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The tower is cold.
It’s something Nicky had been told, but never expected to feel like this. His father had told him grandiose tales of dizzying corridors, eyes and ears sculpted into stone, so cold near the top you could see your breath in front of your face; Oliver had mumbled the same into his shoulder when he would wake up with a scream ringing in his ears. Now, feeling it against his face, wind whistling through gaps of hastily constructed halls, he wonders what else they weren’t telling him, what they were softening for his benefit, feeling frostbite attempt to take hold in the tips of his fingers.
Or has it changed? Was this place always this cold, or has it adapted, moulded around its new lord? The alchemy pot five times the height of Nicky at the bottom of the tower had sat dormant, abandoned, cobwebs stretching across the ceiling of the room. He imagines the genie that would pop out, the conversations Oliver had told him about, the only warmth in this place settling at the ground floor. Is this part of the cycle? Nicky had wondered, ever theorising:
“What do you mean, part of the cycle?” Oliver had asked, laughing.
“Well, did the previous king build his tower, too?”
He’d received a hum, more quiet laughter, and a maybe.
He had only stopped to look at the cauldron for a moment, something about it sticking in his throat, before he’d scrambled on to figure out the transport system of the place. It hadn’t been hard; he’s been studying Nazcaän structures since he was little, since he’d understood his future, since he’d started worming his way into the library in his father’s mansion. He had stood in the magic circle and imagined the top of the tower, although he’s never been there, basing it off of every little detail he’s ever heard from the people around him, and—
—Well, he hadn’t quite made it. Engraved in the stone tablet that would take him back down to the ground was the number 92, the eye carved out of it following him as he blinks at it. Considering he’s never been here, never attempted to travel up the tower before, he considers it pretty good—not that he has the time to feel proud for it.
So he races through labyrinthine hallways, keeping his familiars at the forefront of his heart, prepared, ready to be struck at any moment, just as he’d been told—but there’s nothing. He faces empty corridors and chambers, broken down stone, eyes and ears lining the walls just as he’d expected, but there’s no life here; no fights, nothing that he had been preparing for since he was five. It’s silent, desolate passages, not even spiders to keep him company. He runs anyway, footsteps echoing in the empty rooms, every noise he makes—every shiver, every pant, every rustle of his clothing—made louder by the silence. There’s nothing but musty hallways and the sound of his own boots to distract him from racing thoughts flitting through his mind, panic almost taking him over, the tiny bits of warmth in his memories strangling him.
“Every five floors,” Oliver had recounted, “there was some big creature we had to fight. Like a trial.”
“Ah, Nicostrato, it was simply relentless,” his father had said, waving his hand like he couldn’t bear to think of it. “Why, Horologium would always get us through, but—”
Nicky bursts onto floor 95 to find it just as empty as the rest—but on the ground, dark against the stone, a large bloodstain. Not fresh—and he swallows back his fear—but not a thousand years old, either. If he stuck around to think, he could probably guess the exact day, plucked out of his memories.
He doesn’t. He keeps moving.
It’s strange, he reflects briefly, to be here. It’s one thing to wish for, when you’re twelve and can’t see another path for yourself—it’s another, entirely, to be climbing like this, piece by piece, floor by floor. Oddly, it doesn’t feel as though he’s ascending; there are no stairs, after all, only those little stone tablets that bring you where you want near instantly. With no sky, no outside air, only stone walls from corner to corner, there’s no frame of reference for how close or how far he is from the end; only the carved numbers and his knowledge of floor 100.
It’s a maze, filled with dead ends and dark corners. He keeps to the left wall; when that fails, once, when he loops, he dives into the middle of it and prays for the exit. He’s not trapped; he’s prepared for this too, wand clipped to his belt and rune for Vacate seared into his mind (Oliver had guided his arm, when they were fourteen, in an almost-hug that let Nicky feel his breath on his cheek, and it had been a brilliant way of ensuring the memory stuck in his mind), but he refuses to even think about using it. He has a duty to fulfill; there is hope to hold onto.
The door, at the end, is unlocked.
“Horologium had found the—”
“Horace gave me the key.” Oliver had run his hand over the memorial stone in Ding Dong Dell, gaze far away. “I dunno how we could’ve gotten up there, otherwise.”
It gives away to blue sky. Nicky takes a sharp inhale, fresh air hitting his lungs, heavy breaths crystalising in front of him. Clouds drift past overhead, gentle and soft in the slight breeze, as though the world is okay. It’s just as quiet up here as inside, he finds, but with the light of the sun it feels so much more peaceful. He walks, not runs, up the set of stairs leading to the platform, boots clicking on the floor below, and swallows as the sculpture comes into view.
This, too, he’s been told about; the top half of a giant eye, reflected in the shiny floor below to look like a whole object, staring at the throne in front of it. He had imagined it so many times—
“Hideous thing, really,” his father had scoffed.
“It kept looking at me.”
—but he had never gotten close to the real thing. Bigger yet smaller than imagined, grey and teal and yellow. The floor is a polished mirror, so much so that Nicky can see himself extremely clearly in it, but he refuses to look that close, knowing the expression he’d find on his face. Instead, he stares forward, finding the throne empty—and the person he’s looking for lying in the middle of the rooftop, staring up at the sky.
He wants to weep. He wants to collapse out of relief. Instead, he walks forward, onto the tile, and towards him.
His shoes click on the floor, but there’s no reaction to his presence until Nicky is standing over him, looking down at his face. “Hey.”
Oliver blinks up at him a few times, before a weak smile appears on his face. “Hi, Nicky. How’d you find me?”
He says it like they don’t both know. “Lucky guess,” Nicky says the same way.
Oliver laughs, faint and sweet. “Nah, you know me too well.”
Nicky circles around him, splayed out on the floor, stepping over his arm to sit down next to him, facing him, facing away from the eye. He crosses his legs, looking down at Oliver’s face. His brow is pinched, eyes fuzzy as he looks up at the clouds, but he glances down at Nicky and something in them clears, just slightly. “Did you run here?” he asks.
Nicky keeps his face neutral. “I may have.”
“Aww,” Oliver teases, like there’s no reason for him to have done that, like everything is fine.
They stay like that for a few minutes, Nicky tracing the lines of Oliver’s face, catching his breath, while Oliver alternates between looking at him and looking at the sky. Nicky can’t tell which is worse.
“What are you thinking?” Nicky finally asks, quiet, loud against the silence of the rooftop.
Oliver swallows, rolling his jaw. “Would it be that bad?” he whispers, voice breaking, and Nicky doesn’t ask what he’s talking about.
“If you made it? Of course not,” Nicky says softly, around the lump in his throat. He reaches out to brush a curl from Oliver’s face, running his hand through his hair. “But the gods are picky, Oliver. You know that.”
Oliver leans into his touch, eyes fluttering closed just slightly. “I’m the pure-hearted one,” he whispers. “The saviour. I’m powerful enough, right? Maybe they’d let me...” He trails off, and Nicky stays silent, not trusting himself to speak. “I could help people, y’know?”
“You can help people as you are,” Nicky murmurs gently, petting Oliver’s hair.
“Not enough,” comes the mutter, as Nicky knew it would be. “If I could help everyone, then...”
Nicky laughs softly. “You’re not cruel enough to be a god,” he whispers, trying to convince himself. “They’ll never let you in.”
Oliver snorts. “Sure.”
He doesn’t say anything more. The glassy look returns to his eyes, and he follows the clouds.
Nicky retracts his hand from his hair. “People can help themselves, too, you know,” he says.
“Not as much as I can,” Oliver murmurs back, and Nicky winces.
“Isn’t it important that they do?” he whispers. “That’s what you told me, when we were kids. Remember?”
Oliver is silent, hesitating, eyes almost clearing, and then he turns his head away. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“Do you really think so?”
He gets a noncommittal hum in response. “Everyone needs help sometimes,” he says, “and I’m the best for the job.”
“So keep helping people. Down there.”
“But I can do more.”
“Do you really think they’re so hopeless?”
It’s the wrong word to say, he knows, as soon as it leaves his mouth—not for Oliver, but for him. His next sentence dies on his tongue, staring at Oliver as he traces clouds with his eyes.
They’ve had conversations about this very topic so many times over the years. Whispers of hope, of faith that they will do the right thing, entangled in linked pinky fingers and shared blankets and forehead presses, and Nicky has been chasing that hope with Oliver in tow for so long that he had forgotten that there was ever any doubt in the first place. Faced with a warning of the next steps of the prophecy, of warping thoughts and desperate holds, Nicky can barely stay together.
“Hey,” Oliver says, faint alarm in his voice, as Nicky fails to keep the first tear back. “Hey, whoa, Nicky...” His voice drops into the soothing tone Nicky knows it can be as soon as he starts sniffling, raising his hands to his eyes and turning his head away from Oliver as he tries to stop crying. Behind screwed-shut eyelids, he hears a shuffle of fabric, and then he’s being tugged closer to Oliver and guided to rest his head on his shoulder. He lets him do it, curling into the familiar warmth against the cold of the wind, of the tower he’s just climbed, and shakes. “I’ll come back down, okay? Okay. I’m sorry, Nick.” He feels a kiss pressed into his temple, circles rubbed into his back. “I won’t do it again.”
“Okay,” Nicky whimpers, and doesn’t accuse him of lying.