We were traveling for the better part of the night. For the sake of efficiency, we didn’t take any breaks, though they weren’t really needed as the oxen handled the journey gracefully. We had already wasted enough time while preparing for our departure from Nara and wanted to make up for it and get as far as possible before we finally stopped to rest and regroup.

The night was chilly and even though we had not seen a single drop of water, the smell of rain was strong. The road was fairly well illuminated by the almost-full moon, but the densely packed dark trees on either side made it impossible to see very far around it. Regardless, we felt safe given our numbers.

We knew that no wild animal, not even a wolf pack, would dare attack a convoy of eight huge oxen driven by humans, and Man had informed us that this road was almost always safe from highway thieves since it was patrolled regularly, pushing thieves to scavenge on alternative routes.

Thankfully we had no encounters on the road apart from the occasional wildlife. When Man was not scouting ahead with one of our horse summons, he and I discussed how we should present ourselves in case we stumbled upon people, especially somebody from the Order.

His advice was invaluable and we decided that the best thing to do was to pretend to be manaless traders from his country, Leka An. He could handle the talking while the rest of us hung back.

When we saw the sky on the horizon become lighter, we knew it was time to get off the road and find a place to camp. In order to keep our facade up, we needed to actually prepare a camping site for eight people, and had it not been for Man’s help, we wouldn’t have had any camping supplies with us, much less know how to set one up.

It took us almost a full hour, with him doing the majority of the work, but eventually the camp was set up in the middle of a forest clearing, with our four carts acting as the perimeter. Even though our wagons had defenses of their own, we thought it would be a good idea to set up one of our orbs of protection in the center of our encampment that would act as a low power protective dome.

Item : Orb of Protection

Type : Magic Item

Durability : 5,048/5,200

Grade : C Grade

Weight : 40st.

Description : An orb that extends a protective mana field in the shape of a sphere, spanning 50ft. on all sides. The orb will stop incoming physical attacks and creatures that try to enter it without the express permission of the person who activated it. The orb has a life expectancy of 9,200 hours of continuous use.

Finally, we decided that we should get eight replacements to come out of the tower so that we could also take some rest.

The foyer of the tower still looked crammed, but it was now mostly defensive devices instead of beds, mattresses and bulky furniture; anything from tiny coils that would shoot lightning bolts, to giant ballistas able to launch mundane bolts to intruders. I had to admit that for the sake of our safety and temporary peace of mind, excess was a sensible choice.

Nevertheless, this was not the way I wanted us to live our lives so I made a mental note to at least make these defenses less apparent in the future. I also saw a huge pile of tapestries and artwork placed on the floor, ready to decorate the high walls of our foyer.

Before I even managed to find eight volunteers to station outside, Krysha arrived and distracted me by gushing about how great the tower was.

She rarely, if ever, ranted about how good something was and that said a lot about the tower. What was most amazing about it, was the fact that there was some kind of magical outpost that always had visual access to what was happening outside, kind of like a watchtower.

It was positioned on the far end of the ground floor, in a secluded room that had its own door and no lighting in. The interior looked like a series of large mirrors but instead of my image being reflected in them, they showed what was happening outside in real time.

More importantly, this magical device gave us a bird’s-eye view of the exterior of the tower instead of just what could be seen if you were standing on its doorstep. From here, I could make out the surroundings of our entire camp, perhaps even better than I would have been able to if I was looking with my own eyes.

Pleased to have such a good surveillance operation, we went back out to the camp and called everyone in. Thankfully, Kard—who was now fidgeting with a finely ornamented dagger instead of his metal thingy—had anticipated the need to replace those of us outside and had already sent some people to sleep, so that they would be ready to replace us when we needed rest.

As soon as he saw us, he sent for those people and we decided to take a little tour of the tower, to see how our people had settled in, while we were waiting for them.

“Where’s your thingy?” I asked Kard, as we walked through the hallways.

“It’s here,” he replied with a smile, and gave the purplish dagger a little flip.

The hallways and common rooms of the first three floors were already furnished with wooden benches and decorated with large paintings of places we had never seen before. I noticed that some of the private rooms had their doors closed, which I suspected meant that people were sleeping in them already.

We continued to the fourth and fifth floors and it became apparent that above the fourth, the floors were identical and empty. By my estimations, we had enough beds and furniture to fill up six additional floors but that would be a chore for another day. Instead, we decided to use the magical platform and get to the top floor.

The platform was a marvel itself. It seemed to work with a pressure plate on the floor. Whenever someone stepped on one of four particular stones close to the ledge, a platform would instantly appear on that floor while its movement was controlled by a long lever in the middle of it.

I looked up as the platform rose, and saw the main source of the tower’s illumination drawing closer. From a distance, it seemed like there was a dome made of windows at the very top, and sunlight was being diffused and spread through the whole tower. As I got closer though, I noticed that the ceiling itself was illuminated. Whoever designed this part of the tower must have had some great control over light magic.

The last floor was somewhat different to the others. For starters, there were no walls or rooms of any kind. The whole floor was open in the shape of a ring around the central platform. What was even more unusual though, was that the floor did not even have outer walls. Instead it was encircled by glass. We moved toward the outer part of the circular floor and touched the transparent material. It was cold to the touch and felt very solid.

As I focused on the view outside, rather than the interior of the floor, I realized that what I was seeing was our actual immediate surroundings. The view in front of me was exactly what I would have seen had the tower been a real building standing tens of stories tall. The surveillance room on the ground floor was of course much better for the purpose of guarding our surroundings, but this place was equally amazing.

Having observed most of the changes in the tower, save for the basement warehousing facilities, I thought I should return to the foyer.

Since far too few people were still active at this hour, I decided to postpone general announcements until the next day but waited for the people that Kard had sent for before going to bed.

Even though we would have lookouts in the tower around the clock, some people also needed to stay in the camp outside if we wanted to look like traders, at least for show. For this reason, Man and I greeted them once they arrived and informed them of what they should do in case someone approached our camp.

“We have taken every precaution to hide from anyone that travels the highway,” I told the eight young boys and girls that came to replace us. “All four of our wagons have their own protection and we set up an additional layer centered in their middle. This will probably be the only day that we spend without magical camouflage, but I think we’re going to be fine. In the unlikely case that someone does approach you, we’ll be notified by our sentries and Man, Kard, Krysha or I will come to deal with them.”

“Regardless of that,” Man continued, “you should know the outline of the backstory we will adopt during our travels. We are manaless merchants from the land of Leka An. We traded ores and jewels for magical items and are now heading to the port in Leskia in order to cross back over to our country.”

“This would explain some of the magical and mundane items that we have in the carts, though nobody should be able to get past our protective barriers anyway,” I added. “Now please go, and we’ll send for you in about six hours when we all gather for further announcements. I’ll make sure that breakfast is delivered to you soon, so no need to worry about that.”

Even though they seemed concerned, they were also very willing. We would all have to help out, after all.

As soon as they left, I thanked Kard for his good thinking on this matter. It was good to know that we had many able and trustworthy people among us.