August struggled to his feet. The teleportation was botched for some reason, and he might even be lucky to be alive. But now he needed to get his bearing.

  Where am I?

  He looked around. The first thing that caught his eye was that he was in a dilapitated, half-collapsed home. He wasn't alone. Two climbers lay unconscious before him. He quickly identified them to be Quann and Seven as luck would have it.

  It would be easier to cooperate with them since they fought together before. Instinctively, he used his sonar to map out his surroundings, only to wince as his arcane lashed out. He was able to study where he was, but it didn't extend past this house.

  August checked Seven and Quann, slapping them for good measure, and when they didn't answer, he pulled them to a corner. He was sweating now, and he hadn't moved that much. His lips were chapped.

  He decided to step out of the door. Metal railings creaked beneath him, and he realized he was standing several floors high above the ground. Directly underneath him, an endless red sea stretched across the horizon, threatening to drown the tall buildings connected to each other like trees and vines.

  The sky burned red and black and reeked of blood and iron.

  The catwalk led to other, similarly dilapitated buildings. It snaked haphazardly, as if it was a built by a person who gave no regard to road design and simply built these tall buildings and despised having a person navigate it.

  He had designed the patch of forest that surrounded him using arcane, but that was controlled chaos, with each tree meticulously designed to be aesthetically pleasing. Not this one.

  In the distance, far up, lights crowded a small area. He didn't see any peopl. He returned back inside, sat down, and let his mind wander while he waited for one of them to wake up.

  August focused on his arcane. There are times when he was defenseless, but not quite as defenseless as he was now. For his entire life, he'd learned to use arcane even in his sleep, but now he felt blind, weak, and fragile. The surroundings threatened him at each bated breath.

  At first, he demanded his arcane listen to him. His pool was nearly full, but the nerves that controlled the arcane itself was pulled taut, snapped, and then ripped to micro fractures. In theory, he could still control his arcane and will it to existence, but he was facing a mental block of some sort.

  Usually, these mental blocks only last for no longer than a day, but this seemed to be the type that could extend his recovery by several days. He didn't have the time. He needed to delay his recovery and force his body to listen to him. Or condense a week's worth of rest to several minutes.

  He reached inward. It was time to addres the issue of the personality within his arcane.

  Ever since he arrived here in this tower, his power pulsed strangely, and then it began to rebel and nudge him to certain actions, like when he achieved a connection between Quann and Seven.

  He probed his arcane. He wanted to communicate with that strange feeling, but he'd have to learn how to talk to it first.

  He began by simply sensing it, feeling it there. It wasn't dormant. It felt more like a wave of emotions, a rapidly expanding and contracting of emotions. He felt it notice him too, signalling where it hurt by poking different parts of his body.

  He tried to communicate his thoughts through language, but as he meditated on the arcane, he realized it spoke through images, taste, and touch. And there was a being inside him, he was certain of that now. This thing, whoever it was, was part of him.

  After about half an hour or so, he was able to communicate through simple images. Emotions were easy to convey, but more complex forms of ommunications rankled him. He used his info bracelet to take notes about certain translations for words like yes, no, maybe, and how he could convey that with a positive emotion.

  Nevertheless, his arcane still seemed to understand what he was trying to say for the most part, with it being part of him since he was born, like a sibling.

  And it needed a name. He couldn't refer to it simply as a thing anymore, even if it didn't need one. Since it was so rebellious and ridiculuously stubborn in healing itself before it was allowed to help him, he called it Rebel. Strangely enough, Rebel felt feminine, not because he wanted her to be, but it felt right, and that was good enough of a reason to refer to it as one.

  No use arcane, it said with conviction using three forms of communication: a dull pain in his head, an image of a hand, and a blueish, translucent color. Oh, he loved it.

  Please? he asked.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  No.

  August imagined himself puffing his chest out, trying different ways to use this new language, forgetting where he was and his passed out friends. This was new, interesting, and entirely novel.

  But good moments like these are bound to end. Seven was the first to wake up, immediately opening her eyes and looking around.

  "Good morning," he smiled ruefully. "Or evening. Wherever we are."

  Seven tilted her head. "What happened?"

  He explained the brief distortion he felt when he walked through the portal, though he left out the part where he learned to communicate with his arcane. That wasn't urgent. What was urgent was to assess their position, and now that she was awake, he could look around while she guarded their so-called 'leader.'

  "Seven, can you guard Quann? I want to look around the area and see what's out there."

  She nodded.

  He decided to put communicating with Rebel on hold.

  The air was still as he stepped out into the open and felt his way across the iron path. He climbed a few stairs, turned a right and a left, and it was easy since the lights acted like giant fireflies guiding him where he needed to go. Convenient landmark, that one. The place was problably the tallest out of all the buildings here.

  When he climbed the last set of stairs, he saw the village. It was a small, dimly lit, empty shacks of houses. If it was summer and the sun bloomed in the sky, it wouldn't have made a difference. Every road looked like someone had murdered a man and never bothered mopping out the blood.

  August was, nonetheless, fascinated at this new sight. He took it all in, the smell of iron and the filth, but also the familiar stink of fish.

  Right across the street, a bright store was stationed. A blue-skinned, fat creature stood behind a counter. He wore an apron. He was surrounded by pots and pans and an assortment of fish whose faces looked very much like him. He cut them up neatly, set them aside, garbled a few words, and began cleaning the counter again.

  August approached him and sat on the stool. He had an idea of what this was. "This must be what they call a restaurant," he said.

  The creature spoke in a tone resembling popping bubbles and a drowning man. August couldn't understand a single thing.

  "Can I have some? Food? How much?"

  It was like communicating with his arcane, and it didn't take long before the giant fish man pointed at his info bracelet and gestured withh his fingers.

  "Two?" August guessed. "Twenty? No. Two-hundred credits?"

  Two-hundred credits it was. The soup tasted like as if someone imagined what cooking a soup would taste like and dumped the fish, intestines and all, into a pot and called it a day. No seasoning, not even a pinch of salt. It tasted like home, and he loved it.

  Once he'd eaten his fair share, he asked the fish cook for directions, to just point a place where he thought someone could help him speak his languge. He understood that.

  August was shown a piece of wood with a carving of a spider.

  After crossing several bridges, August found the building. It looked old. It was about four stories tall, and its windows were boarded with thick cobwebs. A spider sigil similar to what he saw before was carved onto the walls here.

  Nervous, he carefully walked inside.

  He saw the giant spider first. It was hanging from a cobweb that covered nearly the entire wall. The spider itself look liked half his size, but was clearly longer, and its limbs were threateningly sharp. He'd never seen a spider that was as large as this one, and he immediately tried to think of running away.

  "You gonna stand there and stare, boy?"

  It spoke! No. He didn't see it move, but he heard it anyway. It spoke like what an older woman would sound like.

  "Well? Come in here, I won't bite. Heh."

  August nodded, looking around for other spiders. "The cook pointed me here," he said. "My lady."

  "Fuller did? That's very nice of him. It's not often we catch a few strays. Welcome to the second floor, young man. I'm afraid I don't have any refreshments to offer you. Water is precious, and relief is scarce."

  "This is what the second floor looks like?"

  "Gods, no. You see, ever since the god on the third floor died, his blood has been spilling down here in the second floor. Strange things have been happening since then. The portals are acting erratically, so thoe who come here in the second floor, whether you're climbing or descending, sometimes end up in places they shouldn't be. Like here. You've been dealt a bad card. A stroke of misfortune."

  August nodded. "Is there, um, a way to leave this place?"

  She started weaving silk from her mouth, almost like a habit. "There is, but that'll be difficult. Only the Ravagers own an airship, and they guard it obsessively. Once the weather clears and the monsters thin out, they'll abandon this forsaken city. You'll want to live here for quite some time and either hope for a rescue from one of the other cities or steal the airship itself." She leaned forward, her front limbs resting on the counter. "You'll need food and board and water, all of which the Arvanna Sisterhood can provide, if you have the means to earn your keep. I'm Asell. I'm an arachne, as you can no doubt tell."

  "August," he said.

  "So, what'll be, August? Tell me what you want, and I'll see if I can help you. For a price, of course. Heh."

  August thought about it. At the moment, securing a safe place to settle in for his teammates was his priority. So, he told Asell he wanted lodgings and all the amenities required for survival, like access to food and water enough for him and Quann.

  The Sisterhood can provide you protection in one of the homes. Three rooms, close to us, and it'll cost you 10,000 credits a month. That doesn't include food and water. If you don't have any credits on hand, you'll have to work for it."

  August took note of that. he'd have to ask Quann later about this.

  "If you want food, you'll have to go to Fisherman. That's what they call him. I'll put a marker on your bracelet. He lives in the docks and he's been supplying the only food stall here."

  August exstended his hand. In turn, Asell reached behind her and looped a bracelet, tenderly tapping it against his.

  "Water is more difficult to acquire. The sea of blood underneath us is poison, even for my kind. We'll have to wait for rainfall to stock up on water." She paused. *"The Ravagers owned dozens of wooden barrels across several areas of the city. If you're up to it, I can offer you a mercenary work. You and your friends will need the Sisterhood's cooperation anyhow."

  August raised an eyebrow. "What kind of work?"

  She tapped the counter, thinking about it. "Raiding their encampments. Intimidated?"

  Well, he paused. This was, after all, some kind of test, wasn't it? Another floor, another test, and, another set of rewards.