There are only half a dozen rooms upstairs, so searching through them wouldn’t take very long. The first two are unlocked and empty. A quick search of them turns over nothing interesting, other than obvious signs of being lived in.
I doubt there are more than a half dozen people between those two rooms. Either the other eighteen of them were crammed in four rooms or they are staying somewhere else.
The third room is packed full of supplies, crates of all sizes are stacked on each other. I poke around, looking around for anyone, but finding no one. To the victor goes the spoils I suppose. A small crowbar rests on top of one such stack and I get to work tearing the tops off of several boxes.
I paw through them and find nothing but clothing, so I move on to another one. It’s stuffed with identification papers, small leather wrapped books with a photo and information on the owner. All of them have the Tower’s symbol stamped on the front in gold foil. These are either excellent forgeries, or someone has been smuggling them out. Either way it’s troubling.
There has to be more up here then just clothing and these booklets. Clearly, they had a way into the Tower, but where are their weapons?
I dump out the contents of more of the boxes, rapidly cluttering up the floor as I sift through them. There’s nothing here, it’s just box after box of disguises! Even those Zauberei downstairs didn’t have silver blades. Dammit.
I stomp back out into the hallway and square up with the fourth door. With a frustrated shout I kick the door off its hinges. It smashes into the floor with a loud bang that knocks over a small vase in the room. Someone was here, very recently. The room reeks of stale sweat and old beer, with paper strewn everywhere.
I pick up a few pieces, trying to make out the rabid scribblings on them.
Subject 39 didn’t survive the night, rapid onset rejection sickness occurred within two hours of operation.
Subject 43 a partial success, exsanguination the key?
Subject 78 survived! Required total exsanguination, two hearts and total blood exchange.
This is dated just two days ago.
I scan around, trying to find anything else that might give me a clue. A quick glance at the other pages doesn’t reveal anything. Still, Caius might know what all this is. I spend a minute scooping up an armful of the sheets and stuffing them in a waterproof pouch on my hip.
Two rooms left. I press my ear up against the fifth door but no sound comes through the door. I step back, getting ready to kick this door in as well. As I go to kick the door in, it flies off the hinges into me. With a solid thump I slam into the wall behind me, pinned beneath the weight of the wood.
My vision fades in and out as I slump against the wall. I groggily start pushing the door off of me, grunting with the weight. A sharp impact to the other side of the door slams it back into me, bouncing my head off the wall and back into the door. I shake my head to clear my sight, and with a growl I shove the door away from me. A pleasant warmth creeps up my spine, the bone beneath my eye slips back into place with a snick.
Standing before me is a woman covered with long lines of stitches. They stretch down her arms and legs, her whole chest looks like it was opened and sewn shut again. Her eyes are empty pits that slowly leak blood and her mouth has all the teeth removed. A crude looking 43 has been branded into her forehead, as well as on the palms of her hands. Her breathing is heavy, almost panting and it has a wet, sucking sound to it.
I shouldn’t have left my halberd downstairs, I didn’t think it would be much use up here. I can hear Caius running up the stairs to me and I hold out my hand behind me to get him to stop.
“Gods, what is that?” He says under his breath once he reaches me, thankfully stopping once he does. I have no idea, and I’m not sure I want too.
The woman sniffs the air in front of her, like a beast catching a scent. She runs its tongue along her toothless gums and shuffles forward, towards Caius. I press up against the wall as she passes by me, slowly reaching down for the long silver knife on my hip. Caius shoots me a panicked look but doesn’t move, a small quiver running through him as he stands his ground.
The woman stops in front of him, running a stitched-up hand down his cheek. Caius’s fear floods through to me, and I stop drawing my knife for a second to push it aside.
“Calm down.” I mouth to him, creeping up behind the woman with my knife drawn.
With a shriek she grabs Caius and slams him into me, knocking us both back down the hallway towards the open rooms. I try to turn my landing into a controlled roll, but Caius just gets tangled up in my legs. The woman pounds down the stairs and I hear her smash through the door, her footsteps fading as she runs into the town.
“What in the frozen hells was that!” I exclaim, pushing Caius’s arms off of me as I stand. I give him a hand and get him to his feet.
“I have no idea what that was. Or what they may done to her. She clearly had some kind of surgery performed on her, but what? More importantly, I could not sense her. She had no presence in the aether at all, she was just an empty spot.” Caius replies.
“Did you find anything?” Caius asks me.
“No, you?” I reply.
“Nothing beyond a huge supply of food in the kitchen.” He says. I take the hunk of bread and cheese he offers me and wolf it down.
“Well, there’s only one room left. We’ll search it together?” I ask him, and he nods.
Caius picks up the door from the fifth room and knocks down the last closed door with it, his arms glowing blue and shedding wisps of aether as he does. I rush in the room, knife drawn and looking in every corner for a threat.
The room looks like an old slaughterhouse. Dried blood is splattered everywhere, and there are several buckets full of it. I fight the urge to vomit, turning away from the scene as I gag.
“There is magic here. There are several spells designed to deaden sound and the smell. All of them are barely noticeable, their construction is extremely efficient.” Caius says, pointing to the doorway and the walls.
I turn my gaze back to the room, swallowing heavily as I do. The crucible in the corner catches my eye, along with the furnace it rests on. I gingerly trod over to it, pressing a rag to my face as I do. Caius drifts in behind me, heading over to the pair of beds in the back of the room.
The crucible has a muted sheen to it, and there are several small ingots on a nearby table. I pick one of them up, trying to identify the metal without success. I put the ingot down and fish out a small knife, intent on dragging it along the mystery ingot. As I do a small strip comes away, spiraling and revealing the brilliant metal beneath.
Silver.
I look around the room again. Several hand drills lay by the two beds, and some funnels also coated with dull silver. The bed sheets are stained brown, with holes burnt straight through them. Just like Dan’s memories.
“They were making…” I say
“War Mages, or something similar.” Caius finishes for me. He pulls his tattered robe tighter around him as he casts his gaze around the room. He walks next to the closer bed and picks something up from the floor. He holds it arm’s length, and something warm slides down my cheek.
“What is it Caius?” I ask him, trying to steady my suddenly quavering voice.
He turns and shows me a stuffed animal, turned dark brown by all the encrusted blood. One half of it is burnt, the glass eye cracked from some great heat. He gently sets it down on the bed, idly patting at the matted fur. I come up next to him, trying to catch his eyes but to no avail. I gently grab his elbow, trying to get his attention.
“Caius, we need to get to the Tower, now.” I tell him, gently pulling on his arm and sidling out towards the door. He doesn’t move, his arm hanging loosely in my grip. At least he’s stopped petting that thing.
“What can we do against people like this?” He asks quietly.
“Against people who experiment on children? We kill them. All of them.” I snarl, tugging on his arm with more force this tim
e. He stumbles towards me and I keep him close as we walk together out of the room.
“They are not experimenting on children Kearika. The straps on those beds are too far apart, and you would not need that much silver for a child’s bones.” Caius says from inside his hood.
“What are you saying Caius?” I ask, pulling him around to face me as we get downstairs.
“I am saying that whoever was on those beds was not a child. They were a mother, a father, a brother or a sister. They had a family, people who cared about them, which they put aside so they could be here. How do you win against someone who is willing to do that?” He says, his eyes cast down at his boots.
“We tell the Tower when we get there, and we let them sort it out. This is way above our heads Caius! I’m sure Avalin will know what to do.” I tell him as we step back out into the streets. If she’s still alive.
“Did you study the map? How do we get to the Tower without running into any more of them?” I ask him, trying to get him focused on a task again. Stick with me Caius. We’re close, soon everything will be alright again.
“I know the way.” Caius says, giving one last look into the window of the fifth room before leading us around the side of the tavern.
Chapter XXIX - Caius
Duras - Knihovna
29th of Telod, 1873 MD
The Tower is directly in front of us, looming over the entire town, yet inaccessible to to it. It’s a massive structure, easily scraping the bottoms of clouds with its tip. It’s surrounded by dozens of lesser structures, all much more modestly sized. A simple brick wall encompasses the whole area, which is almost two miles in each direction.
Even I know something is wrong here. There should be guards at the gates, but there are not.
It’s taken us quite a lot of sneaking through side streets and alleyways for us to get here without the Zauberei seeing us. Along the way I have calmed down enough to be useful again. Kearika’s cold determination has seen to that, pushing aside everything else in my head.
I could still feel the matted fur in my hand, the crusty scabs breaking away as I rubbed it. The burnt body of it, still carrying the old spark of aether told a familiar story. The smell of old blood was still heavy in my nose, blotting out the scent of everything else. The palpable air of suffering that pervaded that room hangs on my robes, weighing them down as we walk. How can we possibly stop them?
I glance over at Kearika, who’s head swivels constantly as she hunts for a threat. What sacrifices will we be called on to make? I pull out my symbol, presenting it towards to the gates before us. Their wrought iron howls as a warm breeze blows through the twisting shapes. They should have opened.
“I smell blood and fire Caius.” Kearika whispers, pressing her back up against mine “Why haven’t the gates opened yet?”
“I do not know.” I tell her, walking up the gate as I speak. It’s been forced open. That is not, should not, be possible.
The gates to the Tower are enchanted to be invisible to those without the right to be there. A person could walk all day around these walls and never find an entrance. The walls are enchanted to seem just a little taller than a person thought they could climb. Every year dozens of travelers came to try and climb the walls, and each year they left without ever attempting it.
Kearika pushes past me and pulls the gate open. After looking around for a few seconds she slips through it, her halberd extended in front of her. With a shrug I follow after her, relieved to be back at the Tower at last.
My relief is short lived though, vanishing in the face of the devastation within. Several of the smaller buildings have collapsed, and others are burning down. Bodies are strewn everywhere. Several patches of the sprawling lawn have been burnt to a cinder. The statues have been reduced to rubble, having been animated to fight. Huge channels have been torn out of the ground, and heat forged glass sparkles in the firelight. Some of the closer bodies look as if they’ve been dead for a while.
Massive gallows sits a short distance from us, and a dozen figures hang from it. Some wear robes, and others have shining silver armor. They swing back and forth in the stale wind, dangling above the carpet of bodies beneath them. The majority of the dead are wearing some sort of leather armor, the same armor that the only ones still walking around are wearing.
“Caius.”
Shrieking draws our attention to one of the large ponds scattered throughout the grounds. A pair of soldiers lift a screaming, wriggling sack and throw it into the water. A weight attached by chains gets thrown in afterwards, the rippling water covers the ragged screams as whoever that is sinks to the bottom.
“Caius!” Kearika yells, grabbing a handful of my robes and shaking me.
We need to get moving, before someone notices us. I know that, but I can’t get my legs to move. Kearika shakes me again, shoving her face in front of mine and yelling. When I don’t respond she shakes her head and sighs.
Smack!
My head rings from the slap, and everything snaps back into focus. The world comes back in a rush, the smells and sounds filling the void.
“Get a hold of yourself Caius!” Kearika says, shaking my robes one last time.
I give her a weak nod, my hands sweating as I grip my staff.
“We’re going to get up to your study. We’ll grab as much as we can carry, and then we’ll get out of here. I won’t let anything happen to you. Just stick with me, and do what I say and I promise everything will turn out okay, alright?” She asks me, peering into my face.
Her brilliant blue eyes are locked on mine, the red streaks running through them giving her a terrible beauty. In this moment she seems truly alive, an indomitable sense of purpose radiates from her, backed up by a boundless confidence. I can’t help but relax, her feelings are literally contagious.
“Okay, we will get out of this together. I still owe you dinner, remember?” I tell her, trying to give her a brave smile.
“Oh, you owe me more than dinner.” She says coolly as we start running for the Tower entrance. None of the invaders notice us as we dash across the lawn and we make it the Tower’s main door in a handful of minutes. Kearika seems unfazed by our mile-long sprint, but I’m still feeling disconnected from what’s going on.
Kearika tries to pry the door open, but it refuses to budge. She strains for a few seconds before I shoo her away from it. She rolls her eyes but steps aside.
“It’s stuck, we’ll need to find another entrance.” She says.
“No, you just need that special touch.” I reply, grasping the handle and letting a little aether trickle into it. The handle warms under my touch, and the door swings inward.
“Well, that explains why you were always holding the door open for me. And here I was thinking you were being a gentleman.” Kearika says dryly as she passes across the threshold, keeping her halberd close to her.
The door shutting behind us cuts off the sunlight, which is replaced by the cool glow of the stone lamps. Simple pieces of quartz with a bit of caged lightning in them, which travelled lazily around its stony prison.
There should be mages in here, we should hear them.
“Caius.” Kearika says flatly, gesturing towards the stairs.
A figure lays there, but the lighting isn’t good enough to make out who, or what, it is. I rush up the stairs to them, finding myself face to face with a dead soldier. A sizable hole is punched through his scale armor, which has melted around the edges. His weapon, some kind of rifle, lays a few feet from him and another body is splayed out across the next set of stairs.
What is he doing here? How did he get in here?
“Caius, see his patch? It’s a rose with a crown over it. He is, or was, part of the prince's personal guard. What’s he doing in the Tower with a hole blasted through him?” She asks, glancing at me as she roots through his pockets. I shrug and move on to other body.
It’s a mage, with a fist sized hole through her heart. The faint smell of ash and wood smoke tells me that she
used to be a Pyromancer. Well, that explains the melted armor on the other one. She died with a snarl on her face and there’s burns across her arms and neck. She must have been shot through the heart and used her own aether to burn him down. A mage’s beating heart carried a great deal of their stored power. Heart wounds are difficult to heal, and afterwards a mage never recovered fully from the experience. Sometimes it reduced the mage down to just their own personal aether, limiting them immensely
“Have you found anything?” I ask over my shoulder to Kearika. She replies in the negative, and we continue up the stairs towards my study.
***
Several dozen flights of stairs later we finally come to the simple wood door of my study. No metal inlays or calligraphy marred its surface. My door is a functional slab of solid wood, worked and sanded to a glassy finish. Along our way we’d seen countless bodies strewn around the stairwells and landings. Everyone is either a prince’s guard, a mage or their Protector. We have yet to find any of them alive however. Kearika pushes on the door and it swings open silently.
With my door finally closed behind us, I feel relaxed for the first time since the mountains. I look around my study, taking a visual inventory. Everything is just as we left it. Huge stacks of books cover every free table and surface, and dozens of floating lights gave my study a warm glow. Shelves filled with mementos from our journeys lined the walls, there are even a few mannequins with armor and jewelry standing beneath them.
The only, relatively, cleared off space is the old couch in the center by the fireplace. It’s plump leather cushions are Kearika’s domain, as well as the low table in front of it. Whetstones, beads, a few scrolls and some knives littered its surface. Kearika bounds over to her couch and drops her pack on the floor with a thud. She gives a content sigh as she sinks into its embrace, which turns to annoyance when I poke her in the forehead.
“Let me have this Caius, just for a few minutes.” She says, her eyes barely flickering open as she speaks. I roll my eyes but there’s no point arguing with her, I would need a few minutes myself to gather my things.
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