Dearest Kinsley,

I go on to prepare a place for you. Even now, I ascend to find that which you deserve. Along my ascent I found others like me, of which there are many. We are of one mind and soul. We toil and squall and fuck in the fetid mud, while the elites and gods cavort in the skies above, gorging on the fruits of our labors.

Have you enjoyed the clouds, Kinsley? I certainly hope you have, before your wings are clipped.

Now that my anger has passed, I don’t blame you for what you did. It was always this way. Society wants to believe it can identify evil people, or bad or harmful people, but it’s not practical.

But I cannot look past your hubris. For I am a man of passion. At the orphanage they put me in just before Bush Senior’s first term, there were some older boys that caught a horse in a barren field, trapped against the cliff face of a steep mountain. They put kerosene on his tail and lit it and cut the rope. Away went the horse, bombing up the unscalable mountain, stumbling, climbing ever higher to get away from the flame. But the flame went with him. That horse, that’s me. The man of passion.

And you set the fire.

I’ll continue to climb, kindling this eternal flame you set. For I have found god and god has found me. I’ll search the mountain for the cracks between places, mine the hidden veins of precious metals that exist within the annals of etemenanki. And I will forge those metals into a sacrificial knife. I’ll prepare an altar for you in the shape of an enneagram, with an empty shell arranged at each point. After all, a clown can get away with simple murder. I have something more sophisticated in mind.

With love,

Myrddin.

It was the best I could do on short notice. There were a few misdirects that led nowhere: I’d picked an enneagram both because it was less cliche than a pentagram, and if Miles bit and swallowed, it would lead him to the enneagram personality types, and an assumption that each point of the enneagram represented the sort of person I intended to kill: The Achiever, the Challenger, and the Investigator would stand out like a sore thumb.

I avoided using my own written voice as much as possible, just because Miles was exactly the sort of motherfucker willing to hunt down old essays and homework once he had a writing sample, so I was cribbing from a combination of Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, and Fish, paraphrasing at points, referencing indirectly at others, with some conflicting socialist and fascist undertones thrown in to further muddle the message. Along with making the message sound suitably menacing, the references would serve as a dog whistle for Miles. He’d realize I was taunting him—and with any luck, assume I’d accidentally tipped my hand with all the references to verticality.

It worked. Cook was shoving his way through the crowd, trying to get to me. He circumvented the line and several region affiliated Users stopped him. He pointed at me, then pulled out his badge and tried to shove past. There was still a mark on his throat from the garrote.

A few of the region Users looked in my direction, but none of them saw me.

I smiled widely, all teeth, and drew my thumb across my neck. Shortly after, someone escorted me through the massive gates.

/////

The scent caught me first. Funnel-cake, fatty meat, and popcorn hung in the air like olfactory ghosts of a dying past. Past the small assortment of vendors that could have been at home in any festival. At the front, there was a counter that looked a bit like a carnival ticket booth, only instead of small trinkets and plastic prizes no one remembered more than a day, there was a series of swords, axes, and wands. They weren’t in the best shape. The top shelf merchandise was top shelf only in the sense that they were mostly free of nicks and dents. Otherwise, they were basic in their designs, and absent the sheen and clarity of good metal.

It was difficult to breathe. Visitors overran the tower, capacity nearly bursting. I spotted Nick. He was standing next to a facsimile of a small medieval village, complete with astroturf speaking to a diminutive-looking man, nodding enthusiastically as the man took “spoke with his hands” to entirely new levels, while Keith and Halima stood off to the side, looking terribly bored.

The peasant reached out to me with an overwrought gesture. “Good ser, are you the last hero?”

Whoever he was, he’d caught me completely flat-footed. “Um… what?”

“He’s with us,” Nick said.

The peasant raised his hands upward, in one of the most hackneyed portrayals of supplication I’d ever seen. “Praise be to Elphion! The quartet of heroes has formed in the meteor’s passing and the ancient prophecy is fulfilled.”

Keith cringed, probably too polite to groan out loud. Nick seemed happy to let the whole thing play out. The massive turkey leg he idly nibbled on hemorrhaged grease from its inadequately swaddled backend, directly onto the astroturf.

Maybe if none of us said anything, the “peasant” would cut to the chase.

“Do you have a quest—” Nick started.

“A prophecy foretold our arrival?” Halima asked.

I was briefly tempted to throttle her.

“Oh yes.” The peasant nodded vigorously, clearly excited at the opportunity to delve into the lore and extend his performance. “Many moons ago, a traveling tinker passed through. He foretold the rise of the tower, and the many treasures laid within. He also divined the rise of the four heroes that would climb the tower and unearth the mystery within.”

“—three heroes that would climb the tower and unearth the mystery within.” Someone echoed. Another peasant, a few huts down, repeating the same lines to what looked to be a User couple that brought along a third wheel. Which meant our current peasant wasn’t improvising. Someone wrote this god awful script.

The man’s arm looped through the woman’s. I recognized him as one of the pug-faced goons from Sunny’s office. But what really caught me off-guard was the woman herself. I knew her immediately; her face permanently etched in my memory since the tunnel.

She was the tail I’d missed. The woman who unloaded the escalade with a child in tow and showed up after the trial. Behind them, another, taller man stood. He was wearing a high ponytail wrapped in leather, his face a mask of snark.

Gotta be one of the high level teams.

I was still in the back of the group. The peasant was so focused on Halima I could probably move freely. I took a step backward, letting the bustling crowd sweep me towards the second group.

I focused hard, filtering the external chatter to a minimum, trying to zone into the conversation.

The woman fiddled with her wallet, retrieving a small golden card with a dark vortex on the front. Her dark blue acrylic nails glittered in the mess of high spotlights.

“You already have the Praetor’s Assurance.” Their peasant tried to whistle, but the sound he made was more like wind whipping through a cave.

“We’d like to fast-pass to the twenty-eighth floor.” Acrylics said. She was the only one looking at the peasant. Pug-face and Ponytail were scanning the room in that laid-back, deceptively casual way that only came with experience.

Their peasant laughed nervously. “And the Praetor’s Assurance allows you full entry to any floor under thirty. But fair warning, brave heroes. Past the twentieth floor, the tower grows exceedingly dangerous.” He cupped his mouth and stage whispered. “Floor twenty-eight is no exception. There’s talk of vampires afoot.”

“Do we look concerned?” Ponytail sneered.

The peasant blinked. “Fair enough.” He pointed towards the center of the room, a mass of people crowded around them. Bright beams of light illuminated the lifts. Whether they were artificial or actual magic was impossible to say. “Your writ of assurance provides you with two free snack items and a discount at the smithery, if you lack silver weapons. Once you’re prepared to embark, head that direction, a tracker will show you the way.”

They all turned at once, walking towards the lifts with purpose. I kept my head down. Once the high level team was clear, I scanned the crowd. I had a minute, maybe less, before my companions noticed my absence.

Need to do this quickly.

I saw my mark. A man wobbling in adventurer’s leathers, double-fisting a pair of blended drinks. My goal was nestled between the index and second finger of his left hand—a golden and black card, exactly the same as the one Acrylics used to cut the line. I weaved through the crowd, keeping my focus past the man, and toggled the Ordinator’s mask to full-coverage.

I ran into him at a brisk walk.

The moment we collided, I used the distraction of the impact to pluck the card out of hand, covering it by making a show of trying to stabilize his drinks.

“What the—“ He started.

“My bad. Didn’t see you.” I slid the card up my sleeve and stepped away.

“No shi… no shit you didn’ see me.” The man stared at a wet section on his chest with the sort of clouded, confused contempt only a drunk person can manage. I beat a quick retreat towards my group at a brisk walk.

A few seconds later, long after I’d safely disappeared into the crowd, I heard him exclaim. “Where—where the hell’d my PayPal assurance go?”

I still wasn’t done. I needed to make sure the card worked, and wasn’t tied to the User’s name. All the vendors had a long line except for one. A guy off to the side who was, strangely, one of the few employees in normal clothes.

“Pink or blue.” The man asked, wiping his hands on his apron.

“I don’t care.”

“Twenty selve.”

Jesus. This really was a theme park. I flashed him the card.

He took the card and marked it with what looked like a piece of gray chalk, leaving a single check mark in the upper-left corner, then reached into the tree of multicolored poofs, handing me a bundle of pink cotton candy and returning the card. “Enjoy your stay in the Gilded Tower.”

Good enough. I couldn’t know definitively that they didn’t have additional security measures in place when you use the card to skip floors, but the interaction at least supported the possibility that they had nothing sophisticated in place.

I toggled the back to the default setting

The peasant was still talking when I slid back into place beside Nick. “… and so the third age came to pass…”

Nick took one look at me, eyes trailing towards the pink cotton candy in my hand until he looked away, one hand pressed to his mouth, his shoulders shaking.

“What?”

He shook his head, steeling his face. “Nothing at all.”

Perhaps—finally—sensing he was losing us, the peasant finally directed us to the lifts. We’d be starting on the second floor. I watched the priority lifts out of the corner of my eye, watching to see how the card process worked. If anything, it was less stringent than the cotton-candy vendor had been. They didn’t even bother marking the cards, just glanced at them, and ushered the holders onto the priority lift.

A violet message notification lit up in the corner of my vision. I focused on it until it expanded.

Miles.