The dwarven Hisui and elven Skyheart Snowsong flew halfway across the world together… or at least, halfway across Living Jade Empire's map.

It was hardly the first time two individuals of vastly different species had traveled together. Nor the first time they had grown closer. But Jade wondered whether Harmony felt the way their friendship seemed to multiply with every extra minute that passed as the night turned to day again within the game.

The sun rose over a vast crowd as the skimmer launched itself over the tallest dune at the edge of the Sea that lay beneath the Imperial Palace in the sky. The islands that ran along the far edge of that expanse weren't even a shimmer along the horizon, but Jade knew where they were almost as well as if he had once placed them himself.

His mother had told him of her own character's flight upwards, before the stairs had been placed. Of the way she had made her own flight to the top of the world, not the way Appella had flown above the sea of air and dissolved, but all the way to the Emperor himself with the help of her dearest friends.

Their adventures had helped shape the Empire that now existed, and laid down the path that drew hundreds of characters to this shore every week. Perhaps thousands, or tens of thousands now, Jade guessed as he surveyed the seemingly endless crowd for enough room to park the sand skimmer safely.

The steps that rose into the air in a translucent shimmer as the sun rose within the game were rumored to always exist, but only become visible on the one day a week that the Emperor granted the citizens of the Empire audience. As one of the first climbers fell, Jade felt oddly certain that the steps did not actually exist within the same space for all characters.

"How does this thing actually fly?" Harmony asked as she gazed at the semitransparent spiral that rose into the sky ahead of them. "Any chance we can just fly up the staircase?"

"We'd knock other people off!" Jade objected.

"That seems to be a completely valid tactic from everything I've ever heard about the climb," she informed him as they watched another climber fall.

"The Emperor watches. How you get to the top matters," Jade told her seriously.

Of course, the climb was a competition. It was a race. Only a limited number of people could make their request, and getting to the top was just the start. The game's Emperor rewarded conquests whether that was fair or not, but Jade wasn't hoping to gain that sort of reward.

He was hoping to be allowed to speak to someone precious to him.

Harmony pointed and shouted over the increasingly loud buzz of the crowd who had been waiting for the stairs to appear, "Then land there! Below the curve!"

Jade aimed for the gap, and then realized why the space was still empty. A grave marker stood there. Not the kind that stood on real graves, no pile of stone, or solid plinth. This was a spiral of light that reflected the steps in the sky above it.

"Jump out!" he shouted back.

Skyheart Snowsong launched herself from the skimmer at his word, and landed in that beautiful spiral. Her hair spun in the invisible currents that pulled the illusory steps.

Jade grounded the skimmer at the edge of the crowd and turned back in time to see the arrows launch. Harmony and at least a dozen others shot lines upward to catch a step. Most fell back, but a few caught.

He kicked the ground and the jets within his boots launched him higher than he could ever have lept on his own. Higher than the first curve of steps.

Hisui landed hard, against a step as transparent as glass and as hard as stone. His character's coordination hadn't failed him, he was suspended firmly in the air. But with a hundred eyes gazing upward, he felt as awkward as he did in real life.

Harmony's character climbed toward him, her own line securely wrapped around the step above him. He pulled himself to his feet and got ready to pull her onto the stairs, before the sight of the people who had already climbed higher than this in the time it had taken him to land grabbed his attention.

They were scrambling upward almost madly. Desperately. Each one determined to arrive first.

For a moment, Jade hesitated. He didn't want to let go of his friend without at least knowing why, but… he wasn't certain that he was willing to trample anyone else's hopes or dreams in order to contact her.

Harmony pulled him out of it with her instruction, "Grab on Jade!"

He stuck his small arm toward her automatically, and when her slender elven fingers grabbed him, pulled with a dragon's strength. Harmony laughed as he tossed her up to the step above, landing as lightly and neatly as a bird. Or a hoverboard rider.

Jade looked down at the people who were struggling to climb the rope she had secured with a knot written in the air with an arrow. Most people wouldn't have been able to pull off such a trick shot with skill alone, but he hadn't noticed any sign of a god's favor. More people were struggling to leap from translucent step to step behind him, while yet others were laying pre-built ramps into place behind them.

Jade reached down and pulled. The rope, and all of the people on it rose upward. Faces filled with incredulous hope, uncertainty, and fear gazed upward. A few more people lept to snatch at the end of it as it was pulled out of reach.

Harmony called out, "Come on! Before they catch up!"

"In a minute!" Jade swore.

His deft hands tied the rope around the step he stood on once the highest of the climbers was within arms reach, and his boots lit again as he slammed his feet down. He raised his flask and dumped water over his feet and the step, making it shine slickly. He stamped down with his boots, and they flamed as he bounced upward.

The cord, that carried at least a dozen, lit as Hisui caught Skyheart Snowsong's hand. The elven rope didn't burn instantly, like a candle wick, but it smoked and smoldered and began to blacken. The climbers cried out in protest, and the highest frantically scrabbled for the slick step above them.

The people climbing from below pulled out weapons, and slashed at the charring rope. Jade didn't continue to watch what happened, but he listened for the sound of an impact, and heard one a moment later with an almost physical wince.

"That was needlessly kind," Harmony chided him as she almost effortlessly made her way upward at his side.

"Needlessly cruel, you mean," he grumbled.

She glanced back and then raised a single eyebrow. "Perhaps, but only if you think that helping them set them back in some way?"

Jade couldn't see a step where the next one should hang, but he could see the one above that. He didn't take its existence on faith, but he put his faith in the hand that took his when he reached out, as he pulled her close.

He could see her surprise, but she laughed when he tossed her upward without stopping to explain, and landed as gracefully as though they had practiced this climb a thousand times. Her hands caught the spool of thread he tossed after her and she knotted it around the step.

Jade secured the end he'd held, and stepped onto the thread as though climbing the wind that swept upward along the path the stairs laid. His dwarf ran up the nearly invisible thread as agilely as he could forge and cut a hundred toothed gear. The faintest glimmer, as something caught in the wind blew past the spot where a step should have been, made him laugh.

"Raising hopes without fulfilling them," he gasped as his feet hit the solid surface that supported Harmony's elf.

She didn't ask what he meant, she understood that he was finally answering, but she argued, "Raising hopes is fine, it's making false promises that would be needlessly cruel."

They left the nearly invisible thread that ran over a completely invisible step in place and continued to climb. They weren't catching up to the people who had gotten ahead of them, but no one was catching up to them yet either. A curious dragon peeked out of a cloud that seemed to be being drawn in slowly by the spiralling wind.