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“Well, you’re a lot faster than I am, could you give me a ride to the top and/or bottom?” you say.

“Whatever gets you out of my way,” the crawler says.

“Okay!” you say. Seeing that you’re a bit too big to ride it, you try to grasp the æthereal fluid around you to distort the size and scale of space to make its form larger to your perspective. But something pushes back on you, as if pressing in from all around.

“Well, hurry up, what’s the problem?” the crawler says.

“It’s just...you’re a little small for that,” you say.

“Ædan, Ædan, just when I think you are starting to show intellect,” the little one says.

“Of course, size and scale are meaningless, anyone knows that. But I cannot seem to alter dimensions in here. Something is holding me back,” you say.

“The stairs do not like outsiders tampering with their space,” the crawler says.

“Ah, the tower, acting so single-minded on us again,” the little one says. “How ridiculous. It won’t stop me, though, it knows better.”

“Then, can you make the crawler a bit bigger?” you say.

“Effortlessly.” The singularity dives into the crawler’s form, and you feel a pull as the æther distorts. Its body now seems much smaller.

“No, bigger!” you say.

The bright little speck emerges and circles your head. “So particular, the Ædan, always wants one thing or another.” It collides with your form, and you feel the pull of distortion from within as the tower around you grows far bigger--or perhaps, your own avatar is smaller. Now the crawler towers over you. The stairs are enormous plateaus with sheer cliff faces. The intricate patterns carved into their surfaces seem like valleys, rivers flowing with æthereal light.

“Well, hurry, hurry,” the crawler says.

You climb up one of its countless legs and onto its back.

“Now look what you’ve done, it’s going to take me forever to reach the bottom,” it says.

The little one circles you, seeming exactly as small as ever. “Better get on with it, then.”

Your ride starts moving, running fast, but the terrain is wide. As it crawls over land and down cliff, you can’t feel any sense of gravity pulling you in any direction. The stairs are identical downwards or upwards. You can’t even be sure if you’re going forwards or back. But at the crest of each cliff, you catch a glimpse of your goal ahead, the brightest star, shining red and pulsating--it calls to you. You need to reach the star.

“So little Ædan, what server do you come from? What sorts of stairs do you know?” the crawler says.