9) The Tower

  For a long moment, I just sat there in the gray sand and nervously waited… as absolutely nothing happened.

  “Viola?”

  “Anyone?”

  There was no response, so I called up Caesar again to start rolling me towards the door.

  After all, what else was I going to do? I was still a hunk of crystalized magic with no ability to move around on my own, and where else was I going to go? I appeared here right in front of a door, which made it seem like I was meant to go through it, so why not just on with it?

  Besides, even with Viola now being my Dungeon fairy it didn’t seem to let me bring her here with me, or in any way communicate with her from here. So it’s not like I had anyone to ask for advice.

  Luckily I didn’t need to try to figure out how to get a cat sized lizard to open up the entrance to the impossibly tall tower, the massive door simply swung inward with a slight metallic groan of the hinges as my salamander rolled me close enough to it.

  Behind the doors was a short passage with a curved ceiling leading into a round room with a shabbily dressed woman with dark gray wings folded up behind her shoulders sitting with her hands clasped in front of her on a battered looking off white stained wooden desk.

  Looking up, the woman gave me a nod and a slight smile before beckoning for me to approach her. So I set Caeser to nudging me into motion along the flat but not quite smooth floor.

  All of the floor was one solid piece, without any cracks or seams from separate stones being put together, while still having an uneven surface. The rough cut of the worn stone made it easier in fact to be rolled along on since if was any smoother I would roll off on some errant angle ahead of my summons each time it nudged me with its snout instead of steadily approaching the desk.

  Almost like the place was made for me.

  The winged woman, a thin, dark haired woman of an uncertain age and of average looks, cleared her throat. “Would it help if I came and got you?”

  Her voice seemed to carry across what I could now see was an immensely large chamber without her having to shout. “No thanks, I got it.”

  A good solid minute later I finally rolled to a stop to find that the woman had walked around her desk and was leaning forward with her hands braced on her knee. Her clothing seemed worn but serviceable like it was something she wore around the house to be comfortable without any concerns about who saw her dressed like that.

  Nodding at the top of her desk, she smiled nervously and began twisting the patches on the knees of her pants with her fingers, “Sorry, I’m new at this. There’s a sort of round rest on top of the desk that I think was made for living Cores, but it would be easier for me just to pick you to put you on it. I'm not sure how else you would get up there.

  I sighed. “Alright, go ahead.”

  Her hands were pretty cold as she reached down and lifted me up with a reverent look on her face before setting me down on what looked like a flipped over shallow bowl with a hole in the center. I could see that the thing looked like tarnished copper with some overlapping dark spots on it as she set me down on it with a metallic click.

  Strengthening up, she gave a nervous laugh and rushed over to sit behind her desk. “So, I was just created a moment ago to serve as your Liaison. Normally there would be a bunch of us to keep track of everyone going up in levels. But as you can see…” She spread her hands out to indicate the huge round room with only us at or on her desk sitting in front of one wall.

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  “It’s just us. But since your entire race consists of just you, I guess I can cover things on my own.” She tittered and looked around like was expecting someone to scold her for doing so. “I think I’m going to go by Unity for my name.”

  She half smiled, then leaned forward to look at me more closely. “Please don’t go and die on me, if you die I don’t think anyone of your race will ever exist again, and the God I was made to serve… well I don’t think he would ever call on me to do anything else for him. He’s… difficult.”

  Hrmp. “Unity, you don’t know the half of it. And be assured I have no intention of dying. Ever. But in regards to that... Where am I? What am I doing here? And how do I get back?”

  Although… This place seemed to have a distinct lack of monstrously large Core eating cockroaches out to try to eat me. Could I just stay here?

  The newborn being in front of me pressed her fist up against her lips as she cleared her throat.

  “Welcome to the Tower of Ascension. Normally you would come here in your dreams the next time you fell asleep, or got knocked out, after choosing to advance a level. This is where you get to interface with your Liaison…” She pointed at herself with both thumbs. “And choose what you get for going up a level.”

  Unity laid her hands flat on the table in front of her, “I hope you don’t mind, but since you don’t sleep, and didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, I went ahead and set things up to yank you over here whenever you decide to level up. It’s overstepping my normal authorization…”

  She let out a sigh and slumped down in her chair. “But my boss never showed up to give any orders, or to set policy, or to even greet me…” She rubbed at the corner of her eye. “So I’m having to make things up on my own.”

  I decided then and there that I wanted this woman to be on my side, so… “All the power, and all the blame, without anyone ever giving you credit. Sorry. But I at least think you’re doing a great job, and besides, Nameless made this resting thing here. So it might not be that he’s ignoring you, so much that it seems like he may think you got it all covered.”

  Unity sniffled and smiled. “That's… such a load of crap. But thank you for trying to make me feel better. It’s nice that someone cares enough to at least try.”

  Well, darn. “So how does this work? Gaining a level and all.”

  She interlocked her fingers. “Well, I want to give you as much as I can to... you know, to keep you alive. But if I make things overpowered the number of Merit points you need to go up another level not only goes higher, it goes up by a multiple.”

  Unity threw her hand out and her wings twitched. “And the multiple stays there, even if all your other levels are under powered. So I got to be careful what I give you, but…”

  The slowly Liaison grinned. “It’s a whole new class. I don’t have to pick out class abilities that will be so generalized they’re good for anyone who gets the class. We can pick things, especially for you, and if my boss doesn't like it, he can show up and change things to how he wants it himself.”

  She looked around the room and jerked her head up in challenge as she crossed her arms.

  I cleared my… I don’t have a throat. I made a throat clearing sound. “So, what did you have in mind?”