05 – A big tower

The two guards were leisurely strolling down the path, walking at a slow pace with little interest for their surroundings. The leftmost guard lifted his helmet up, revealing a sharp and hairy face and looked up above the line of tall trees.

“Damn,” he said, “you can see it all the way from here.”

The other guard struggled to lift his head up, held back by the weight of the metal helmet. Eventually he decided to cut the struggle short and remove it, letting his long green hair flow across his shoulders, seemingly coming from nowhere. The helmets were slightly magical, and his was even more so, allowing him to hide his ears and long hair when he wore it. It cost him a pretty penny, but it was worth it.

“I see it. Do you think it’s coming from the village up in the mountains?”

The pillar of smoke was faint, as the blowing winds had dispersed it into a veil of dark brown.

“Must be. It’s too small to be a forest fire.”

The green haired demi-human nodded. “Right. Plus, it rained the other day. The forest is still damp.”

The other guard shot him a look.

“What?” his ears twitched.

“Nothing, nothing.”

He nodded, and he was nodded back to. “In any case, it’s in times like this that I’m glad my army time is over.”

“Yeah, right? I wouldn’t want to have to go there and check, personally.”

A smirk appeared under the green hair. “You scaaaaared?” he teased.

“No, no.” he shot back. “It’s just the bother, you know? Having to march there, inspect the place, file a report… all that.”

Just as the two were talking idly, Martin’s figure appeared from behind a turn in the path. He found himself quite close to the two armored people, and before he could even appreciate the peculiar features of the green haired one, they had both unsheathed their swords and were pointing them at him.

He felt his body react on his own, and his hands shot up to the air in sign of surrender. His back was damp and he felt his heart race. Then, slowly, he realized that he wasn’t powerless like he used to be back in his own world, and slowly the frightened face morphed into a half-crooked smile. His back got straighter, and he felt taller and more confident.

He looked at them from above. The sloping path allowed him to, despite the three being roughly the same height.

“I mean no harm.” He said, chin lifted high.

The human guard took a step forward. “I’ve never seen you around here before. What is your business?”

Martin took a moment to think, looking straight at the guard. It was too late to put on an act, wasn’t it?

“I… got lost.” He said monotone.

“Lost?” the guard repeated.

“Yeah, lost. Then I heard explosions coming from there.” He pointed at where the pillar of smoke was still rising from the forest.

“You don’t look lost, or frightened. What were you doing back there?”

Martin eyed the guard. He was getting very suspicious. The other one was just observing them, saying nothing. He had put the helmet back on, he noticed, hiding his distinctive features and reverting back to looking like one of the many soldiers Martin had seen back at the village.

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“You know, not everybody reacts the same way to being lost. Just because I didn’t panic, doesn’t mean I’m not lost.”

The guard’s eyes narrowed. “You said you heard explosions?”

Martin nodded. “Yes! As soon as I heard them, I decided to get back on the path and get as far away as possible from there.”

He had tried to naturally shift into a more scared-looking body language, doing his best to drop the cocky expression that he knew he was wearing when he met the guards. In his mind, two thoughts were battling for supremacy. One said that he should be more careful next time, and learn from the near sabotage of this encounter so that he could better manipulate people into thinking he was harmless. The other said to just kill the two guards and get it over with.

Both were equally good in his mind. One was reason, the other was desire. Desire seemed to prevail for a moment, but then reason threw a curveball and his decision changed. What if he encountered someone actually powerful that could overpower him? He would die. Better to be safe than sorry.

The other guard, who Martin was sure had green animal ears before, nodded to the first guard.

“Let’s take him back to the city for questioning.” He said.

Martin felt an itch.

“Questioning?” he asked.

The human guard shrugged. “Just some routine stuff, nothing to worry about. There may be some questions about the explosions you heard, but you don’t have to worry.”

He acted scared. “You don’t think I did it, do you?”

The guard looked at him, and laughed. “You? No,” he laughed again. “Anybody can sense that you barely have any magic. Even some weak goblins would overpower you. That’s why I say not to worry!” he put his hand over Martin’s shoulder. “It’s just to help the investigation. Come.”

Martin bit his tongue, and said nothing.

The first thing he saw as he approached the city was not a wall of stone surrounding it, or smoke coming from a multitude of chimneys, no. It was a black spear, a tower of ivory that pierced the skies. He didn’t see where it was coming from, only the tip that rose above the line of trees and above the clouds. It was dark as night, and even where it was the thinnest it was as large as a skyscraper, but many, many times taller.

A blinding, white iridescent beam shot up from the truncated tip of the tower and up in the sky. Above it, the firmament was broken, shards of reality like ever-falling pieces of a shattered mirror lay motionless in the air, slowly spinning and revealing the multifaceted truth that seemed impossible to grasp. At the center, the hole was a perfect void.

The beam entered the hole, and vanished inside. Perpetual.

It took a while more until the city was in view. It was built into the side of a mountain, with mighty walls that looked tiny in comparison, and winding streets of red-roofed houses carved in the dark grey stone. The tower was atop the cliff, and its foundations were like a buried black pyramid that here and there poked out of the stone until it reached the ground, slightly out of the walls. The city had used the tower as a natural defense, and the dark material it was made of protected two sides and only a quarter circle of wall had to be built, and the rest of the city was up there, clinging to the rock and hanging along the hidden slope of the tower.

Suddenly, looking at it Martin felt the system react.

>>SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE<<

This was all the system said, but it was enough. Now Martin was dead curious, but also quite intimidated by what already was a quite imposing piece of artifice that surely didn’t belong to this place and age.

The walls grew bigger as the three people drew closer to the city, and Martin was led to a small building to the side of the main gate. The building was made of stacked stones, drywalls of huge boulders with tiny little holes where the stones didn’t align perfectly and, while evidently a work of great strength, this close to the walls Martin couldn’t help but notice how inferior this seemed to be.

It was as if the walls were marvels of marble, polished great stone bricks the size of a truck, placed there by giants and ornated by little imps of the stone, while this building was the hasty work of poor men, strong but brute. The walls, and their imposing gate of wood and intricate golden gilded work, seemed like relics of an old past long since gone.

But the city… the city, from what he could see, was the stuff of fantasy. Yet then, why did the barracks look like this? He wondered, and he was led inside by the two guards.

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