip the handholes above him, pulling himself up onto the yellow road. Everything lurched and his stomach protested.

This is down, Micah told it before forcing it out of his thoughts entirely.

The ant kept on running up the wall, ready to follow him wherever he went. Unfortunately for it, that meant it was now climbing down from the ceiling along the wall. It had its back turned to him.

Before it could raise its head up to look at him, Micah tackled it. He used one arm to keep it in place, his knee to keep its head down, and his knife to try and pierce its shell. That felt how forcing a dagger through a pane of glass should: wrong. He was using the wrong weapon for this.

That didn’t mean it wouldn’t work.

The Honey Ant’s shell slowly cracked as he forced his blade into the grooves he’d already made. The shell gave way and the knife slid in. Yellow goop trickled out of the wound and the ant went still. Micah turned his head away in preparation of the coming smoke, but there was none. Furrowing his brow, he took a breath and stepped back. The dead Honey Ant stuck to his knife, weighing it down.

“Huh.” He turned to Lisa and Ryan, briefly forgetting that they had made him fight on his own, and said, “I got one!”

“Congrats,” Ryan said. “What—”

“No thanks to you!” he added.

Ryan smiled. “What can you make of that now?”

“Better healing potions,” Micah said. “Or Potions of Lesser Strength. And they’re useful in lots of other stuff, too.” He glanced at their hands then but didn’t find any yellow crystals there. “What about your two?”

“They ran away,” Ryan said.

“Oh.”

Micah already had one and they still had a good four hours before he had to head home. They could always hunt more, so it wasn’t so bad. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t nettle them, though. “I guess that means I’m in the lead, then.”

Micah stuffed the ant in an empty pouch of his backpack. Ryan offered to carry it, but he happily declined. This was his. Then they headed on.

The next tunnel split into two directions at a wide angle, each with a slight upward slant. Also called obtuse, his mind added and Micah would have been proud at remembering something if it wasn’t the simplest math tidbit he needed to know for Tuesday. The stuff for the entrance exams used letters instead of numbers. Something must have gone horribly wrong there.

The tunnels here had much less structure. They were barely circular. Some sections were wider, some had bumps, some even sharp ledges that he might be able to use to his advantage. And yet, even though they were broader, they seemed just as well lit. Micah watched Lisa walk over a shell, but she barely threw a shadow. Was the light really all coming from the yellow road or was it like in the safe room they had been in—light essence?

There were still shadows here and there, but not many. Even if the Tower was illuminating this floor, it wasn’t perfect. And the holes and cracks they passed were dark, too.

Similar to their first trip into the Sewers, Ryan made them skirt the outer edges for safety. Despite that, the next group of ants that ambushed them went right for the guy’s throat. They appeared out of a hole in the wall next to him. One of the Honey Ants stood on the other for extra reach as they both stretched forward to bite him, and Ryan lunged to bash it aside with his shield, cracking the side of his head. The first ant pulled the other back inside before any of them could follow up.

A third appeared out of nowhere and headed for Micah’s legs again. Lisa hammered it from above. When the other two came back out of another hole, the one Ryan had bashed was mostly healed again.

Mostly.

Micah abandoned the one at his feet for Lisa to handle, lept onto the side of the wall, where the yellow road was, and stabbed the ant through those cracks. It burst into surprisingly clean smoke. Ryan struck the second one away before it could attack him, thankfully, and Micah got back up and hopped behind him. After another swing, Micah stepped in and tried to stab it as well.

The ant dodged both of their attacks. It circled around, picked up the crystal of its fallen brethren, and disappeared in a tunnel.

Micah needed a moment to process that. Then he cursed. “Damnit, Tower. They recover their own crystals now?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said sheepishly.

“Why? It’s not like they can heal them.”

Or could they? No, crystals didn’t have patterns. But maybe they could use them to make … more of themselves?

“They bring them back to the clusters,” Lisa explained. Sam offered him a yellow stone, so she must have killed her enemy at least. “There, they just … store them forever, I guess. Or at least until climbers raid the place.”

Well, that wasn’t an option.

For now, Micah inspected the crystal they had managed to retrieve while the others kept watch. He had seen this type of crystal before in the Climber’s Bazaar. Often, actually. And yet he was none the wiser about what its essence might be. He thought of real honey ants, and bees, and asked, “Is it … nectar essence?”

Maybe it just hadn’t been processed yet?

“Close,” Lisa said. “You could say that if you want to, but it’d be better to just say something like ‘nutrient’ essence or ‘nourishment’ essence, because it isn’t actually essence that comes from nectar. It’s just similar. That’s actually pretty valuable for its flexibility.”

“Same as flesh,” Micah commented while he put the stone away.

Lisa shook her head. “Trust me on this one. Nutrient essence is much more flexible than meat.”

Micah frowned, but he did. Trust her judgment, that was. An explanation would have been nice, but Micah could already begin to work it out for himself. “Nutrients” could feed all sorts of patterns, after all. Flesh couldn’t.

With one full Honey Ant and another crystal in his bag, Micah poked Ryan in the side as they walked up to the next tunnel and whispered, “Healing spit.”

Ryan obviously tried not to react.

At the next bend, they poked their heads around the corner of the tunnel and looked for the Honey Ant that he had heard there. Lisa kept an eye on their backs.

It stood on the yellow road and was busy stabbing its legs into the ground, then … spit something inside of the hole it had just made. Then it stabbed that something again. A soft glow oozed over the edge.

“It’s making the shells?”

Ryan nodded above him, hitting him with his chin.

So they made the yellow road, meaning they wanted climbers to walk on it … to follow it?

Ambush.

“Where does the yellow road lead?” he asked Ryan.

“Clusters.”

Of course.

Something didn’t add up, though. When Ryan had severed the Sewer rat’s feet earlier, they had only burst after he finished it off. That implied they were linked somehow. If Honey Ants made and maintained the yellow road, shouldn’t their shells be bursting all the time as climbers killed them around the Ant Hive?

A second Honey Ant walked out of a hole behind the other and joined it in the tunnel, but it didn’t do anything. It walked aimlessly for a moment, seemed to check up on its kin—was it looking for wounds?—then headed for another hole again.

A third came out of there, blocking its path. They both raised their heads a little and clicked their mandibles, twitched their small antennae a little. Were they communicating?

Micah frowned as he watched those two. If he squinted his eyes a little he could almost imagine a slight … distortion around them, just a few millimeters wide. A swirl, like the outlines of a gentle whirlpool made by stirring the water in a glass.

Unmade have a pattern strong enough to draw from the world.

Micah squinted his eyes to get a better look at the Honey Ant that was busy stabbing the ground.

No swirl.

He clapped a hand over his mouth in surprise, then hissed at Ryan, “The stabbing one is fully-made!”

The other boy nodded again, but only a little this time.

“Yeah. They maintain the yellow road,” he mumbled. “... Which doesn’t make sense. They travel in teams of three as early as one tunnel in and help each other out, have half a dozen different calls for help, but build a road leading intruders to their home? Maybe the road isn’t meant for us …”

He knew all that? Micah hadn’t really considered what Ryan had to learn for his Path before, but it was apparently a lot.

Now, the guy glanced at him and sighed. “This is pointless. I won’t learn anything new like this.” He drew his sword and stepped out into the tunnel. “Sorry, Micah, but we might as well get you some more ingredients instead.”

The ants noticed him and immediately began their charge. It was too late to convince Ryan otherwise, but maybe Micah could still help him figure out Honey Ants another way? They had only spotted one of them. Micah was still hidden.

He glanced up to check for handholds, took a few steps back and forward again before he jumped. Then he pushed himself off the wall with his foot and stretched to pull himself up onto the yellow road, hiding behind the corner. When he glanced back down, he realized just how far up he’d made it in one go.

Huh.

“Are we fighting?” Lisa asked.

“It’s just a single team,” Ryan said, glancing up at Micah. “I can handle it.”

The first unmade reached Ryan, lifting its head up to bite him. He sidestepped and tried to sever it at the head. The ant seemed to press itself to the ground, going with the hit instead of trying to dodge it. Instead of severing its head, Ryan’s sword only drew a glancing cut between the segments that leaked light. At least, it threw off the ant’s momentum.

The second one reached him then as well and Micah saw his chance. He ran around the corner and came face-to-face with the fully-formed. It actually had a slight swirl around it then, but only barely. Much less, compared to the other two. It isn’t made entirely of fl— … goop.

Instead of pausing, Micah did as the ants do and kept on running. He jumped low over its reaching mandibles so he wouldn’t fall off the yellow road, landed behind it and let himself fall back, pancaking it to the ground.

Even as his bag poked into his back and pressed against his lungs, Micah breathed and turned to wrap his arms around the crystal insect, hugging it like Lisa might hug Sam. Only, he also kept its head in a deadlock so it couldn’t turn around and bite him.

The ant squirmed around violently in his grip and stabbed his arms with its front legs, but his chainmesh held, even if he might get bruises if it kept that up. Micah immediately checked on Ryan below.

He’d finished off one of them already, guessing by the wisps of smoke, and the second was fleeing. Before it could retrieve its ally’s crystal, Sam ran by and swooped it up. It tried to meet Micah on the ceiling, fell, and landed on his back again.

… It didn’t learn, did it?

Without the crystal, the ant escaped.

Micah stared at the far-away floor, then at the ant he was wrangling in his arms.

“Uhm, Ryan? You want to come up?”

“Huh, why—?” He looked up and switched tunes. “Oh. Sure.”

A moment later, Ryan had jumped up and was staring at him with a face that demanded an explanation.

“Here,” Micah said proudly. “I caught it.”

“Caught” might have been a generous term, though. Apt for what Micah might generously have called a plan. The ant was squirming like an eel in his grip and slapping him wherever it could reach him with its legs. Its only true sources of danger with its front legs and mandibles and those … were slowly slipping out of his grip. He twisted his body a little to get a better hold of it.

“You caught it?” Ryan asked, face still blank.

“Yeah, so you can study it up close,” Micah explained. “And I can still get its parts. Two birds, one stone. Great, right?”

Ryan seemed to nod back a little in understanding.

“Uh … yeah. Thanks for the idea, Micah,” he said, “But here’s the thing. I’ve already seen Honey Ants up close by, you know, fighting them?”

“Aw, rea—” Micah grunted as he strained to keep the ant from twisting around in his arms. “—lly? Isn’t there anything else you can find out? Look, it’s patching itself up.” He nudged it forward a little.

The ant had slight cracks in its forehead. Something in Micah’s bag must have hurt it, but he was drawing a blank on what. Now, a little bit of its yellow goop was filling up the wound and slowly repairing the damage.

“Already seen that, too. But I do appreciate the thought, man.”

“It was worth the try,” Micah said and considered. “Uhm, can you do something about it before it gets free and bites me?

Their mandibles reminded him of the pliers smiths used to bend metal. Or worse, the ones dentists used to pull out teeth.

Ryan smiled. “Where’s your dagger?”

“Right-side leg,” Micah said and Ryan reached for it. “Aw, are you going to kill it?”

Ryan gave him a funny look before he gripped the ant to steady it, and with a show of effort, slit its throat halfway through. Yellow goop trailed down Micah’s arms, but he breathed a sigh of relief anyway. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Ryan put his dagger back and pulled off his own backpack as Micah laid the ant down. “I’m carrying that one,” he said.

Micah had been distracted by the leaking wound and agreed with half a mind. He didn’t want the goop to ruin Ryan’s backpack and he didn’t want to lose too much of it either. It was a valuable ingredient after all. “At least, let me bandage it up a little so it won’t spill?”

“Sure.”

Micah did just that and put it inside Ryan’s bag, all the while the other kept watch in case they were attacked again. After wiping off his arms a little, they headed back to Lisa, who was still waiting at the crossroads. Sam had brought her the crystal. Another one rested next to it.

“Did you fight?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, but two escaped,” she said. “How did you—” She broke off and started sniffing the air all the sudden. Her usually calm expression became … nervous? “Micah, what did you do?” she asked, then to Ryan, “Don’t you smell that?”

“Huh?” Micah asked. “Why do you assume I did something?”

Ryan sniffed the air a little, as if for the first time. Micah joined them but found nothing amiss. They both still kind of smelled like wet dog, the tunnels like rocks. What were they looking for?

“Because there’s a distress call in the air—” Lisa started.

“We have to leave,” Ryan interrupted her, drawing his sword. Something in his backpack shifted.

“Yeah,” Lisa agreed.

They started walking off at a hard pace. Miah followed, but he still wanted an answer, “Distress call?”

“I screwed up,” Ryan said. “There’s a kidnapping distress call in the air. All the nearby Honey Ants are about to respond to it.”

Kidnapping—?

Something in his backpack kicked again and Micah caught on. The ant must not have died. How? Ryan had practically cut its head off. Could it really heal itself that much? No, he’d bandaged it. That must have helped it heal the wound.

And now it was alerting all nearby ants.

Oh.

“Problem is,” Ryan went on, as if that weren't problem enough. “The ants that get the call? They repeat it.”

Oh, no.

“Remember the clusters?” Lisa asked as they rounded a corner. “Hey, Sam! Come here,” she called, picked the Salamander up, and took away its crystal. Then she started jogging. Ryan and he kept pace. “As long as the signal keeps spreading, eventually, one or more of those will respond as well.”

Ryan glanced at every single hole they passed like they might erupt with ants at any moment and Micah drew his knife as if it could somehow protect him against hundreds of ants when he already struggled against one.

He gulped. “Are they—?”

They were jogging, so it might just have been his imagination, but Micah thought the earth around them was trembling.

Ryan must have noticed it, too. He paled and said, “Faster!”

They broke into a sprint.

Behind them, Honey Ants did come from the holes then. First, it was just one or two, then half a dozen. Micah glanced back, but the stream didn’t stop. They showed up ahead of them as well.

A head suddenly shot out of a hole, trying to snap at Micah. He jumped over it but didn’t watch where he was going. He landed halfway outside of the yellow road. Ryan grabbed his arm before he could fall, yanked him forward, and bashed another ant aside.

It fell from the ceiling. Two ants below seemed to catch it and all three took up the chase again.

The one in Ryan’s bag was visibly struggling now.

If this was a kidnapping distress call— “Can’t you give it back?!” Micah shouted as they kept on running.

“No,” Ryan called back. “It’s much too late.”

Micah had been half-expecting that answer. He was familiar with it after all, but he still didn’t like it. Why didn’t monsters accept apologies?

Everywhere he looked, more and more ants poured out of holes they passed. More and more sets of legs hit the earth. This was the Salamanders den all over again. Just this time, Micah had two friends with him. He was not going to let them be boxed in like he’d been, but he didn’t what else he could do but run. His mind raced to come up with emergency plans as he mapped the way back to the portal.

Halfway around the next bend, Lisa’s staff burst into flames and Micah almost missed a step. A small wave of ants was streaming down onto the yellow road in front of them and blocking the path. The air distorted around her staff as the flames whipped upwards. Even a stream of heat essence flowed over from Sam and joined.

It was an all too familiar sight. Slowly, she was creating a fireball at the tip of her staff. If she had to do it like that, it meant she was low on mana. Summoning the monster might not have been such a good idea after all. Lisa slowed down a bit as she cast it and Micah stayed to protect her.

“Micah?” Ryan asked, gripping his arm in a vice and hauling him forward. “Keep going!”

“But Lisa—”

“GO!”

She was behind them now. Micah glanced back as he kept on running towards the ants. Suddenly, a comet of flames arced around his right and cut through them, throwing them off the yellow road and freeing a path. When he glanced back again, Lisa was already catching up again.

The ants on the left side of the road were trying to swarm them. Ryan had placed himself to Micah’s left and was keeping them off. One tried to bite his leg and Micah flipped his dagger to his left and slashed it away. He actually cut off one of its mandibles then. The wound leaked light and he realized the unmade were weaker.

Ryan bashed it with his knee before they kept on running and Micah was suddenly much more confident in his ability to keep them off.

Then they were headed towards a ledge. Micah recognized it. Their first and last tunnel, the one that went straight up. They were almost there. As they stepped over its bend, he glimpsed silver stone and light, and a low wall of yellow shapes that was blotting out the ground.

The ants were waiting for them there, trying to block their escape.

Either way, Ryan and him turned around and waited for Lisa, bashing aside ants where they could and keeping them off each other. As soon as their last teammate got close, they both grabbed one of her bag straps and hauled her along.

“Lisa?” Ryan asked, glancing at the wall. “Got another one in you?”

“Give me a second.”

The air distorted around Sam again and a much thicker trail of heat flowed over to her right hand. Micah was surprised to see a river of heat essence flowing away from Ryan as well, and it was just getting bigger.

She could do that?

Still, the ball of flames atop her staff was much too small, the size a small ball or an apple. It was growing too slowly, too. Without mana, making a fireball might take her as long as it took the Kobold back then.

Micah had a better idea. He slipped his bag off one shoulder, yanked the ant corpse out with one arm, and threw it. The dead ant sailed overhead. The wall surged as its members dived to catch their fallen comrade and Lisa threw a half-sized fireball at the lowest point, breaking open a path.

Ryan lept over where the wall would have been and turned around, waiting for them.

Run, idiot!

Micah followed, grabbed his ant corpse again and another by its legs as he passed, and ran on through the silver portal. He stumbled into the open space outside of the Tower and face-planted into the stone, groaning. The living ant he’d dragged along flailed around wildly before it burst into smoke.

Lisa and Ryan stumbled out after him, each with two ants in their hands as well, and Micah breathed in relief. If they hadn’t come out right away, there would have been no way he could help them. The ants burst in their hands and their crystals dropped to the ground.

Sam followed out last, with a second crystal barely fitting in its mouth. When had it left Lisa’s arm?

“Hey, everything alright?” a man asked them. Other climbers were glancing at them, too, as they walked past. Some even leaned down to pick up their crystals for them. Others were looking them over. It reminded Micah of the Honey Ants.

Looking for wounds?

Micah couldn’t answer. The only thing he was capable of doing at that moment was breathing. He looked to Ryan and Lisa, deferring to them. She gave the man a thumbs-up, gulped, and said, “Everything’s alright.” Then she let out a whoop and cried, “Actually, that was awesome!”

Ryan looked much less enthusiastic. He looked like he would buckle at any moment, but was forcing himself to stand. He held out a hand to drag Micah up and support him. With the other, he dragged Lisa away from the portal.

The climbers walked away with hidden smiles mumbling something about kids.

“C’mon, I want to go again,” Lisa said.

“Not with this much blood pumping through your veins,” Ryan said. “We’re done for the day. Plus, we got what we came for, right?”

Micah saw the crystals they each held, the ant corpse in his own hand, and said, “Right.”

“Aw. You’re no fun.”

On their way back, Ryan and Lisa explained to him that the Tower apparently had rules.

“But everyone says they’re lawless!” Micah protested as they stepped into the hall of the Climber’s Guild. As the sun began its descent, the building cast a shadow over the yard to the Tower. It tinted the sky in a loose red.

The Towers are lawless.

Micah had heard that phrase and others like it more times than he could count growing up; from his parents, his family, his neighbors, people in the market, even their teachers had said it sometimes. It even reminded him of something Ryan had said earlier, that you should avoid other people inside.

Oh, and the comment suddenly made sense. It was basically stranger-danger, except on an entirely different level, since you were in the middle of “don’t-know-where” and cut off from the rest of the world.

“How do people police the Tower?” Micah wondered out loud, getting off-track. Not that he was worried. Literally every climber he had met so far had been nothing but helpful, if not necessarily nice.

“Here in Hadica?” Lisa asked. “Mostly the Heswarens. They’re raised to consider crimes made in the Tower as furthest from right, so the moment someone steps out with a black splotch on them, they’ll, ah, alert the proper authorities.”

“Oh,” Micah said. “Cool.” So Anne’s family were kind of like heroes, then?

“What about everywhere else?”

Lisa shrugged. “It’s mostly cultural; a mixture of upbringing, authority, and safe behavior. But I’m willing to bet more crimes slip through the cracks in the rest of the city than in the Tower. The whole city’s eyes are on it, after all. They can’t not be, considering.” She glanced back at the infinite spire that cut through the horizon, then. “This isn’t a ‘Lisa knows things’ thing, though. It’s just my opinion.”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah, because I disagree. There isn’t a week gone by where one of our teachers doesn’t warn us to keep safe inside the Tower and avoid strangers.” He paused. “Then again, there isn’t a week gone by where they don’t tell us to go help when someone whistles ...” He glanced at Lisa and she nodded hesitantly, which made Ryan scowl, like always.

What did that scowl mean?

“The Towers are literally safer than they have ever been,” Ryan went on. “Our school showed us a statistic once, about yearly deaths and it’s not even a hundredth of what it once was. But you still want to watch out.”

“And follow the rules?” Micah asked, which he hadn’t even known about. “Which are…?”

“It depends on the floor. Most of them don’t have any special ones like the Ant Hive does. The Garden has literally thousands. But there’s three you should always keep in mind.”

“The three Ungiven Rules,” Lisa said haughtily.

Ryan scowled more light-heartedly this time, like he was embarrassed. “Don’t call them that. It’s embarrassing.”

Ha! Micah had guessed that right. He was getting better at the whole “guessing what Ryan is thinking” thing.

“Hey, I’m not the one who named the stuff around here,” Lisa said. “This city was founded by [Adventurers], you can thank them for that.”

Ryan ignored her. Instead, he turned to Micah.and said, “Don’t call them that. Nobody does. They’re just common sense, really. The first is ‘Do not settle’, which means you shouldn’t try to live comfortably inside the Tower. Why would anyone ever want to live in the Tower anyway?"

Because it's wondrous? Micah thought. Or just to grow stronger?

"The second is ‘Do not plunder what you have not earned’," he went on. "...That’s a little trickier. And the last, ‘Do not destroy’”—Micah felt a cold chill go down his spine. He’d literally destroyed the Salamander’s Den during his first time in the Tower. But then Ryan finished—“without reason.”

Oh. Puh. He’d had a good reason back then. Survival. Or rather, revenge. He thought of the second rule, though, and wondered, “How does the Tower determine what you haven’t earned?”

“In school, I heard the example of, uh, Dared Gelhad?” Ryan offered somewhat sheepishly.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Lisa said. “Yeah, use that.”

“Who’s Dared Gelhad?”

“He was this first generation [Wizard] who wanted to mass-produce mage staffs by cutting down Tower forests with spells,” Ryan said, sounding kind of … energetic, actually. He was smiling. Did he like this story? “On his first try, one of the trees—and this was on the third floor, you know—turned into an Ent and ate him alive. Some say his bones are still there in the tree to serve as a warning, and any who try to retrieve them will be met with the same fate.” He paused. “But that’s just a myth.”

Micah imagined a tree eating him alive and croaked, “Right. But, uhm … why?”

“Because he didn’t put in any effort,” Lisa explained. “You can go into the Tower with an axe and cut wood all day if you want to. You might even find a chest in a tree for your troubles. But cutting down a whole forest with a flick of your hand? Monsters don’t like that. Monsters like … effort.”

Micah nodded a little, frowning.

“So what did I do wrong?” he asked. “Just now, I mean. Are you really not allowed to kidnap an ant?” Guessing by the response, it was hard to believe. And anyway— “So killing them is alright, but kidnapping isn’t?” What kind of a backward logic was that?

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ryan said instead of answering him. “I did. I screwed up.”

Micah shook his head. “I was the one who bandaged it. If I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been able to heal itself.”

“But you couldn’t have known that,” Ryan said. “That’s my job, to know things, to keep you safe, Micah. I should have cut off its head in the first place.”

Micah bristled. “No—”

Lisa smacked them on the back of their heads. Hard. “You both made the mistake, alright?”

“Ow,” Ryan mumbled.

Micah grimaced. “So … ants?”

Ryan didn’t look happy about getting smacked but sighed in defeat. “Yeah, you’re not allowed to kidnap living ants. It’s not really a rule, it’s just a response. The ants have different scent-based signals and one of them is reserved for kidnapping or torture. It basically tells the whole hive to come kill the people doing it.”

“Oh.” Micah gulped. So if they had been further in or any slower …? “What other kinds of signals do they have?”

“It’s mostly just marking stuff to communicate, like different types of enemies, places that need repair, abandoned crystals, wounds, and stuff like that. That first ant we fought marked us, too, when it circled us. I think it was some kind of assessment marking. Probably singling us out as the weakest in our group?”

Weakest?

Micah scowled. Stupid ants. “What about the other rules? If you try to cut down a forest, an Ent will eat you. But what if you destroy something or, uh, ‘settle down’?”

“Uhm...” Ryan said and looked away like he didn’t want to talk about it. He’d seemed pretty happy to tell the other story, though. They stepped out of the Climber’s Guild then and headed towards Nistar.

“He might have to know for entrance exams anyway,” Lisa added.

He sighed. "Right. Well, a common myth for ‘destroy’ is drunk fifth-years headed into the Tower to throw around some fireballs before ducking back out again.” He sighed. “... And they can’t. According to the myth, the portals wink shut and the floor monsters fall on them like an ant cluster. It’s supposed to be a death sentence.”

Micah stopped walking for a moment. The portal … closed? The Tower could do that? The others waited on him, so Micah kept walking and asked, “And the other?”

Ryan didn't answer, so Lisa picked it up.

“People in Anevos have tried making homes in the Ruins time and time again since there are empty, sprawling cities with furnished houses just waiting to be occupied. But when you do, more and more monsters attack you until you’re forced out. And trust me, eventually, you will be.”

Micah thought of his stay in the cave in the Wolves’ Den and felt an irrational sense of fear. That was long behind him; why was he afraid of it now? Buf if he had stayed longer…?

“Why isn’t any of this in the Beginner’s Guide?” he demanded. “If you learn about it in school? It seems like something important to know.” And Garen hadn’t told him about them either.

“They aren’t taught in school,” Ryan said. “It’s not like they’re official rules. I heard most of those stories from older guys I went climbing with and who wanted to scare me. The ‘do not destroy’ consequence is basically a myth, but it’s not like people want to test it out for themselves, right? Otherwise, it’s just common sense really. We get so much from the Towers. Why destroy them or take more than we deserve?”

The way he said it almost sounded religious to Micah.

“Plus, it’s not like a normal beginner can break any of those rules,” Lisa said. “You’re an exception, Apples.”

Micah didn’t like that answer, but he still replied, “...Maybe.”

Lisa pointed at a food stall then, but Micah stopped walking as he realized where they were. His thoughts went to other things. They stood in a busy plaza of the Climber’s Bazaar and had three dead monsters in their backpacks.

“Potions,” he whispered.

As Lisa kept on walking, Micah headed towards a shop selling obscure ingredients. Ryan followed along. A few moments later, Lisa noticed they were gone and caught up with a steaming meat skewer in her hand. Micah bought a pouch-sized bag of bird feathers and a small bottle of fish oil. His mind tried to remember the recipes. They’d need to go to a normal market after this. He still needed milk, and eggs, and walnuts, and ...

He dragged the others from shop to shop, buying the regular ingredients for his first monster-based potions. By the last stop, he paid with iron pennies but he knew it was worth it.

Then they headed to Lisa’s. Micah had four new potions he could make.