《Soon Should a Spire Slay Her Son》


 Entries 1, 2

    Entry 1:


    Of the beasts manifold that inhabited the lands before I ascended the tower, no sound may be heard. Not of their steps, not of their breaths. From the mayfly to the youngest of turtles, barely any remains of them, or even several generations of their descendants, may be found. A tree or three, the last pines older than literature itself, may have been seeds or perhaps just saplings back then. I am the last speaker of the tongue of the people that considered me a brother, a son. I don¡¯t remember where my mother was once buried, and twisted is the memory of my father¡¯s last words. Yet they made me seek the tower, and not time, not men and definitively not gods can tear it down like it may deserve.


    The tower is eternal. And so are we who reached the top.


    I have lived every life a man can live. Beggar, farmer, engineer, architect, scientist, soldier, gigolo, waiter, dramaturge, thief, hitman. Name a profession, and odds are I have a lifetime of experience on it. I have been a promiscuous lover and an ascetic monk. I have searched for fossils I deemed precious and grinded them to make cure-all potions that didn¡¯t work, too. I have been a loving father; I have been a child murderer. Every life a man can live, with not a single death a man can earn. And woman, too. We gods can modify our body. I fathered a million children and mothered ten thousand more. Twins, triplets, even sextuplets, I gave birth to. I raised them with love or I raised them with hate, I drowned some in the tub or choked them in their sleep or crushed their heads with a brick. I have been a model, a prostitute, a scholar, a businesswoman, a religious idol. I don¡¯t even remember if I were a man or a woman for some of the events on my life so long.


    And I could keep this list going on forever, because eternity is on the side of the children of the tower, because I did things I¡¯d need to help coin a term for, and because writing this diary bores me.


    Everything does. Boring me. Everything does.


    I have done everything a man can do. Except for one thing.


    Dying.


    The blood I have shed trying to kill myself could fill every clepsydra in the world to the brim. All of it mine, the blood. Cut my veins and the wounds heal almost instantly. Pierce my heart and the result is not much different. Tear it out from my own chest, still beating, with my bare hands, and crush it: I could do it now, and when I¡¯d be done, a new one would beat inside my healed ribcage. Not even a scar remains from my countless suicide attempts. Use my powers to obliterate myself, to pulverize the smallest trace of my being and burn it with the heat of a star¡­ and from dust I will be reformed.


    But the tower gives immortality, and hopefully it can take it away. Here, in my celestial chambers, at a golden table engraved with rivulets of mercury, sitting on a luxurious chair upholstered with the scales of an animal that existed just once, born out of my whim, and with the sole purpose of dying by my hand, I manifested a diary and a pen. And now, on them, I write for you. Whoever you are or will be, I know not. Mortal or disgraced, one or several, barely educated or an intellectual. I don¡¯t care. I wish to get rid of my immortality; I have lived enough. Yet I still yearn for some sort of afterlife. Not a literal one, mind you. I wish for my words to outlive me. Of all the men I have been, i suppose this is the ember that survives. A wish to transcend, to be more than we are, despite knowing that being more is this despicable monotony that surrounds me.


    I am a god. I will be until the tower gifts me freedom from my powers. And I won¡¯t kill myself if I reach the last (For those who ascend, the first) floor. If I descend the tower, giving back all of their gifts to each guardian, I will emerge and breathe the desert, plain or jungle air once again as a man. Then, if the scorching sun, a wild cat or a blood-poisoning mosquito-borne disease take me, I¡¯ll go with a smile. These hands that now obliterate planets, I want them to hold a spear they need once again. Or a gun, as weaponry marched on since last time I had any need of it.


    Finding the tower is an issue even from the top, despite the plain of the divine seemingly converging on it. As a mortal, it took me years to attain the mindset that would make the way appear before me. To lose all fear of and reverence for death, to think like a child or an animal would. To live, even if for a second, without a concept of it. And when I did, the next blink threw me into the sands of the desert, where, from atop a dune, I beheld a building unlike anyone I had ever seen. My people lived in houses of mud with thatched rooves. The tower appeared as an unmelting column of ice, with elaborate balconies and twisted like a corkscrew ¡ªa tool that didn¡¯t exist back then. It frightened me, the contrast, the impossibility. I returned to my home in the next blink, rejected due to my altered state of mind.


    I remember I laughed like a madman. The tower existed! My father had told me the truth before passing. A woman stared at me with a bit of apprehension and bit of fear. My sister? My wife? My friend? My lover? I cannot recall. Not even her face comes to me. It may have been a man with long hair, too. I didn¡¯t care, that I remember. The tower was real. And I was an idiot.


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    I won¡¯t say I should have stopped seeking it then, that I should have lived and died just one life, because that would be spitting on the face of all the other men and women I took on as personas over the millennia. Immortality had its novelty, long ago, and the power to make and unmake, to know it all, also did.


    I don¡¯t regret seeking immortality. But I regret attaining it. So, as previously stated, I will seek the tower, and with it, a mortal¡¯s gift.


    Yet that won¡¯t be an easy task. There¡¯s a known path to the tower for deities: those who genuinely wish to test or observe the climbers of the last floors can find it. It¡¯s a path I cannot walk: the tower knows one¡¯s true intentions. I cannot lie to it. Nobody can. I¡¯d need to convince myself that to observe climbers is what I want, and once I do, returning to the current mindset could prove impossible while remaining inside the tower. It¡¯s true that I have nothing to lose with trying, but that¡¯s the default state of my existence. It would be another meaningless failure, like self-decapitation or obliteration were.


    No, what I am going to try will be to reverse the initial state of mind, the one I used to find the tower as a man. It stands to reason that if to stop fearing death is necessary to attain immortality, I¡¯d need to either fear and revere death while being unable to die, or to stop despising my eternal existence while still seeking the tower, while still seeking to end it. And that poses the main problem: one can seek immortality while not fearing death, as there are countless benefits one could ascribe to an extended lifespan. Such pragmatic justifications are nowhere to be found in my current situation.


    If I succeed, I will write again. Until I make the slightest of breakthroughs, though, this diary is on hold.


    <hr>


    Entry 2:


    A fraction of a second! I glimpsed it, if only for an instant I couldn¡¯t retain. Once again, the sight of the tower pulled me out of the necessary state of mind. I stood on a hill of cotton-like clouds, flowers composed of thunderbolts sprouting left and right. In the distance the tower, charred bricks and pointed stakes, like an insect with countless legs, pierced upward though the cloud. And on its roof, perched haughty and curious, Karerak The Endless spotted me. The old dragon, the only deity that, until today, I had not seen since I left the tower. But now, after eight years of restless meditation and self-examination, I exchanged glances with her. She knows more than anyone about the tower, but I had thought her gone. Now, I need to drive her away from the tower, I need to convince her to meet me in neutral territory. As long as she is perched up there I am afraid I won¡¯t be able to keep the memories of my ascension from interfering.


    Furthermore, I cannot die without having some questions answered. I have a theory. I believe the tower, so intimately related to men¡¯s states of mind and so reflective of a part of the self in its outer aspect, is a sort of egregore. I am referring to a construct of the collective minds of men, not necessarily a conscious effort. Our fear of death, our desire for transcendence, both given form in unity; to be found only by those that shouldn¡¯t be seeking it.


    But that¡¯s only conjectures. What I know for certain is that I can reach the tower again, and that I need Karerak¡¯s cooperation if I aim to enter it.


    This is the thing about Karerak: according to the other gods, she doesn¡¯t like being named in vain. Not even in writing. To pen down her name with the intent of referring to her is to rapture her attention. So if I spin my glass of whiskey slowly, if I find the right angle¡­


    Hello there, Karerak. Her image refracts on a little imperfection of the glass that wasn¡¯t there yesterday. Golden, pulsing wounds surround her deep violet eye. I will record my conversation with her as I have it, to get the details down to a T. My memory as a god may be prodigious compared to that of the average mortal, but it¡¯s still far from perfect.


    ¡°Karerak, acquaintance of my early days, I have questions for you. Would you mind providing me some answers?¡±


    The eye opened further, asking the question without using words. The conical teeth rimming said eye chittered.


    ¡°I wish to recover my mortality, and I suspect the tower may give it back to me if I let go of all of its gifts. Are my assumptions correct?¡±


    Like broken glass, the voice of the dragon came through, making me curl my hand into a fist to avoid telling her to close her damned snout.


    ¡°If you plan to turn her gift into a loan, know that Ilucaris is a usurer. I have no issue in letting you descend through my sister, and neither has she, provided you can find her. But to think you will come out the bottom a man, with eyes, hair, and hearing the wind howl¡­ you would need to try hard to be more wrong.¡±


    I had forgot she referred to the tower as her sister, or maybe never learned about it.


    I am tempted to ask another question. I will. ¡°Do you remember my name? The one I had when I first ascended the Tower?¡±


    ¡°Useless artifact. Ilucaris knows you without need of a name, and so do I. I will hide next time you come, such that I don¡¯t stir your memories. But remember you won¡¯t come out the bottom a man. You will be a bag of bones, old and weak. Blind, most likely.¡±


    ¡°I have seen all there is to see a thousand and one times. I won¡¯t fall into despair if I go blind for a few years.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t leave my sister waiting, then. Come, Unnamed One, come and show us the depths of your ingratitude. ¡°


    Her image disappeared from the glass a second ago, her presence gone with the flaw on the material. I should not name her again.


    I should consider the price I am asked to pay, however. Over a drink. I wonder which one. Tea with wine, like that old man in a bar during a south-hemisphere winter told me long ago? Whatever. Anything I drink, nothing will change. Anything I may drink, I don¡¯t need to yet. I hope I feel real thirst soon, for what could very well be considered the first time.


    Next time I write I hope to be standing before the tower.

 Entries 3 to 5

    Entry 3:


    The wounds begin in the firmament, and, golden as the dragon¡¯s scars, they cross the horizon, ending at my feet. The blackened stone cracks like frost under my weight; its fragments, freed from the whole, elevate like playful butterflies with each step I take. The diary is hanging from my belt, encased in a protective rubbery cover, even as it is being written. I need no pen to mark its pages, not yet. I have one. I use it when the fancy strikes me. To be closer to a man, perhaps.


    And Ilucaris pokes her ugly head out from the foundations of the shattered world. This time around, the tower is a pile of blades melded together. I cannot recognize a sword, a dagger or a Halberd. Not even a kitchen knife. They shift in shape and position, edges that exist briefly, created out of the red heart of a volcano. This is a menacing tower. An angry one.


    It tapers on and her image contorts if I dare to look higher. She doesn¡¯t want my admiration. She inspires awe in me, still, and I can feel it: she hates it. I had forgot, until now, that Ilucaris has such a strong personality. Perhaps because when I ascended the tower showed herself as mostly benevolent, if harsh with her trials. How could I forget that on the fourth floor I found a couple of siblings, no older than fifteen, with her eating his dead flesh raw, not minding my approach? Or the bird that spoke to me on the seventh floor and declared to not want to go higher, for she had already attained what she was looking for? And something I couldn¡¯t forget is the statue in my tenth floor, the one of a crying woman cupping the globe in her hands. I didn¡¯t understand what the weirdly-textured sphere was back then, for my people didn¡¯t know the world to be round. Yes, people went mad in it, but the fantastic lights, the ascended animals, the refined statues, the luxurious halls and the windows behind which worlds that are not could be seen¡­. I yearn to see them again.


    But I won¡¯t. The Ilucaris I ascended was cold, and is gone. This one exudes the warmth of fresh bloodshed, and is only for me. Every incarnation of the tower is unique, tailored to the climber that beholds or traverses her. Sometimes, men and women can meet its equals in some floor, just to never see each other until they come out at the top¡­ if they come out at all.


    The dragon (Whose name I won¡¯t write out of respect) is hidden, I cannot even sense her presence. But she is around. She wouldn¡¯t leave her sister alone. I wonder now if she can even climb the tower, up or down. Other deities have taken the forms of dragons for extended periods of time, but that was the norm: we can control out shape at will, and as such, it is natural some gods or goddesses are drawn towards those of powerful or gentle creatures, mundane or mythical. Well, except for the ¡°eel god¡±. He likes morays, which I don¡¯t consider neither gentle nor powerful.


    But that¡¯s not the point. The tower¡¯s sister (oh how difficult you are! you who I may not name unless I wish to summon thee!) never, to my knowledge, changes her aspect, or her genre. I doubt her humanity¡ªnot regarding her attitude or actions, but her origin. She dares, after all, call Ilucaris a sister: sibling relationships imply a level of equality that calling immortals ¡°the tower¡¯s children¡± does not. And if it were just the caprice of a haughty deity, I would ignore the subject. But we are talking of one that constantly lives around Ilucaris, perches on her, and guards her roof forever. This is not something that, in my heavily biased opinion, would be permitted to a child of the tower.


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    This is me, nearly omniscient, making conjectures. Useless, but refreshing. Uncertainty holds a particular appeal for a child of the tower. You may not know what you will eat tomorrow. I do. I know what you will dine every day of your life. I know how you will die. However, anything related to the tower¡­ all of it is barred to me.


    Maybe that¡¯s a good reason to descend, too: novelty.


    But that¡¯s too long of a rambling already.


    I am floating, scouting the outer surface of the tower for a window or crack that would allow me to peek inside. It shows none: under any gash on the wall of blades there are only more walls. The tower is hollow from the inside. Sometimes, also from the outside. But not now. Now, it is massive. If I attacked it, maybe I could blow some holes in the structure, but none would give me access. It would, however, denote me as a moron, and perhaps anger the dragoness.


    It seems the only way I am getting in is through the exit at the top. I suppose the dragoness won¡¯t be there to break my delusion, to spirit me away from the tower once more. I shouldn¡¯t even be writing, for the state of mind is frail and to write about it is a defiance of the aforementioned. I¡¯ll stop for now, ascend to the top, and then continue. Maybe after entering.


    <hr>


    Entry 4:


    Inside the tower there¡¯s a floor most gods came to despise. We gave it the agreed-upon name of the Halls of fictions: for most, it¡¯s a library. For those who didn¡¯t know how to read or were born before written tongues were a thing ¡ª like me ¡ª statues of people you know or knew appear lined up along the walls, and when you stand in front of them, they tell you a story about your life. The first statue you face or book you pick up tell you that only by finding the one story that isn¡¯t a fiction you can leave the floor. At the end of the main hall, into which the infinite side halls eventually loop into, a statue of a grinning jackal stands. Or an old librarian with a beard or without it. The guardian varies as does the floor. The fact of the matter is: you are told you have to tell the guardian which story is real. Books have numbers, and for statues you can just describe their appearance ¡ª or if you remember it, say the name of the person they represent and the attire they wear.


    The thing is, the halls contain not a single truth. While having one, ten million or a thousand true stories would still net a zero percent chance to find them among the infinite possibilities, the halls are determined to always lie. It¡¯s not always big lies: some stories deviate from the truth by a word, by the number of grapes you ate a certain day, or by how many people you killed on the battlefield. Or they may change a letter in the name of your dog or cat or pet parrot. Silly, pointless numbers, letters. But wherein does fiction survive, if not in details? Truth outside the tower is absolute, memory imperfect. No person can ever tell a true story when enough detail is involved. The best they can do is to remain unaware of the lies they innocently tell.


    So, how do you move beyond this floor? You ask the guardian to let you through. Nicely. And he (or, for some people, she) lets you, for everything in the halls is a fiction: even the instructions on how to beat it. The exit was always open to you.


    This isn¡¯t the case for immortality, but now that I see Ilucaris maw...


    Carved out on her roof, like a cave bored in a formation of jutting out rocks or swords, a cold breath comes out of her entrails, not as wind, but as a march of invisible ghosts of men ascending the wet, weathered steps one by one. It¡¯s cold that crawls on and about and through you. It¡¯s cold that I can feel, and that alone makes it a source of elation for me.


    This cold grave should be mine. I want it, the death the tower threatens me with, the strife that only in her entrails I may find. I am going to rush inside. And once I am, I am going to write that which I really want to, but can¡¯t as long as I remain outside.


    <hr>


    Entry 5:


    I am descending the decrepit spiral stairs that lead to the top floor. Karerak Karerak, Karerak, Karerak, Karerak. Karerakarerak. Ka-re-rak.


    There. Screw her ability to be summoned with written text. She cannot make Ilucaris vomit me out now. I think. I hope.


    Karerak.

 Entries 6, 7

    Entry 6:


    Coming out of the staircase cave, I start climbing the soaring river, this thin film of water not giving in under my indigo booths. It¡¯s a spiraled, gentle slope uphill, and the water curls around the araucarias and snakes among the branches of scaled trees that you won¡¯t find on any nook or cranny of the world. I dare not take a guess at how big the last floor is. Even when one ascends it¡¯s massive; but now my eyes see no walls at all, just a ground teeming with vegetation, a cloud-speckled sky the same color as my footwear, and a horizon where they meet. The soft moss on the stones of many colors is just as variegated as them and passes me by as they lazily drift or roll up this impossible river. On some trunks mushrooms flat and wide, yellow or pink, grow, and they seem to be amalgamations of countless smiles when stared at from the right angle. The air is impregnated with a sweet floral scent that tries to bring a thousand memories to the front of my mind, but deftly dodges all my attempts at recognition.


    Why, Ilucaris, do you give me a beautiful landscape to traverse? I imagine it is a bribe you are offering, a temptress¡¯ attempt at preserving her child.


    Bribe I am not taking. The landscape may fulfill the aesthetical needs of men, but needs you left me none, Ilucaris. I know beauty, but its lack causes no distress in me. Beauty, like air, like sunlight, like love, can be there or not. Any god who has lived as long as me has learned to suffer not their absences. I don¡¯t even need a heart pumping blood inside my chest, Tower. A floating river drawing bows and other cute doodles in the sky and a fetid hell filled to the brim with crawling, squirming creatures with putrescent flesh hold the same appeal to me.


    But no, you know me too well tower¡­ not a bribe. A provocation, perhaps? A childish tantrum? I don¡¯t know. I cherish such ignorance. Your sole existence, Ilucaris, weakens my nigh omniscience. And what a wonderful gift that is!


    As I ascend further I hope that, after the river loses itself among clouds of orange, I may find an exit. Her forest below is silent, not a single bird chirps, not a lone bug chitters. Ilucaris made this paradise a tranquil, meditative safe haven for the mind.


    An elegy. This is her elegy. Perhaps, even when a child betrays her, a mother ought to love them still.


    To you who know my soul, Ilucaris: to you I will admit that I am sorry. I must trudge onwards. Upwards the river, which means downwards your entrails. I wish I could live forever. But it is not for the man I am now, nor for the last thousand men I have been. I envy those who rest in coffins without fear of waking up. I tried to sleep forever, but the dreams are as tortuous as the waking reality. Since I discovered the finitude of existence, the absence of an immortal soul and an afterlife, I have taken a fascination with the mortuary rites. I have lied to grieving daughters and sons by telling them their loved ones were now somewhere better. And it was not only a lie because it failed to address a truth, but also because I would consider no afterlife better, not without my essence being twisted by it to some unrecognizable extent. I like to complete my tasks when possible. And my life won¡¯t be complete until I cease to be, completely, utterly. I don¡¯t seek peace in death. I don¡¯t seek relief or a reward. I don¡¯t even seek punishment for my misdeeds, for there¡¯s no authority to identify them as such. I don¡¯t wish for death because many of the people who I have thus far loved perished already: I can rebuild them. I have done so, to the last atom, to the last thought. I have killed men and women twice to prove points I didn¡¯t need to. Everything men hold sacred is utterly worthless to me, the eternal, the all-powerful. And therefore, the one thing they can have and I cannot becomes infinitely valuable.


    That¡¯s it: as long as I am alive, I am incomplete. Grant me completion, merciful tower.


    <hr>


    Entry 7:


    In front of me strides a man. We find ourselves in a collision course, a golden sword made out of pure sunlight dancing around him. I can see his thoughts: he intends to battle me as a way to prove his prowess, thinks of me as a test sent by the heavens. Had he found any other god, he would be right.


    He charges, his sword multiplying around him, it reminds me of an autumnal wind carrying dried willow leaves. I could stop him. I won¡¯t. I don¡¯t feel like killing a near-god today. The blades accelerate, shooting towards me, impaling my chest, my arm, my legs. It should hurt. I wish I could make it hurt in a way that mattered. All I intend to do is keep on walking.


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    ¡°I don¡¯t feel like bleeding today. Apologies,¡± I tell him as soon as I come within earshot. This is not his last floor, despite being my first. That¡¯s not how the tower works.


    The man stops, and opens his arms wide, showing his palms at the height of his waist. A useless act to tell his weapons to torn my flesh asunder. And they do. They cut, they sever, they rip through my bones and organs and clothes. The clothes regenerate immediately: I am not descending the tower in tatters as long as I can avoid it.


    I bleed not a drop: that would taint the river¡¯s water, which would truly be a shame.


    The weapons cut, too, through this diary. I also restore it immediately. I care about it way more than about my liver.


    Seeing his attack doesn¡¯t stop me he commands his floating blades of light to sever my head, which promptly falls to the forest before reappearing back over my shoulders. I crack my neck. What a nuisance this little man resulted to be.


    ¡°My intentions are merely peaceful, climber. ¡°I say as I pass him by and he drives a jab to my stomach, which, after connection, sends the anatomy of his hand into disarray, causing him enough pain to kneel and cry as he holds his crushed wrist and looks at the sorry, swollen results of his impulsiveness.


    With a mere thought I restitute his hand to its healthy state. I pat him on the shoulder and keep on walking.


    He turns to look at me, sobbing from both fear and amazement. I also turn and address him for a short instant. I believe, in the gentlest of ways, that he deserves to die. But there¡¯s no better argument against eternal life than letting its seekers taste it.


    ¡°Do you want a gift?¡± I offer, covering my tattered, grotesque flesh with my cape. I don¡¯t feel like rebuilding my body immediately.


    ¡°What?¡± he stutters, and stares at me like a dog who did something wrong.


    ¡°I have boundless knowledge of the world outside the tower. I don¡¯t need it anymore. My omniscience is useless in here. Some would call it a burden. Do you want it? It may let you skip a floor. And¡­ swords? You could use blasts of energy, or guns. Or a bit of creativity.¡±


    He decided to ignore the last part of my statement. ¡°Where¡¯s the trick? You are testing me somehow, right?¡±


    ¡°I can bring your dear mother back to life with the sole intent of bedding her, and I will do it if you keep implying I have come to test you. The gift comes with no strings attached besides its own nature.¡±


    The wind cradles the long red hairs of the sobbing man in tis invisible tendrils. For him, this fresh breeze flows to the east. My dark green cape waves towards the west. Just a caprice of mine, to defy physics regarding the small details while I still can.


    The man¡¯s face lights up with hope. ¡°Gods can bring the death back to life? It¡¯s not a mere insult?¡±


    ¡°For the sake of truth: we can. That doesn¡¯t mean we often do: Most immortals stop caring about the individuals below, sooner or later. No love burns eternal, Teralos.¡±


    His head shots back when I say his name, his eyes wide open.


    ¡°I can read minds.¡± I tapped my left temple with my index. ¡°Except this one.¡±


    ¡°Will your gift tell me how to survive the tower and recover my family? I cannot live with having¡­ killed them in that accident.¡±


    I fake a smile. ¡°Yes. But there¡¯s a high price to pay. You will lose one of the keystone traits of humanity. You, little curious monkey, will become this perfect celestial being. The only place where you will ever experience wonder or awe again will be here, inside Ilucaris. Heed my warning, young man: they sold you a myth about grandeur. When there are no gods above your head, when you can crush empires or raise them with a mere wink, when death is as easy to undo as the unfolding of a blanket, everything becomes senseless.¡±


    ¡°You are saying godhood is a curse?¡±


    ¡°I am saying it requires a very particular mind to remain psychopathic enough to enjoy it for all eternity. Some gods do. There¡¯s one that destroys the world weekly, then another rebuilds it with no trace of the destruction ever happening. There¡¯s a third one that constantly keeps tabs on the position and momentum of a single sub-atomic particle. Then there¡¯s me. I found the tower again. I entered from the top. I will come out by the bottom, dead or nearly so.¡±


    Teralos nods in acceptance. ¡°I can¡¯t live with the guilt. My mother, my wife. My son. I¡­ I should have slept better that night. I prayed for a second chance. I prayed so hard. Nobody answered.¡±


    I don¡¯t feel like shrugging, or even making an adequate facial expression. ¡°No, we often do that. Ignoring prayers. Answering gets too boring too soon. Do you want the gift, yes or no? Say it loud and clear.¡±


    Teralos stood over the flowing waters, with some difficulty to find his footing once again, and stared at the fall behind the thin film of liquid. Then his eyes met mine, determination burning inside the na?ve man. ¡°I do. I¡¯ll accept your gift.¡±


    I snap my fingers, merely for show, and unimaginable amounts of knowledge about the furthest reaches of the universe begin emigrating from my mind and into his. ¡°It will arrive gradually. You are dealing with someone considerate enough to not make you go mad from revelation. Farewell, hope you die someday.¡±


    The impulsive youngster grimaces, but soon a smile finds its way into his face. ¡°Goodbye to you too! And sorry for attacking you! And thank you!¡±


    My gesture, a little flicker of the hand, is unimpressive when compared to his energetic waving. Then again, I have no intention of missing anyone for long.

 Entries 8 to 12

    Entry 8:


    Is the third day since I entered this floor, and I have finally reached the end of the river. It spreads into many arms, as if meeting an invisible mudflat. They flow three-dimensionally: up and down, left and right, to and fro. Little albino dragons entangle on the rivulets like snakes on a branch, and gaze at me with their coal eyes. They are not afraid: the beings inside Ilucaris don¡¯t pay respect to the concept of death. They exist due to her grace, and they cease to only due to it, too. They have been assured there is a continuity, that from her they come and to her they go, endlessly. They may be dragons on this floor of mine and of Teralos. I imagine they could be crabs on another. Flowers on a third. Talking birds, like the one that once long ago relayed this information to me, on a fourth.


    I wonder where floors go when people leave them. Do they stay, unvisited, awaiting to host a new climber during a wee while? Do they disappear and get created anew when there is a need for them? If they linger, do they mutate, and are all those seemingly permutations of some floors reported by other gods (Ilucarology is a blooming field of research among immortals. I hope this diary makes it out the tower and into the hands of men, which would place it into the hands of gods, too. Something new under the sun draws the eyes of the nigh-omniscient, specially something born from Ilucaris.) just the same floors, changed to suit their new visitors?


    I even wonder if Ilucaris is always a tower. Do the animals that find their way in see it as a cave? Would a rabbit see a majestic lair where it needs to dig deeper to progress? What about other beings that find their way in? What would a fungus or a weed perceive?


    I may never know.


    I pick a branch of the river to follow. I stroll through its twisting surface, walking with my head pointing to the earth at moments, and pointing at the horizon at others. The barrier of spray, a multitude of shining droplets, before me probably acts a curtain that will lead to a staircase. I cannot see beyond it. I expect a guardian to be found somewhere in there, to ask me to give him or her one of the gifts of Ilucaris to proceed. I won¡¯t give them anything, if possible: I have already parted with my omniscience, and if I want to reach the last floor, I suppose I may need every last one of my skills.


    <hr>


    Entry 9:


    A narrow passage carved into a flying iceberg contains the exit of this floor. The rivers have left behind, and a path of fragmented, floating breccias leads to the cave of glossy walls of blue. There¡¯s no guardian. Either the tower considers I already made my sacrifice, or its forsaking me like I forsook her. She knows that if there is nobody to grant my gifts to, there¡¯s no chance for me to come out of this as a man. I¡­ resent the idea of surviving this trip as a god. Half a god, if she were vile enough to take everything but the immortality. And that¡¯s an idea I fear, to be half divine. To have all the weaknesses of a man and be forced to suffer them for the remainder of eternity. Please no. Have mercy, Ilucaris.


    And despite that fear, I must go on. To go back now is to remain incomplete, more so than I was before entering. Furthermore, cowardice would be the final conclusion I would arrive to when examining the why for my retreat. And I have been a coward in many of my life, of course I have been. But afraid¡­ I don¡¯t think I have been truly afraid since I stopped being a mortal. So I played the role of a coward, because it was fitting, because the performer needs to get in character for the sake of the play. But like an actor knows he is in no danger when pointed at with a prop gun, I knew my head being blown up by the enemy in wars that I could end with a finger snap would be inconsequential. Just an end to that particular story, to that persona that I had no attachment with besides incarnating them.


    Climbing up to the cave, my steps are those of a weary man. I am not worn down; I cannot get tired. Yet the cave expects a traveler, and it is only polite to look like one. With my cape for a cocoon I advance like a man would. No teleports, no flying, only my feet upon the glacier-hewn rocks.


    Breccias. I remember having studied them back in a life where I was a geologist. I remember long, delicate, golden hairs falling over one composed mostly of felsic minerals. Mine, probably: I think I was a woman back then.


    A cave in the ice¡­ it reminds me of that expedition to the Rediran mountains. It was me atnd a few others. Three? I think the group was mixed, regarding sexes. I can retrieve images of a bearded man reflecting his coppery skin on the ice walls of the cave, illuminated solely by the light of a torch held behind him.


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    I look at my hand. I don pale skin now. I am unsure why I chose it last time I shapeshifted.


    You may believe I like to lie about having a very good memory. There are books that I could recite from memory, even in tongues I don¡¯t speak anymore. It¡¯s just oo many lives, too many moments that held no significance for me. Of all my weddings, I remember only the few that went, to put it somehow, horribly wrong. When I and Cortiala (Cortiala?) burned alive after I silently pleaded the wind to topple a candle. When I messed with the mafia just enough so they would kill as I carried my wife out the aisle. When my jealous ex-boyfriend ran in with a knife and stabbed me despite my husband¡¯s best efforts to defend me from the assassin enhanced by godly will. I have had so many endings, left behind so many bodies I didn¡¯t consider mine. But as I said before, had them been mine in the truest sense, the deaths would have been just as inconsequential.


    I enter the frozen throat, knowing the shape of the inside and that of the outside won¡¯t fit together. A tepid and putrid breeze comes from its depths, as if it were the breath of some titanic monster. Just another of Ilucaris wonders; another reminder that the tower exists above logic, unbound by it.


    <hr>


    Entry 10:


    The cave wound down for about three minutes, and then it ended. The way back melted on the lava pool behind me. The sky here is tinged in charcoal. Ashen creatures show only their eyes when they peek over the surface of the sea of sky-blue molten rock. I am sitting over a platform composed of something resembling basalt. It could be basalt, regardless of floating on blue, lukewarm lava.


    Yes, I have tested it with a finger. It wouldn¡¯t burn a man¡¯s skin unless he kept it submerged it there for a long while. It¡¯s not the scorching oven of nature we often regard a volcano as. And it¡¯s definitively not a cryovolcano, one of those you can find in other planets and their moons: This is molten rock. With three-eyed creatures swimming in it like alligators in a swamp, with a sky hue on its surface and among its blackened, cooled-down blotches, and barely warm. But molten rock all the same.


    The end of the platform hangs over the air, over a massive¡­ lavafall, for lack of a better word. Imagine the widest waterfall you know, and add floating debris, pieces of it that got a tad too cold, falling slowly over what seems to be the edge of the benighted world.


    There¡¯s a zigzagging path of rock going down, an unsupported projection of the platform. I could follow it. Still, looking down¡­ Jumping seems like a good idea. The worst that could happen would be Illucaris pulling one of her dimensional manipulations on me and making me fall further away from the bottom. And while time isn¡¯t of the essence, I¡¯d like to take a shortcut. At worst, I am delaying my death a few minutes or hours. So little gained, so little lost.


    Yes. I will jump.


    <hr>


    Entry 11:


    Inside the lavafall live these two-and-a-half eyed rat-headed giraffes, to provide a description of these long-necked creatures. The half eye is found on the left side, and it¡¯s just the right part of the ocular globe and surrounding tissues inserted vertically immediately below the ¡°normal¡± eye, creating a T shaped form. They extend their necks from under the curtain of liquid, cutting long lines in it, and sniff me as I continue my, now half-an-hour-old, freefall. The bottom is nowhere near and the falling speed feels slowed down. I could give up and fly towards the nearest portion of the zigzagging, winding path down. I won¡¯t. If Ilucaris wanted me to play by her rules, she would have provided me another idyllic paradise, and not this alien plane of wrongness.


    Now, if you excuse me, I have a fall to complete.


    <hr>


    Entry 12:


    It¡¯s the wisdom of the common folk that seasons last for about three months. Their defining characteristics can extend a little, and in some places of the word there are just two of them, six months long each. I bring not a chat about summer or the wonders of spring, but a complaint about winter: it never comes, as the fall never ends.


    I had a lot of time to think of that introduction: Today is the fourth mensiversary of the day I took the jump, and I begin thinking it may have been a bad idea. However, I must persist. Falling is effortless progress, and the tower cannot stretch the fall forever. Or, rather, she can, but not for longer than I can remain stubborn. I know the time inside Ilucaris doesn¡¯t match the time of the world. Whether it passes faster or slower, I cannot know, and thus worrying about it is an empty endeavor. Furthermore, even if there are no more men when I emerge holding my pyrrhic victory in my dying, trembling hands, there will be gods to read my diary. Can you die? Can you conjure a star ex nihilo? I wonder. I write this with the intention of it being intelligible for mortals, but you could be a children of the tower too. And if you are, I assume you are haughtily laughing at me.


    One of the giratffes just licked me as I dropped by. They do that sometimes. Judging by the spots on her gray hair, I think I saw her before. I don¡¯t understand if there are copies of the same rats spread over the height of the lavafall, hiding behind it, and they all get information from the others faster than I fall, or if I am trapped in a sort of loop.


    I am going to nap until the fall ends. Otherwise I will fill the diary with useless ramblings about the giratffes and their behavior.

 Entry 13: The First Guardian

    Entry 13:


    I swear I must have slept for about ten minutes before hitting the hard, ashen ground. Rivulets of blue lava run around me, and the rock, who seemingly considers itself harder than a god, is unscathed. Ilucaris¡¯ sense of humor, skyclad.


    As for me, I think I broke shy of a hundred bones, I see brain matter and blood scattered all over the basalt, and my right femur decided to poke out to get some fresh air. For a landing done while I slept, I consider it a success.


    Little islands scatter through the lava river, onto which anyone that has climbed up here could leap, form a way leading to the floor¡¯s guardian. Crystal spikes like violet hexagonal pencils jut out from the ground and conform its foot or nest, and its body is a cylinder sprouting arms, humanoid ones, like a pine sprouts dense branches. This body is crowned by a neck long and flexible, like a bubblegum pulled from between one¡¯s teeth, and it ends on a head that I can only describe as Paleozoic: big composite eyes, dark chitinous spines sprouting from the shield that makes most of it up, and armored appendages dangling from it, wiggling, twitching. It regards me with a tilted stare, as if I were as alien to it as it is to me.


    ¡°Greetings. You are the guardian of this floor, or so I assume. Do you know my name?¡±


    The creature moves it¡¯s three insect-like mandibles and a voice full of little taps and chitters reaches my ears. ¡°There¡¯s no such thing anymore. Do you wish to keep on descending through Our Mother?¡±


    I walk over the lava to reach the island where this creature stands. ¡°Very much so. I assume an offering is needed.¡±


    ¡°Not yet.¡± The guardian says, to my surprise.¡± You have that which many desire. Do you really want to give it all away?¡±


    ¡°I am determined to die, if that¡¯s your question.¡± Its neck describes a half circle to my right, and now to my left. The guardian is regarding me from every possible angle. ¡°And if you have a name, I¡¯d be pleased to know it.¡±


    ¡°I am born from Ilucaris. I am one or I am ten thousand. I am, ostensibly. At this moment, before you I am, but there¡¯s no need for a name when I exist in loneliness. Your name is lost; mine is unneeded. Why do you, adopted by her, receiver of her boundless grace and gifts, wish to die.¡±


    I shrug. I had forgot how guardians often behave. Many may have been humans once, stuck in the tower, unable to advance anymore. This one is not the case, and that is bound to make things more difficult for me.


    I straighten my back. ¡°Novelty. Closure. And because I have a right to.¡±


    ¡°A right to.¡± Silence settles between us, and even the wind calms down to listen. ¡°Do you believe gods, siblings of yours and of mine, deserve an expiry date? For our lovely mother to slaughter them once enough blood has drained from their clepsydrae?¡±


    ¡°I do. Sooner than later, many would ask for. It¡¯s death or insanity, inhumanity. Incompleteness.¡±


    I don¡¯t know if it is smiling or that gesture in its head means another thing. Its labrum is risen, little tongues like albino worms come out and play on the borders of the hole. ¡°Then pray tell me, considering the so-claimed universality of rights, and according to your beliefs: how soon should a spire slay her son?¡±


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    ¡°That should be the decision of said son.¡±


    A whistle comes out as the creature pulls its neck back. ¡°That sounds like a right so precious. What is, then, the counterpart? The obligation that exists to balance it out?¡±


    I hesitate just a few instants. ¡°This. Descending Ilucaris when one is ready to die.¡± I cross my arms under my cape. ¡°Does this mean that, in your eyes, we already have such right?¡±


    ¡°No. I don¡¯t consider gods to have rights. Rights are for the feeble. For the flesh. Gods have a will, as does Ilucaris. And it is her will for you to be able to pursue your ends, even if they go against her own.¡±


    I hum for but an instant before answering. ¡°Useless chatter, then. You don¡¯t understand what is to have been born a man.¡±


    Then the guardian got his monstrous head closer to mine. ¡°Oh, and do you?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± I admit, despite wanting to say yes and yearning for it to be true if I did. ¡°But perhaps by descending Ilucaris I will remember. I need the pain. I need the fear. I need the end.¡±


    His breath felt cold on my skin, polar. ¡°And what about the love, the hope, the infinite little delusions and cute tales they tell themselves?¡±


    ¡°I am positive some of the things I lost during my life too long are irretrievable. I am beyond loving any person or rock. I am beyond hating them, too. I have hope, otherwise I wouldn¡¯t be here, before you. As for the delusions, I don¡¯t believe them to be exclusive of men.¡±


    ¡°Interesting.¡± The neck retreated into the slimy from which the arms sprouted. ¡°Then, it must be time for you to continue your march towards death. What do you offer?¡±


    I sit on a nearby mound of basalt and begin going over my powers. I have already thought what to give up, but a guardian probably is free to refuse an offer.A second and third choice are most likely merited at this point.


    Ah, I know. Few are the things I am willing to part so freely, but the sacrifice is necessary. ¡°I will begin by offering that which could be a curse, instead of a blessing, without omniscience: my ability to become omnipresent. You could guard this pathway and be anywhere else if you had it. Do you want it?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want it,¡± the guardian says, flatly.


    I groan a little. ¡°I am not so willing to part with it, but what would you say about the power to force others to swear oaths? Do you want it?¡±


    The guardian answers the same thing again, in the same tone. I curse under my breath.


    ¡°Mind reading? Do you want the power to read minds?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want it.¡±


    I think about gathering power in my hand and throwing a little star at it. obliterating the guardian and have to look for another in the vast expanse of this room. I open my hand and look at it. It¡¯s likely not worth the effort. ¡°What, then, do you want? Answer!¡±


    ¡°I have no wants.¡±


    For a second, I remained in silence. For ten, I guffawed. For another five, I catch up in the diary, as the surprise made me stop writing. Now, seventeen seconds later. I speak. ¡°And I thought you were being picky! So, you don¡¯t want any of my powers. But which one would you accept as a tribute so I can be let through?¡±


    It extended its neck back out. ¡°Which one would I accept, you ask. Any is the answer. If for none I have need, how would I choose while behaving as it is only fair and neutral? All have the same value for me, so to ask for the one you treasure the less would be an ask of benevolence, and benevolent I am not. To, instead, ask for the one you cherish the most of those you offered would be an act of malevolence. And malevolent¡ª¡±


    ¡°You are not.¡± I say, without any ill intent towards the creature. I reach for its head and place two hands on the chitinous, bumped surface between its eyes. ¡°Have my omnipresence, Guardian.¡±


    I disappear from everywhere else I could be. I feel the universe closing its doors to me, my existence condensing inside my body, like water rushing into a submerged, empty bottle. Bottle that would eventually swallow the whole sea. So many wonders seem to me now forever lost, but that¡¯s okay: I don¡¯t need it here, in Ilucaris. In my coffin.


    The guardian retreats inside the hole of its crystal base, the arms pulling the cylinder down, and with it, dragging the neck and head. ¡°May you perish at last,¡± it wishes me before his head disappears among the sharp crystals, revealing beyond them a cave with stairs chiseled out of what seems to be quartz. And in a flaw in them, I notice an eye rimmed in teeth staring at me.


    Hello there, Karerak.

 Entries 14, 15

    Entry 14:


    Emerging from this cave I am met with a flooded world. Lands beyond this sorry assemblage of flotsam the cave has turned to are out of my sight, and what a blessing this is. Bags of plastic white and boards of variegated wood float around me as I stand in this, the only rock in sight, the exit from the cave that comes from the depths of this sea. A worn-down stretch of rope drifts by, an orange turned pale from exposure to direct sunlight.


    I walk over the waters, away from the island of trash, and look downwards. The waters below the thin veil that is the surface remain imperturbable, so still and limpid that one could confuse it with country air. Petals wide, pink red or purple, replace the fishes one would expect. They swim or float betwixt the sleeping or dead people that lie upon the white sands at the bottom. I don¡¯t wonder why they are there, nor who they were. It¡¯s like wondering why rocks rest at the bottom of a river: most men won¡¯t do it again after the first time they, fully aware of what they are and with a dash of knowledge about how the world works, see a river. And I have seen so many dead that they outnumber the stars on the night sky. Women, men, old, young, and maybe even someone¡¯s pet. The petals, like I, fail to discriminate between them, cover them all as they follow the water currents as if wind they were. If they were ever alive, and if they are dead indeed, I¡¯d like for my final resting place to be like this. I may have no need for beauty right now, but I suspect it will return as I descend the tower. I think it¡¯s only human to yearn for a good place to fall dead.


    I can sink. I can walk among them, be showered by the streams of petals. But I prefer to watch from above, to admire like the god I still am. I may be seeking to lose my divinity, but to deny it has its perks would be the most despicable of lies. Besides, I don¡¯t belong there. I don¡¯t belong anywhere but ¡ª and I am not sure of this ¡ª in the heavenly abodes. I have been everyone a man or woman can be. I have worn thousands of masks, such that my real face must have been sanded away.


    The waves act like small mounds as I wander over the surface. Where to go? Anywhere will lead me to the exit. There¡¯s no way to get forever lost inside Ilucaris, not unless in one¡¯s heart of hearts lies the desire to do so.


    Sometimes a wave grows taller than me, and I ride it like a camel a dune. Were this sand, I wouldn¡¯t see the dead, or the sleeping. The idea thrills me, of a cemetery unknown resting under my feet as I, unware, traverse the desert above it.


    A dolphin jumps by my left, another by the right. Their eyes are placed around their spiracles, a sort of bastardized apical system, a poor imitation of a sea urchin. I wonder if they release eggs and sperm through their spiracle, too.


    Only silence and my own breathing complement the sound of the waves. My memories scream at me that something is wrong, that the world cannot be tranquil, that to hear no voices and be nowhere but here forebodes some imminent tragedy. I am alone with myself, and I am not my own, ethereal reflection that I am staring at. Sanity for a man, insanity for a god. Where do I fall in that scale?


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    Water rises like mountains in the horizon. Not land, and not waves or a tsunami: it¡¯s still, it¡¯s as if the surface of the world had been wrinkled. One could climb up those oceanic slopes and ridges. Grab onto the foam and hold it tightly. Water that wouldn¡¯t run off between my fingers.


    I keep on going, draped on my cape, towards a valley. The daytime stars spin above my head, their shy light undrowned by the lazy, orange sun.


    The fields of dead extend into the depths, into the darkness unmarred by the day. How deep is this ocean? Is it even an ocean if there¡¯s no evidence of land but a lone stone emerging over it? Because men have defined the lakes, the seas, the river, the air, and even the land because it is not omnipresent. You have no need to define something you find anywhere.


    This aimless wandering leads me to waters dark and endless. The big, violent bubbles that rise from the unfathomable murk tell tales of creatures never seen by eye any.


    I wish to be attack by some. It would be amusing. While I can, I mean. I may be here, I may be now, and I may not know, but for every other intent and purpose, I am a god, capable of violence unmatched without even moving a finger. Or of escaping harm without having to defend myself. Throw me to the hungering wolves, and I may choose to feed them a flesh I have no need for, or to let them bite mist and smoke.


    And that explains why Ilucaris presents me no challenge of the sort. You know, and so does your sister. Given an ocean is a giant glass, I won¡¯t pronounce her name.


    The further I venture, the flattest the water surface becomes. Waves are dying off around me, the cemetery of the deep now reflected on the surface, on its stillness.


    I poke a smiley face on the surface with my index finger, and the grooves don¡¯t fill back in soon enough. The fluid is not denser, but it seems reluctant to move.


    This ocean is depressed, or so I believe.


    I look behind me. I have been leaving footprints since a while ago, it seems. I wonder if tracks left on water, if they last long enough, would be considered ichnites. Trace fossils of a god¡­ I am fond of the idea. Imagine they remain here, in the ¡ªmetaphorical¡ª sands of this watery desert, for someone to find and unveil my truths: that I traveled alone, that I wasn¡¯t hurrying anywhere. That I wandered in a meandering path as I walked over rebellious waters. That I pioneered in the making of graptohydres: writings in the water.


    But what may I imprint upon the surface of this weird liquid that marks me as undeniably human, and yet divine still? A passing thought brings to me the tongue of my people, but we had no writing system. I could use some other long dead and forgotten tongue, but that wouldn¡¯t mark me as a god, as Ilucaris is timeless, and so it would be reasonable for a native speaker of that tongue to write it as they passed by. A combination of dead tongues from two groups of people that never met in life? A scholar¡¯s joke, maybe a scholar whose knowledge was lost, but only human in the end.


    Maybe it is meant to be only human, and if I do, I need to inscribe something undeniably human. Something no guardian or born from Ilucaris would.


    <hr>


    Entry 15:


    Pride wouldn¡¯t find me dead here, for I drew a phallus. I think there¡¯s no more telling track of mankind that a silly, pointless joke about bodily parts. While Ilucari¡¯s demons can deceive and her satyrs may trick, their humor, I hope, would never step to such simple lows.


    I was a man, and I wish to become one again. I drew a dick. I feel I am a step closer.


    The sea stirs, the water around the drawing rearranges into words I can read. ¡°Very funny, Unnamed one.¡±


    It seems I have found the guardian of this floor, and I have been walking over them for a while now.

 Entry 16: The Second Guardian

    ¡°Make your offer,¡± the stilled sea insists.


    ¡°Tell me your name, guardian.¡±


    ¡°Only if you tell me yours first,¡± demands the ocean whose waters act like sand or dough.


    ¡°You know I have no true name no more.¡± I could poke it. The water. I doubt it will bother the guardian enough to be worth a breath, though.


    ¡°And why would I trade mine for naught?


    The same song over and over and over. The landscape changes, so does the appearance of the guardians, but this one sounds to me a bit like the first. Children of Ilucaris, they have an inherent purpose. They know no misery, no tragedy. And men think that by imitating them, they will find happiness. Nonsense. They know no happiness as men conceive it. Their content is alien to humans, can drive them envious and mad. They can make them jealous of even their name.


    ¡°You were human once, guardian,¡± I say, almost sure of my words.


    The water frolics around me, little spikes like a train of stalagmites circling my feet at a snail¡¯s pace. ¡°No. Don¡¯t insult me like that. An ape I never was. I learned their tongue, I spoke their words. And I flew across their cities as I did so.¡±


    ¡°Well, allow me to be blunt: you want something shiny, then.¡±


    ¡°The idea your species has of mine is insulting. We magpies are much more than seekers of colored mirrors.¡±


    He doesn¡¯t need to know that I was thinking of crows instead of magpies.


    ¡°But you are not a magpie anymore, and I no man.¡±


    Silence. The sea doesn¡¯t know how to answer, or has taken offense to my words. A wave rises in the distance, slowly, as a curious crocodile stalking an animal it had never seen before.


    ¡°So would seem to show the available evidence.¡± The guardian hums, little waves forming circles, as raindrops would when falling into a puddle. ¡°Still, I sense in you the vices of men, undying as you are, yet dormant. Your divine attributes repress them, god. I think it would be interesting to rouse a few of them.¡±


    The sea has no means to grin back at me, but I can imagine a titanic magpie doing so.


    ¡°I have no need for greed. After nobody can a shapeshifter lust. There remain no crackling embers in my soul that could reignite the fire of my wrath. No meal can stir the dried out well of my gluttony. I suffer no exertion: sloth is alien to me. I suppose I could envy men: they can effortlessly have that for which I yearn for. As for pride¡­ I am a god.¡±


    ¡°And I am an ocean,¡± the magpie states, proudly.


    It¡¯s plain to see that this guardian is not like the previous one. It wants something particular from me. What. The ghost of uncertainty looms over my psyche, and I find the feeling scrumptious. The liquid at my feet furrows; knife wounds; upside down dorsal fins of a shark leaving a cast behind.


    ¡°State your price, Magpie.¡±


    ¡°Let us barter, god. Show me a shiny, so to speak, power you are willing to part with. Delight my oh-so-inferior bird brain, if that would gladden you.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s no need for mockery, guardian. I don¡¯t think less of birds than I do of men.¡± I sit upon the calm surface, not before sidestepping the depressions in it. ¡°Men in general don¡¯t foster ill thoughts about birds.¡±


    ¡°Liar! Liar!¡± The ocean caws. It sounds like the bird it once was now. ¡°Liar¡­¡± It mewls now. I think he just had a serendipity, a realization of what it wants from me. ¡°Give me your lies, god! Scintillating rings of pyrite incrusted in cubic zirconia!¡±


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    ¡°Beg your pardon?¡± I blink out of surprise. What is this creature¡­ or landscape¡­ asking for? ¡°Do you want a ring.¡±


    ¡°The ring is a metaphor. A lesser lie, if you will. But I want the juicy ones. I don¡¯t want your powers worthy of a god: I have no use for them! But it would delight me to strip you out of a treacherous tongue. I want your capacity to lie.¡±


    This mix of relief and abject dread is something I haven¡¯t felt in a long time. I shiver at the thought of being deprived of this skill so early on my descent. Is this nervousness? Is this what a caretaker feels whenever the object of care dies after weeks of agonizing pain?  I expected to give up my capacity to define abstracts, to declare what¡¯s wrong and what¡¯s right, to have an unimpeachable judgement by virtue of changing the rules of the game whenever I would need to. A power that I may need to give a lot of use to if I render myself unable to tell a simple lie.


    ¡°Would you consider taking anything else?¡±


    I say in a serviceable tone. ¡°I am not much of a liar. You would be scamming yourself by asking for something so worthless. I wasn¡¯t lying when I said men and women don¡¯t consider most birds a plague. You are protagonists of their banners, nest betwix the lines of their poems. Your wings ring in their minds as synonyms of freedom.  Men wish they could fly.¡±


    ¡°Nonsense!¡± The sea shrieks, causing the water to quake as if land it were. ¡°Flying is tiring. We could have had hands, but we got wings instead. We are forced to get by using our beaks and legs. This limits us. You have wonderful prehensile appendages capable of fashioning wood and stone into wonderful trinkets! Trinkets that can even fly! What right do you have to envy or admire us, sons of apes? Liar!¡±


    ¡°Believe what you will. Do you wish to propose another deal? It wouldn¡¯t satisfy my justice-seeking soul to rip you off this badly.¡±


    The ocean laughs, and the raucous bouts traverse my body like a shockwave. ¡°Rip me off? I lose nothing by allowing you to descend to the next floor. Yet you give away your attributes, one by one, your very self picked apart, a jigsaw puzzle carved out of a deity, all for nothing but for the promise of death. Who is swindling who?¡±


    I snap my fingers and the world goes red. Far above us hydrogen and helium have gathered, ignited by a nuclear spark.  They are still pretty far away, yet I don¡¯t have to fear: I can defend myself and this diary against the infernal heat of a newborn star if there was the need to make it come and crash down.


    ¡°How near do you think I need to bring it for you to not swindle me, then? I don¡¯t know how being an ocean feels, but boiling away, or even turning to plasma, cannot be a pleasant sensation.¡±


    Loom, loom. my little star, so that nobody shall wonder what you are.


    Is the sea squirming? I want to see it squirm.


    ¡°Cornered, aren¡¯t we? Distressed enough to threaten a guardian. How wonderfully your creation hangs above us, god! How it shines and rages with the strength of countless wildfires! I am a Child of Ilucaris, adoptive, but child of hers still. Kill me and you will find yours truly again in another floor. And then you will be weaker, with way fewer tools to weasel your way out of giving me what I want. But acquiesce to my demand now, and you get rid of me, Unnamed one.¡±


    I value my capacity to lie. It is bound to prove itself far more useful than the power to fabricate a star and command it to crash down on my head. Yet I cannot kill this guardian without setting myself up for failure.


    I snap my fingers once more, and the red giant fizzles, its mulish heat soon following.


    ¡°Anything else, magpie. Please. Give me an option, choose something more or less valuable, and let me choose.¡±


    The sea goes mute, impossibly still. I¡¯d swear it froze solid, if I didn¡¯t knew better.


    ¡°No.¡± The guardian said, calmly. ¡°I know what I wish for. Accept or attack or turn back; there¡¯s no bargaining with me. You, god, are in no position to force so.¡±


    ¡°What if I sit here and wait for you to change your mind?¡± In suggest, making myself smaller inside my cape, the arms clinging to the body to look humble.


    ¡°To test my patience is to assume I have a need for anxiety. We are both immortal, we can behold each other forever and a while. You shall bask in my magnificence, and I¡¯ll bask in yours, and we both are going to come out just as stubborn as we are now and here. Meanings are timeless for those who can decree time is meaningless.¡±


    The guardian refers to the meaning of his (or her, I cannot know a priori if this was once a male magpie) negative. That is as clear as the waters underfoot.


    Waters over whom I pace restlessly, from side to side. ¡°Parakeets are my favorite bird,¡± I blurt out, ¡°their tranquil chants soothe my busy mind after a long day at work.¡±


    ¡°Parakeets are noisy nosy ugly things!¡± says the one who in life sounded like a snake¡¯s rattle.


    I keep on pacing. I have too much to say while I can. ¡°I regard office workers as the most fortunate of men: their jobs are exciting, and make them feel needed.¡±  I make a pause and turn one hundred and eighty degrees. My index finger raises as I shake it. ¡°My name is Wilarden Anserducary and I want to live!¡±


    ¡°Now that is an obvious lie, unnamed one.¡±


    ¡°You are pink.¡±


    ¡°I am not! Quit your senseless yapping.¡±


    I freeze in place, lower my shoulders, exhale. I have so many lies to tell. And I won¡¯t be able to express them anymore once the deal is struck. So, even if it displeases the guardian, I shall shout them all out now. I¡¯ll write again when I am done.

 Entries 17 to 19

    Entry 17:


    I have told every lie I could think of. Merely for the record, I must say that a thousand and seventy-three hours have spanned since I arrived to this floor. That¡¯s a month and a half of uninterrupted poppycock broadcasting, of torturing the floor¡¯s guardian. If I hadn¡¯t started to repeat myself in the last tenth of that time, I¡¯d go on, maybe up to the point where the ocean would beg for death. And while that could benefit me, I am not confident in my tolerance to my own bullshit. My wish for death hasn¡¯t so far engendered one for madness.


    ¡°I am done, Guardian. I have told all the lies I ever wanted to tell,¡± I lied.


    The ocean doesn¡¯t answer. It is tired. Overwhelmed by my infantile behavior. I don¡¯t think it deserves punishment or pain. I know I will be expected to express such sentiments in the nearby future. Desire to I foster none, however. Should my equanimity, born from millennia of watching the world unfurl, shatter, I can only hope none will be bothered by its splinters.


    ¡°I am done, I said. You can have my ability to lie.¡±


    It abandons my body in droves, gushing out every pore, or so it feels. My talent to deceive betrays me, leaves me for dead and runs away with the foam. A weight rests over my shoulders for the first time since forever. I become an eidolon of truth. I manifest a ring composed of chalcopyrite with a lump of cubic zirconia set at the dorsal. My fingers part slowly, glacially even, to let it slip between them, drop into the ocean, not bouncing on its surface but sinking in.


    It gets lost into the turbid blue, a feather falling from an abandoned nest and down an infinite cliff. I envy the ring. To fall to the bottom of Ilucaris would be a dream, to splatter onto the ground and be overtaken by pain, and then by unconsciousness. I stare at my hand. She forces me to take the winding path, the slow track to cease. I cannot lie. It¡¯s the third floor of she knows how many, and I already lost not the power of a god, but a fragment of the humanity I so yearn to recover.


    This is how it happens. This is how I die. Not in a glorious instant as I crawl out the gates at the bottom. Not in a last breath, an exhalation so magnificent and so pathetic at the same time. Not facing the sun or the stars and basking in their light as I perish. The ocean called me a puzzle, and one by one I am losing my pieces. And once all pieces are scattered, is the one behind the cupboard more of whole than the one that remains in the box? Because I never considered myself to be my godly skills. I am without knowing it all. I am without being everywhere. I could be without sight, without hands. But am I without lies? What will go next? The anguish? This anguish? I don¡¯t want it taken away. My lies are¡­ were¡­ too precious, and I never thought they could be robbed off. I can only imagine how cherished suffering can become for me.


    I had not noticed it but I am walking on thin air now, a hole has opened under my feet. I am floating amidst the ocean, but not on water. Funny.


    ¡°I have your lies, god. Let yourself fall into the deep blue tunnel, slide through it, and you will reach the next floor,¡± says the magpie, calmer than I have ever heard it.


    ¡°How can I know you are not lying?¡±


    ¡°You can read my mind, cannot you?¡±


    I can. Indeed, the Guardian doesn¡¯t lie. Teasing him, however, is still enjoyable.


    I stop levitating and let gravity take me into the water tunnel. I begin sliding on the surface of the liquid as if it had frozen into slippery ice. I descend in a straight line, faster, faster. At the end, I can see a distant orange light, a maw of fire perhaps?


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    I shall soon see. I shall soon see.


    <hr>


    Entry 18:


    Starring this level of the tower, there¡¯s a star. Fiery burning, magnificent arches of plasma, bigger than planets, adorn my horizons. The ocean¡¯s tunnel-slide has evaporated; I am standing upon a solar spot that would take a man¡¯s lifetime to cross walking. The diary is protected by my powers, otherwise it would be instantly obliterated by the overwhelming heat. It¡¯s relatively cool down here on the photosphere, it should be noted. There are worse parts to stand on when it comes to stars. Relatively speaking, of course: any living being would be vaporized by the photosphere or the corona all the same.


    As it is usual, I wander. As it is usual, I wonder. There¡¯s not much to see when you walk upon the surface of a star. Plasma everywhere, a brightness that erases the other stars from the sky coming from under your soles. And no nearby stores to buy sunscreen. Factor thirty would surely be enough for a leisurely stroll by the nearest coronary ejection! What would my dermatologist recommend?


    With a snap of my fingers I manifest a dermatologist. She gets immediately vaporized, as it would be expected. Why did I even do that? I cannot think clearly. There¡¯s no fog in my mind, and yet¡­ the distress acts as one. I cannot lie. I cannot accept that I cannot lie.


    Hand flat as a blade, I bury it into the surface of the star. I want somewhere more homogeneous to rest, to think. The scorching core, bursting with energy, will provide the perfect garden to give my mind a respite.


    I cut southwards, using my hand as a sword, opening a wound into the star¡¯s skin. I don¡¯t need to do so, but I am a god still: I may as well do godly things while I can.


    As the star, confused and injured, bleeds scorching matter, I penetrate into the unwelcoming depts. I fall, headfirst, towards the core. The incandescent matter tries to burn me, but finds an unpassable wall of cold immobility.


    I am falling since an hour ago now, seeing the layers of overexcited gas pass me by one by one. A funny shaped spot lies ahead. Pain. I have crashed onto a hard surface. A core?


    As I incorporate and my eyes adjust to the local level of brightness I make out shelves made of the same boiling plasma as everything else, slightly colder, by the look of it. There are yellow, tiles under my feet. A tintinnabulation reaches my ears, even amidst the alien noise of the vibrating radiative zone.


    A shopping cart has come to my aid. It bumps against my leg, and its bars of starfire almost feel metallic to the touch. I read its mind: the cart wants me to shop.


    I may as well indulge. If ilucaris wants me to splurge a bit while I dive into a young star, why not indulge her?


    <hr>


    Entry 19:


    The rats¡¯ aisle is a mess. All the kinds of solar rat you can think of are stocked in the shelves: fat, thin, red, redder, yellow, blue, ultraviolet, male, female, asexed. Microwave. And one would think rodents made of starfire wouldn¡¯t urinate. Yet the place stinks of rat pee, and it does so with an unwarranted passion.


    As if that weren¡¯t enough, the shelves stack impossibly high, such that I cannot see their tops, and they extend onwards to the horizon. No knot forms on my stomach when I gaze at immensity, but it would be a welcome feeling in these moments.


    Uncountable aisles with uncountable items, arranged in a fashion I have not fathomed yet. The signs hanging from¡­ nowhere. I¡¯d say from thin air, but there¡¯s no air in here. The signs, their support system notwithstanding, indicate the adjacent shelves stock scalpels, for the one to my right, and money, for the one to the left. I don¡¯t believe that Ilucaris fails to understand the concept of a supermarket. Rather, what could be happening is that she is mocking it. Satirizing it. Like the Hall of fictions, this place if full of lies: the rats move and squeak and sniff around, but they have no flesh, no blood, no fur: it¡¯s all plasma. All around me is hydrogen, helium, a bit of oxygen, a smidge of carbon. Energy. Even this ¡ª rather insistent and dog-imitating ¡ª shopping cart is a fiction. But the items are also solid, my fingers don¡¯t go through them. They possess textures in accordance with the nature of the good they represent. A quaint illusion, if it can be called so.


    I turn on my heels and push the cart to a random aisle. I don¡¯t even bother with reading the signs: I don¡¯t know what I need, but the tower will provide.


    I keep crossing the market without taking any item with me, merely caressing some, poking lampposts and whales and phones as they pass me by.


    And just now, Eureka. The aisle in front of me has what any lost shopper needs: papers. But not any kind of papers: these are hastily scribbled, these have rough edges and it¡¯s plain to see that they were torn from bigger pieces of paper. Shopping lists. I guess I now know what¡¯s the first item I must acquire in my journey through this place. All that remains is to choose one.

 Entries 20, 21

    Entry 20:


    A triple-edged straw. The paper reveals my imminent fate, the aisles I shall traverse, the items I must pick up. ¡°Best tower ever¡± hole-less mug. The shopping cart refused most lists I picked up, rolling away whenever I tried to grab one it disliked. Painkillers: Ibuprofen 200 mg/ground glass 400 mg. I¡¯d say most of the items on the list don¡¯t make sense, but their faults align too perfectly for that to be the case. A drill made of soap. These items are straight out unusable for their intended purposes, not merely inconvenient. A thermometer whose minimum temperature is above its melting point. The list goes on and on, and the last item seems the most difficult to find. The heart of a sailor whose dream was to catch a pink nautilus and died without ever fulfilling such dream. To my knowledge, there are no pink nautili outside of Ilucaris. But it is known that the dreams of men don¡¯t obey the whims of possibility.


    It¡¯s undeniable, every item on this list can be found in this supermarket, for it seems to stretch endlessly. I doubt I can emerge back into the star¡¯s surface, return there, or fall further into the core. The star has become the market, and the market has become the universe. And the universe is just another floor on the tower of all. This leads me to engender a new thought; one I have not had before, or at least forgot to entertain and keep. That maybe my statement above rings true not because in the wide world of men one could never find a rosy nautilus, but rather because no such thing as the outside of Ilucaris exists. The tower contains infinite worlds inside, makes and unmakes them at will. Maybe the world of men is but another floor, unknowing children of Ilucaris that think themselves different.


    I push the cart along the aisles, searching for the signs that will betray the location of the items I seek. I soon reach the pharmacy section. I advance for a few kilometers down it, until I find the formulations with Ibuprofen. To my left and to my right stand walls of little would-be blue, pink and white boxes pile on the shelves, all of them with numbers, organized according to the complementary drugs and their amounts.


    I see it. Three hundred seventy-one meters over my head, branded ¡°Ibusilicatol¡±, a little box depicting a glass flower with a shattered petal. I kick against the tiles of the floor, propelling into the air as I extend my hand to reach it, but it seems it will not be so easy. As I accelerate upwards, the shelves elongate, keeping the distance between me and the minute object roughly the same.


    Landing back next to the cart, it seems flying could be the correct approach. As I slowly hover away from the floor, the shelves keep up with my pace. I accelerate, and they do. I reach light speed, and so they do.


    I teleport, and so they do. Stretch my arm as if it were made of rubber, and the shelves keep running away into the infinitely distant sky.


    Telekinesis. It works and the little box drops right into my hand. How despicable of a time sink, to make me try to use several of my skills just to fulfill a senseless caprice of this alien environment. At least it serves as a way to begin saying goodbye to some of them.


    Once the box is dropped onto the cart¡¯s basket, its entry burns out of the list with clean, white fire. I hope completing the list will lead to finding the guardian as I didn¡¯t expect the descent would be this tedious when I first entered the tower. It, however, makes sense for my death, to which I renounced so long ago, is now something I have to strive for, to earn back. And Ilucaris cannot present any hard challenges to me so long as I preserve most of my godly abilities. Only annoying, long ones.


    Given time is insubstantial to me, the length is merely a test of patience, and my patience is still that of a god. The bothersome nature of said tasks, though, can still be considered an admirable attempt on the spire¡¯s part to save her son. Yet, and this one¡¯s for you, Ilucaris: I deserve completion. Closure. Not all your sons you can save. Maybe not even one.


    The next aisle I find is the crockery and cutlery one. The straw and the mug should be somewhere around this section. I will retrieve them with the same method, if possible, and if necessary.


    I have the straw. It was showcased a mere hundred paces into the aisle. Its edges would cut any lips that dared suck on it. If it were not made of plasma, it would boast a precious metallic sheen. I shove one of its ends into the ibuprofen¡¯s box so it wouldn¡¯t fall through the cart¡¯s lattice, and continue my search for the mug.


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    That¡¯s the mug, up there. I have seen the horrors of war, suffered them in the flesh, even. I have witnessed children being gutted, shot or decapitated in front of loving parents that got in trouble with the mafia. I have watched the decomposition of every species in the most varied conditions, taking in the smells, the toxic emanations without blinking or wincing. I have read the depths of the most depraved minds without twitching. And even considering all of this, the thing manages to be the most heinous piece of existence I have ever happened across.


    I cast it against the floor with unparalleled might, and it just¡­bounces. Once and again it bounces anticlimactically, every cycle taking several minutes. I wanted to break it. There are more like it from where it came from, why can¡¯t I destroy such a disgusting creation?


    I move the cart so it will fall into it soon. Burn its name off the list, so I can move to the next item, whichever it may be.


    <hr>


    Entry 21:


    In about six days of searching, I have found everything but the heart. yet that is about to come to an end, as in front of me open two paths: one aisle claims to hold Word hearts, and the other Story hearts. The natural assumption is that the one I need falls into the second category, and thus, this is the line of thinking I follow. I step in between the shelves, admiring the shining cylinders inside of which the organs float, and beat. Every heart at their own rhythm, ignorant of the beating of the others, happily dissonant inside its private container. There are no etiquettes or signs under, on or above the containers to identify them. How am I supposed to discriminate among them? To find my pink nautilus when I am blind?


    I sit by the cart and caress it as if a dog it were. ¡°Do you have any idea? Any input to provide? No? Well, you could be more talkative.¡±


    The cart doesn¡¯t answer. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s supposed to act beyond pushing me towards acquiring the list and some of the items.


    Here I am, sitting inside a supermarket on the core of a star, seeking a heart made of plasma that supposedly belonged to a man who sought a pink nautilus tirelessly, talking to a shopping cart just as real as everything else in this world of star fire.


    Each heart beats to its own tune. That must be it. They tell the stories, each one a different tale. But the code is not Morse, nor any other I know. I listen intently to the one closer to me, putting my ear against the fiery crystal, and cannot make out even a single fragment of the long-winded cycle.


    I leave this aisle with a U-turn, entering the one with the ¡°Word¡± hearts. The cart follows me as if leashed: I didn¡¯t intend it to do so, but I don¡¯t mind, either. Long strides take me deep into the cloud of labeled and unlabeled hearts. Their cycles are considerably shorter than the story ones. And most importantly, some tell what word they are supposed to say, having it stamped on the lower part of its container. This is just what I need. My hope lies in them using the alphabet in their code, to have combinations of beats determining a letter or a syllable. I need a suitable word to test this theory.


    I spot one that says ¡°Drudgery¡±. It fulfills several criterial of usefulness to crack the code. If the code is written letter by letter, then this word alone will teach me how to recognize D and R at first, simply from identifying the repeated patterns. Furthermore, the D is the first set of beats, and it should repeat shortly after. It should prove easy to isolate it. Once I know D and, by a similar process, R, Then I can identify the beginning of the Y patter, and as it has no letter after, determine it without the need to ¡°sandwich¡± it between two known patterns. The U will be revealed simply because I will know where Rs end and Ds begin. Only the ¡°ge¡± syllable will remain slightly ambiguous, then, as I will be unable, with this word alone, to make out the end of the G pattern from the beginning of the E pattern.


    After a little looking around another vessel catches my eye. Zealous. This one is, while not a perfect complement, an acceptable one. A second E means I can make out the pattern for the letter, and that reveals the Z too. Given I know the pattern for the U, I can also isolate the beats that determine the S. ¡°Alo¡± would remain ambiguous, but it¡¯s three letters I can compare with a third heart or fourth heart.


    In less than ten words, if I choose right, I should get enough study material to glean the whole alphabet. That is, if they work like I expect them to.


    I grab the ¡°Drudgery¡± heart and load it in the cart, to then drive away from the cacophony of beats. Once in the tranquility of one of the long halls connecting aisles, I place the container onto the floor, sit with my legs crossed, and listen. The melody of the D seems to be composed of four particular beats. Yes, as I suspected. Is R those other three, with the weak one in the middle?


    Another cycle confirms it. This seems to be the way to crack the code. It will take some more hearts, and careful study of each one to engrave the patterns onto my memory. But I have the method. I have the time.


    I¡¯ll write again once I learn the whole alphabet and begin perusing the tale-telling hearts.