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I scan the area, eyes continuously fixating on the massive stone structure in front of us. A tall, crumbling tower, easily four homes in height, stretches up to the sky. The stone is twisted with vines and growth, the top of it broken as if hit by a massive impact. It's surrounded by a wall that stretches wide and deep, enclosing a massive space within it. Along the wall are platforms strategically placed to face the hill we just trekked up.
The tower has a half-busted wooden door on the bottom, and the only way into the inner bailey is through the decrepit keep.
I've been tuning out the conversations around me, focused on that door. There is a pull there, something begging me to explore. It would be impossible to explain other than my magic knows I am supposed to be here.
So, without a look back, I trust my magic and walk to the keep, wrenching open the door, waving off my group's shouts, and walking into the darkness.
I easily conjure a ball of pure Light magic to float beside me so that I can investigate the structure. Inside, it is bare bones, clearly intended for the residents of this place to investigate all newcomers. The walls are bare except for the overgrowth of plant life.
The room buzzes with magic, but there is none floating in the air. It's as if the very ground here is infused with it. The magic in my veins responds in kind, a pull to join together. It's not painful, but it's an odd sensation.
I take a step behind some sort of counter and trip over two skeletons.
No clothes remain on them, the organic matter long since withered away, but each has a sword next to it. Guardsmen, then.
Before I can finish my exploration of their corpses, a wide hand pulls me back against a flat, lithe chest.
"You just decide to run into the unknown and then not come out and think I won't follow you, numen?"
I turn and look at Mace, rolling my eyes. "I knew you would follow me. What did you think would happen to me here? That a rat would scamper over my feet?"
"Who knows, Viola? And still, you run off without talking through things with your companions. I thought we discussed this." His arms are crossed as he looks at me like I am an unruly schoolchild.
"The plan was always to come here. Why would I need to discuss walking into a keep when that was clearly the choice that needed to be made?"
Mace scrubs a hand down his face in frustration. "We don't live in your mind, Viola. What would have been the harm in waiting?"
I throw my arms up in frustration. "What was the harm in me coming in on my own?"
"The potential for harm is unknown, Viola! That's the whole fucking point of developing a plan with your partner."
"I can take care of myself. I'm a God, Mace, in case you forgot," I hiss, crowding him.
"As if you'd ever let me," he mutters, rolling his eyes.
Huffing, I poke my finger into his chest. "I can handle going into a decrepit keep on my own. It's safer for me than you all, and besides. I doubt I'm easy to kill."
"We don't know that!"
I hold up my hand. "Regardless, I am not now and will never be running all of my decisions by everyone. I understand you are still raw from my time in Ytopie, but my instincts have served us well thus far, and you need to allow me the freedom to follow them."
Mace shakes his head in frustration, taking a step back from me. "You're fucking impossible, Viola! You're not meant to do this alone."
"I'm not alone, I have my high priest."
He tries to hide his flinch, but I see it, and a flicker of guilt lights up low in my belly. He recovers quickly. "The high priest that you left out there. Viola," he grabs me by both shoulders. " Numen, Miss Mistflow, Shadowweaver. Whatever name I need to call you so you listen to me. This time, it was just entering a building on your own. What will it be next?"
The rest of the group enters the doorway, postures and facial expressions telling me all that I need to know about how unwilling they were to wait for us, and I wrench myself from Mace's grasp. "We've got some skeletons over here with weapons. It seems like this place was protected well."
I slip around Mace and down the hall, knowing this probably isn't the last I've heard of this argument, and find the door that I think will take us to the bailey. I throw it open, and my mouth drops. It's a bigger space than I thought it would be, carved down into the rock of the cliff. On one side is an amphitheater overlooking the ocean. Cracked roads lead to and from it, withbroken buildings overgrown with vegetation filling the space.
While the amphitheater is the most striking part of the town, it's the thoughtful design of the town that really impresses me. Not only are there homes, but courtyards in between groupings of them, large halls that most likely were event spaces or schools, and empty rows lined with what at some point must've been permanent booths for a market. Everything is in various states of decay, the stone crumbling and the roofs, which mostly likely had been made of organic matter, completely gone.
If I squint, I can almost see the way this town used to be. The life, the excitement, that came with living in the city of the Gods. I wonder what their daily lives were like. This place is relatively remote, so how did humans end up living here?
"It's a whole town," Plume says quietly.
It's second nature to Decay all the overgrowth, removing the flora that obscures everything and giving a clear picture of the potential this place holds.
