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Old 01-02-2023, 02:15 PM   #8
Terquem
 
Join Date: Apr 2018
Location: Idaho Falls
Default Re: The Fantasy Trip inspired Fiction, The Tower

Chapter 1 part 5

“I am The Tower,” the voice said, dramatically, this time.

“You don’t get to say that very often, do you?” Lisa said as she went toward the fireplace built into the Tower wall across from the stairs.

Alan followed, keeping the torch high.

“No, it has been a long while. Do I sound ominous?” the Tower asked.

“Not really,” Lisa laughed, “but I might be the wrong person to give an opinion on that. What do you think, Alan Robert’s Son?”

“I think I’m more confused than frightened. If that’s what you’re asking.” He looked around. A few feet to the right of the fireplace, near a narrow, open window with wooden shutters built into the wall to either side of it, he saw the fireplace tools, but he didn’t see any wood for the fire. “Is there any wood to build a fire?” Alan asked.

The Tower answered, “Outside, around to the south side. There is a bin built into my wall. It is open on the outer face and covered by a slanted wooden roof. You can’t miss it. It may or may not have any wood in it. I can’t really tell because, well, it is outside of me and I only know it is there because it is part of me, but I can’t tell you what is on the ground between the stone walls of it.”

“I don’t understand,” Alan said as he moved the tools closer to the fireplace. There were no ashes. There was no trace of any fire for what looked to him like a long time. The floor of the fireplace had a crude iron grate, and a crane was built into the wall on the left side. There was no pot, no spit, and only three tools, a sweeper, poker, and tongs.

“You don’t understand about the wood bin, or you don’t understand about what the Tower can see, hear, or know about itself?” Lisa knelt and adjusted the grate to be exactly in the center of the fireplace.

Alan found an iron loop on the mantel and fixed the torch there. He waited until Lisa turned her head toward him and said, “I’ll go check the bin.”

Alan walked away quickly. He closed the large door behind him as he went and this time it made a slight groaning sound.

The lightning had passed on to the east but the rain was still falling. Lisa was about to offer Alan a blanket to cover his head while he went, but he was gone before she could say anything.

“I don’t think you should trust him,” the Tower said, once Alan was gone.

“Why?”

“I cannot sense him, himself. I can tell that something is there, when he was inside a moment ago, but I cannot be sure of what it is I sense. A living thing, even as small as Suressa, I can feel. I learn more about a thing the longer I can feel its presence. That is how I came to suspect you were the Aben Moor sorceress. Different things, living things anyway, each have a unique feel. Sometimes I think I can almost see inside the mind of a living thing that is within my walls long enough. I begin to feel strongly connected to them. As they move about inside of me, I know where they are, what they are doing, and I can always feel their intentions, mostly when they intend to do harm to something or someone else.”

“Are you suggesting he is not a living person?” Lisa asked. She had not considered the idea that Alan was an illusion. He spoke, took a torch out of her pack, and lit it. These are not usually things illusions could do, but magic was not ever a completely stagnant thing. She had learned about illusions from Duncan, but only what he knew. Duncan had been the most informed person she had ever known, but he was also quick to remind her that there were things that he did not know and knowing he did not know enough was what drove him to be a perfectionist.

“This I can tell you,” the Tower said, “I have been told about illusions. Warned, even. I cannot see as you do, and I cannot see an illusion. I have learned to know the feeling of a wizard who is casting an illusion spell, or any spell that requires the wizard to keep draining their life to maintain a spell, but I have no way of knowing what that spell is, with one exception, and that is fire. I know when there is a fire within my walls, magical or otherwise.
I can also –”

The sound of the door opening stopped the Tower before it could finish.

Alan came in quickly, his arms loaded with split logs of wood. He dumped the wet wood on the floor and then immediately went to shut the door shouting, “Is there a way to bar this door from the inside?”

Lisa jumped to her feet and took the torch from the mantle.

“Why?” she shouted back.

“I was followed, I think,” Alan said searching along the door frame for a bolt or locking mechanism.

“Followed,” Lisa said.

“I see torches or lanterns, four or five, coming this way along the same path I was on.”

“There is a bolt in the door near the opening side on the bottom. It is made to go into the floor and keep the door shut against anything but a determined force to open it,” the Tower said. “But why would you worry about being followed? Are you a wanted man?”

“That’s not the best way to put it,” Alan said. “I am not a criminal.” He found the bolt, shoved the door well closed and then turned the bolt so it had a handle now away from the door and with his boot he drove the bolt into a hole in the floor. “But there are people that are always looking for me. They want me, but not because I did something they didn’t want me to do. Most of the people looking for me want me to do something for them that they cannot bring themselves to do. Bad things. They think because of my past, because of what they might have heard about me, that I am a killer for hire. I’m not. That doesn’t stop them from asking me to be one. I don’t like it when they won’t take no for an answer and that is usually when things get ugly.”

Last edited by Terquem; 02-01-2023 at 06:42 PM. Reason: minor editorial corrections
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