The Ascent

The first three floors were a hallucinations trap. The hallway stretched into infinity, the carpet pattern shifting like snakes.

"Don't look at the walls," Lyra warned, her eyes glued to her spectrometer. "The geometry is non-Euclidean. It triggers vertigo to make you fall."

Val didn't listen. He looked. Immediately, the floor tilted ninety degrees. He slammed into the wall, which was suddenly the floor. A gargoyle sconce animated, snapping stone jaws at his throat.

Val didn't dodge. He shoved his forearm into the creature's mouth. Stone teeth shattered against bone that refused to fracture. With his free hand, he ripped the sconce from the wall and crushed it to dust. He pulled his arm back; it was mangled, bleeding black ichor, but steam was already rising from the wound as the flesh stitched itself shut.

He looked back. Lyra was clinging to the banister, eyes wide.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, her voice small.

"Only for a second," Val lied. It hurt for a lifetime. Every time.

They reached the fourth floor landing. The atmosphere shifted from psychological horror to physical assault. The temperature spiked. The wallpaper peeled back to reveal pulsating flesh.

"Fire elementals," Lyra noted, reading the air. "Low level, but volatile."

A vaguely humanoid shape of blue flame lunged from a guest room. Val stepped into its path. The fire engulfed him, burning away his coat and searing his skin. He didn't scream. He simply walked through the inferno, grabbed the entity’s core, and crushed it.

He emerged from the fire, his skin a roadmap of angry red burns that were already fading to pink, then unblemished pale.

Lyra stared at him, not with fear, but with scientific fascination mixed with horror. "Your cellular regeneration is instantaneous. It defies entropy."

"It's a curse, kid. Not a science project." Val grabbed a heavy velvet drape from the hallway to cover his shredded shirt. "We need to move. The building knows we’re climbing."

"Why do you do it?" Lyra asked, hurrying to keep pace as they ascended to the sixth floor. "Walk into fire like that?"

"Because you can't," Val grunted. "I’m the shield. You’re the cargo. That’s the job."

"I am *not* cargo," Lyra hissed, stopping. She pointed her copper device at a sealed door blocking the stairwell. "That door is ward-locked with a blood riddle. You could punch it for a thousand years and it wouldn't open. Move."

She stepped past him, her delicate fingers tracing invisible lines in the air. She whispered a sequence of arithmancy variables. The heavy iron door groaned and clicked open.

She looked up at him, breathless but defiant. "You’re the shield. I’m the key. Try to remember that."

Val looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time. She was sweating, terrified, her heart monitor whirring frantically, but she hadn’t run.

"Right," Val said. "Nice work, Key."