Chapter 1

Gellan squinted through the dim alleyway, peering up at the looming facade of the Celestial Tower. Even in the dead of night, the ancient spire's smooth marble seemed to glow. Mocking him.

"Well, that's just cucking fantastic," he muttered through gritted teeth. Curse his instincts, always getting him crossways into these high-risk, no-profit debacles. But hey, at least he aimed higher than mere cut-purse work or muggings these days.

The Celestial Tower stood as the most iconic - and formidable - edifice in all the Highcrown Capital. Its gleaming spire formed the focal point of Astrum's Grand Cathedral, a colossal sanctuary whose stained glass windows and imposing statuary demanded the devotion of even the most irreverent soul. Deeper within its vaunted marble halls resided the city's most impregnable vault: Hephastuse's Box ironclad vault supposedly blessed by the god himself, housing the holy order's most priceless relics and artifacts.

Which, luckily for Gellan, happened to include his newest highly lucrative score, awaiting light-fingered acquisition.

If only cracking the vault didn't require rappelling down the sheer eight hundred foot exterior of the infamously unscalable tower first. He grimaced anew, tugging the ropes looped through his belt to reassure himself of their security. Yeah, this job's hazard payment better bleed his employer's coffers dry.

"I need to have my skull checked for tumors," he mused aloud. "No sane mind takes a contract with those stakes."

Of course, sanity proved in short supply for most of the capital's underworld order these days - including the mysterious client who'd set this madness into motion through proxies. Just the thought of that raspy, reverberating timbre made Gellan's skin crawl, even through the distance and disassociation of anonymity. Not for the first time, he questioned his decision to-

A sudden flurry of movement from the corner of his eye made his fingers instinctively tighten around the coiled length of rope. Gellan whipped around, free hand dropping to the knife sheathed at his side as years of street-tuned instincts took over.

But it was only a mangy stray cat, slinking along the grimy alley with a Half-chewed rat dangling from its jaws. Its tattered ears flicked in his direction, one milky eye fixing him with a disdainful look, before it vanished around the next corner.

Gellan let out the breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. He forced himself to unclench his white-knuckled grip, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the tightly wound knot of tension. "Get a grip, Gel," he chided himself under his breath. The stakes of this heist set his every nerve aflame, sure, but he'd beaten far worse odds before. Overreacting to stray pussycats wouldn't exactly instill confidence. Though the little furball did possess more recognizable morals than Gellan's nameless client.

Speaking of which, it was well past the rendezvous window. Time to quit stalling and earn his haul.

With one last fortifying intake of the fetid alley's aroma - ah, the bouquet of salt brine and piss, how he'd miss it - Gellan turned toward the tower's smooth facade. He gave the twin grappling hooks clutched in his right hand a few practiced spins, building their momentum until the black steel blurs hummed like a hurled bolas. With a sharp underhand cast, the weighted ropes snapped out in silver streaks, looping their hooked ends over one of the tower's protruding embellishments.

The heavy cords instantly went taut, the power of Gellan's throw smashing the hooks' tips into the aged stonework. They caught with solid thunks, holding fast.

Giving each line a sharp tug to test its grip, Gellan favored the tower with a mocking salute. "Open sesame, darlings."

He took the first loop of rope, slinging it around his hips and thighs to bind it tightly against his body. Once triple-secured, Gellan grasped the slack above his harness and leaned out at a backwards angle, booted feet finding purchase against the rough bricks. He slowly walked himself up the perpendicular tower face, hands alternating grips further up the line as his legs propelled him higher.

A lifetime of athletic tumbling and cat-burgling across the capital's rooftops had hardened Gellan's core strength and balance to the utmost razor's edge. Even so, he felt the merciless strain seizing his muscles just a dozen feet up the tower's curved slope. Sweat beaded along his brow, lank hair already pasting itself in matted strands against his scalp.

Above stretched eight hundred more precarious feet of sheer ascent, stonework devoid of ledges or toeholds. With a muttered curse, Gellan refused to look down, focusing solely on the smooth, looming marble ahead. He inched higher, fighting every agonizing foot of the way.

Halfway up, his forearms trembling like leaves in a gale, Gellan had to physically clamp his jaw shut to keep from crying out. Or worse, letting his grip falter. Strands of merciless fire radiated from his shoulders and back up into his skull. Every breath came in a shuddering wheeze against the vice compressing his chest.

"You...are...passing..."

He grunted the words like a mantra on each ragged exhale, blind determination steadily scaling the tower's flank foot by grueling foot.

"...all the... way... this time..."

At last, the rounded spire's edge came into view, ringed with the distinctive circular amphorae that housed the tower's exterior ventilation shafts. Relief and renewed vigor flooded his veins as Gellan reached up to hook one hand over the ledge's rim. With a final surge of strength through his battered sinews, he hauled himself over the top and sprawled face-first onto the platform.

For long minutes he simply lay there, sucking in deep, steadying lungfuls of the humid night air. Every labored breath stabbed his ribcage with serial daggers of anguish - utterly worth it. He'd mastered the tower's impregnable vertical defenses. From here, the true challenge awaited within.

But first, time for a breather. Gellan peered up through strands of damp hair plastered across his brow. The familiar rose-colored light of the twin Astral Moons reached its elegant apex, haloing Astrum's holiest sanctuary in a rosy celestial glow. For a moment, their serene radiance almost made the blood-sweat and agony recede...

With a harsh shake of his head, Gellan banished the sight. Focus always drifted when he allowed such idle maundering. Duty called, not stargazing.

Propping himself up to a seated position, he reached into the satchel and retrieved the thick, bundled canvas of his tools. Spread out on the ledge, the components took shape - bars of cold-wrought iron, a compact midline pronged frame, and a series of circular serrated blades connected by a central axle rod.

"Should chew right through those old conduits like an emordran worm in an ironwood log," he murmured under his breath.

With extraordinary care, Gellan levered the drill into place, locking its serrated maw into one of the widest shaft openings on a precise spinning vector. A quick adjustment of the speed governor, then the throw of the ignition switch, and the blades whirred to life with a high-pitched staccato shriek. Sparks flew in a dazzling spray of molten stone as the tungsten-edged teeth bored into the ancient marble cladding.

"Nice and steady, darling," Gellan crooned over the din, both hands gripping the drill's stabilizing handles. "Just a little...morning stretch for you, hm?"

Inch by arduous inch, the blades chewed through the dense stonework in a spiraling vortex of pulverized grit. The casing's internal filters strained to keep up, clouds of fine particulate still managing to puff out in dusty plumes around Gellan's face. He squinted against the caustic haze, keeping a hawk's vigil over the drill's steady progress. One mistimed snag against a unexpected resilient vein in the marble could shatter the blades entirely.

At last, after what felt like a small eternity's labor, the drill's forward pressure eased as it punched through into open space on the other side. Gellan killed the power, the blades' shrill whine winding down to silence save for a few final ricocheting pings. Flicking on his hooded lamp's beam, he leaned in to study the perfectly cylindrical tunnel now yawning through the marble edifice.

"Hello, sweet sanctuary," he murmured with a cocksure grin. Bracing his shoulders, Gellan wriggled headfirst into the snug orifice.

The tight confines forced him to inch along in an undignified worm-wriggle, squirming yard by claustrophobic yard through the shaft's dimly lit length. Loose grit and gravel crunched beneath his elbows and belly with each fitful push. More than once Gellan found himself gritting his teeth against the caustic dust clouds swirling in his face, threatening to trigger a coughing fit ill-suited for such restricted quarters.

At long last, his questing fingertips met nothing but open space ahead. Gellan awkwardly twisted himself around, then kicked off in a final burst of frantic wriggling until he tumbled free of the tunnel and out into...

...a small, cramped alcove barely larger than a broom closet. Faint ambient light filtered in through a narrow grille above, but the confined space's stonework walls looked distressingly sturdy. Solid. Frowning, Gellan rapped his knuckles against the nearest wall with a dull thunk of confirmation.

"Well, this wasn't part of the plan," he muttered darkly.

A noise - the slightest percussive patter - instantly seized his attention. Gellan froze, ears straining against the silence as his hood lamp swept its meager glow around the alcove's unforgiving confines. Had he been spotted? Would armored cathedral knights burst through the entry at any moment, blades already drawn?

No...wait. That sound came from above, a series of rhythmic impacts against the vented grillework over his head. Rain? No, too solid and irregular for-

A new sound - a harsh scraping followed by a clang of metal-on-stone directly overhead. Gellan's eyes shot wide, sucking in a shocked inhale just as a churlish stream of foulness came raining down upon him in a putrid shower.

"Mother's saggy bloody--!" The rest of his outraged curse fragmented into a scream of revulsion as Gellan flinched away from the acrid, reeking sludge cascading over him from the vents above. Wads of sodden waste, clumped hair and gods knew what other repulsive detritus came pelting down from the overhead shaft, coating his huddled form in a noisome, viscous muck.

Muffling a retch, Gellan swatted at his eyes and mouth, desperate to keep the vile effluvium from blinding or choking him. With his vision occluded to mere shadowed smears through the mask of grime, he could only cower beneath the revolting deluge without daring to move and risk spreading it further across his clothes and gear.

After what felt like an eternity - but realistically only a few suffering moments - the overhead onslaught finally tapered off to silence once more. Gellan remained cringing in rigid agony, trying not to gag on the charnel reek surrounding him. Only when the last muffled impacts against the grate had faded did he finally dare crack one gummed eye.

The first thing in his hazy scope was the dismaying sight of his arms, upper torso and face utterly coated from scalp to shins in a glutinous film of brown-black filth. From its noxious odor alone, he knew exactly what had just befouled him: the refuse from the tower's waste disposal chutes. The putrid runoff of every grotesque bodily excrement unwholesomely shat, puked, or otherwise expelled by the hundreds of clergy within this unholy sanctuary.

Gellan swallowed heavily against the wave of nausea. With a trembling hand, he wiped cleaning arcs across his face just to unseal both eyes enough to take stock.

A single phrase, ground out in equal parts horror and incredulous fury:

"I'm going to murder whoever designed these ventilation systems."

With nowhere to flee, nothing to clean himself with beyond compounding his wretched state, Gellan could only hunker and wait for the worst to pass. After a small eternity crouched shivering in the reeking, cramped cell, the awful commotion finally ceased from above. He dared creep forward, squinting up through the grille to the vertical shaft beyond.

All he glimpsed in the ambient glow was a neatly stenciled marker inscribed along the outer curve: "West Wing Lavatories - Main Line."

"You festering, sadistic sons of buzzard-leavings," he growled, pawing uselessly at the slick staining his tunic. Normally his life as a thief came rife with risks of injury or imprisonment. But never, in his wildest fever dreams, had this particular occupational hazard even fleetingly occurred.