NOVEL WEB 47: The Tower in the Woods
It took me twenty minutes to convince the poor people who needed help that they were better off praying to Cynath for help. That was when the folks who were more interested in demanding that I help appeared. Those took longer, and by the time I got free of pestering people, the scrap sorting was all finished. Somehow, though, I was more exhausted than if I'd been lifting heavy chunks of steel.
That was when the Captain found me, and suddenly I was dragged into a classroom where a couple of folks in full apocalypse combat gear were waiting. I thought for a second that they had some nefarious ideas or something, but then I saw that they were muttering over a map that was laid out on a desk.
“Thanks for coming, Silver, and I'm glad to see you're alive. Normally, I'd grill you on where you've been for the last week and a half, but…” the Captain said, ushering me over to the map. “We've found something… odd. Since you're the closest thing we have to an expert on the strange new world we live in and you just turned up again, I wanted your opinion.”
The map on the table was a hand drawn representation of the suburb. His finger landed on a space further south down the main road, where the tiny commercial zone of Edgewood morphed into residential.
“Our folks went down to check on the Chinese takeaway, see if it had any rice, but…” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“But?” I prompted.
He sighed bemusedly. “It's gone. Plus a substantial chunk of the block. The place looks like it got stepped on by god himself. That's not the strangest part, though. Where all those buildings used to be is a small woodland of trees you don't get around here, and a little stone tower.”
“A… what?” I asked, staring at him incredulously. “Like a castle?”
“A tiny castle,” he agreed. “Something out of a knights and dragons thing, for sure.”
“I gotta see this,” I said in disbelief.
“That's the plan,” he nodded. “How would you feel about a little excursion with me and my men?”
I was definitely intrigued by the strange description, and it would be interesting to see how the Captain himself was in a fight.
“Sure, why not?” I said, then remembered… “But, I'll need a few minutes to get my axe back from Chloe— no, that'll take forever, she's pissed at me. I'll go pick up a spear and axe from the workshop.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Don't let that one sit. Chloe isn't the most forgiving sort and if you leave it too long…”
I groaned. “I know…”
We set off together, but split when they went to wait at the front of the settlement while I headed to the workshop. April was a bit salty about the fact I'd lost her gift axe, but she let me borrow a spear and regular axe all the same.
On our way to the site of the mysterious tower, we had to dispatch a small group of snow scorpions, and I got a good look at how the Captain fights. He favoured simple martial brawling to any spells, which he occasionally augmented with self-buffing style abilities. Basically, if I were a dungeon and dragons paladin, then he was a fighter through-and-through.
Our route took us along the currently frozen main street river for several blocks. As the street curved to follow the ridge that our suburb was built on, so too did the river.
A couple of blocks past the main bend, it became obvious why the Captain and his people were unsettled. Halfway through a normal residential block, the suburb, the streets, and the houses were cut off like some great titan had stepped on the town. The cut-off itself wasn't some neat and tidy slice, either—whatever had removed this chunk of our town had been anything but gentle. Drywall and wooden framing was scattered everywhere as though a bomb had gone off, and in many places the streets looked like they'd erupted into brief fountains of asphalt.
Jarringly, the area beyond the cut-off was a serene woodland where picturesque trees battled with very tall overgrown grasses for their own little fiefs of land. Seemingly unconcerned by the change in scenery, the main street river twisted its way through the landscape as though it'd always been there.
That, I was extremely certain, was not the case. How did I know this surprise woodland hadn't been here long? Because there was almost zero snow within the zone, that's how. Sure, flakes were beginning to settle into the head-height lush grass, but it was very clear that this patch of land had been enjoying some very warm weather in its recent past.
“The trees,” the Captain said, breaking our stunned silence.
I glanced around. “What about them?”
“They're not native around here. The grass too. It's not actually grass…” he said, nudging an outlying clump with a foot. “See how thick and tall it is?”
“Huh,” I whispered, and took a few tentative strides forward.
No shit, he was right. This stuff was strange. It looked like someone had crossbred rushes and bamboo into some strange hybrid.
Using my axe, I knelt and carefully sliced a handful off at the base. It was tough stuff. Despite my axe being made out of squiron, the reeds resisted at first, and I had to put a bit of effort in.
“Yeah…” I agreed, looking down the hollow tube of one strand. “This ain't grass.”
“Strange trees, strange grass…” the Captain muttered, shaking his head. “Let's go see that tower.”
We did as he ordered and forged on into the alien woodland. That's what it felt like, too—Alien. The literal uncanny valley. All the trees, the shrubs, even the moss and lichen, it was all off somehow. It wasn’t even unsettling, either, just odd in a harmless, natural way.
It didn’t take us too long to push through the trees and tall bamboo-grass to get to the tower, and that too was odd. As far as square stone towers go, it was fairly boring. At ten metres tall, it was rather squat for the average building in Edgewood, and the old thatched roof was rotting and caving in. The only real features of note were that the edges of the building weren’t actually properly square, but instead unevenly rounded off.
The closer we got, the more confused I was by the strange curve of the corners, too. While the curves weren’t purely circular, they also weren’t nonuniform. In fact… the curves were almost exponential, like someone had taken an exponential curve, laid it on its side on the ground and used that to inform the lines upon which the walls were built.
“This is one sus tower,” I murmured as we got within a few yards without any problems.
“Looks old,” one of the fighters accompanying us commented.
Another one chimed in with a grunt of agreement. “Nobody’s been home for a good long time.”
They weren't wrong either. The quarried stone bricks were old, weathered, and covered in some sort of moss analogue. When we walked around the tower, we found a doorway with the remains of a iron-bound wooden door that'd lost its battle with the forces of entropy. Inside the room beyond the door were the remains of the collapsed roof.
The whole lot of us stood there, staring into the cramped indoors of the stone tower, lost in thought. Goddess, but I had a lot of questions. First and foremost, how the hell did this area find itself transplanted into Edgewood, and where had it come from before then?
“Cynath, do you have any answers for us, because I'm struggling to understand,” I finally asked aloud.
The folks around me shifted their attention to me with interest, and then brief alarm when the silvered ghost of a gorgeous feminine face appeared beside me. That was new. I guess it was a compromise between a full manifestation and just speaking as a disembodied voice?
“You will receive no answers from me,” the goddess pondered with a level of confusion that was quite concerning coming from a goddess. “It is definitely reminiscent of stone towers from across history, and yet it is strange in ways that unsettle beyond apparent reason.”
“Did any of the other gods do this?” I asked.
“No,” she shook her disembodied head. “None of the Earthen-bound gods did this, I'd sense it in the weave of reality. As for the high cosmic powers… we are beneath their notice here.”
I frowned, sensing an opening to ask a question that'd been bothering me. “I've heard you mention some of that stuff before. What's the difference between—”
“My kin and the high cosmic gods?” she interrupted. “The gap is orders of magnitude greater than that between myself and the average human, that is certain. Think on it—what has greater power and wider reach, a human’s understanding of honour and conflict, or the immutable reality of time?”
I laughed lightly without any amusement. “I imagine the immutable reality of time is significantly more powerful than any social concept us humans can dream up.”
“Precisely.”
The expressions on my comrade's faces mirrored how I felt about the matter—we were tiny specs of nothing compared to what Cynath described.
“However… even those high cosmic powers have a distinctive scent when they act, and I do not sense any here. This stinks of chaos and the reality storm that has so recently sundered the rules of the universe here on Earth,” Cynath continued, her holographic head bobbing as she spoke.
“Is this area safe? Will more of the town get swapped out like this!” Cap asked, his expression stern and concerned.
Cynath snorted. “I imagine this won't be the last time the region is twisted by the Storm, but you need not worry over the survivor’s settlement you have created. My powers will protect it and those within. As for safety, this woodland is no more or less safe than the rest of the town.”
“Uh… your godliness…” one of the fighters said, having listened with wide eyed interest. “What do we do about this place then?”
What did he mean, do about this place? What would we do? Dig it all up and haul it somewhere else? Rebuild the—
Cynath chuckled and flicked me a wry smile. “Why, you use it, of course. The trees, grass, soil, and stone are all storm-attuned, albeit only at a low level. Create some wards to put the tower under my protection and your people could safely harvest this new and mysterious region.”
Oh. Oh! The wood! We could make bows! I bet there were all sorts of things we could use the bamboo grass for too. Exciting!
Turning excitedly to the Captain, I asked, “I can put the wards up, easy. What do you say?”
He took a few seconds to glance around, as if re-evaluating the woods as a resource rather than a threat. “I think that might be a good idea. I'm not a crafty person, not like Charles and his gang, but even I can see this place could be a goldmine. I'm not going to open the place for use until we've fully scouted the area, but taking over the tower is a no-brainer.”
Rubbing my hands together, I began looking for stones that I could use as the corner pieces of the wards. Edgewood was expanding!
