He bid Ko farewell after eating a roll and a handful of salted nuts. It was a small breakfast, but Mel enjoyed snacking as he walked rather than eating big meals. Something about it just suited him. He marched onwards, following the road until he absolutely had to make a detour. He saw an absolutely massive stone spire, completely detached from any logical source. It pierced the forest and held an eternal vigil over the trees. Mel needed to climb it, and TC agreed wholeheartedly. The teeny little bird swooped and chirped as he headed off the tower.

The stone didn’t seem odd from a distance, and Mel had no clue who would just build a massive spire like this for no reason. But it would make an excellent place to have lunch. He started towards it, occasionally losing sight of it. That didn’t stop him from getting there, but he may have misjudged the distance. The stone tower eluded him for several hours, until the sun was nearly setting again. He ended up setting up camp, still quite far from the spire.

A new day yielded him the success that he absolutely needed. He found himself at the base of an absolutely monumental stone tower. There was nothing living on it, and it clearly wasn’t some sort of strange building. He still could not imagine how it came to be, or why. What bizzare purpose could it serve? He formed a set of climbing gear, and turned most of his cloak into a makeshift climbing rope. Oddly enough, even in forms not at all befitting a cloak, he could still feel his skill improving the metallic cloak. As he morphed it into the new forms, it lost it’s decoration and turned silvery once again.

He hammered the incredibly durable material into the rock face, securing himself if he fell. It would not carry to the top, but given that the cloak could pull itself back up he simply kept hammering. He made his way up the rock face, his cloak serving as a safety cord while he scrambled up. It saved his life once, as he slipped and lost his grip. It was a stark realization that the only thing holding him was a caught article of clothing as he dangled hundreds of feet in the air.

TC had a panic attack at his slip up, and nervously chirped at him as he continued his assent. He wasn’t a fool, so he took it much slower as he neared the top. The peak was almost perfectly flat, as though someone had chopped off the actual peak in order to make a place to sit. It served the purpose quite well as Mel sat like a King atop his mighty castle. Or a Wizard in his tower. Maybe that’s why it was made. To be the perfect place to look around. He couldn’t see Leoris from where he was, but he could make out the road. It seemed so close, yet so tiny from up here.

It was amazing how different the perspective was, even though he often got a similar view climbing the Atlas trees. But this far dwarfed them. This was enormous in scale. He pulled out some food from his bag, and a couple silver pieces from his coin purse. He deposited them into the general store bag and pulled out a small piece of enchanted paper. He held it up so that he could get a good angle to take the picture. He pressed the small glowing circle in the center of the paper and it glowed brightly before revealing the captured view of the land.

Mel then pushed the piece of still glowing paper onto his linked notebook to share the image with his parents. The original picture burned away, leaving behind only the image in his notebook. He spared a moment to wonder how his family was before eating. They would write something soon, and he didn’t want to get the notebook dirty.

He wrote to his parents and enjoyed answering their question until the sun started setting. Then he had to make a decision. Set up his tent here, on the flat rocky surface, or clamber back down. Mel felt the powerful winds and decided it would probably be a bad idea. Unless he secured it with a bit of his cloak. It would probably be idiotic to do that. Mel only resisted the temptation by a narrow margin. But then came the temptation to use his cloak like a hammock and sleep on the side of the rock face.

It was an absolute struggle to get back down, and not just because of the difficulty of climbing down safely. It was just so tempting. Once down he quickly set up camp and went to sleep. The journey back to the road took another day, but when he got to the road he noticed an oddity. Up ahead there was a group of people simply sitting in the middle of the road. That was worrisome. Mel changed his cloak from the swirling leaves to a simple dark green, and approached them.

“What are you guys doing here? Is there something going on?” He called from a safe distance. They glanced at him, and seemed disappointed.

“Hey let the kid through!” A voice hollered from within the group, and the people parted. Mel cautiously walked through, but other than a bit of small talk they didn’t do anything. Curious. Mel took note of the faces he saw, just in case.

The rest of his trip to his first stop went unimpeded. Up ahead was the entrance to an old mine shaft, which should connect to an old dwarven mining town. Which should also lead to a gnomish articing village. They tended to go hand in hand, as dwarves sold their unique alloys to the tinkering gnomes. From what he heard, they both had been abandoned after a series of enchanted golems got loose. That and something about taboo experiments leading to most of the survivors being executed by the Empire Beneath.

Mel pulled out a collapsible lantern, and lit the fuse. One candle was supposed to last an entire week, but it burned quite dim. He headed into the mine, walking for a few hours simply wandering the old tunnels. Just being underground had a strange atmosphere to it. It was fun, and TC was enthralled with the concept of echos, The little bird chirped loudly at tunnels and hopped excitedly when it heard the chirps return.

The mine used to produce a decent supply of copper until it closed down after breaching into the Empire's territory when it hit a dwarven tunnel. Thankfully after an apology, and a rather large bribe, the Empire was appeased. Other than the marks of pickaxes and the wooden bearings, there was no sign of human’s anymore. Nothing was really left behind, except the things they couldn’t bring back. Everything that wasn’t nailed down or worthless was long gone. Anything valuable enough, had also been taken regardless of whether it was nailed down or not.

As he made his way deeper, following the path to the dwarven town first, he started to hear the occasional clattering sound. Something else was still down here, and that was quite odd. Perhaps they never destroyed all the rampant golems? That could be greatly concerning. He was not a very good fighter, and he really doubted he would be able to do anything made out of a dwarf steel. Especially not if it was enchanted. He kept going forward though, hoping that even if he did run into something like that, he would be able run away just as easily.