Pithy’s mind churned as she examined the tower where the Crucible’s announcer was supposed to reside.

She had told Oren that she would kill him if she went to him. After the slight she had suffered at his hands, not to mention the wound she would not have sustained had he not intervened in her bout, the idea was deeply attractive. There would be consequences to such a brash act, however, and she was not certain she wished to deal with them at that point. Openly opposing the College would mean showing her hand much too soon, when she knew little of the other players and had no reliable ace up her sleeve.
 
That said, she could not simply continue to dance to another’s tune. She could not bring herself to trust the College to keep their end of the bargain once the Crucible was done. Even if he claimed ignorance, Oren was the most obvious lead she had to the answers she sought. At the very least, breaking into the room used to monitor the state of the tournament would give her much needed information on her competition.
 
She turned this dilemma again and again in her head, until a small shadow flew from one of the tower’s upper windows.
 
[i]He knows I’m here.[/i] She uncrossed her arms, one of them resting on her rapier’s handle. This was not unexpected. Rather, she had deliberately stayed in the open to gauge the man’s reaction.
 
She had thought she might be ignored until she made a move. Perhaps he might take the chance to barricade the entrance. Hopeful optimism on his part that she might leave if he waited long enough, or she was unable to use the front door. Perhaps he would take the chance to escape, but that was partly the reason why she had sent Mountain Dew to scout around the building. He would tell her if he saw Oren leaving. Alternatively, her purpose in reaching the tower had been stated clearly enough that she would not have been surprised had College agents been brought to send her away, or another competitor was diverted to deal with her.
 
To have another of the announcer’s drones swoop down to greet her made her confident that Oren had decided to stay in his post. Perhaps he felt he could talk her out of this course of action.
 
“Ya came!” Oren's voice was gratingly jovial, as though he was greeting a guest of honor instead of the one who had threatened to murder him only a few hours before. “First person to accept my invitation, and lemme just say, I'm glad it was you and not that giant troll creature. Poor brute, rest his soul. What can I do ya for, dearie?”
 
[i]There have been others, then.[/i] If the invitation had carried the same menace as it had in her case, the fact was worrisome in and of itself. Pithy did not want to think that such confidence was well-founded, but neither could she believe that Oren would be gleefully confronting the competitors of this tournament with no way to assure his safety. 
 
“Do not ‘dearie’ me, Oren. We are hardly on familiar terms,” she said bluntly. “I am impressed, nonetheless. I did not think you would contact me again after our last conversation.”

A slight huff preceded the announcer’s reply. “Pff, what kind of host invites a guest, then gives ‘em the cold shoulder? I ain’t that mean.” There came a brief pause, and in that moment the drone’s arm reached up and brushed across its underside below the eye, as if scratching its chin. “Or didja think I’d be scared?” His flippant tone evidenced how foreign the idea was to him.

Pithy’s eye tracked the motion. A memory came back to her, of one of her previous encounters with the machines. They held a storage area in their undercarriage, did they not? [i]Yes, I did. I think you are, in fact.[/i]

Her grip on her rapier tautened. “It seems you are braver than that. Did you bring this thing out to lead me to you, then?” 

“Well, unless you can fly, no. But the tower’s a straight shot up, minus the two locked hatches in the stairwell. They’ve got...uh, padlocks? Sounds about right.” Oren breathed a long sigh, then leaned closer to the microphone. “Not in much of a jokin’ mood, are ya? If ya really wanna do this, climb on up, but you’re not gonna like what comes next.”

“Took the words out of my mouth.” The crystal cane that until then had been leaning against the vehicle suddenly lanced upwards, crashing into the drone. Sparks sputtered from the impact, and the machine wobbled dangerously as it tried to correct its position. The cane, held aloft in the air with magic, swept into it again, crushing one of its engines. As the machine fell to the asphalt, the rod fell over it again and again until the rotors’ whirring noise ceased.

Pithy’s onslaught, aimed for the most part at the rotors and exterior, did not fully disable the drone’s onboard comm system. When it came through again, Oren’s voice was very distorted, but not so much as to make him unintelligible. “Any time ya wanna stop provin’ how tough ‘n mature ya, I’m waitin’ at the top.” After that, what little power remained was shut off. 

A last strike of the rod sent the machine flying off to the side street. 

The drone had not made a move against her, in the end. Perhaps she was paranoid. Pithy recalled the cane, the chips and cracks that had appeared from the strength of the impact filling and smoothing out of existence the moment the crystal touched her glove. 

She began limping towards the tower’s entrance, silently wishing her accomplice would hurry. She had blinded one of Oren’s eyes, but that would not help her for long. [i]Stars, if the man is truly in that tower, all he needs to do is lean out a window to see me.[/i]

As she walked, she untied the badger’s phylactery from her belt and pulled her own over her neck, summoning a sphere of ice to shield them from the outside. She tucked it under her left arm. 

The trek to the thick wooden door at the tower’s base was short, but left beads of sweat forming on her brow. Her right leg ached with every motion, but there was little the elf could do for it. With neither a healer or a chance to rest, all Pithy could do was endure and carry on. Instead, she leaned against the doorframe, glancing upwards.

The window she had seen the drone come out of was a fair distance off to her left. If Oren was in that room as well, he would need to field another one to see her from this angle. Even if he was in the room straight above her, he would need to poke his head out of the window to look at her. Pithy took a deep breath and looked around her, her eyes going to the top of some of the nearby buildings in search for Mountain Dew’s figure.

After a minute of scanning with no results, Pithy grunted and turned towards the entrance. The orb of ice slid out from under her arm, levitating behind her, and her hand reached for the six-shooter at her breast. She pushed the door open with some effort, keeping the weapon trained on the widening crack. Eventually, the rest of the tower’s base was revealed to her.

The only occupant was a fireplace at the room’s center, the chimney rising upwards and through the ceiling to diffuse the heat into the other floors of the tower. As she had expected, a staircase lined the inside wall, rising upwards to her right and down to her left, forming a spiral. The latch leading to the upper room, proof that Oren had not fed her complete falsehoods, was also immediately visible. Her eye, however, fell on the steps. 

[i]Steep and narrow. As I feared.[/i] The pain in her leg pulsed. She would not be able to weather the climb in her state.

“Saw what you did to the drone.” The sphere of ice seemed to hum as Pithy turned, hinting at her first reflex at hearing Dew’s voice. “You gonna do that to him, too?”

“Depends on him.” Pithy shrugged, hiding her start under a cool voice. “Will that be a problem?”

“Not sure yet. I mean, dude’s kind of a dick. Kept saying my car was bullshit.”

The woman sighed. She was not certain she wanted to touch that topic of conversation. “Tell me what you saw.”

“Well, the drone was pretty messed up. Did you get a baseball bat while I wasn’t loo—”

“What you saw around the tower, Dew.”

There was a hint of a smirk in the man’s face as he straightened. “No other entrances that I could see, if you don’t count the windows. As for something suspicious… nothing much. ‘Cept for the room that drone came out of.”

That got the woman’s attention. “You saw inside?”

“Well, it was pretty far away.”

“I know what the tube atop your weapon is,” Pithy told him, patience beginning to fray. “Tell me what you saw.”

Dew did not withhold his smirk. “Had a feeling you’d pester me about it when I got back, so I saved myself the trouble. There’s a pretty impressive looking set-up in there, but I also saw a cot from my perch. Didn’t see Oren, but I think he was off to the side where I couldn’t see him. Place looked lived in.”

Pithy took a steadying breath, closing her eye. That was the confirmation she had been hoping for. “I want you to climb the tower from here.” She looked at him. “Oren said there were two locked latches on the way to the top. Can you deal with that?”

“Of course.” The man preened, as though insulted that Pithy had so much as hinted that such a thing would be an obstacle to him. “But what about you? Will you sit here while I do all the work?”

“Do you want to carry me to the top?” she asked dryly.

“No.”

“Then don’t ask pointless questions,” she snapped. “Get going, and don’t waste time. When you get to the top, restrain Oren.”

Dew let out a puff of air through his mouth, rolling his eyes. “Aye aye, Cap’n.” 

Pithy ignored the shiver she felt at the words. 

As he moved past her in his way towards the stairs, Pithy retreated out of the building. A glance to the skies revealed no new drones, but she could not know if Oren had released a new one and hidden it while she was speaking with Dew. She limped around the building, throwing searching glances at her surroundings every few seconds, until she was directly under the correct window. She holstered her shooter and took the sphere with the phylacteries under her arm once again before setting down her cane. 

Pithy drew her rapier with her free hand, and as she pointed it to the space between the ground and the tower, crystal began to form. A sheet of ice grew against the wall, hugging its surface at the same time as thick ice formed on the floor below. There was a crack, and the ‘L’ shaped crystal separated from the surfaces she had used to mold it. Another gesture with her rapier formed a vertical handle at chest height. The mage approached it, hooking her arm, blade and all, around it, and leaned against the wall. With another flash of the runes on her weapon, a sheet of ice covered the boot of her good foot, securing her in place.

This solution was hardly elegant, but she did not intend to wait below while Dew confronted Oren. The two men were similar in certain respects, similar enough that Pithy did not wish for the two to meet out of her sight if she could help it.

She took a deep breath, her mind conjuring images of the elevator she had used when she had first arrived at the Justice Hub. With a flash of her runes, the crystal carrying Pithy began to rise upwards at a sedate pace, sliding against the stone walls with unnatural smoothness. Perhaps Oren was right when he assumed she could not fly, but levitating a platform was certainly within her capabilities. 

Pithy looked at the receding landscape for a moment before she focused on what lay above her, making sure Oren had not leaned out to drop something on her. Frustratingly enough, the announcer was ready to take a stand against her. Whatever drove him had long since gone past bravado, and it would be dangerous of her to assume otherwise. She was certain that, were she to attempt his front door, she would have fallen into a trap, which was why she had sent Dew that way. It was entirely possible that Oren had other eyes and ears inside the building, which was why she had not shared the rest of her plan with the man.

Ideally, the two would arrive at the same time and corner Oren together, but with no way to coordinate, it would not be strange if one arrived before the other. Even if she kept to her slow pace, the trajectory of her ascent and the lack of obstacles made it likely that she would be the one to reach the top first. 

Which left her with a need to plan her final approach. She could simply throw herself into the room as she was and hope that Oren did not see her coming, but that relied too heavily on her luck even before considering her injury. She would much prefer to have eyes on the room first.

The elevator slowed ever so slightly as Pithy drew her focus inwards, then channeled a spell through her rapier. A crystal disc began to form besides her, the surface reflective like a mirror. It continued to grow until it was larger than her head. With a whispered word, the surface of the ice sphere under her arm took on the same mirror sheen.

Pithy looked behind her for a moment, taking in the distance that she had traveled. She was close to her entry point now, and she knew that a fall from this height would certainly kill her. Swallowing, she sent the first mirror upwards, letting it reflect the inside of the room.