The Tower Valley

The next morning, Fawks spent most of his time – over breakfast, while they packed, and even once they had set off – trying to convince the others to turn back.

“But I’m telling you, I heard her. She’s real. She needs us!” he insisted.

“Well… I’m not saying what you saw wasn’t real,” Elias tried to comfort him as they kept walking. “I’m just saying it might have meant something else.”

Fawks pulled a face of pure frustration.

“Look!” Bard called from the front. “Even if you’re right – even if she is in Orrendale (which I’d doubt)…”

“She’s there!” Fawks cut in fiercely.

Bard didn’t break stride. “Orrendale is one of the biggest cities. Where would we even begin to look for her?”

Fawks had no answer. He only stared at the ground, sulking.

Cecile drifted closer. “Fawks, we need to get these supplies back to camp,” she explained gently. “But as soon as we’re there, I promise I’ll take you to Orrendale myself and help you find her.” She smiled at him.
“I’m curious too,” she added, half to herself. If she’s even real, she almost said, but bit it back.

“I’ll help you too!” Elias promised. “We’ll go by the Lone Haven road… maybe even fix that non-existent staircase-bridge.” He hesitated. “But – didn’t we say we had a city to build first?”

“Ah, right, Elias! You’ve given me a fine idea.” Bard stopped and shrugged the pack off his back beneath the shade of the trees that sloped up to their right. “Plus, it’s time for our first break, don’t you agree?”

It was about noon. They were at the foot of the mountains, already higher than the great plain that stretched endlessly to their left and below. The air was thinner, cooler; a faint wind rose from the valley floor. From here, the land dropped off steeply, so that the view of the valley spread before them like a map laid on a giant’s table.

“Yes, sir-ee!” Cecile agreed at once, setting down her own pack and stretching her arms with a few half-playful motions.

Fawks slumped onto the grass, lost in thought.
Why wouldn’t they follow him now, in his noble cause? Even if it was just a dream, the worst they’d lose was time. But no – that wasn’t a dream. It couldn’t have been!
He clenched his fists. What if I just go myself? Fly back to Orrendale. Dad isn’t following me right now… but he’d understand.

“So,” Elias asked Bard, “what’s this idea you had?”

“Training.”

“Training?” Elias frowned.

“Yeah! You’re a builder, right?”

“An architect.”

“Right!” Bard grinned. “We all saw what you did. So… you can train. Right here, right now.” He gestured toward the valley below.

“Oh…” Elias hesitated. “Sure…”

“That’s how Cecile trained to make the rhino-like creature you saw the other day, and more,” Bard continued cheerfully, settling at the cliff’s edge.

“Why are you hesitating?”

“He’s afraid of heights, remember?” Cecile explained, shooting Bard a reproachful look as if to say how could you forget that?

“Anyway!” she said quickly, closing her eyes as though to brush it aside. “Let’s try something else. Elias, stand back a little, please.”

He obeyed.

“Do you think you can start by making a crenelation here, on this edge?” she asked.

Elias’s eyes lit up. He shut them for a few moments to focus, and when he opened them again, a brand-new battlement rose from the ground, jutting from the cliffside path above the valley — a solid stretch of stonework where before there had been nothing. Ten meters wide, it stopped just shy of where Bard was sitting.

Fawks forgot his brooding and rushed over. “Wow!”

“That’s very solid,” Bard observed, impressed.

Cecile stood beaming.

“Thank you,” Elias told her, and then, slowly, carefully, he stepped onto the new crenel, standing between two merlons.

He looked down. Vertigo seized him; the valley spun beneath. He shut his eyes tight. After a moment, he opened them again, inch by inch, until he could focus.

Before he could second-guess himself, a tower –raw stone, like the one he had made at Frostshore Wilds–  thrust upward from the valley floor below. With every new spire, the valley answered: an echo of stone shifting, a low hollow groan that rolled through the rocks, like the land itself rearranging. Dust and tiny pebbles skittered away in spirals and the sunlight caught the new faces of stone, throwing sharp bright edges across the grass. This time, he didn’t even break a sweat.

All of them watched in awe.

“Come on, you can do better than that!” Bard teased.

Elias tried again. Another tower rose beside the first, this one broader, taller, and near flawless – as though carved from a single massive spike of rock.

No one spoke. Bard and Cecile exchanged a loaded glance. Fawks leaned forward eagerly, waiting for more.

And more came. Though Elias was tiring, he summoned a third tower further down the valley. This one was magnificent: stone from base to peak, with a broad arched opening like a vaulted hall at its foot. Higher up, a machicolated turret jutted like a balcony crowned with battlements, and above it, a round spire soared skyward, roofed with steep, elegant tiles – a near-perfect replica of Tarlmere’s Turning Tower, or at least as much of it as Elias could still recall.

He stopped for breath, panting, sweat dripping down his brow.

“Here.” Fawks offered him an azure crown, the largest of the few they had left.

Elias accepted it with thanks, brought the dral to his lips and cracked it between his teeth. The little stone shimmered faintly – a trapped, pulsing light like a captive moon – and when he swallowed there was a cool, oily flash along his tongue. A warm, steady surge uncoiled through his limbs, steadying his breath and knitting loose strength back into him. He felt it renewed.

“Rest a while, Elias,” Bard urged. “That’s enough training for now. We’ve a long road ahead.”

“You’re right,” Elias admitted, “but it wouldn’t be training if I stopped so soon.”

And with that, he pressed on – raising tower after tower, small and tall, until a full dozen of them studded that stretch of valley, culminating at the replica of the Turning Tower.

“If you keep this up,” Cecile laughed, “we’ll have to move our camp here. Though, truth be told, we’re still just inside the Core.”

“What do you mean?” Bard interjected, startled. “Most of the stuff we bought in Teranbrath is already useless to us now,” he added with a bitter edge to his humor.

Elias staggered to the shade of a tree and all but collapsed there.

For a while they simply rested together, gazing across the valley transformed – towers of every shape and size standing sentinel in the sunlight.

Half an hour later, Elias fumbled in his pocket and found a final dral he had tucked away back at the Blue Lake. He held it in his palm.

“You’re not planning to keep going, are you?” Cecile asked, half-scolding.

But Fawks was already on his feet, pointing beyond them to the far right, toward the end of the valley where the mountain range curved to a close.

“Look!”