“We’re going to lose, John.”

“Don't say that. Please, don't even think that.”

“It’s true, and you know it is. I can already feel myself coming apart at the seams. The rest of us won’t be far behind.”

“I... don't want to lose you.”

“You aren’t going to have a choice, my love. I'm sorry. When we lose-”

“If you lose-”

“When. It won’t be long before the village will need a target for their grief. He’ll need to be far away by then.”

**************

Jack set his bag down in the chest by the foot of the bed. Unpacking done, he turned to survey the room.

It was unnervingly beautiful. How did they expect him to get any sleeping done in an art gallery?

“Hey, does all the stone on this mountain have designs on it?” he turned, and asked the boy whose room he was now sharing.

The boy was tall, but solid, and had the sharp cheekbones and soft white hair common to Permafrost cultivators. “Yeah, pretty much,” he said, shrugging. He didn't seem to smile much, but Jack supposed that he had effectively halved the size of his room. He couldn't begrudge the boy a little bit of a stony demeanor.

“Why?”

The boy, Jack had been told that his name was Sollen, cocked an eyebrow. His expression remained stable. Maybe that’s just his face. “Practice, I think? I see the older disciples working on them all the time. The rest of the class thinks it's an exercise in control.”

“Maybe it's a punishment, like having to write lines. How do you keep from running out of space?”

Sollen’s head cocked at an angle. “It’s possible.” His eyes flicked to a specific spot on the wall where someone, in a fit of artistic license, had etched the likeness of a dragon. “It could be both, as well. One of the elders wipes a building every few days, so there’s always somewhere to work.”

“A lesson in impermanence?”

“I doubt that would make much sense for Permafrost cultivators. Now, come on. I'm supposed to show you the city, and I want to finish before it gets dark.”

Jack followed the tall boy out the front door into the street, which was bustling at this late afternoon hour. He shifted under his heavy jacket, trying to get a little more air circulation. He had packed nothing but warm clothes in anticipation of freezing his butt off in the sect known for its control of ice and frigid stone, but between the insulated carriage ride here and the balmy autumn air of the town, he was beginning to feel the heat.

Sollen ascended a ladder affixed to the wall right next to the front door and disappeared over the roof, and Jack scrambled up after him. He struggled to keep up with the long-limbed teen as he set off down a catwalk that extended over the thoroughfare. There was much less traffic up here, and the air was cooler, which Jack was thankful for. They made their way towards one of the multi-story buildings that rose like, well, mountains over the dense town.

When they made it to the northernmost building, as far as Jack could tell, Sollen wasted no time in climbing up another ladder, and Jack followed, passing landing after landing. Halfway up, he saw a female cultivator rising past him at breakneck speed on a circular stone platform that melted out from the stone of the wall and melted back in when she reached the top.

They reached the top in reasonably short order, and Sollen graciously allowed him a moment to catch his breath before gesturing down and out with a wide sweep of his arm. “Here, we have the Lower City.”

Jack stepped out on the ledge and looked out over the city. It was the densest array of buildings he had ever seen, all neatly organized into rows and districts that made up four quadrants of the great flat circle. Connecting all of them was a spiderweb of streets and alleys, with two great thoroughfares making up the cross border between the districts. The entire disk of the city was on entirely flat ground, an arcing hollow carved out of the stone of the mountain. Every building was constructed of some mixture of marble, quartz, or other stone that created a staggering palette of grays, whites, reds and blacks. Everything, from the streets to the roofs sported intricate carved designs, and there was a lattice of catwalks connecting the roofs that made up a second set of streets atop the first one.

Jack choked. “The lower city?”

“Yep.” Sollen pointed further up the mountain, and Jack could just make out the edges of buildings peeking out over the ledge. “The inner sect members live in the upper city. Elders live in the Peaks.”

“Ashes.” Jack swallowed. “Can we go up there?”

“Apparently if you can get an inner sect member to take you. I don't think there are any rules against it, so if you want to take a stab at climbing the wall…”

“I’ll pass. I barely even made it up here.”

Sollen looked him up and down. “You haven’t started cultivating yet? Or does your cultivation focus on something other than strength?”

“I haven’t.” Jack swallowed. “The elder who came to my village told me that was a good thing.”

“Interesting.” Sollen looked back out over the city. “Well, as you can see, the city is divided up into four quarters. Merchants and craftsmen live and work closest to the main Ways that divide up the circle, because that’s where carriages and visitors can get to them most easily. The main part of each quarter is mostly sect services and storage, like the mess halls and logistics centers. Us sect cultivators live and work on the outer ring. They say that’s so we’ll be the first line of defence in case of attack, but I think it’s just because it's a little cooler out there.”

Jack nodded along. “And what about…” he looked down at their feet.

“The center of the disk is the Cultivation Nexus, but we just call it the hub. We come up here to cultivate, and inside the building are all the services we need as cultivators, like the outer sect library and the lecture halls. Other than that, there are a few herb gardens and arenas outside of the bounds of the disk, but you shouldn't need to visit those unless you’re a gardener or get powerful enough that you can't use the training rooms in here.” He turned to Jack, who couldn't seem to find any words to say. “First time in a sect?”

“I… just... “ Jack said, gesturing to everything. “How does it all stay up?” He had never seen anything like the intricate structure of catwalks and structures that made up the city, and the closest thing he could think of as an analogue was a series of layered spiderwebs. Or maybe, perhaps, a crystalline growth directly jutting out of the mountain.

“Some of it is reinforced with Qi, but the elders try to limit the amount of Qi they let out into the environment, so most of it is just built out of natural stone.” Sollen shifted from foot to foot, the first break in composure that Jack had seen from the young cultivator. “Is it really that impressive?”

“It's… incredible.” Jack looked up at the cliff face, where the most powerful of the sect lived, just out of sight. “I've seen a few cities, but this is something else.”

“What are they like?”

Jack turned to see Sollens eyebrows furrowed, a completely guileless expression on his face. “Most buildings I've ever seen only have one floor. And these pathways between buildings, what do you call them?”

“The catwalks?” Sollen’s eyebrows shot up. “Do they not have them where you come from?”

“They look a little like the floating docks down on Silver Lake, but I've never seen any between buildings.” A moment of silence passed between the two. “Where do you come from?”

“I was born here, and I've never been anywhere else.” Sollen looked down over the edge, the hundred foot drop down to the street that made up the outer city. He shook his head to clear it. “Come on, let’s go to the eastern mess, there’s a cook there that makes the best rice pudding you’ve ever had, and you can tell me more about whatever the blazes floating docks are.”

*****

When the two got to the eastern mess, which turned out to be a squat building close to the arc of dormitories that made up the sect’s eastern border, with walls decorated perhaps a little more fancifully than the surrounding buildings, the light of day was fading to dusk. The interior of the building, a surprisingly cozy space dotted with stone alcoves, was lit by crystals that gave off a soft blue light. Posted up in one of the alcoves, poring over a book, was a familiar face.

Silvia looked up and they entered and caught his eye. As she beckoned them over, Jack noticed the girl sitting next to her. She was tall and slender, with severe cheekbones and soft white hair in a short fighter’s cut, and a steady expression with only a slight curl upward at the mouth as she caught him staring. He quickly tore his gaze away and hurried over to the alcove, his tall companion following a step behind.

Sil placed the pad and pencil she had been writing down on the table and smiled at him, making to introduce her companion. “Jack! This is Amethyst, she's my new roommate and guide, apparently.” She seemed poised to continue, but then a basso rumble interrupted from behind Jack’s shoulder.

“Hello, Amy.” Sollen said, striding up to the table and locked eyes with the girl who had apparently introduced herself as Amethyst, and both at once, their stoic expressions cracked. Amy’s into a scowl, and Sollen’s into a smirk.

Amy crossed her arms, leaning back. “Sollen, for the love of the Matriarch, can you let me go by my birth name for once in my blasted life?”

“Absolutely not.” Sollen said, chuckling, one arm resting on the table. “Your parents should have given you a normal name if they wanted you to use it.”

Amy threw a pencil at him, which he managed to catch.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's get some food for our charges before they run out of everything good.”

He promptly took off, long strides taking him quickly out of sight, before Amy, now wearing an exasperated expression, stood up and followed. The two new arrivals looked after them in stunned silence for a moment before Jack spoke up.

“Did you know their faces could do that?” he said, heavily taking a seat on the bench across from Sil.

She shook her head. “Honestly, I was thinking there was a fifty fifty shot that some elder had just animated some statues to show us around. I never even saw her raise her arms above her head.”

“You haven’t been up the ladders yet?”

She shook her head again in negation. “I wanted to see the library first.”

“Oh, just wait until you see the city from above. It’s the most weirdly beautiful thing I've ever seen.” He looked down at the book on the table, which she had closed at some point. The cover read ‘Myriad uses of the Decay aspect’, and it was a slim volume, maybe fifty pages from cover to cover. “What’s the library like?”

“Oh, it’s amazing. Stacks of shelves taller than this building, and they’ll let you take out any book you want, as long as you only have two out at once.”

“Really?” Jack said, dumbfounded. “Even cultivation manuals?”

“Really!” Silvia said, nearly vibrating out of her seat. “From what I can tell, cultivation methods aren’t restricted knowledge here!”

“Ashes of god.”

“I know!” she looked around furtively. “I think they keep the really dangerous stuff in the inner sect library, though.”

“How in the world do they keep track of the books?”

At this point, Sollen and Amy returned, Sollen sliding into the booth and depositing his loaded tray of various dishes onto the table in one smooth motion. “Easy,” he said, picking up the volume and tapping it on the table, which made an audible click. “All the librarians are stone cultivators of some variety or another, and all of the books have covers made of stone with some weird formation inside that all the librarians can sense. They’ll know if a book gets damaged, or if you try and take one out of the city.”

Amy took a break from dishing what smelled like curried pork onto her plate to grin at her Permafrost counterpart. “I wonder how you know that second bit, Sollen?”

A grimace flickered across Sollen’s face before it returned to its baseline neutral expression. “It was one time, Amy. I didn't mean to drop it off the roof.” His eyes unfocused as he looked off into the middle distance. “I still don't think Elder Memory has forgiven me for that one.”

“She did pick that name for a reason. I don't think she’s really one to hold a grudge, though.”

“Dust.” Sil swore. “How long have you two known each other?”

Sollen and Amy glanced at each other, deciding who would answer, somehow silently reaching the decision that Amy would take this one.

“Our whole lives, basically” She said, as Sollen started dishing out plates for the two newbies. “We’re the only two in our class that were born here and not recruited, so we’ve been running around here together since we could crawl.”

“Who are your parents?” Jack asked, realizing that it might be a sensitive question two seconds too late and quickly shutting his mouth.

The two looked at each other again, something passing between them before they shrugged, in unison, and Amy said “No clue. All the elders raised us communally, and all we can get them to tell us is that our parents are senior members of the sect, and that we are Not,” she stretched out the syllable, crisply articulating the word, “related.”

Jack glanced between them, noting the similar features. They could be siblings, if not fraternal twins. “Really?”

“Yeah, apparently all children of two permafrost cultivators look basically the same. By the way, if you end up meeting either Elder Dextra, Sinstra, or Centrum, don't greet them by name, just use Elder. They’re completely identical and like messing with people. Anything you guess will be wrong.”

Jack surrendered the last of his composure and buried his head in his hands.