The entrance into the tower looked like a wide street with houses wall to wall on both sides, topped off by a wide arch, all made out of the same sandstone or similar materials.
Both the walls and the roof were covered in runes. Thousands upon thousands of runes. Each one entirely new with its own meaning.
I recognized a few, some I knew the meaning of but those few were nothing against the sheer flood of runes with a meaning no one may know, a meaning lost to time.
Some were glowing in an ethereal glow, all different colors of light flowing out of them.
Some were seemingly runes of creation, water, sand, fire and many more things spilling out of them.
Some runes also had even more runes circling out of them, like a reversed whirlpools of scribings.
The thought, that those signs could pave the walls that stretched on like layers of mazes, kilometers up into the heaven and just as deep down into the abyss, simply would not fit into my mind.
"Do you wanna keep staring at the walls or do we wanna search for a place to stay for the night?", Thessa asked, standing a few meters ahead and waiting for me.
Just know I realised, I had stopped and viewed the wall for a good few minutes.
I blushed and hurried to catch up to her.
"Were are we headed in here anyways?"
She looked at me like I said something stupid: "Up of course, the people below are mindless brutes. We can find the adventurer workshop and maybe we could even find a mentor. To learn fighting and stuff, you know?"
My head was buzzing from all those informations but I tried to focus on the most urgent question:
"If those vile brutes live right below the other ones, why dont they attack each other?"
Thessa rolled her eyes:
"You really dont know anything about the tower, do you? The tower consists of three kingdoms; the upper one, the middle one and the lower one. We are currently in the middle kingdom. The adventurers mostly live in the upper parts. It's not that easy to cross the border between those kingdoms."
The street we walked one started ramping upwards, the first people aplearing on the sides. Some were just talking to each other, some were busy with exhausting tasks like smithing or harvesting exotic plants from little elevated plantbeds.
I thought about our stay for tonight and suddenly, another question struck me:
"Do you even have money for a stay?"
She pulled out a rattling pouch of coins.
"Soooy about earlier...what happened? I assume the monster didn't just slip and fall to his death?"
The memory still made my heart beat a littke faster.
"It's hard to explain. I...felt the basilisks mind, I felt his focus and everytime I touched him, it was like his focus was ripped from him, he fell asleep."
She looked at me and raised an eyebrow:
"You mean...you killed it with magic?"
"I didn't really do it, it just happened."
She giggled.
"We both know the basilisk didn't kill itself with magic."
After thinking for a moment, her expression got serious again:
"But where did you get the magic from? Did you make a contract. Or did you maybe use runes?"
I had not made any contracts or any runes or anything,I couldn't make sense of it however I looked at it.
"Seriously, I didn't do anything, it just happened."
Even though that did not seem to satisfy her, she still stopped digging.
———
After anotherhour of walking, we had finally found what looked like a tavern that offered rooms to sleep in.
Thessa marched in confidently and I slumped after her.
In the tavern, a few men sat at the bar, one particularly broad man at the back wall.
Thessa climbed up on a bar stool and knocked on the counter.
The bartender waddled over and grunted:
"What can I get you two? Two large drinks?"
He fell into a deep laughter, interrupted by an occasional grunt.
Some other men joined in and I could see Thessa getting unpatient:
"Two small rooms, and if you try to make fun of us again, I will shove a large drink UP YOUR..."
The man on the end of the counter had risen to his feet:
"If there is one thing I hate more than kids, its brats that don't know when to to keep their loose mouths shut."
He swayed over to use, now looming over us like an oger.
In a gesture of witless heroism, I tried to push my meager body between the dwarfing figure of the man and Thessa.
His fist hit me like a battering ram and threw me to the ground.