There wasn’t much to do in the empty land between the stone rose and the next region. They ran, and ran, and ran on, until the mountains finally rose up before them again. There was no sword-strike gap in these mountains, so they had no option but to mount them and make toward a relative low point in the peaks, a mountain gap where they wouldn’t have to summit the peak to cross to the other side.
There were no puppets around the mountain, but at the gap, a great wall rose before them, one that shone with defenses and wards. Ike slowed, seeing it rise up around a curve in the land. It had been deliberately hidden from the outside in a twistback in the mountain’s natural shape, so that travelers couldn’t see it until they were right up on top of it. The wall itself was gleaming white, but had an ancientness to it that Ike could feel even at this distance, and the wards thrummed with power. If he tried to enter this area, someone would know, and the wards would likely resist him. It was so unlike anything he’d seen the puppets do so far that he was taken aback.
“What’s this? Are the puppets manning defenses?” Wisp asked, coming up beside him.
“I don’t know. We should proceed with caution,” Ike warned her. He extended his senses toward the gap, trying to determine what was on the other side of it, but he couldn’t sense anything past the wards. There could have been puppets, spirit beasts, humans, or even nothing at all manning the walls, and he wouldn’t know the difference. The wards blocked all perception, all forward senses. Nothing exuded past the walls, and as a consequence, he could sense nothing on the far side of the wall.
“How do we proceed with caution, boss? Because it’s looking a lot like we walk up to the walls and shout,” Wisp muttered, crossing her arms. She, too, examined the wall, leaning back to see its top.
Ike glanced at her. “You don’t sense anything either, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Mag, what about you?”
Mag was circling overhead, but he lowered his flight now, dipping his wings to swoop down so he could speak with them. “I can’t see anything. There’s a thick fog beyond the wall, and not natural fog. I think it’s some kind of spell or array hiding whatever’s beyond this wall from those who can see in from above.”
“Interesting,” Ike murmured.
“Oooh, so they’ve got something to hide. That makes me wanna get in even more,” Wisp cheered, excited.
Ike twisted his lips, thinking. They could go around, but the wards covered this pass so well that they’d have to summit to get past, or walk a long, long ways around to the next gap. And who was to say the next gap wasn’t defended, too? Besides, he was curious, too, even if he was acting the serious leader right now. What were they hiding behind that fog? Why go to so much effort to hide whatever was behind this wall? If he went around, he wouldn’t learn. “I guess it’s time to shout and see what happens.”
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“What if they’re hostile?” Wisp asked, with a grin that said she already knew.
“Then I’ve got two fresh skills to test out and a lot of pent up confusion to let out.” Ike slammed his fist into his palm and stepped forward, looking up at the wall. “Hello!”
His voice echoed off the wall and boomed off the walls of the cliffs that surrounded them on two sides. At Tier 3, he could enhance his voice significantly, and he spoke at almost maximum volume now, only holding back so that he wouldn’t trigger an avalanche from the snow-covered peaks that towered overhead. It echoed back to him, bouncing all around: Hello… ello… lo… lo… lo…
The three of them waited. Mag climbed higher in the sky, while Wisp and Ike faced the wall, arms crossed. There was no reply.
Wisp looked at Ike. “What if they just ignore us?”
“You know, I hadn’t thought of that possibility until now, but I’m certainly thinking about it now,” Ike said, pinching his chin. What if they just ignored them? There was a big honking wall between them and whoever was inside the fortress. There was no reason for that person to pay them any particular attention. The wards—and the wall itself—could handle them. Literally stonewall them, so they couldn’t get past at all.
The brush of feathers sounded overhead as Mag swooped low. “What if there’s no one on the other side?”
“That’s possible, I guess,” Ike allowed. There were such things as enchantments that could run without any human being powering them, enchantments that ran on mana batteries or spirit stones, or whatever mages had at hand that they could charge with lots of mana. This city could be dead, and its defenses sustained by the cold, unfeeling batteries that mages had charged years ago, beyond the limit of memory. If they got no response, it was possible that they were talking to no one.
“So… do we bust through?” Wisp asked.
“Who knows if we even can? Let me try again.” Ike stepped forward one more time. “HELLO!”
This time, he didn’t hold back. If his voice wouldn’t get their attention, then the avalanche it spawned surely would. Or so he thought, but the snow on the mountaintop stayed stubbornly in place, the wards remained as they were, and the wall stayed a bleak block of pure white.
Ike shrugged at Wisp, who shrugged back. He nodded at the wall. “I guess it’s time to bust through.”
“Sure looks like it.”
The two of them charged at the wall, two tiny figures against the rocky valley between the peaks. As they closed in, the wall shifted. Something split off of it—a human-sized, rocky humanoid, roughly carved from some kind of white quartz. It faced them and roared, and the whole wall trembled. Arms, legs, heads, and torsos all appeared out of the seemingly smooth rock, and humanoids swarmed out of it, all charging at Ike and Wisp.
“Uhoh,” Ike muttered.
“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting the wall to fight back. You neither, huh?” Wisp glanced at him and laughed. She hopped into the air, firing off a blast of thread at the charging horde.
Ike chuckled. He reached within him, to the knots of power associated with the Prince and the King. “Good a time as ever to test my new skills.”
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