I twisted my length, peering about. Wide eyes stared back at me, each pair set into grimy Coreless faces. Those faces were attached to thin necks and too-small trunks; even their limbs were skeletal and weak, with nowhere near enough muscle to fight off a raging bad-thing. Some of them looked wrong, beyond the way that the designs of all Coreless weren’t quite right. With twisted limbs, or with slack expressions, or with oozing pustules that raced across their flesh. Different from the Coreless I had seen before.

Weaker, and not by just a little.

Surprisingly, I was pleased by that - it was all the better to use them to prove the Great Core’s superiority. If all of the Coreless were as strong as my disciples, that would be significantly harder. Better to turn nothing into something rather than something into something more. The first change had an unquestionable cause, while the second could be debated by the blasphemous.

“Is that…” a few of them mumbled, looking back and forth between their [Little Guardian’s Totem] and my own form. I preened under the inspection, and preened even more under the smattering of [hope] that came from the grimiest among them. There was potential there.

“I’m seeing a lot of [Little Guardian’s Totem]s here. How many of them did your faction buy? There can’t have been enough for everyone; we didn’t make enough for that. Lots of towers around here,” Will said to one of the Coreless that had brought us here. He was a tall Coreless - taller than even The Unrepentant One - but with nowhere near the same mass of flesh. Though also not as skeletal as the grimy Coreless that rested in the tower-nest’s shadows. He was somewhere in between the two extremes.

Still large enough to crush me with a fall, though, but I felt more secure about random weight-related deaths now that I had [Transient Reanimation] and [Life Hunter], even if I hadn’t been able to test either of them yet. There hadn’t been time, and I was worried that the amount of life force that I needed to absorb to fully recover would be too high if I tested it while away from a large enough source of enemies.

I had faith that it would work, though. The Great Core would see it through.

“There wasn’t. Truth be told, I’m not sure it would have mattered even if there were enough to go around; most of the other factions never even bothered to really meet with your merchants. Claimed that they were telling tall tales. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone tried to pass off a mana-infused item for something that it’s not. And without one of your Guardian Statues around for proof, well…I’m sure they thought it was convenient that the [Little Guardian’s Totem]s just so happened to not have everything they needed to work the way they were supposed to. We, however, chose to believe,” the Coreless jabbered, his eyes looking appropriately alight with [fervor]. I hissed, congratulating him on his acceptance of the Great Core’s light.

He didn’t hiss back; maybe he didn’t hear.

“What made you choose differently than the rest?” Will jabbered back. “You wouldn’t have had any different information than any of the others. Not until you went to Orken, but you bought the [Little Guardian’s Totem]s before that.”

“Take a look around,” the Coreless replied to my disciple, waving one of his hands at the grimy Coreless around us. “You’ve seen outside. You’ve seen the differences between the towers. I’m sure that you’re observant enough to realize that the people have differences, too. As much as it hurts to say, we’re the forgotten. The cripples. The sick. The poor. And yes, even the law-breakers, for a portion of us. A faction of people who most of the other towers, content with their own lot and unwilling to share, try their best to ignore. And, with our defenses so much worse than theirs, that takes a toll.”

“Law-breakers?” Will interrupted, [startled].

“To an extent,” the Coreless answered, bouncing his shoulders up and down. “But keep in mind that not all laws are made equal, and some intentionally so. There’s only so much safe space to go around, and if a law can be made to push people out, to free up some of that space…that law will be made. Even if it means some are sent to the mines until they work off their sentence, only to find they don’t have a home anymore when they’re done. Even if it means that, after everything’s said and done, the only place they can go for safety is a place that’s not that safe at all. Here.”

My disciples looked around for a little while, as if seeing the surroundings in a new light. They must have thought the newest of the Coreless were just as pitiful as I did; a smattering of [sympathy] stretched through their [Little Guardian’s Totem]s.

“See there?” the Coreless continued, pointing at one side of the tower-nest. There was a section that looked different from the others around it. Newer. Cleaner - thought not clean enough that I’d willingly touch my tongue against it. Nothing here was. Honestly, these Coreless were filthy. I’d have to make sure they fixed that, if they were going to represent the Great Core properly.

“That was replaced after the last monster attack. A group of climbers that scaled the tower and smashed through a section of rotted boards before anyone could do anything about it. The bit of null-water we have just isn’t big enough for our needs, but we’re forced to make do. And that means that, every so often, we lose people. It doesn’t help that we’re at the city’s edge, too. Makes us the first place any monsters tend to go.”

“Nobody else comes to help?”

“No. Some of the weaker factions used to try, but the crossings between all but the nearest towers can be dangerous during a monster attack. The space is too open and, after leaving the safety of their null-water, more than one attempt at reinforcement has turned into a complete disaster. Now, they just don’t even try. Everyone just looks after themselves.”

“What about the stronger ones, then? Sure, fighting monsters is dangerous, but I can’t imagine that they’re just willing to let people be put in danger. ”

“You’d be wrong, then. How do you think they got so strong in the first place? Looking out for themselves, those hoarding assholes. Been that way for a long time, before I was even born. My Da always claimed that things used to be different; that the towers weren’t so divided in the past. Apparently, that changed after they found a few veins of xenlite down in the mines. Said people got greedy after that. Started laying claim to sections of it. Any semblance of cooperation just about vanished from there. Especially after the White Towers - I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised to find that those are the big white towers you might’ve seen, hard to miss - managed to make some sort of agreement with another city in exchange for a Core a few decades back. They’ve lorded it over us ever since. Claim that they’re the ones who made the sacrifices - I couldn’t tell you what those actually were, they seem pretty tight-lipped on that end, but I assume it involves the xenlite or the mines somehow - and that means they have no obligation to share the benefits.”

“Xenlite?” the-female-who-was-not-Needle cut in, cocking her head enough that it nearly bounced off my own. “What’s that?”

“A gem. Apparently, it can be used to collect Core mana real well. Works a bit different than just putting it in metal. Good for special enchantments. I’d have thought you would know,” the Coreless answered, [confusion] running through his [Little Guardian’s Totem]. His hand rose, a finger pointing towards where The Grateful One stood. “Your friend there’s got one set into her armor, I think. Don’t know what type of mana’s in it, but that looks like xenlite to me.”

He paused, shaking his head. “If it came from a mine like ours, a lot of people could’ve hurt themselves - or worse - getting that little gem. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. No,” he finally finished jabbering, “we’re here to talk about how we can convince you to do the same thing for us that you’ve done for Orken.”