They’d had to buy the boats, because no one in Eppau was allowed to come to the island without a special permit from the Guild. In truth, it was more like having bought two houses, because the Eppaunese lived on their boats. The only solid building in the whole village had been the Chief’s house, and even then they’d almost missed it. But it wasn’t hard to spot the Tower. Even before they saw the island itself, the stone column stretched up into a swirling abyss of clouds, its top lost to the sky. It may as well have been an Elder Dragon for the twinge of fear and doubt it left in the bottom of everyone’s stomachs.

“So, we want to climb all the way up that thing, huh?” Orion asked. “You’re sure there’s not just an Elder or two we could take down here?”

“Didn’t they call you the Climbing Captain in the guard?” Sarah asked with a teasing edge to her voice.

“Yeah, but I climbed monsters, not Towers that reach up past the limits of the known world.”

“Speaking of which,” Kean said, drawing his blade. “Something big is coming this way. Two somethings.”

The creature that splashed up out of the waves was massive, a golden sailing fish that dwarfed their boats in size. They’d heard stories of big fish, but the Lagiacrus that launched after it, snapping its ebony jaws around its airborne prey, was much larger by far. The spined leviathan dove back into the tumbling waves with a crackle of electric energy.

“Son of a Kut Ku,” Orion said. “Was that Lagi black?”

“It was,” Kean replied. “An Abyssal Lagiacrus. If that’s the caliber of opponent we’re up against, we’d best prepare.”

“Just how bad is an Abyssal compared to a normal one?” Tyr asked. “I’ve never really fought one.”

“A Lagi is about as powerful as a Los,” Adaline explained.

“And the Abyssal is more like the Silver Los,” Kean finished.

Tyr looked distant, but only for a moment before he caught Sarah’s gaze. “Well, then nobody go for the aerial stab.” He chuckled once, but no one else laughed.

Their landing wasn’t smooth, but the welcoming party was worse.

The first of the beasts to emerge from the trees wasn’t there. The trees bent aside, the sand splashed, but whatever it was wasn’t actually there. “What the…” Orion began, but a second invisible creature had pounced through, and the beasts collided. Their collision sparked both into existence, a furious mass of silver fur. A perfect mixture of Felyne and scalebet, their combined roars stunned the Untitled, but all of them were moving before the beasts recovered. Neither of the pseudowyverns attacked them. Instead, they continued to blink in and out of view as they fought, clawing, swiping, and whipping with their tails.

“What kind of Nargas are those?” Tyr asked himself as he watched the creatures clash.

“Tyr!” Kean shouted. “Come! We run while we can!”

And so they ran towards the Tower. They were hardly out of range of the twin Nargacugas when a terrible chorus of cracking trees signaled, even before Kean did, that there was another beast coming towards them. The group barely had time to leap free of the crimson Tigrex’s path. The rampaging beast didn’t just break through trees; the trees exploded with fiery bursts at the pseudowyvern’s touch.

“AND a blast-element Tigrex?” Orion shouted, pivoting to face the raging foe. “What in the world do they feed the monsters on this island?”

“Whatever it is,” Tyr said, “It smells like Legend material, no?” He rolled under the Tigrex’s leap, his blade coming up against the massive tail.

“We shouldn’t be wasting our time!” Kean was a distance back, close to Sarah and her volley of arrows.

“Then you keep running. I’m here to become a Legend.”

“You fool, we need to save our strength!”

Tyr leapt out of the way of the Tigrex, rolling to put some distance between them. “We’re here to take down an Elder, right?” He narrowly dodged past the Tigrex again, but an explosive burst hit him mid step. When he got back to his feet, Kensei was drawing the wyvern’s attention with deep cuts into its wings. “So, either we can take down opponents like they do, or we’re dead.”

“Intelligence is knowing when not to fight!” But Kean’s reason was drowned out by the roar which shattered trees.

The Molten Tigrex was its own worst enemy in the jungle environment, but it was also no friend to the team. Adaline was the worst-off at first. Her aerial maneuvers suffered from the shifting canopy, and when the path was cleared the blasts of splinters from downed trees pelted her and forced her eyes shut at several crucial moments. Orion wasn’t in a much better position, occasionally being blasted off the pseudowyvern’s back by the explosive powder flaking off its scales.

The downed trees slowed movement, and the explosions shifted them whenever they didn’t simply break them into pieces. It was like fighting on a rockslide, and more than a few times everyone was on their knees when they needed to be striking or evading. Tyr suffered the first major blow. A spinning tree trunk whacked him into the Tigrex’s open jaws. This breed’s teeth weren’t as sharp, but the flint-like clash made certain he shot away like he’d been sneezed out.

Sarah’s shots whistled into the blood red body, but it felt like the beast was hardly slowing down. It barreled towards her, shoving fallen trees aside like twigs. She jumped onto the end of one just as the Tigrex slammed onto the far end, rocketing herself into the air with Adaline. It was the first time in a while that she’d been airborne in an actual fight, and it took her a moment to remember how to flip herself over. A quick charge. Her arrow split three ways as it rained down onto the Tigrex. A solid hit, but she landed on a still-moving tree and toppled backwards.

Though she was up in moments, it wasn’t fast-enough, and she found herself pinned between fallen trunks. She could still see the raging wyvern, her comrades fighting it, but she couldn’t possibly free herself. Kean was by her side before she remembered to look for him, straining against the massive weight. It didn’t budge, and the two of them together was too enticing for the Tigrex to pass up. It leapt, crashing into the fallen tree which crushed Sarah just a bit more. It was brutally painful, and Sarah’s vision swam with the lack of oxygen.

An explosive burst ripped the pressure from her back, and Sarah collapsed into the space it left, just out of the reach of the Tigrex’s snapping jaws. Another explosion, just over her head. The heat burned, but she was able to roll onto her feet unsteadily.

“Saving you,” Adaline’s voice came just before her axe hooked between Sarah’s legs and shot her upwards. Sarah had never been more glad for Peace Ore in her life, but below, Adaline had to fall flat to avoid the Tigrex’s latest charge.

She spun back to her feet and rocketed herself after the Molten Tigrex with a burst. Blast Dashes had once been the purview of gunlances, but no one would’ve ever guessed it the way Adaline lashed into the tail with enough force to finally separate it.

The Tigrex should’ve been furious, but as it scrambled to its feet it only growled deeply before turning to trample off into the jungle again.

“There,” Tyr said, panting a bit. “That wasn’t so b-“

A screech from above revealed n Azure Ratahlos descending on them. “Tyr, get out of there, now!” Kean shouted.

Tyr laughed, his blade still humming yellow. “It’s just a Los. I can even handle this one myself if you need a break.”

His confidence didn’t last. As he ducked to avoid the Los’s first blow, he could feel the rumble beneath his feet. A brute wyvern, its tail a flaming, smoking blade, and its mouth a cavern to the underworld, came charging into the clearing. It slammed its greatsword-like tail into the ground mere inches from Tyr, and the logs he’d been standing on burst into flames where the tail connected.

“Now can we run?” Kean shouted, but Tyr was stuck between the battling wyverns. The Los swooped in, poisonous talons tearing through the air. The Glavenus slashed again and again, unrelenting in its assault. If the ground had only been clear, there might have been an opening, but each gap Tyr found was closed by a fireball or a mass of wyvern.

“Tyr!” Adaline shouted as she rushed in to save him. She caught the Glav’s tail, let it whip her around and slid off next to him. “Come on!”

He saw the twin blasts of fire emerging from both throats. “Get down!” Slamming into her, both only narrowly avoided becoming as scorched as the trees on any side. They pulled themselves up, and found that the two rampaging wyverns had moved off, the Los circling above while the Glav roared up at it.

They didn’t wait.

Tyr and Adaline rushed away from the warring wyverns, and by the time they stopped they’d nearly run themselves over a sudden cliff.

“This island, huh?” Tyr laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Kean said from behind them.

“The trees must grow like weeds to keep up,” he continued, undisturbed.

“That or something has the monsters more agitated than usual. An Elder just might be nearby.”

“Don’t monsters usually flee when there’s an Elder?” Adaline asked.

“Usually isn’t always,” Kean replied. “And the monsters here are a class above any other, as you saw. They might not know what it means to fear Elder Dragons.”

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Orion said. “You think I can get me some of that?”

“The tail I cut off is back there if you want it,” Adaline said sweetly.

“I think I’m gonna try the fruit first. Might be something to that.”

They followed the cliffside, listening for any sound of more monsters. They were sore, even after the aid of some potions, but herbs grew everywhere, so there was always more to gather and mix. The roars from the trees were always just barely far-enough off to raise concern, but the beasts avoided the cliff as much as the Untitled stuck to it. An hour later the cliff face sloped down gradually enough that they could slide down it.

Kean, the least damaged of the group, went first. As he went down his heightened awareness from his armor lit the lower forest up with sound and smells. They were everywhere, and there were so many that he could barely keep track of those closest to him. It seemed that the aversion to the cliff wasn’t shared by monsters at the base. The space he slid into was only meters from a sleeping monster. And there were more close by. There hadn’t been any other way, and a quick survey didn’t leave many options for continuing either, and so he reluctantly signaled for the others to follow him, hushing them as they came down.

“Large wyverns,” he whispered. “We go around while they sleep.”

The beast was, indeed, massive. It looked like a spikier Rathian, if such a thing was possible, but it was easily twice the size. Its orange spikes stood out as a sharp warning against anyone who might get close. They crept around, giving it as wide of a berth as they could, but there was another sleeping nearby, and then another, and no better way than through the middle.

“As long as we’re qui-“ Orion stepped onto a fallen branch, snapping it cleanly.

The beasts reared their heads at once, three of them all staring at the party with tired eyes. The largest of the three gave a warning roar, and with nowhere to run, the Untitled drew their weapons. Two monsters at once was bad-enough. Three was going to hell. But something was off.

The wyverns, whatever they were, weren’t getting up. They weren’t attacking. Instead, they were watching the hunters, waiting for something. “Whoever is doing whatever you’re doing,” Orion said. “Keep doing it. I like not needing to fight things.”

“Do you… think they’re tame?” Adaline hazarded.

“They don’t seem hostile, at least. Maybe they’re herbivores, like Larinoths?” Sarah asked.

“Not with those teeth,” Kean said. “But I suggest we not give them any reason to change their minds on not eating us. Put away your weapons.”

Everyone did so, but Tyr wasn’t moving back like the rest. “Tyr,” Kean hissed. “Come on. Now isn’t the time for whatever inane thoughts you might have in that head of yours.”

Tyr stared at the largest of the wyverns, meeting its gaze directly. It blinked slowly at him, as though observing an unexpected bluebird. Then, apparently having decided they weren’t a threat, the large beasts lowered their heads and went back to sleep.

When they had cleared them, and in a rare moment of peace of the island, Kean whirled on him, slamming Tyr up against a tree. “What the hell was that? Were you trying to get us killed?”

“No.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It didn’t look like it was going to hurt us. I guess I just didn’t see the harm.”

“And if they’d attacked suddenly?”

“Then we’d be having this conversation over their dead bodies instead.”

“You don’t have infinite stamina. None of us do. Even if we can keep finding what we need to heal, we need to rest or our bodies will give out on us. You can’t just fight everything that comes across your path. You’re going to get us all killed.”

“Tyr,” Adaline said, snapping both their heads in her direction. “He’s right. We can’t keep fighting everything. We have to be smart about this or we won’t make it to the Tower.”

“And if we can’t fight off a few of these, what chance will we have against an Elder?” Tyr asked.

“What length is your finger?” Kensei asked, and Tyr wasn’t certain how to answer, but when Kensei didn’t continue, he had no choice but to guess.

“I suppose it’s a few centimeters, bu-“

“The distance between us?”

“A few meters.”

“The length of a Rathalos?”

“Over a dozen meters, wh-“

“How tall is the Tower?”

“No one knows, that’s th-“

“And the Kirin?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “I don’t know, okay?”

Kensei nodded to himself, ignoring Tyr’s escalation. “What a gift, the human mind, it can measure even things it knows nothing about.”

Tyr’s muscles relaxed as he sighed. Even his head dropped a bit. “Alright. Alright. If everyone’s against it then we’ll run.”

“Finally, some sense,” Kean said. He took a look at the Tower, now infinitely bigger than it had seemed when they landed, but still so far away. “It looks like it’ll still be at least an hour away, but that’s assuming we can keep pace in a straight line. It will likely take us at least twice that, perhaps more if there are unavoidable encounters.”

“What are waiting for then?” Tyr asked, and Kean stopped him again.

“How about making certain everyone else is actually ready to go?” Kean turned back. “Is everyone stocked on potions and energy drinks?” A chorus of nods later, Kean let go of Tyr. “Now, we go.” Kean took off ahead of Tyr, finally feeling in his element. After months of following Tyr’s haphazard ways, they were finally starting to see reason.

They moved slowly, keeping a pace that Tyr hadn’t in years. Kean’s ability to sense incoming monsters was invaluable, even if there was always a threat nearby, and so his senses were working overtime. That constant presence flooding the area was also prickling at the back of their necks, and getting stronger the closer they got to the Tower. It made them shiver, and even Kensei kept his hand close to his blade.

It was impossible to move silently, but it was just barely possible to move with less noise than the larger fights going on nearby. Relying on others to keep watch wasn’t Kean’s favorite method of hunting, but his body was beginning to fight against the constant barrage of smells, sights, and sounds that usually made him perfect for it. The others weren’t any more comfortable with it. There was always some noise that echoed suddenly, or a flash of unexpected shadows. The slightest breeze that ruffled a leaf was suspect to being a new and powerful opponent. The softest sound a potential signal that they’d stepped into a trap. The shifting shade of the canopy almost didn’t give away the Wikoatl.

Kean dived, but the snake wyvern was too quick. Its tail lashed around Kean and launched him upwards before the rest of the party could draw their weapons. Barreling after him him, its multi-hued wings shifted through the color spectrum now that it had given up its camouflage.

Kean tucked himself into a ball, knowing his spiked armor would do more for him than the sword in his hand. Below, Sarah was firing upwards, her arrows only barely fast-enough to catch up with the beast. The Wikoatl snapped its jaws around Kean and attempted to swallow him whole. In the saliva-filled darkness Kean stabbed wildly in any direction he could as he flailed for a hold. The creature bucked and choked before spitting him back towards the ground, almost fifty meters below.

Then it dove into the trees, its shifting wings blending it with the swaying trees effortlessly. Even knowing where it was, Tyr nearly lost sight of it twice. When it lunged again it was closer than it should have been. Orion only barely managed to grab hold before he was yanked back into that shimmering camouflage. Though he was barely clinging on, his body provided an excellent point of reference to track the wyvern as it barreled through the trees and took to the sky once more.

Sarah was reminded, looking up as she aimed a piercing shot, that nature was so much more beautiful when it was deadly. The Wikoatl’s immense body extended out like a whip. At one end, its head, shaped like a wide hood with a blade-like horn coming back over that hood from the nose. At the other, a tail that split into almost a dozen flexible feathers, giving it the ability to grab unsuspecting prey as it had with Kean. And the wings, those beautiful wings that shifted color at will, covered in more of those flexible feathers. Every bit of it screamed death, and Sarah screamed it back as her shots whistled through the air.

Whipping violently now, the Wikoatl snapped its jaws and tail at Orion. Orion took a beating, but held his grip. He yelled something, unintelligible in the roars, and Adaline started towards the trees. “Sarah! We need to get up there!”

Before Adaline had even finished, Sarah had lodged three massive arrows into nearby trees, creating a ladder only her sister could truly use. Each new arrow landed only a second before her sister did, and soon Adaline had caught the Wikoatl with an unexpected blast.

The snake wyvern dove away from her, leaving her to land back on the top arrow as Sarah struggled to create something more climbable for the rest of the group. It took three times as many to get them halfway up, and by that time Adaline was struggling to stay high-enough while up against the blitzkrieg attacks. “Guess Kean and I were lucky not to find one after all,” she muttered to herself as another arrow thudded into yet another tree.

What Sarah should have been watching for was their opponent, because it had been watching her. All at once she found herself wrapped in the powerful feathers, and then slammed into a tree. Then another, and somewhere she heard a crack that could’ve been her arrows, or the trees, or even her bones. She could see through the gaps in the feathers, but the world outside was nothing but a rush of sudden greens, ethereal browns, and flickering blacks. Every time she thought she could make out which way was up or down she was jerked in a new direction. No room to draw her bow. No gap long-enough to reach for an arrow. Just pain that blurred her vision until she landed on something softer than a tree and rolled.

Tyr slashed again, but met only air. “How do you catch up to this thing?!”

“How should I know?” Kean retorted.

“You’re the expert, aren’t you?”

“Yes, so…” He paused, but kept his eyes on the snake wyvern. Worrying about Sarah wasn’t going to solve anything. The Wikoatl was fast, deadly, and it never stayed within range for long. They needed a way to keep it from flying off once it came down. “Flashes. Of course. I should have thought of it sooner.”

The first flash brought the Wikoatl screaming into the ground, and for a brief moment it was vulnerable. The Untilted lunged, but once in range they were assaulted by the Wikoatl’s violent flailing. It was a hurricane of feathers and scales, and the moment it recovered its sight it was in the air again.

“Any other bright ideas?” Orion asked, slowly pulling himself back to his feet after being flung off the wyvern in its chaotic thrashing.

“That questions like that help no one. What do we know about it?”

“It’s fast and it’s gonna kill us,” Orion said. “And it’s fast.” He held a hand to his head. “Ugh, is the world still spinning for anyone else?”

“Get down!” They all ducked, except for Sarah, who was back on her feet and loosing arrows again. The Wikoatl had used her to tear off her own arrow rungs, but she could still hit it, and the paralyzing toxins in her phial were going to make certain that every hit counted twice. “Now, get ready.”

Its jaws wide, the Wikoatl was rushing down towards Sarah, the only source of irritation in its otherwise perfect dominance. Sarah pulled a piercing arrow to its limit, funneled her chakra heavily, and let loose a shot that tore through the wyvern’s insides. Its muscles seized and spasmed before it slammed into the ground a few feet in front of Sarah, who had to leap off of it to avoid being crushed in the slide.

The group was on the paralyzed Wikoatl in an instant. “The wings!” Kean shouted. “Don’t bother with anything else!” And so they slashed and sliced and stabbed at the feathers, which took the blows disappointingly well. The Wikoatl twitched beneath them, struggling against the toxins that Sarah continued to pump into it with her arrows.

It couldn’t last, and when it snapped upwards, tossing the Untitled in every direction, their desperation looked as though it had done almost nothing. A few ruffled feathers, and now the Wikoatl somehow looked angrier. Its feathers splayed and bristled, and they settled from shimmering into a violent green as it wrapped itself around a nearby tree.

“Not good,” Orion said. “But at least he’s still, so…”

The crack of the tree as the snake wyvern snapped it in two was somehow worse than the Tigrex’s explosions had been.

“Well, Strax me.”

The Wikoatl dropped down on the group, wielding the tree like a club that shook the earth beneath their feet. Everyone stumbled, but only Kensei and Tyr were smacked with the follow-up and sent spinning. The Wikoatl was still deadly, but grounded with the tree there was an opening, and the group had to take it. Ducking beneath the next swipe, Kean and Adaline lead the charge, barreling into the Wikoatl as it strained to pull its weapon through the follow-through.

The openings were brief, because the Wikoatl fought quickly with its head, and slowly with its tail, but at least there were openings they could use. Attacking on six fronts meant that even the massive attack radius couldn’t catch them all at once. By the time the Wikoatl regained its composure and took to the skies, there were a few more bleeding marks on its hide than they’d managed with it fully downed.

“Another ten of those and,” Orion began, but the Wikoatl was coming in already.

“Sarah, do you have any sleep coatings left?” Kean asked.

“Putting it down last time didn’t do much,” Tyr said.

“This time we‘re going to run.”

“Again?”

“Yes. We’re underprepared. We can try again after we know a little more about our opponent.”

“Tch,” Tyr scoffed, but he didn’t have a better answer than that.

Sarah’s sleep-tipped arrows brought the Wikoatl down quickly, and although not a gentle landing, it was still in the grips of overwhelming fatigue when the group dashed off to safety.

Now, the Tower was almost within their grasp, but there still wasn’t a moment to rest. Another Glavenus trampled through their path, and then another Los, and another Wikoatl that they only managed to escape because it was busy with the Los. They dove beneath a clashing pair of Nargas, unable to tell if it was the same pair from the beach. They crept under a nest of sleeping pelagii that none of them dared to identify. And they narrowly felled a Zinogre that wouldn’t stop chasing them under any circumstances.

By the time they stumbled in through the door at the base of the Tower, no one could hold their weapons up, even with chakra neutralization. It was dark, one of the blackest nights any could recall. They didn’t know if they could afford to sleep, but they had to. Kensei took the first watch, and, for once, no one disturbed him with chatter in the middle of his watch. He did not wake them for the Kirin that passed the entrance. Its mane glowed with electrical energy, and its single horn was tipped with light. In the darkness of the night, it was a shining white and blue-striped beacon. It said “Wake up,” to him, and his eyes snapped open. He had no idea when he’d fallen asleep, but no one was hurt, so he breathed a little easier.

“You should have woken one of us,” Sarah said an hour later. “It’s not fair that you had to stay up all that time.”

“The sky darkens for me as it does for you, little lark. Rest can be found in the most unexpected places.”

She didn’t say anything, but her expression soured a little bit as she digested his words. Her expression had soured much further by the thirteenth floor, and then further still by the twentieth. The Tower was in ruins. Broken hunks of stone columns littered the ground, gaps in the staircases were normal, and some floors were nearly impassable. Moss grew thick on every surface it could take hold of, and Great Thunderbug swarms, buzzing with electricity and hostility at the intruders, were common. But there were no larger monsters, and the view was increasingly incredible through the holes in the walls.

Beneath them, the sea of trees, littered with the occasional flash of fighting monsters, seemed endless, even when they could finally see the actual sea stretching out beyond it. More than once, Sarah just wanted to stop and stare, but everyone was pushing forwards, ever upwards, and so she would go when she could tarry no longer. The clouds came ever closer, and as they did the frequency of Thunderbugs dropped off, but they were replaced by something worse: Remobra.

While Remobra were snake wyverns like the Wikoatl, they were tiny, and shaped much closer to a typical wyvern except for their slightly elongated form and head. They were easy to avoid at first, their screeching and all-too-obvious tells giving away every poisonous move. In the clouds, however, everything was grey, and everything was wet. It was like fog that settled beneath the ground, along with being everywhere else. The Remobra that sunk its fangs into Sarah’s shoulder had been impossible to spot even during the bite.

She slashed through the now-empty air with one of her arrows, only to be struck again by a second Remobra from behind. “Tyr!” she called out before realizing what she was saying. She’d called the wrong name. “Adaline!” she followed up. “Do either of you have an antidote?”

“I got a few,” Orion called back. “But it’s not gonna do much good unless w- sonofafango – we get out of this nest.”

It would be another three floors of clouds and Remobra attacks before they were finally able to rest again. The clouds were still as thick as ever, but the screeching was beneath them now. Adaline could barely see a finger’s width in front of her face, but she found Tyr and pressed into him all the same. He was the only thing that was real in that world of grey. Everyone else was disembodied voices, crumbling steps, and an occasional wind that did nothing for her vision, but which chilled her damp armor all the same. It was miserable, but it was a misery with him, and that made it bearable.

“We could leave now, you know,” she whispered. “We could ‘slip’ off the edge and never be seen again.”

“You don’t think they’d come looking for us?”

“We can leave something for them to find. Just enough that they’ll think we’re dead.”

“Why don’t we see what’s at the top first, hmm?”

“I suppose that’s why we came, isn’t it? And we’re almost there.”

“We don’t know how far the top is from here.”

“I know, but I can’t help it. The secrets. An Elder Dragon. Our future together. It’s all up there, one way or another.”

“Just don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Addy.”

She kissed him, letting her lips linger on his until Kean called for them to move again. “I won’t. Come on, my Legend.”

True to her prediction, on the next floor the clouds cleared, and they could see the vast plain of stormy grey beneath them, stretching out to, strangely, a new dome of darker greys. “Are all clouds like this?” Sarah asked out loud, but no one had an answer. The wind picked up, stronger than anyone expected, and when it calmed a roar of thunder took its place. It was much, much louder than a monster’s roar, but it didn’t have the same effect on the hunters as a roar would have. Still, everyone covered their ears to keep themselves from going deaf.

As the thunder subsided, the Untitled went up the stairs to find that there was no longer any way to go up. And further floors had either been removed, or never existed. Whatever it was, it was empty of anything except for broken stone fixtures and parts of what used to be the walls. No Elder Dragon. No pinturas. Just a mostly featureless platform. Adaline’s expression fell. “There’s nothing,” she said, walking out onto the platform and turning around to face the group. “Nothing at all.”