Chang-li was falling. His body splayed out as the wind rushed past his head. Far, far below a landscape turned and rotated and shone beneath him; rivers streaking across green fields and rough terrain alike, mountains rearing in the distance, a vast patch of desert somewhere off to one side. His eyes watered as he blinked against the wind.

What had gone wrong? He'd stepped through the door to the next portal, and here he was.

Terror gripped him. The wind screamed louder, only it wasn't wind; it was his own voice, ripped from his throat. He stifled his shout, and the noise barely dropped. Min was screaming too, and Hiroko.

He forced himself to look around rather than just down. All four of them were falling, heads together, bodies stretched out in four separate directions. He reached out his left hand and grabbed Min's right. She squeezed tight. He extended his right hand and took Hiroko's, and in another second, Joshi extended his arms as well. Now they all four fell in a circle.

The ground didn't seem to be getting any closer, but he could feel their speed. It couldn't take long like this.

"When we get close to the ground, I'll weave a —" he began.

"Don't bother," the trickster's voice said, and a second later, descending from above, came Sun Wukong. He was seated in a meditative position, his hands on his crossed knees, looking scornfully at them.

"There's no need to worry. I just thought you might enjoy a glimpse of our game board, so I arranged to have us enter from an unusual perspective."

"You what?" Joshi demanded.

Min's mouth was clenched tight shut. Her hand squeezed Chang-li's as they continued to fall.

"Yes, well, as an honorary tower denizen, I have certain abilities to influence my entrance. Sometimes it's important to make a dramatic appearance," Wukong said. "Now that I have your attention, let's renegotiate our little deal."

The wind whipped his words past Chang-li's ears. "Not discussing anything till we're on the ground."

"Well, that's a shame. Then I will do all the discussing for both of us," Wukong said. "I admit you fulfilled the terms of our bargain in a way I wasn't expecting. I can hardly blame you. Fulfilling the letter of a deal and not the spirit is one of my favorite ploys. Nevertheless, you did get me away from that mountain, and despite my annoyance at your dissimulation, I am now on a path toward my own freedom."

He shrugged. "I am only slightly annoyed at you. However, we are going to renegotiate our deal."

Chang-li thought of the token weighing down his pocket, even now. "The Jade Emperor gave me ways of dealing with you," he warned.

"Yes, yes," Wukong dismissed the notion. "He doesn't trust me, and after the last few thousand years of our enforced proximity, I can hardly blame him. It took me quite some time to determine that I had no way of escaping this tower on my own, and some of my attempts were no doubt annoying to His Imperial Majesty. However, we have more important things to discuss. We all, at this moment, want the same thing, to reach the top of the tower and win the prize that awaits there. For you: boons and your chosen ally laying claim to this tower. For me: my freedom. And the same thing stands in both our way, the cultivators who are even now climbing Five Element Mountain on their way to the top. They will not find the Jade Emperor. His majordomo, however, will usher them through to this floor in good time."

"Tell me about them," Chang-li demanded. At the same time he forced himself to study the ground below, imagining a map. Once he got down and had pen and parchment in hand again, he'd draw it out. The sun was standing directly overhead, so that was no help with direction. He'd have to draw the map without any orientation on it.

"Six cultivators, all at the Lux Embodiment stage, entered the tower. They are in two groups of three. And I warn you, each of them has in their possession an artifact of incredible power. At first, I thought merely spiritual weapons, but these are more than that. They seem to have acquired trinkets a little too powerful for them, the sort of thing that back in my day might be wielded by a Lux Dominator and then left in his sect's treasure trove once he ascended or died. Are such treasures commonplace these days? No?" Wukong asked when none of the four answered.

"Well then, they have resources none of you do, and are much stronger even than Chang-li and Joshi are. By the way, I suggest Joshi overcome that little issue with his Intent, and finish up with Lux Endowment already. We don't have much time to waste."

"We'll have to stay ahead of them," Chang-li said. "Do you know the secret of this floor? What we'll need to do to convince the Guardian to let us pass?"

Sun Wukong crossed his arms. " You will attempt to outrace cultivators far stronger than yourself? Hope you reach the top and are able to open the tower to your ally, and that he is standing by ready to aid you and comes to save all of you?"

When he put it that way, Chang-li didn't like the plan either. He cleared his throat. "We cannot take on three Lux Embodiment cultivators at once. Or worse, six."

"Agreed," Sun Wukong said cheerfully. "Hence, you'll have to find ways to separate them. As for the rest, I suggest you put the idea of racing them out of your mind. You don't need to make it to the top ahead of them. You need to make sure none of them ever leave this floor."

There was a long moment. The wind whipped past. Chang-li looked at the drawn faces of his companions as they fell. The ground beneath was beginning to unfold. He could no longer see the desert or some of the distant mountains, and the green beneath was taking on features, fields here, forests there.

"They won't be expecting you to try to fight," Sun Wukong said. "They'll expect to crush you easily, should they go up against you. And indeed they might, if they perceive that it's you." He smiled. "I suggest we make sure that they are forced into fights they weren't expecting."

"How so?" Joshi asked.

The ground was coming very near, perhaps a few hundred feet below. Chang-li let go of Min's and Hiroko's hands and forced his body so that his feet were toward the ground. Sun Wukong wove a strand of cloud around each of them. Chang-li felt it catching him, lowering him gently to the ground. He allowed the cloud to assist him as Sun Wukong sketched out a plan. By the time his feet were on the ground, his mind was racing as he listened to Wukong.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

This floor was dense in spiritual luxes. Even as Sun Wukong spoke, Chang-li began feeding violet lux into his temporal training chamber crystal. It wasn't quite half full, but at this rate it would be ready before long.

Wukong finished explaining his plan and looked at them. "Well?"

It was a dangerous plan and had elements Chang-li very much did not like. They would be putting entirely too much faith into the hands of a self-proclaimed trickster, one whom they had maneuvered into their service, and who might, despite his words, harbor a grudge. But Wukong was right. They couldn't just try to run away from Eri's minions.

It was time to turn the tables.

He nodded. "I think it's worth the risk."

To his surprise, it was Joshi who objected.

"I don't like what you're suggesting for Hiroko. Why don't you do it?" he challenged.

Wukong, instead of countering him, placed his hands together and peered over their tops. "Yes, I thought you might say that. It's a reasonable question. But the truth is, this is your fight, not mine. I am here to assist, not to do the work for you."

Hiroko turned a pale face toward Joshi. "I can do it," she told him. "It's time for me to start pulling my own weight around here."

Joshi had both her hands in his. He squeezed them tight. "You don't need to prove anything."

"It's not about proving. It's about doing," she said.

Chang-li had to look away as the two stared intently into each other's eyes. He caught Min's gaze. Min was hiding a grin behind an upturned hand. She winked at him.

After a moment, Joshi stepped back. "Very well," he growled.

Chang-li came over to Hiroko. "You'll be fine," he told her, taking her hand and squeezing it.

She looked surprised at the unaccustomed gesture, then her eyes widened just a bit as he passed the control token to her. Hiroko smiled at him. "Thank you," she said.

"In that case, Lady Hiroko and I will be off, to greet our visitors," Sun Wukong said. "I suggest the three of you visit the river ford over there. We'll see that they're directed to the right place. You start preparing for the first arrival."

Hiroko flew, or rather, Sun Wukong conjured up a mighty wind to push her and him along on a flying cloud. As she and Sun worked out their scheme, she fought back a wave of growing fear. There was no way she could wield blue lux against Lux Embodiment cultivators. They would sense. They would know.

But… blue lux wasn't the weapon of an ordinary ambitious climber. Sects attracted students with philosophies similar to those of the master. Prism Eri was a powerful, vain, but ultimately direct person. Not a mistress of illusions. Her students would be likewise.

They skimmed over the top of the grass, heading for an enormous wooden gateway. It was simply constructed, two enormous red-painted pillars with a red beam laid across them, like the spiritual arches in her grandmother's section of the Imperial Gardens where she'd wandered as a child. But this gateway was fifty feet high.

"They'll come through there," Sun Wukong said. "Are you prepared?"

"I will be," she said, working herself up to it. What had Parvah said? Never lie to herself? Hiroko looked at the truth, straight on. She was only at Peak of Mental Refinement. Could her illusions possibly deceive a Lux Embodiment cultivator? "I'm worried," she confessed. "They've all learned to see through the three Veils. They ought to recognize when an illusion is being used on them."

"You'd think," Wukong said cheerfully. "But as you will find, far too many cultivators believe the evidence of their senses, unless they've been alerted that they should not."

They reached the great gate and Hiroko alighted. Sun hovered on his cloud as she began to spin an illusion. Once more she clothed herself in imperial raiment. She lightened her countenance until her usually pale face was bone white, lidded her eyes with black, painted her lips with red.

Sun Wukong produced a mirror and let her inspect herself.

Hiroko arranged her hair atop her head, then added to it with more illusion, until her hair stood nearly two feet high, and shone with pearls. She wove a bouquet of delicate white and gold flowers around her left arm. Then crafted a gown that shimmered like a rainbow. She looked again and added two black dots on her cheeks to heighten the stark white.

Sun Wukong vanished the mirror and applauded.

"There," he said, "a heavenly maiden indeed. I will not say you are the very image of Kwan Yin," he smiled, "but I have not seen her in four thousand years or so..." He broke off. "They come."

Hiroko's heart beat faster. She schooled her features, hiding her thoughts as she had been taught so well to do, and a moment later, Eri's cultivators appeared, just as Wukong had said. There were six of them: three men, three women, in two groups. They stepped through the arch and looked about.

The first two men's eyes fell on her at once, and they proceeded forward. Hiroko raised a hand and outstretched it.

"Welcome," she said, and injected hints of Lux into her voice, spinning it out as her weave began to edge invisibly around and through them. "I am Heavenly Maiden Snow Blossom, here to welcome you on this stage of your journey."

One of the men laughed, tossed a glance at the other cultivators. "Well now, this is a better floor than that orange one already."

Two of the women strode past them, approaching Hiroko. "What trial do we face here? Where is the floor guardian?" one of the women demanded. "Speak!"

Hiroko felt a surge of dislike. There was no need for such rudeness, even if they did believe her to be merely a tower creation. "What's the challenge on this floor?" the other woman, probably her sister from their faces, demanded. "Speak quickly, or we'll have your lux!"

Hiroko held up a hand. She could feel her technique winding tighter around them and trusted it would be enough. "This floor tests your righteous deeds and your courage." Slowly, she spun out the invisible blue threads, trusting her pattern to do what it must.

"Courage," one of the female cultivators snorted as the invisible tendrils wrapped around her. "Right. It'll be one of those floors. What is it, slay a hundred rabid monsters, collect the eye of a phoenix and deliver it to the king?"

Hiroko quickly took at the connections between the cultivators groups and found, as she'd expected, a strong bond between the two sisters, a weak bond between the two men and the remaining woman, and hardly any bond at all between the last man and the pair of sisters. She adjusted her plans accordingly. Her task was to split them, make it possible for her friends to face them one or two at a time, not all at once. Her heart beat as the blue lux spooled out, binding ever tighter around their heads.

"You see the Three Sacred Mountains?" Hiroko asked. She pointed west, then east, then north. "Atop the Blue Mountain in the West and the Red Mountain in the East reside mystic monks, holding sacred scriptures. You must retrieve the scriptures from both, then take them to the Lord of the North. He will open the door for you."

"Does that mean passage to the next floor?" one of the men asked. He snorted. "I hate these towers that have themes like this."

"We should split up," the woman who wasn't a sister said. "One group go east, the other go west. We'll meet in the north."

The rest of the cultivators stared at each other. Hiroko could see the distrust in their faces. She hardly even needed to work her illusions here. Their own rivalries were doing it for her. She marveled at how well the Emperor's design had worked on these. They were at each other's throats, not climbing together as sectmates or friends.

"Agreed," one of the men said at last. "If we need both scriptures, you can't betray us and we can't outrace you. Once we pass the gate, though, the deal is off."

They glowered at each other, and Hiroko smiled. Time to add just a bit more fuel to this fire. "You must be careful," she told them. "The gate is narrow. Few may enter. To receive the texts, you must show your devotion to your advancement. You must not let anyone stand in your way." She raised her hands. "Now, come forward and I will offer you my blessing."

She had to hide her smile as one by one they came. Already her technique was settling on them so silently, they didn't even question as they stepped forward. She put her hands on each in turn, leaning forward to whisper honeyed poison in their ears.

And then they set off; three east, three west. She watched in satisfaction.

A moment later, Sun Wukong appeared again. "Nicely done."

"We need to get back to the others quickly," Hiroko said. "I need to help them prepare."

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