Chp.14: The mysterious tower

After obtaining that particular information from Rhaegal, Haku had immediately set to work to organize a real research expedition. Now that they had confined the area where they were to search from the entire Baudonia City Alliance (and probably the Jurao Kingdom as well) to just a circle of a couple of kilometers, it was imperative to probe every centimeter of that area to find out where their brother was.

The first step, of course, had been to inform Maldor of how the magic item that allowed her to see through the invisibility rune worked, and to ask her if she could counter its effects. Obviously, however, it hadn't been that easy: Maldor had promised that she would research something, but it certainly couldn't be a job that could be done in a day. Even with the facilities of combining magic and math, it was still a complicated process; therefore, she couldn't have provided a spell suitable for blocking or even disabling the magic item in question in the short term. This left the dragons with only one option: to act cautiously and avoid the soldiers as much as possible, even if they weren't wearing any masks, as the information they had on this magical item was too little. The best thing to do would have been to experiment using small handfuls of soldiers to see if they were wearing the magic item or to understand how it worked, but for obvious reasons this was not possible in that context. Besides the fact that the soldiers would hardly have left since the king would have been present, they were still few and probably all of them were elite, so anyone would have noticed if one of them disappeared, of course assuming that when they attacked him the dragons weren't forced into a furious fight that would have attracted the attention of everyone within a radius of ten kilometres.

This clearly made the situation more problematic. Haku had decided that only a few of them would have physically gone to look for Rhaegal: in fact, in this way they would have been less identifiable. Besides, each of them had a role in the makeshift army they were bringing with them to the Thul Oasis, so they couldn't afford to be absent all of them. Now that he knew that Rhaegal was fine, Haku's brain had returned to full capacity, and this had allowed him to take into account the fact that despite the situation they still had a large number of people under their wing and that even if some like Zamor they could guide them for them, many instead depended on them (such as people who were heading to the border on board ships). Being absent, even just for a few hours, could have caused quite a few imbalances that would have only worsened the situation. Since they couldn't all go looking for Rhaegal anyway due to the risk of being discovered due to the humans' new magical item, then it was better not to risk undermining the security of the whole operation.

It had taken a while for Haku to convince his sisters, but in the end they too had let rationality prevail over their feelings and had agreed to act with awareness. For that research expedition Haku had chosen those who had proven to be better at hiding even if they were visible: Corgorin, Sisna, Jatara and, of course, himself. He would have taken Serengal with him too, but he had preferred to avoid it on Kotaru's advice: in fact, she was still quite shocked by what had happened. After all, she had seen her brother being taken away and she could do nothing to stop it; though she tried to stay strong, it was clear her mind was still in turmoil. Even if the seventeen dragons had seen much worse in their life, Haku had preferred not to put too much pressure on her after just one day after what had happened: better to wait at least a little time.

To further decrease the chances of being spotted, they would use mice as avatars. They were small and fast, perfect for hiding even without the invisibility rune. Haku hated wasting hydra venom, since there was very little left by now, for avatars so small and insignificant that they couldn't have given him any advantage in a fight, but in the end it wasn't a bad idea to own a small creature to be able to infiltrate where they couldn't have entered with their dragon bodies or even with their human avatars. They had been brought to the right place by Malchia, who had possessed an amphitrite and had hidden in the darkness of the night (and had landed a short distance from the designated point), and then they had begun to explore the area.

A foolish person might have thought that by checking only the surface they would discover nothing, since Rhaegal's whereabouts was apparently underground, but that was not the case at all. It was enough for Haku and her sisters to dig a little into the ground until they reached the underlying rock to establish its hardness. The harder the rock, the less suitable the soil was to build something underground, since digging would have been very long and difficult. Instead areas that had very friable underlying rock were more likely. Using this method, Haku and her sisters could do a quick first reconnaissance of the area and clear many areas off the map. In this way, the one-mile-diameter area Rhaegal was in was drastically reduced. Starting from the outermost point and continuing in a circular way inward, they managed to rapidly decrease the portion of territory in which they had to search, obviously mentally noting all the points where there was the possibility that humans had built an underground structure. Even though normal mice couldn't technically move very fast, Haku and his sisters had improved their bodies by adding numerous muscles that allowed them to run at extraordinary speeds, thus being able to cover far greater distances than a normal mouse could. Not to mention, of course, that they couldn't get tired.

Over the course of six hours, Haku and his sisters had explored about a square kilometer of land, and of that area only a hundred square meters seemed suitable for building an underground structure. If that were the case for the portion they still had to explore, then they would have reduced the area where Rhaegal might be by a tenth. Even if they didn't find their brother, that would have been a great victory.

After all that searching, Haku and his sisters had started getting closer to the place where the meeting was going to be held very soon, and in fact they were starting to notice the silhouette of the tower that Malchia and Glausar had been talking about. But the closer they got, the more definite it became, the more confused and a little bewildered Corgorin seemed to become. Finally she said: "Guys, sorry, but I... I know this tower"

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Haku asked her. "We've never been here"

"No, but... brother, remember when I told you about how Rhaegal, Serengal and I first met Thora? Well, in the distance we had seen a tower that looked identical to this one!" Corgorin explained. "And I'm not just saying it, it was really the same! Everything, from the shape to the material it's made of, is identical! Efren had explained to us that it was a kind of temple of a god that everyone respected"

"A god?" Haku's gaze hardened. If the gods were involved, things would certainly have become more complicated. "Which god?"

"Efren called him the God of Knowledge. Apparently no one knows his real name" Corgorin answered.

Haku's eyes widened. He certainly hadn't forgotten that strange elf who had come to give him that prophecy while he was a prisoner at the king's feast, and who had introduced herself as a priestess of the God of Knowledge. So that was one of his temples? It was certainly not the way a temple was imagined. "Are you sure this is it?"

Corgorin nodded. "Absolutely. And... well, I don't mean to say nonsense, but..." She pointed to the horizon. "If I haven't miscalculated... the other tower, the one near the capital of the Jurao Kingdom, is located in that direction. Which means that these two towers form a line parallel to the movement of the sun across the sky. Both ends point exactly west and east. Maybe it's just a coincidence... but it's strange that they form a line so perfectly aligned with the cardinal points"

Haku couldn't help but agree with her. If the line that the two towers formed had been slightly displaced, even by a few degrees, then he might have thought that it was just a random occurrence and that those who had built those towers had only built it there because it was a nice place. But a line that was perfectly oriented with two cardinal points? Perhaps he was the one who was a little too paranoid and was used to seeing danger everywhere by now, but it seemed a little too difficult for it to have happened by accident. How high were the odds after all? But if the two towers had really been built that way intentionally, why was this done? Was it just a religious reason... or was there something else behind it?

For some reason, since that strange priestess had spoken to him, Haku didn't feel very calm when he heard the mention of the God of Knowledge. He had had a bad feeling when that woman spoke to him and he hadn't forgotten it. He remembered how strange and indecipherable she was, and how absurd her words seemed. All these months he had assumed that this was just a chance meeting and that he would never have to deal with the God of Knowledge again, at least for some time… but apparently fate seemed to have other plans for him. And he didn't like that at all. The gods themselves were already dangerous, and Haku would have preferred to avoid them... but for some reason, he wanted to avoid the God of Knowledge even more than the other gods.

"Brother, are you all right?" Sisna asked, noticing that he hadn't spoken for a while.

Haku shook his head. "I was just thinking" he answered. "Let's get closer. I want to look at that tower more clearly"

They ran to the strange tower and climbed a small hill. From there they could see about a score of soldiers encamped at the foot of the building, each of them with a wyvern or amphitrite or some other type of winged mount in tow. They were clearly all of the elite. This proved indisputably that the king was nearby. The soldiers didn't seem concerned and spent their time chatting, but Haku was sure that if something strange tried to get close they would snap and take him out in an instant. But for some strange region, none of them was approaching the tower: even if it would have been much more convenient to ask for asylum, as was customary to do with normal temples, the soldiers had preferred to camp outside and therefore subject themselves to any bad weather and to sleep on the hard ground. It was possible that they had done so because some rule of the temple of the God of Knowledge prevented entering armed... but Haku doubted that that was the reason. It was as if the soldiers were instinctively avoiding the tower, more out of fear than respect.

He looked at the tower. The huge building looked no different from any ordinary tower, but for some reason it gave him a sense of foreboding. It was the same feeling one felt when a predator was near her. But not just a normal predator: it was a predator that had already spotted its prey, and that no matter how much the prey moved away or hid, it continued to follow it and never lost sight of it. A predator that never let its prey feel safe no matter how much distance it put between them or how deep the hole it hid in.

Evidently his sisters shared that sentiment, because after a while Jatara said: "Haku, I don't think we should go any closer"

Haku nodded. "I think so too. Let's stay at least a hundred meters away from the tower and the soldiers' camp. Let's check the rest of the area and then leave immediately"

His sisters nodded, glad that they didn't have to stay near that tower any longer than necessary. They ran off and went back to inspecting the grounds, trying not to think about the strange building; but for some reason they continued to feel a strange uneasy feeling the whole time.