Chapter 32: The Layered Truthless Lie

  Yana and her familiars appeared on a ridge overlooking the Truthless Lie Tower. It was a spiraling tower made of sand, water, glass, and deep darkness. It spiraled up into the sky like a giant drill bit trying to bore a hole into the fabric of reality. Its components moved with an unnatural fluidity that made the mind buzz if one looked at it too long.

  Yana watched the tower for a long moment. She knew it would not be easy to enter—no one in Shi had tried in eons because none had ever returned—but to see it had no doors and cast no shadow was a bit annoying.

  Alisha spoke up, her lace dress fluttering in the windless air and her soft voice belying her fierce power. “DD will have to use [Void Step].”

  Both Amber and Yana nodded as Tasha burst into condescending laughter. “I think [Dimensional Step] would be better.”

  The ground vibrated and small chunks of soil rose to incorporate themselves into DD’s vast form as he spoke. His companions, including Yana at this point, no longer flinched. Yana honestly thought about it; although he needed to practice more, she did as well, and her [Dimensional Door] was only at level 2.5. She nodded and prepared herself.

  There was no shadow, so she could not see into the tower, and that made this pretty dangerous, but her affinity to darkness gave her confidence. She waited for the tower to spin to its side of darkness and watched. Her black eyes slid across the dark surface, peering for places to put a dimensional door. It only took two revolutions for her to find three good spots. She breathed deeply and her familiars attached themselves to Yana through magical connections and deep internal bonds.

  Yana’s magic moved forward just as the darkness side began to face them. The door opened on the first try; it set deep and opened wide. The group moved through the door and entered the tower.

  Yana bit back a curse as they all passed through and began free-falling in the darkness. She penetrated the darkness and saw there was no floor—there was just an endless drop. She sighed. “Amber, Tasha, DD, Alisha, to me!!”

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  The connections between Yana and her familiars strengthened and tightened. Yana looked around them and spotted a second area of softness between the layers. Her eyes dissected the area. The other side rippled and reflected in her mind’s eye, and she knew she would move to the water side. There, she could see shelves.

  She looked below them in the darkness and she knew what she wanted was there. The Winter Soul was below them, but it believed itself to be directly below them. They continued to fall, and she just made the decision.

  [Dimensional Door]

  The group moved through the door and water immediately washed over them. They stood on a wide shelf, water flowing all around them. Yana again looked down; the shelves below them were wide, green, and waterfalls poured over the sides and down to the next levels. She could not sense her secret item. She pursed her lips.

  She needed to go lower in the tower, but she needed to be on the side of darkness. She looked for a softness in the layers again. She found two in the sand side. It had shelves as well, but there was constant movement. Yana saw the steady motion of sand falling and became apprehensive. It seemed like sand moving through a sieve to bury everything below.

  She drew her familiars to her and then opened a dimensional door back to the darkness. Again, they were all in a free fall. Yana looked for another place to open a dimensional door.

  “Mistress!” Tasha’s annoyed voice cut through the darkness and Yana sighed.

  [Dimensional Door]

  The group moved over to the glass side. The shelf they stood on began to crack.

  “DD!” This time it was Amber. Her yell caused DD to immediately alter his mass and cause himself to become lighter. The shelf stopped cracking, but the group still moved to a different shelf.

  Yana focused, and again—no Winter Soul. She sighed. “It’s in the side of darkness, but we do not get closer to the bottom; we just free fall. If it is an illusion, I cannot sense it. It is just a free fall.”

  She thought a long while. “We will go down on the water side and then return to the darkness.”

  “Should we go back and try to figure out how far down we need to go?” Alisha’s voice sounded full of concern.

  Yana shook her head. “I already tried to sense it. I feel that we need to go down via a different side.”

  “But we haven’t even been to the sand side.”

  Yana looked to Tasha. “We would need void magic for that. I sense the sands are constantly shifting and the shelves are just sinkholes.” She thought for a moment and looked up again. “There would need to be precision involved. Let’s go back out and use one of the lower spots on the darkness side. I sensed something there that felt like a wall. There was a smaller area above it…”

  Yana stopped speaking, lost in thought.

  [Dimensional Door]

  Outside the tower, Yana waited for the darkness side. She would need to begin again.