The Living Tower

Chapter One: The Monster in the Tower

The claws on Valerianella Locusta's hands were made of shining yellow light, but they were more than capable of tearing through the flesh of the men who'd been foolish enough to think they could kill her.

There were five today. It took half as many minutes for her to bring them down.

As the last man collapsed, Val let the claws shaped from her magical energy fade. Dark blood pooled on the wood floor beneath her. She wiped her hands on the yellow skirt of her dress and watched new smears of red join the other stains on the fabric. The gray bodice and white shirt underneath hadn't gotten off easy, either. Gods be damned.

She considered changing clothes, but she'd put off laundry for so long that all she had left was a pair of trousers. And she wasn't in the mood to climb down to the well in the tower's basement. She'd avoid the task for a few more hours. Instead, she moved to close the window her attackers had entered through.

As for the bodies, well, if she was going to be held prisoner, she refused to be a maid, too. The witch could deal with them when he arrived.

Besides the scent of blood, it was a pleasant morning in the tower's uppermost room. A semi-circle of five casement windows occupied the southern wall, offering a view of forested mountains and allowing the sun to spill in. Golden light washed over the room's furnishings: Val's chair and vanity, the narrow stairwell to the lower levels, the always-locked door, and the many shelves crammed full of junk that was useless to Val. In addition to using the tower to imprison his monster, the witch used it as storage.

Nothing Val could use to escape, of course. Empty potion bottles and extra stashes of ingredients, crystals and plants, old grimoires in languages she couldn't read. There were also books, books like the one Val had been in the middle of reading before her attackers scaled the tower and came crashing in.

The book seemed to have been made to torture her.

The thing was titled Humankind, a surprisingly simple title for a book detailing every human civilization under the sun. Though, like many books on the tower's shelves, this one had plenty of torn and stained pages. Some were ripped out entirely.

The missing pages would have undoubtedly tortured Val more. Reminded her of the world she'd been locked away from for most of her nineteen years.

Unbothered by the five dead men on her floor, Val sank into her chair and continued flipping through the book. Admiring the artwork. Lamenting the fact that she was trapped in this godsforsaken tower, far, far away from any of the beautiful scenes that followed her into her dreams. An emerald sea serpent breaching the waters of the Titanic Ocean. Bison racing across the western plains of Terrica, herded by native riders on horseback. Beautiful merfolk lounging alongside walruses on rocky shores. The colorful Rainbow Reef off the coast of Souterria. Dragon skeletons on display in a Stjerwegian museum.

All of the descriptions were written in Terrish, humanity's common language. It was the language Val spoke with the witch, despite living in the heart of Stellany. He'd taught her Stellan, too, but she hardly had reason to use it.

Near the end of the book came a view of Earth's ring arcing over the horizon at the southern ice continent, and the same ring appearing as a thin line over a desert at the equator. Then there were the castles of the Three Kingdoms of the Ring. Each castle was built up by spacespeakers from the material of the asteroids they stood on, surrounded by skyspeaker-formed clouds, standing against the backdrop of the glittering cosmos.

Val was going to see the world beyond the tower someday. She had to. Her unmatched power couldn't be contained forever. Hell, she was powerful enough to rule some of the lands she admired. If she wanted to.