The entrance to the tower had shut behind them, which was somewhat reassuring for Verdan. While it did mean that he had to be aware of who was where to avoid people being locked inside, it also meant that no one could sneak in and loot the place.

“Let’s keep the talk of what we found to a minimum,” Verdan said to the two brothers as they reached the door. “I don’t want any Sorcerers from the Sects trying to muscle their way in or steal from us.”

“Not a problem, Boss, we’ll follow your lead,” Tim said with a slight shrug, Tom echoing his response a moment later.

Verdan thanked them both before opening the door once more and leading them out to the makeshift camp the others had made. It was little more than a campfire with some larger stones for seats, but it was enough for Pawel to be making some hot food for them all.

Feli had left to visit a nearby grove of trees, Barb tagging along with her just to be safe, but Blane and Sylvie had returned from their patrol in the meantime and were sat around the fire with Pawel in their human forms.

“Find anything, Boss?” Pania asked, looking over from where she was on watch.

“A few things, so I’ll be spending more time here than we originally planned for. Any sign of anything nearby?”

“Nothing has come near the tower.” Pania shrugged before gesturing to Sylvie.

“We saw few tracks during our patrol, far fewer than I expected,” Sylvie said with a slight frown. “We did see signs of webbing to the south, so there might be a nest of some shadeweavers or the like. If a group of those have moved in, it would explain the lack of animals nearby.”

“I see,” Verdan said as he cancelled the light spells he’d been keeping active. “Sylvie, could you head back and confirm what we’re dealing with?”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, not if we’re careful.”

“Good, don’t take any risks. I just want an idea of what we’re up against.”

Both of the Airta nodded and got to their feet, heading off out of the camp before shifting back into wolves and loping off out of sight.

“Are you intending to head back in, or should we prep to go after whatever it is they’ve found?” Pania asked once the Airta were out of sight.

“No, we’ll be staying here regardless. If it’s a threat to be dealt with, we’ll notify the guard so they can deal with it. It’ll be good practice for their Sorcerers.”

“Understood,” Pania nodded and moved back to her spot to keep watch on the surrounding area.

“Good, I’m going to head back inside for now and start taking some notes. Knock loudly on the door if you need me.” Verdan waited for a moment for any final questions before heading back into the tower.

Walking eagerly back down to the workshop area, Verdan made his way over to the storage room where the writing supplies were kept. He’d noticed earlier that a few of the containers in the rear of the room had sigils carved into them, and he was hoping that they were preservation-related.

One of the containers had a series of drawers down the front, so Verdan pulled the first out and grinned to himself as he saw a stack of pristine sheets of paper. This was perfect.

Reluctantly pushing the drawer shut once more, Verdan went back out into the main room and began to carefully organise all the notes and documents he could find. Each workstation was kept separate, but Verdan wanted to break down the info into useful categories for him to work between.

The whole task would be a significant undertaking, but even skimming through the documents was providing Verdan with insight into this snapshot of the past.

The people working here had been “Artificers” rather than Wizards, but given the use of Aether, Verdan could only assume that was a specialisation rather than something entirely new.

Over the next couple of hours, Verdan was able to work out that the tower was some sort of maintenance and repair facility. The models on the workstations were personal projects these Artificers were working on rather than their day-to-day work.

Annoyingly, as these were personal projects, they lacked some of the additional detail that Verdan was hoping for. There were too many unfamiliar terms for Verdan to understand everything on a quick read, but he would come back and take his time with these later.

Rubbing tired eyes and ignoring the headache that was building from so much frantic reading, Verdan finally found what he was looking for.

It was a short memo addressed to Artificer Bayan regarding a delay in a shipment of metal for the workshop. The contents were interesting, as Verdan assumed the workshop mentioned was what lay beyond the sealed door.

What Verdan fixated on, however, was the date at the top of the memo. Surprisingly, the date was in the Imperial calendar and put the events within the memo as almost a thousand years after Verdan went into his coma.

The weight of all those years pressed down on Verdan for a moment as he looked around at all the impressive magitech on display. The yawning gap between Verdan’s life in the Imperium and the life of this Artifcer Bayan was beyond comprehension.

That gap was only a fifth of the total time between Verdan’s curse and the present day.

Verdan had assumed that the civil war had been the start of the decline to where things were now, but clearly, that wasn’t right. The technology here was beyond that of his time, so something else must have happened.

The idea of what might have destroyed a civilisation more advanced than even the Imperium sent a chill down Verdan’s spine.

Putting the memo down to one side, Verdan stretched and put it all aside for the moment. Dwelling on potential apocalypses of the past wouldn’t help anyone.

Heading back to the door, Verdan stepped out into the makeshift camp and saw that everyone had returned from their trips.

“Good timing, we were just about to eat,” Pawel called out with a laugh as he began to serve everyone some of the stew he’d put together. “Want a bowl, or are we heading out?”

“I’ll have a bowl. We’re in no immediate rush,” Verdan said, taking a seat next to Sylvie as Pawel passed him his food. “So, what did you find?”

“It’s a shadeweaver nest for sure. We spotted a couple of them eating a deer that they’d caught. I’d put the whole nest at about one to two dozen of them from what we saw.” Sylvie grimaced in distaste as she spoke about the monstrous spiders, a feeling that Verdan could empathise with.

“Enough for a challenge, but not too many,” Verdan said, more to himself than anything. Looking up, Verdan motioned to catch Tim’s attention. “Do you think you could get to the city and back before nightfall?”

Tim looked up at the sky for a moment before slowly nodding. “Yeah, should be able to. What do you need?”

“A few things,” Verdan said, gathering his thoughts as he put together his plan to keep his entry to the tower somewhat hidden. “I want you to grab supplies for us to stay out here overnight. Report to Commander Silver about the shadeweavers as well, tell him that I think it’s a good training opportunity and ask him to send some people to meet us here. On your way back, bring Dirk with you as well. He should be here.”

“Got it, Boss. Pawel, Pania, fancy a ride?”

The two other guards nodded and quickly finished their food before heading over to get the horses.

“Should we leave the shadeweavers alone for now, then?” Sylvie asked as Tim and the others set off.

“I think that’s best. We should defend ourselves as needed, but the actual subjugation should fall to the city guard. I’m more interested in why this wasn’t spotted previously, though.”

“They’re not the easiest monster to find,” Sylvie said with a shrug. “Blane and I are better scouts than the average adventurer, so it could just be that.”

“Perhaps,” Verdan let the matter drop for now, but he would bring it back up with Silver the next time he saw him. For now, however, he was going to head back inside and carry on working. “I’m going back in. Keep a watch out here and call for me if there are any issues.”

“We’ll be fine. It’ll take more than a few shadeweavers to pose a threat with us here,” Sylvie said, dismissing Verdan’s concerns with an idle wave of her hand.

Considering that there were two Airta, a Witch and a Sorcerer present, Verdan was inclined to agree with her.

Heading back into the tower, Verdan made his way down to gather a few pieces of the preserved paper and begin copying over some of the more important notes he’d found when going through it all earlier.

Taking these notes with him would let him pick apart the details at his leisure, and if he kept it all in High Imperial, there was little chance of someone being able to translate it without his aid.

Dirk could work with the guards tomorrow to clear out the shadeweaver nest, giving Verdan plenty of time to copy over some of these technical documents.

Thankfully, he knew a basic spell for the transfer of written words as long as ink and paper were available, so he didn’t need to do it all by hand.