AA3 4 - The Tower I (Patreon)

The room they found themselves in seemed to be a hub for the floor, with a number of different corridors leading out in several directions, each one holding several doors.

The passage of Aether was sporadic at best in the area, and each door had been broken through already, leaving piles of broken stone on the floor.

“Let’s spread out and look around, but be careful and call me if you see anything odd,” Verdan said, giving both brothers a firm look before heading towards a nearby room.

The room Verdan had chosen seemed to be living quarters of some kind, though it was quite compact, and anything not made of stone had long since rotted or decayed away. The only real giveaway was that the frame of the bed had been made from the same stone as everything else, and the wardrobe was a recessed section with hinged stone doors.

The use of so much stone made Verdan wonder if the whole place had been hewed from the hill, to begin with. Given how it was positioned, he’d assumed not, but the amount of stone he was seeing suggested it was their primary material.

Either way, this wasn’t the architecture of the Grym Imperium, that was for sure. The Imperium had tended to use magitech devices only sparingly, though they had been on the rise in the years before the war.

Checking the destroyed door, Verdan found a few pieces of shattered crystal, which implied that every door had the same magitech controlling entry. It was a tremendous expenditure of resources for something as simple as opening a door, but there were no other applications that Verdan could think of.

Searching the next few rooms in the corridor, Verdan found similar signs of broken crystals, which seemed to support that magitech had become far more common. Oddly, however, when Verdan looked closer at the damaged walls, he could see small threads of metal running through the core of the walls.

Interestingly, Verdan found a replica of the globe that Macannan had shown him tucked away in one of the rooms, though the top had been bent and broken.

Running a finger of the strange sigils carved into the metal surface, Verdan noted that the indent at the base was the right size and shape for one of the rectangular pieces of crystal.

Right now, he didn’t have enough pieces to really experiment here, but if they came together like he thought they might, this was a whole new field of magitech. One that was far beyond his own experiences.

Verdan let himself revel in the possibilities of what he was finding for a few moments before getting a grip and focusing on the task at hand. Everything he was finding was either damaged beyond repair or already looted. It was time to move on.

Regrouping with Tim and Tom back at the hub of the floor, they went over everything they’d found. Disappointingly, this floor of the tower seemed to be predominantly made up of living quarters, with a few bathrooms, kitchens and communal areas lumped in.

Stone furniture really didn’t seem to be the best idea to Verdan, but he could only imagine that there had originally been soft furnishings that had long since perished.

Continuing up to the next floor, they found much the same situation, though everything had suffered more from the passage of time, and there were cracks and holes here and there around the exterior.

“I don’t think we’re finding anything up here, Boss,” Tim said as they looked around them.

The increased amount of damage meant that almost none of the floor was being supplied with Aether. With that protection gone, it was clear that whoever had been here before had already thoroughly looted the place.

“I think you’re right,” Verdan said with a silent sigh. The rooms on this floor looked larger and more elaborate as well, which made it all the more annoying.

“Should we try the next floor up?”

Verdan considered Tim’s words for a few moments before nodding. “Yes, let’s keep heading up and check each floor. No need to check each room as we go, though. We’ll sweep each one for any sealed rooms and then leave it at that.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Tim said, heading back to the stairwell with his stick held up to light the way.

They spent the next thirty minutes checking over the following floors, but the further up they went, the more damage there was.

Each floor had fewer areas to check as the rooms grew larger bit by bit, allowing them to cover the final few in mere minutes.

The top of the tower was heavily damaged, as they’d seen from the ground, and the stairs they were on soon became dangerous to traverse.

“We’ll stop here. It’s clearly a fool’s errand to continue,” Verdan said, bringing them to a halt as he pointed out pitons that had been hammered into the rock above them.

Whoever had been here before had taken great care to loot the tower thoroughly. The only way they were finding anything was through the ground entrance.

Returning to the base of the tower, Verdan approached the door to the interior. A recessed crystal was present where the door connected to the wall, so Verdan infused it with his Aether as he’d done before.

A shower of dust fell to the floor as the door slowly retracted, letting out a waft of stale air as it did.

“Aer,” Verdan conjured a gentle breeze flowing into and back out of the room beyond the door. “Let’s give it a moment to freshen and then head in.”

“Damn, I can’t believe we’re going to be the first people in here,” Tim said with a shake of his head. “No offence, Boss, but I didn’t expect you to get through something that the Sects had struggled with.”

“I have my advantages,” Verdan said with a shrug. “Sorcerers don’t seem to be able to do this sort of thing, so they’d only be able to brute force their way in.”

“Ah, that explains how you became one then,” Tim said to his brother, who promptly punched him in the arm in response.

Verdan hid a smile as the two brothers began to bicker with each other and instead took a closer look at the interior of the tower.

Peering in through the open door, Verdan found himself at the entrance to a long corridor, with a secondary door on the left that likely led to the stairwell.

The corridor was around fifteen feet wide and ran for at least thirty feet before dipping down out of sight.

Once Verdan was satisfied with the air quality inside the building, he got the attention of the other two and carefully stepped inside.

The interior of the corridor bloomed with light a moment after Verdan stepped inside, glass globes set into the walls steadily brightening as they gave off a warm glow.

Each globe had a small crystal set below it, and Verdan could see the slight outline of sigils carved into their surface, illuminated from within.

Sharing a look with the two brothers, Verdan continued on down the corridor, following the sloped path down to a large open area that was illuminated in stages as they approached.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Verdan noted that the globes far behind them had turned off once more. It was almost like a bubble of light that was moving along with them.

Turning back to the space that had been illuminated, Verdan found himself looking at what seemed to be some sort of combined working area.

Multiple discreet workspaces were present, each with a workbench, a table, some storage and a few other pieces. Most of them held a variety of metallic parts in various stages of completion, which looked like they’d been abruptly abandoned.

“What in the abyss is this?” Tim asked as he moved over to one of the benches and picked up what looked like a wire model of a human arm but with blades coming from the forearm.

“I have no idea,” Verdan said in an almost giddy tone as he rushed past the wire model and looked to where a pile of papers lay. Each sheaf of paper was littered with musings and drawings of the model, and it was all in High Imperial.

“What language is that?” Tom asked, furrowing his brow as he tried to read the paper that Verdan was looking at.

“One that I had feared was forgotten,” Verdan muttered with a sense of wonder as he drank in the information in front of him.

The papers were all yellowed with age and looked fragile, but they were perfectly legible still.

“Hey, Tom, come look at this,” Tim called out from the other side of the room.

Verdan barely noticed as the burly Sorcerer stepped away to see what his brother had found. His focus was entirely on reading the research notes in front of him.

Apparently, the person who had been using this space was developing a new form of arm, one with retractable blades. Initially, Verdan thought it was regarding some form of prosthetic, but it was looking unlikely.

From what Verdan could tell, this was the design for something much larger, perhaps a prosthetic for a giant.

Tearing himself away for the moment, Verdan saw that the two brothers were examining a shield that was propped up against the wall.

 The shield was easily three times as large as the one that Tim used and had markings on the back to show where sigils would be inscribed.

“This wasn’t designed to be used, right?” Tim said nervously as Verdan joined them. “This thing is too big even for someone like Cullan.”

Verdan considered giving his current thoughts but eventually decided that it would be difficult to explain, given what Elliot had said about giants having died out.

Looking around the room, Verdan saw a few open archways leading away and eagerly continued exploring.

As eager as he was to keep reading, it would be safer to finish exploring first.

Two of the three adjoining rooms were filled with material supplies. Metal, wood and various tools were in one room, while the other held paper, ink, styluses and a supply of crystals.

The third room, however, was sealed by a similar-looking door to the one he’d entered through. The difference this time was that there was no longer a single crystal controlling it. Instead, there were nine crystals laid out in three tight triangles that themselves formed a larger triangle.

Verdan stared blankly at the triangles for a few moments before infusing one of the crystals with the slightest amount of Aether.

A few seconds passed before the Aether was drained from the crystal, but nothing happened. 

Trying a combination of crystals, Verdan eventually found that once he reached the sixth infusion, the Aether was immediately drained away. The effect seemed to be based on the number rather than time, which was interesting.

“Everything okay, Boss?” Tim called out as he peered around the corner to see what Verdan was doing.

“Yes, I’m fine. I believe this is the equivalent of a lock on the door. One that I’m unable to get through right now.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Tim said confidently before gesturing over his shoulder. “What do you want us to do with all this?”

“Leave it be for now,” Verdan said after a moment of thought. “We’ll head back out and seal it back up. I need to decide how we’re going to handle this.”