The Forgotten Architect released Su's wing and settled into what appeared to be a comfortable sitting position, despite the fact that the floor was completely flat and there was nothing to sit on. It just... folded itself down, joints bending in ways that suggested either extreme flexibility or a complete disregard for how spines were supposed to work.

  "Right," it said, its voice now carrying a tone of businesslike efficiency. "Before we embark on our grand quest to dismantle three centuries of institutional oppression, we should probably address some practical concerns."

  "Like what?" Su asked warily.

  "Like the fact that you can't fly, you're trapped in a tower surrounded by people who want to dissect you, and you've just allied yourself with a faceless entity that's been imprisoned for longer than your country has existed." The Architect paused. "Also, your friend appears to be having a crisis."

  Fernando was indeed having a crisis. His fronds were vibrating at a frequency that suggested deep botanical distress, and his mental voice was a continuous stream of: "We're going to die we're going to die we're going to die this is worse than the fern-grenade incident we're going to die—"

  "Fernando," Su said firmly. "Breathe."

  "I'm a PLANT. I don't BREATHE."

  "Then... photosynthesize calmly?"

  "THERE'S NOT ENOUGH LIGHT IN HERE TO PHOTOSYNTHESIZE MY WAY OUT OF THIS EXISTENTIAL CRISIS!"

  The Architect tilted its blank face toward the panicking fern. "Fascinating. A sapient plant with anxiety. Is that common in this era?"

  "He's special," Su said. Then, to Fernando: "Look, we've been in worse situations."

  "NAME ONE."

  "The warehouse raid. The tax vault. The time we fell forty stories and survived."

  "THOSE WERE ALL WITHIN THE LAST WEEK. WE'VE HAD FIVE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES IN SEVEN DAYS. THAT'S NOT SURVIVAL, THAT'S STATISTICAL ANOMALY."

  "He makes a valid point," the Architect observed. "Your survival rate does suggest either divine intervention or catastrophically bad luck that's somehow self-correcting."

  Su glared at the faceless being. "Not helping."

  "I'm not trying to help. I'm trying to assess our actual chances of success, which currently stand at..." The Architect paused, as if calculating. "...approximately seventeen percent. And that's being generous."

  "SEVENTEEN PERCENT?" Fernando's mental shriek was glass-breaking in its intensity.

  "Possibly less if we factor in the Chancellor's resources, the cult's fanaticism, and your tendency to make decisions based on spite rather than strategy."

  "Okay, first of all," Su said, her feathers ruffling with indignation, "spite is a perfectly valid strategic motivator. Second, seventeen percent is better than zero. And third—" She stopped. "Wait, how are you calculating that?"

  "Three hundred years sealed in a void leaves one with excessive time for probability mathematics," the Architect replied. "Would you like to see my work? I can project it as a visual diagram. There are several dozen variables, including something I'm calling 'Su's Chaos Factor' which I've had to represent as a fluctuating unknown because your decision-making patterns defy conventional modeling."

  "I'm unpredictable. That's a tactical advantage."

  "No, you're random. There's a difference. Unpredictability implies intentional misdirection. You're more like... chaos in bird form." The Architect's blank face somehow conveyed thoughtfulness. "Though I suppose that could be useful. Chaos does tend to break rigid systems."

  Fernando had recovered enough to rejoin the conversation. "Can we please focus on the immediate problem? Which is that we're trapped in a tower with less than a day before this sanctuary collapses and we're exposed to everyone who wants to kill us?"

  "Ah yes," the Architect said. "The escape. That is somewhat problematic."

  "'Somewhat'?" Su repeated.

  "The sanctuary is sealed from the outside. The Chancellor designed it as a trap—anyone corrupted enough to break the seal gets purified to death. Anyone pure enough to enter doesn't need to, because they're not the kind of threat it's meant to contain." The being gestured at the curved walls. "The only reason I could exist here is because I was sealed from within when the sanctuary was created. I'm grandfathered in, so to speak."

  "So we can't leave."

  "I didn't say that. I said it's problematic." The Architect stood, its too-thin frame unfolding with unnatural grace. "There are always loopholes. I should know—I helped design this tower's security. Every system has vulnerabilities. The trick is finding them without triggering the self-destruct mechanisms."

  "This tower has self-destruct mechanisms?" Su asked weakly.

  "Oh yes. Seventeen of them. Well, probably more now. Donovan was paranoid about spies and saboteurs. Half the tower's structural supports are actually explosive runes disguised as decorative engravings." The Architect moved to one of the sanctuary walls and pressed its hand against the smooth stone. "Let's see... carry the coefficient, account for temporal drift, factor in bureaucratic laziness over thirteen generations..."

  Lines of light appeared where the being's hand touched the wall—not the golden glow of the sanctuary, but something else. Architectural diagrams, structural blueprints, equations that hurt Su's eyes to look at directly.

  "Ah," the Architect said with evident satisfaction. "There. Maintenance shaft seven-B. Built in year thirty-two of Donovan's reign. It bypasses the main security because the servants needed a way to clean the upper levels without setting off alarms every time they carried a mop bucket."

  "A maintenance shaft," Su said flatly.

  "Don't sound so disappointed. Some of history's greatest escapes have involved maintenance shafts. There's a certain elegance to it—the powerful always forget about the infrastructure that enables their power." The being traced a path along the glowing diagram. "This shaft connects to the tower's ventilation system, which outlets at ground level near the kitchens. You'd emerge directly into the service areas, which are notably less guarded than the main entrances."

  "That... actually sounds reasonable," Su admitted.

  "There's only one small complication."

  "Of course there is."

  "The shaft entrance is on the other side of this wall." The Architect tapped the stone. "Behind approximately three feet of solid, magically reinforced masonry that I cannot break without disrupting the sanctuary's purity field."

  "So we're back to being trapped."

  "I said I cannot break it. I'm a being of pure magical theory—my physical capabilities are somewhat limited after three centuries of disembodiment." The Architect turned its blank face toward Su. "However, you have that fascinating Void-Sovereign ability. And more importantly, you have those spectacles that let you see structural weaknesses."

  Su pulled out her Lens of Procedural Insight. She'd been so focused on the immediate crisis that she'd forgotten about its final charge. Looking at the wall through the Lens revealed exactly what the Architect had described—thick masonry, layered wards, and... there. A hairline fracture running vertically through one section where two construction phases hadn't quite aligned properly. A weak point.

  "Even if I can break through," Su said, "I've got a damaged wing. I can't climb down a maintenance shaft."

  "You won't have to climb. Gravity will do most of the work." The Architect's tone suggested this should be obvious. "The shaft is vertical. You'll essentially be falling with style."

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  "That's not reassuring."

  "It's not meant to be reassuring. It's meant to be accurate." The being tilted its head. "Though I suppose we should address the other issue."

  "What other issue?"

  "Once you break that wall, the sanctuary's purity field will destabilize. It will collapse immediately rather than in twenty-two hours. Which means every corrupted entity in the tower will suddenly be able to sense this location. You'll have perhaps thirty seconds before Vermilion and the cultists arrive."

  Fernando made a sound like a tea kettle about to explode.

  "So our escape plan," Su said slowly, "is to break a wall, trigger a security collapse, fall down a maintenance shaft with a broken wing, and hope we reach the bottom before the evil peacock and death cult catch us."

  "Yes. Simple, elegant, and with approximately nineteen percent chance of success—I've recalculated based on new data." The Architect somehow managed to sound pleased with itself. "Better odds than before!"

  "We're doomed," Fernando whispered. "We're so profoundly doomed."

  "Probably," the Architect agreed. "But you're doomed anyway. At least this way you're doomed with purpose." It moved to the doorway—the threshold where its prison had been. "I'll create a distraction on the upper levels. Something flashy and attention-grabbing. While everyone's focused on that, you make your escape."

  "What kind of distraction?" Su asked.

  "Oh, I haven't decided yet. Perhaps I'll reanimate some of the decorative gargoyles. Donovan always hated those things—said they were tacky. Making them attack his descendant's tower guards would be deliciously petty." The blank face turned toward Su one last time. "I'll find you after. I have some business to attend to in the city. Three hundred years of back rent to collect, so to speak."

  "Wait—you're just leaving?"

  "I'm providing tactical support. There's a difference." The Architect paused at the threshold. "Besides, I suspect we'll cross paths again quite soon. Chaos tends to find itself. Or in your case, you tend to find chaos and then make friends with it."

  And with that profoundly unhelpful statement, the being stepped through the doorway and vanished into the darkness beyond, leaving Su and Fernando alone in the sanctuary with a wall to break and a rapidly approaching deadline.

  "Su," Fernando said carefully. "That thing was incredibly suspicious."

  "Yes."

  "We have no reason to trust it."

  "Correct."

  "Its escape plan is essentially 'cause a disaster and hope for the best.'"

  "Also correct."

  "And you're going to do it anyway, aren't you?"

  Su looked at the wall, at the weak point revealed by her Lens, at her damaged wing that would make any kind of controlled descent a fantasy at best. She thought about seventeen percent odds and "falling with style" and the absolute certainty that staying in this sanctuary meant either capture or death when the field collapsed.

  "Yep," she said, and pulled herself to her feet. "But first, I need you to do something for me."

  "What?"

  "When I break this wall and the sanctuary collapses, I need you to throw yourself down that maintenance shaft as hard as you can."

  Fernando's fronds went rigid. "WHAT."

  "You heard me. I'm going to break the wall, Shadow Step through, and then you're going to launch yourself after me. I'll catch you on the way down."

  "That's—that's the stupidest plan—you want me to become a projectile AGAIN?"

  "It worked with Vermilion."

  "I WAS TRAUMATIZED."

  "You were effective. There's a difference." Su positioned herself in front of the weak point, gathering her void-energy despite the sanctuary's suppression. "Look, you can either come with me and have a nineteen percent chance of survival, or stay here and have zero percent when this place collapses. Your choice."

  Fernando was silent for a long moment. Then: "I hate you so much."

  "I know."

  "If I die—"

  "I'll find you the nicest pot in the afterlife. Promise." Su took a breath, focused on the wall, on the hairline fracture visible through her Lens. "Ready?"

  "No."

  "Perfect. On three. One—"

  "Wait, I'm not—"

  "Two—"

  "SU, I'M SERIOUS—"

  "Three!"

  Su channeled every ounce of her Void-Sovereign power into a single, concentrated strike against the weak point. The sanctuary's purity field fought her, compressing her corruption, making it feel like she was trying to punch through water. But the wall was physical, and physics—despite the tower's best magical efforts—still applied.

  The stone cracked. Then shattered. A hole two feet wide opened up, revealing darkness beyond and the musty smell of old ventilation shafts.

  The sanctuary's golden light immediately began flickering. The purity field, its structural integrity compromised, started to collapse.

  Su didn't wait. She Shadow Stepped through the hole, her void-energy flaring as the suppression lifted, and found herself in a vertical shaft that dropped into darkness. Handholds on the walls—maintenance ladders, long rusted. No time to climb. She spread her wings, ignoring the screaming pain from her injury, and started a controlled fall-glide-tumble that was more panic than technique.

  Behind her, Fernando's mental voice: "OKAY I'M COMING DON'T LEAVE ME YOU TERRIBLE BIRRRDDDDD"

  A dirt-and-frond projectile launched through the hole, arcing through the air with the grace of a thrown brick. Su twisted, caught the fern in her talons, and immediately regretted every decision that had led to this moment because Fernando's broken pot was heavy and her wing was damaged and they were both falling.

  Above them, she heard it—Vermilion's screech of rage as he sensed the sanctuary's collapse. The sound of cultists materializing in the room they'd just abandoned. The Architect's voice booming through the upper levels: "SURPRISE! I'M BACK! AND I'VE BROUGHT FRIENDS!"

  Something exploded. Su couldn't see what. She was too busy desperately trying to slow their descent as they plummeted down the maintenance shaft, bouncing off walls, hitting ancient rungs that broke under their impact, creating a cacophony of crashes and Fernando's continuous mental screaming.

  They fell for what felt like forever but was probably only fifteen seconds.

  Then Su saw light—dim, flickering torchlight from below. The kitchen level. Ground floor. Escape.

  She tried to angle toward the outlet, failed, hit a wall, spun, and essentially exploded out of the maintenance shaft in a shower of loose brick, ancient dust, and one very dizzy fern.

  They crashed into what appeared to be a storage room. Bags of flour burst open on impact, coating them both in white powder. Su rolled, tumbled, hit a shelf full of preserves, and came to rest in a pile of broken pottery and jam.

  For a moment, there was silence. Then Fernando's weak, traumatized voice: "I want a divorce."

  "We're not married."

  "Then I want whatever the botanical equivalent is. I want to be repotted in a nice, quiet garden far away from you."

  "Noted. Can you move?"

  "Physically or emotionally?"

  "Physically."

  "...Unfortunately yes."

  Su extracted herself from the jam pile, shook flour out of her feathers, and assessed their situation. They were in what was definitely a storage room, probably off the main kitchen. The maintenance shaft entrance was now a gaping hole in the wall. Alarms were starting to sound from somewhere above. And she could hear voices—guards, probably, responding to the noise.

  She grabbed Fernando's pot (now completely covered in flour and jam, making it look like the world's most unfortunate baking accident) and moved to the door. Cracked it open. Peered out.

  The kitchen was chaos. Servants were running everywhere, responding to alarms, shouting about "intruders on the upper levels" and "the Chancellor's orders." Nobody was looking at the storage room.

  "We walk out like we belong here," Su whispered.

  "We're covered in jam and flour. I look like a failed pastry. You look like you were breaded for frying."

  "Details. Come on."

  Su stepped out into the kitchen, moving with the purposeful stride of someone who was exactly where they were supposed to be. The servants, busy with their own panic, barely glanced at the flour-coated bird carrying a jam-covered plant.

  One cook did look up. Blinked. "What the—"

  Su projected with her Sonic Manipulation, creating the impression of a supervisor's voice from behind the cook: "GET BACK TO WORK! THE CHANCELLOR WANTS—"

  The cook spun around, looking for their supervisor. By the time they turned back, Su was already through the service exit and out into the predawn darkness.

  They emerged in an alley behind the tower. The city was just starting to wake. And Su, covered in flour and jam, carrying a traumatized fern, had somehow escaped the Chancellor's tower, multiple threats, and a collapsing magical sanctuary.

  "Nineteen percent," Fernando said weakly. "He said nineteen percent."

  "We beat the odds."

  "WE SHOULDN'T HAVE. THE MATH DOESN'T WORK. WE SHOULD BE DEAD OR CAPTURED OR—"

  "But we're not," Su said, and started limping toward the warehouse district. Her wing throbbed. Every muscle ached. She was pretty sure she had flour in places feathers shouldn't have flour.

  But she was alive. Fernando was alive. And somewhere in the tower behind them, the Forgotten Architect was causing enough chaos that nobody would notice two small figures disappearing into the morning mist.

  +300 XP

  ESCAPE SUCCESSFUL

  NEW SKILL: IMPROVISED DESCENT (NOVICE)

  You have learned to fall through vertical spaces without dying. Mostly.

  REPUTATION UPDATE: THE CHANCELLOR'S TOWER

  Status: DEFILED. A maintenance shaft has been destroyed, the kitchen has been vandalized, and something is throwing gargoyles at guards.

  Su found a rain barrel, dunked her head in it to wash off the flour, and tried to think past the exhaustion and pain.

  She'd escaped. She'd learned the truth about the Sky-Dancers. She'd made a deal with a being that had been sealed for three centuries. And she was Level 16, with nine levels to go before she could face whatever came next.

  "We need a plan," she said.

  Fernando, still traumatized and covered in jam, just whimpered.

  "Great. So we're in agreement." Su looked toward the rising sun, toward the city waking to news of whatever the Architect was doing to the tower. "We need allies. Real ones. Not faceless entities or sarcastic plants."

  "I am RIGHT HERE."

  "I said 'real' allies. You count." Su's mind was already racing ahead, calculating options, weighing risks. "The Sky-Dancers need to know the truth. About what they were. What was done to them."

  "They'll never believe you."

  "Probably not. But I have to try. Because if I can get them on my side..." Su felt her void-energy stirring, responding to her determination. "Then seventeen percent becomes something better. Maybe even twenty percent."

  "That's not—math doesn't—" Fernando gave up. "You're going to get us killed."

  "Probably," Su agreed. "But at least it'll be interesting."

  And with that absolutely terrible reassurance, they disappeared into the waking city, leaving behind a tower in chaos, a mystery that had been sealed for three hundred years, and enough flour to make bread for a week.

  The Forgotten Architect would find them later, it had said. Su was already dreading that reunion.