The Tower Wakes

The Tower Wakes

Kahleen’s image hovered above the pedestal, blurred at the edges and broken by bands of pale light.

Kaelen stepped closer. “Do you know us? We were in Alfadin, in the tower there. You spoke to us about the power failing.”

Kahleen turned his head as though listening to someone beyond the chamber.

“He mentioned a geographic location,” he said. “I will inform him it is irrelevant.”

“Incredible,” Anderix breathed. His eyepiece clicked and whirred as its lenses adjusted. “It is definitely a projection, but the image is badly degraded. It is blurry to all of you as well, yes?”

“Evaluating Aethorian Common Tongue,” Kahleen said. “Enhancing communicative algorithms.”

“I am sorry,” Kaelen began. “I do not understand what you are....”

“Greetings.” Kahleen’s attention shifted away again. “Increased power fluctuations are allowing communication, though magnetic interference remains.”

Blena stepped towards the pedestal. “Why have you appeared in this tower?”

She remembered how quickly he had vanished in Alfadin. If there were questions to ask, she intended to ask them before the light failed again.

“Geographic location irrelevant,” Kahleen replied.

His gaze wandered around the chamber. Light flickered across his face as though he were struggling to recognise what he saw.

“This tower is malfunctioning, but temporarily aligned. Excess power surge has forced particle concentration.”

Then he saw Anderix.

Kahleen’s eyes fixed upon the mechanisms surrounding Anderix’s eye and arm. “They possess adaptive technological advancements. We should initiate assistive transfer.”

A second voice sounded somewhere behind him, muffled and distant.

“They are attempting communication.”

Kahleen turned back to the group. “We are in the tower, as you summoned us.”

Alster stared. “What, like a demon from the dead world?”

“Shh,” Blena hissed. “This is serious.”

Humour was Alster’s usual answer to fear.

“We were summoned by something or someone within your receiver-transmitter,” Kahleen continued. “It has been dormant for eons. The reason for activation is yours. Can you receive file transfer?”

Anderix took an involuntary step closer. “A transfer of what?”

The distant voice interrupted again, clearer this time.

“We are losing connection. Abort transfer.”

“Increase power and eliminate fluctuations for continued connection,” Kahleen said urgently. “Do you understand?”

Ruodoon rumbled. The vibration beneath their feet softened into a lower, steadier rhythm.

Kahleen vanished in a flash.

The air cracked with a concussive pop that sent dust spiralling through the broken chamber. Blena raised an arm across her face. When the dust settled, only the clouded crystal remained.

Kaelen opened his journal with shaking hands and wrote down every phrase he could remember. Their answers had only deepened the mystery. The tower’s origin, Kahleen’s identity and his connection to the stars remained hidden, yet Kaelen felt more determined than ever to help him.

“They are like us,” Kaelen murmured, “but also not like us in so many ways.”

Tajan folded her arms. “Well, that is helpful. I am hungry, but not hungry in so many ways.”

“Exactly.”

She stared at him. “Are you all right?”

Anderix was still watching the empty space above the pedestal. “They could see us, but their sound and image did not arrive together. Kahleen recognised my augmentation. Wherever he is, they understand technology at least comparable to that of Mechanum. Perhaps far beyond it.”

“He asked whether we could receive a file,” Drue said. “What is a file?”

“Information arranged for storage or like a ledger or record.” Anderix’s words came quickly now. “Plans, instructions, measurements, perhaps images. He believed this tower could send it to us.”

“Could it?” Blena asked.

Anderix looked offended on behalf of the machine. “Not while half of it is missing.”

They went around the group twice, each person recounting exactly what they had seen and heard. Blena remembered Kahleen’s eyes moving before the second voice spoke. Drue had felt the floor’s vibration change when the connection strengthened. Tajan had noticed that the crystal brightened in time with the volcano. Alster remembered Kahleen calling it a receiver-transmitter. Anderix recorded every light fluctuation displayed by his eye enhancement.

Only after their racing hearts had slowed did Kaelen close his journal.

“We should search farther inside. This place is powered. You all heard them say that.”

“I propose that the energy does not come from the crystal,” Anderix said. Excitement had stripped the reserve from his voice. “A crystal has limited storage, and its output weakens once that energy is used. This one grew brighter. Did you hear Ruodoon while Kahleen was here? The volcanic pulses and the tower’s activity were synchronized.”

Tajan smiled faintly. “You sound almost cheerful.”

“I am standing inside an ancient machine powered by a volcano.” Anderix looked around the ruined chamber. “Cheerfulness is a proportionate response.”

As the light faded, the surfaces around them became easier to see. The tower seemed both ancient and impossibly new. Its stone was worn and broken, yet some walls were smooth as still water. Fragments of perfectly flat, gently curved glass lay among the rubble, unlike anything Kaelen had seen made in any Crestrealm.

At the rear of the chamber, a spiral staircase climbed towards the shattered upper floor and the bright sky beyond.

“Last time, Kahleen told us to find the stars,” Blena said. “Perhaps we can see them from above. A pattern, a planetary alignment, something we could not see from Alfadin.”

“It is daylight,” Tajan replied. “Even if the stars were visible from up there, which they are not, your suggestion is hardly appro....”

Blena put one foot on the first stair. “Last one up is a frightened luffy bird!”

Alster was already running before she finished.

Tajan watched them race upward. “She is a little much sometimes, don't you think?”

Kaelen snorted. At that moment, Tajan seemed the wisest person in the group.

Anderix ignored the challenge and continued examining the pedestal. Drue glanced up the stairs, then towards Tajan. Luffy birds lived near the Losden, and he had guessed from her accent that she might have grown up near Bymotha, although she had never named her home. He had no idea whether speed would impress her. But knew he did not want to be a luffy bird in front of her.

He decided to run too.

“Fine,” Tajan said, as she gave in ran after Blena.

“Apparently it is very bad to be a frightened luffy bird,” Kaelen told Anderix before joining the race.

Anderix looked around the now-empty chamber and sighed. “I was assigned to a serious investigation.”

Then he followed.

Blena and Alster stood victorious at the broken summit, greeting the others with triumphant smiles and an absurdly complicated handshake that neither had known five minutes earlier.

Sometimes Kaelen felt like the eldest member of the group, although he certainly was not. Anderix had expected disciplined experts and had instead found them. Yet after the terror of Kahleen’s appearance, Kaelen could not resent the silliness. They all needed to let off a little steam, and Ruodoon seemed to have plenty to spare.

“Took you long enough,” Blena said.

Tajan muttered something impolite, then surveyed the remains of the upper floor. “There is nothing here. No doors. No clues. No power.”

Blena’s triumph faded. “Sorry I made everyone come up. The view is excellent, though. And now we know who is fastest.”

“We know who began first,” Tajan corrected.

Kaelen leaned against a wall and caught his breath. “There is nothing more we can do up here except climb all the way back down.”

As they turned, Tajan noticed a hole in the centre of the floor, previously concealed beneath fallen stone. Through it, the clouded crystal was visible in the chamber below, still giving off a faint, ethereal glow.

“Was that directly beneath us before?” she asked.

They gathered around the opening.

The crystal began to rise.

Slowly and without any visible support, it floated upwards from the pedestal. Its light refracted across the broken walls in shifting patterns. When it reached the floor, it fitted itself into the opening so precisely that not even water could have slipped around its edges. Its upper surface protruded like a cloudy lens.

“Well,” Tajan said, stepping closer, “that is new.”

“Thank you,” Blena replied. “I thought the enormous floating crystal had always been there.”

The air hummed. The vibration intensified until they felt it in their teeth. Everyone stepped back and shielded their eyes as the glow grew brighter.

Ruodoon answered.

A blast like a thousand thunderbolts erupted from the far side of the volcano. Smoke billowed above the ridge, and the floor lurched beneath them.

“I agree with Anderix,” Kaelen said. “The volcano is somehow powering the tower.”

“Or the tower is provoking the volcano,” Blena said. “Or it is a trap.”

Tajan rolled her eyes. “You are hopelessly overcautious. Glowing does not make something dangerous, and unfamiliar does not make it a trap. We need to analyse it, not invent reasons to fear it.”

Anderix and Kaelen both turned towards her, visibly impressed. Then they looked at one another and smiled.

Drue, who had missed the first encounter with Kahleen in Alfadin, stood at the edge of the group. “Can someone please explain what is happening? This is all rather a lot.”

“We believe the tower is part of some kind of network,” Kaelen said. “It uses power, communicates across great distances and may connect in some way to the Heartwell Crystal.”

“And the towers may be tied to one another,” Blena added.

Anderix gave her an approving nod. Kaelen did the same.

Tajan raised an eyebrow. “Oh, now you want to be serious and scientific.”

“I won the race,” Blena said. “It is time to move on.”

Tajan crouched beside the crystal. “We need to understand its purpose. Is it connected to other towers, or is it only receiving a signal from Kahleen?”

“Perhaps the crystal is a key,” Kaelen suggested. “It might unlock something when it receives enough energy.”

“Or it may contain knowledge,” Blena said. “Something we need to decipher.”

Anderix sighed. “This is what I mean. You are offering possibilities without evidence. We cannot base conclusions upon things we cannot observe.”

Drue had stopped listening. He was staring over the tower’s outer wall.

“Where is Dasher?”

No one answered.

His voice tightened. “She was circling above us. I tied her below before we entered, but she is not there.”

The urgency in his face silenced every argument. Whatever mysteries the tower held, finding Dasher mattered more.

The crystal’s glow weakened. It sank through the opening, descending towards the pedestal below.

Kaelen turned to Blena and shrugged. “Follow the clues.”

They hurried down the spiral stairs. Drue and Alster went outside to search while the others watched the crystal settle into its original place.

Without its light filling the chamber, Kaelen noticed a faint glow beneath the staircase. A narrow doorway opened there, leading into the mountain.

Alster returned moments later, breathless but smiling. “Crisis over. We found Dasher in the trees. She must have been frightened by the eruption. Drue is calming her. Oh, look. There is a passage beneath the stairs.”

“I already—” Kaelen stopped himself. “Yes. You are right. A passage. Let us investigate the passage Alster found.”

Alster frowned. “I did not know you had already....ah. I see what you did.” He peered into the opening. “The tower is round, so that must lead into the mountainside. Unless you knew that already too.”

Kaelen lifted a power crystal for light. “Come along, discoverer.”

The passage sloped upwards through the dark.

Thy Quest: Evidence and Assumptions
The heroes offer several explanations for the tower, the crystal and Ruodoon’s volcanic activity. Identify one conclusion supported by evidence and one idea that remains an assumption. Explain what evidence the group would need to determine whether the assumption is correct.