She nodded with satisfaction, then cleared her throat, signaling a topic change. “So…you mentioned needing a rope? Do you have any extra fabric?”
“Fabric…?”
I looked down at my outfit, realizing I didn’t have so much as a handkerchief in my pockets. If this were good old Alfheim, I could produce a veritable ton of extra clothes, capes, and so on from my virtual item storage, but the Underworld was not blessed with such convenience.
“…Well, all I’ve got is this shirt and these pants. If need be, I’ll take them off, though,” I offered with a one-shouldered shrug.
Alice made the bitterest face I’d ever seen and yelled, “That will not be necessary! You must be joking. I cannot believe you would head into battle with nothing but a sword.”
“Hey, you dragged me and Eugeo here from the academy with nothing but the clothes on our backs, right?”
“But you snuck into the tower’s armory, didn’t you? There were plenty of very fine ropes in there that…oh, forget it. This is a waste of time,” she snorted, turning away. She lifted her right hand in its golden gauntlet, then grimaced when she realized she couldn’t take her other hand off the sword hilt.
She thrust her arm toward me and commanded, “Undo the fastener on my gauntlet with your free hand.”
“Huh?”
“And do not touch my skin under any circumstances. Quickly now!”
“…”
From what Eugeo told me, back in Rulid, Alice had been a bright, friendly, and kind girl to all. So where was this totally opposite personality coming from?
At last, the feeling was back in my left hand. I lifted it up to the fastener on her gauntlet. I held the metal device so she could pull her hand free. Her pale, slender fingers made a gesture, and she shouted, “System Call!”
This was followed by some complex, unfamiliar commands. The gauntlet in my hand flashed and began to change shape. Within a few seconds, I had a beautiful, coiled golden chain in my hand.
“Whoa…a matter-transformation spell…?”
“Weren’t you listening? Are those ears on the sides of your head, or carnivorous holes for devouring insects? That was just a shape-changing art. Only the pontifex herself can perform the art of altering the very material.”
I apologized to Alice, who clearly didn’t view our truce as a chance to soften her tone, then tested the strength of the chain. I stuck the end into my mouth and tugged; it felt like my teeth were going to pop out. The metal was thinner than my pinkie finger, but it was clearly tough enough, and the chain was bookended with sturdy-looking fasteners.
I stuck one of the fasteners onto my belt and held out the other end, which Alice took and attached to the metal clasp of her sword belt. The length of hanging chain between us ran about fifteen feet long. As long as we didn’t both fall at the same time, this gave us some measure of security.
“All right…”
I glanced around to survey our situation. Based on the placement of the sun, we were hanging from the western wall of Central Cathedral. The sky overhead was turning from blue to purple, while the sunlight hitting the white stone painted it a soft orange hue. I estimated it was about half past three.
After a very careful glance past my feet and the thin wisps of cloud beyond them, I could make out the stone walls that surrounded the cathedral garden like a miniature play set, then the rest of Centoria, split into four by the Everlasting Walls. The sight was a reminder of the impossible height of the tower.
Counting the thickness of the stone partitions, I estimated each floor of the tower to be about twenty feet high, so the height of the eightieth floor, where I fought Alice, would be over fifteen hundred feet off the ground—perhaps more like sixteen or seventeen, given the high ceiling on the fiftieth floor. If I fell from here, there was no chance of survival. My body would be so pulverized by the impact that I’d be reduced to dust. The air around us was gentle for now, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t blow harder.
I shivered and clenched the hilt of my sword tighter, then wiped the sweat from my free palm on my pants.
“So, uh…just so I’m clear on this…,” I started to say.
Alice’s face shot up to look at me; she’d been gazing down as well. I thought she looked a bit paler than before, but her tone of voice was just as blunt as ever. “What?”
“I was just wondering…if you know the high-level sacred arts to change the shape of items, maybe you’d also be privy to an art to…fly? Okay, sorry, forget I asked,” I stammered at the sight of her arched eyebrow.
“Did you learn anything in school?” she snapped. “The only person in the entire world who can fly in midair is the pontifex herself. Even the youngest apprentice monk knows that!”
“Hey, I said I was just checking! You don’t have to get so mad at me.”
“I did not appreciate your insinuation!”
It was becoming more clear by the moment that Alice the Integrity Knight and I were simply not designed to get along on a personal level. Still, I stifled my urge to snap back and asked, “Fine…so in that case…is it possible to call that enormous dragon you flew me here on?”
“It’s just one stupid question after another. Dragons are only allowed to approach the thirtieth-floor landing. Even Uncle…er, the knights’ commander himself isn’t allowed to take his dragon higher than that.”
“H-how would I know those rules?!”
“You ought to have realized the implication, since the landing was placed only on the thirtieth floor!” she said, glaring at me yet again for a good three seconds before we both turned away in a huff. I spent the next three seconds calming my rage over her totally unfair accusations before I was ready to resume.
“So…there’s no way for us to escape this predicament through the air…”
It took Alice another couple of seconds to regain her cool. Her blue eyes caught mine. “Not even birds can approach the upper reaches of the cathedral. The pontifex cast some kind of special art unknown to me that prevents them from coming closer.”
“I see…Very thorough.”
Off in the far distance, I saw a birdlike shape, but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I supposed it was some combination of Administrator’s magical power and a pathological sense of caution. In a sense, the abnormal height of this structure was both a symbol of power and an indication of fear toward some unseen foe.