The next day gave us the first chance to check how high up we already were.
We passed a bridge, a curving structure protruding from the side of the tower.
To ascend even higher, we had to cross the bridge anyways.
But only as we both stood at the railing of the stone bridge was it that we could see down from the tower city into the forest.
Before, I thought we were only a few dozen meters above the ground.I was wrong.
As I my eyes fell down into the valley hudreds of meters below, my mind was once again blown by the dimensions of this tower.
Looking up, The tower streched up far over the clouds, so far that I could not see the top.
Looking down, the abyss devoured every ray of light eventually; there was no bottom. Not one that I could see from up here.
The tower was not just a building. It was an inate part of the world, a lance piercing both the very bottom of the planet and its sky.When the arch stretching across the sky stood directly above the tower, I feared it would scrape the uppermost parts of the tower off like a planetary plow.
From down here, Thessa also showed me the arena. A large round structure floating in a part of the upper tower.
Seeing the arena myself, I finally understood what it actually meant that Thessa had proposed there.
Fighting in front of tens of thousands of people.
Fighting someone who probably had already won countless fights.
Yes, I was scared.
To make things worse, Thessa had told me stories of the arena.
Stories of legendary fights, champions of all kinds, especially one:
The beastman Ghorhaln.
She described him as the ultimate champion; only those that had won countless fights could even challenge him, but no one had ever managed to even wound him.
Thessa said he had many nicknames: the unbroken, the demigiant, and my least favorite one, the godeater.
The last one, she explained, he had earned by biting off a god-sprout's arm with his bare teeth.
I was glad that neither of us had to face him. But to imagine sneaking through the vaults beneath the arena while someone named Godeater lived somewhere in there was horrible.
"And you are sure this is our best option? There is no better way to cross the border?"
Thessa grinned:
"Sounds like someone is scared, hmm?"
"So you are telling me you are not afraid of someone they call Godeater?"
She giggled but didn't answer; I took that as confirmation that she, too, was scared.
But if this truly was our best chance to get into the higher parts, we had to face the danger of the arena.
———
To fight in the arena, we would both get equipment there, but it was allowed to bring your own stuff into the fights, and so, Thessa had the idea to buy some runestones from a runesmith with the coins she had left.
Runestones were the most common form of magic; they were incredibly versatile and were easy to get.
They were not particularly strong, but it was enough to give us a little advantage in our fights.
After asking around, we eventually reached a runesmith, an elderly man, muscular but with sagging skin and a short black beard.
He had explained to us that custom runes could take some time but that he had prefabricated ones in his forge.
After looking around for a while, we both had decided on two runestones each:
Thessa's secret weapons of choice were a rune that slowed time around her for a couple of moments and a regular healing rune.
I had decided to pick one rune that could create a small burst of wind.After that, I was unsure what else to pick.
With no fighting experience, if my opponent had the chance to wound me, the fight would probably end right then. So a healing rune didn't seem helpful.
After a few more minutes of browsing the walls covered in layers of small stones, each flat but all differently colored and with different runes, I saw one that caught my eye:
Even amongst the thousands of runes on the walls of the city, I had never seen this rune. It held three circles, each with a pair of dots, almost like eyes. Each circle had a different expression.
The stone it was carved into was unique as well. It was of a dark grey and smelled like salt.I had no clue what its use case was, but my curiosity ultimately won.
I took the runestone from the wall.
In the moment my fingers made contact with the cold stone, a surge of emotions flowed through my body; I could feel hot rage, warm satisfaction, cold grief, and a hundred more different things.
Steuck by the intense emotions, I stumbled back.
I had not even used the rune yet, and the feeling still almost blinded me.
"This one. I take this one."