The metal monolith was incredibly large. Each side was hundreds of feet long, but it was also riddled with holes and stained by dried blood. On two of the sides that faced the cliff from where Kain and Luna came from there was a massive gash that stretched multiple stories of the building. In the trench that was another result of the gash, there were many items. What looked like lamps, smashed or shredded pictures, and other devices that neither Kain nor Luna could determine the function of were all lying in the trench. It was a miracle that the building still stood tall, as two fifths of the bottom wall was missing, but it could have been attributed to the remarkable craftsmanship of the building. Kain walked with Luna up to the base of the structure and peered in. The first thing that the two noticed was that the rooms were made for creatures of extreme height. The ceiling never dipped below 13 feet and all of the furniture was made for creatures quite literally almost twice the size of Kain. The room that Luna and Kain looked into seemed to be bedrooms because of their bed-like furniture in the far corner of the room.
‘So the bottom layer holds the bedrooms? That makes… little sense.’ Kain said, contemplating the question.
‘Luna replied with her usual energy and inquisitive nature, ‘What’s a bedroom? Also, why can’t it be on the bottom floor?’
‘Y’know your burrows?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you have a separate area you use in your burrow to sleep?’
‘Yeah. Most rabbit burrows I have had always had a dedicated area for sleeping. So that is like a bedroom then?’
‘Yes. You see those large mats on the metal supports?’
‘Those are what the creatures slept on?’ In that case it must be comfy!’
Kain was impressed by her insight, so asked, ‘How’d you figure that out?’
‘Well, those pieces of armor out there are very tall, and the mats up there are quite long. So I assumed that the creatures lie on the mat to sleep, kinda like you did when you evolved. Though I assume that you don’t usually bleed when you lie down, right?’
Kain chucked. ‘No we don’t.’
‘So why can’t the bedrooms be on the bottom floor of the tower?’
‘Well, think about it. Where would most threats go first if they broke through the defensive robots out here and got into the tower?’ Kain asked, sitting on a spider robot that had been crushed near the gash. He let Luna hop onto his knee and lie down, looking into the building.
‘If they came from the ground, then they would first breach the lower floors. However, if they came from the air, then they’d breach the upper layers first, right?’ Luna asked, eyeing the breach in the tower.
‘Hmm… That is also true. They seem to have fewer weapons to attack any enemies in the air, so your thought is a good one.’
‘Hehe… thanks…’ Luna replied. She really liked being praised by her brother, so she enjoyed his compliment.
‘Other than their faith in their ground defenses, there may also be something more valuable than their people up in the higher floors.’ Kain analyzed.
‘What could that be?’
‘Well, we’ll have to find that out ourselves.’ Kain picked Luna up off of his knee and stood, ‘Ready, Luna?’
‘Ready!’ Luna cheered.
Kain put Luna on his shoulder, drew Mouse, and carefully moved to the opening. He hopped into the broken wall and looked around. It was dark. Very dark. There was little light to be seen in the ruin because of the odd lighting prevalent in this new world. All he could see was the giant bed in the corner of the room and nothing else. Suddenly, Luna asked a question.
‘Do you know how light works?’
‘Yeah, why? Seems kind of irrelevant here.’
‘I want to test something out. Please..’ Luna looked at Kain with the closest facial expression a rabbit could make to a sad puppy dog look.
‘Alright, here’s how it works…’ After explaining the way light works in simple terms, Kain sensed Luna focusing. Within a few seconds, her eyes shot out beams of light that illuminated the room. It was a large room, twenty feet by twenty feet, and had a desk, chair, standing lamp, and a locker aside from the bed. Kain was surprised, but before he could ask Luna any questions, she began to cheer in his mind.
‘Yes! I knew it could work! I’ve been thinking about this for a while, so I tested it, and it works!’ Luna raved and cheered in Kain’s mind before finally settling down after a few minutes.
‘So what did you do?’ Kain asked.
‘Ah! Okay, so I wanted to test our energy for a way to make different effects, so I tried to imbue the energy with a thought! It didn’t work though, so I tried to get a better understanding of it. After you told me how light works, I really underwood it well, so I kinda like, imbued the energy with the concept. Does that make sense?’ Luna asked, beaming. She was incredibly happy at this point because she felt like she really was surpassing Kain in a certain area, meaning that she could be useful, even if she was a rabbit.
‘So if I think of, perhaps fire, then I can conjure a flame in my hands?’
‘I think. Let me see… ‘ Luna looked like she was focusing again, but soon looked at Kain, blinding him in the process.
‘I can’t see, please stop that.’ Kain sighed, shielding his eyes.
‘Oh! Sorry! Let me…’ Her eyes began to dim and quickly stopped shooting their beams of light, ‘Ok, how does fire work? I’ve never seen it very closely. Oddly enough, no creature that hunted me ever used fire against me.’ Kain proceeded to explain the workings of fire and combustion in general. After his explanation, it took Luna little time to create a small flickering flame that hovered in midair. ‘I did it! Look, brother, I did it!’ She was ecstatic.
‘Nice! Let me try…’ Kain replied, drawing energy from his body to create a cloud of energy. He then tried to change it into fire, but the cloud would not change. No matter how hard he tried, it did not change. He furrowed his brow and asked for Luna’s opinion, ‘Luna, do you know what I am doing wrong?’
‘Hmm… I think the problem is that you’re trying to change the energy’s nature after it’s been formed. Try doing it before it leaves your body.’ Luna replied.
Kain tried again to create a small flame, but it took much more effort than it did when he made a simple cloud of energy. In the end, he was only able to make a tiny flame, not even a fifth of the size of the flame made by Luna. She felt bad, so tried to comfort him.
‘It’s alright big brother. Your body is still getting accustomed to handling energy, so don’t feel too down.’
‘I never felt down, Luna.’ He grinned and, when the little rabbit was left wide-eyed, chuckled, ‘I may not be able to do anything now, but I will be able to later. Anyway, I am going to play around with this for a bit.’ He first tried to move the flame which, while not as difficult as trying to create it, was difficult. It took a little bit of concentration, as well as giving the energy that escaped his body the concept of movement, to move the flame a bit. He noted that the process took a small amount of energy to complete. He was satisfied, though, because he knew that the few days of using energy he had was no match for the literal lifetime of experience that Luna possessed. He finally spoke to Luna.
‘I think that we should get going, don’t you?’
‘Yep! I really want to explore this place!’
‘Alright. Can you keep that fire out? Anytime I try to use mine, it doesn’t provide enough light to do anything.’ Kain said with an apologetic tone.
‘I can do you one better… Watch this!’ Luna mentally shouted. She began to gather energy around her and soon produced four new flames the same size as the first one. They began to swirl around the room, illuminating every corner and crevice. While they did get a better look at the room, nothing new was found that could help them get a better understanding of the creatures that once lived in the tower. They moved to the door after checking for any possible clues. It was closed and what seemed to be the handle was high up, but was not out of the reach of Kain. He pulled the door handle down and carefully opened the door with Luna’s flames behind him. He looked out into the hallway and saw the corridor nearly barren of furnishings, only having a few benches, and having numerous splatters of blood across the walls, floors, and ceiling. It seemed that the inner parts of the tower were not free from the carnage either.
He looked up and down the corridor and found that it was long and wide, bending around where the outside wall bended, leaving numerous rooms made for giants lined up. Among them, many had their doors ripped off of their hinges and blood staining their interiors. Of the nearest rooms, only one was free from being torn to shreds, so Kain crept over to it, aiming to see an untouched room of the giant creatures. He opened the door and aimed Mouse in. Luna’s flames, not needing direction, rushed in and illuminated the whole room. It looked like it had been abandoned for hundreds of years, but could not decay because of the quality of the materials used. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust, and the room felt incredibly stuffy. The room had a few personal effects, the most glaring of which was the giant sword hung over the desk of the room. It too was caked in dust, but it also had various silver ornamental designs that seemed to repel the dust of time. Kain abruptly realized that the sword he carried around was not a sword but merely a dagger. Kain jumped up to the desk with the help of his energy strengthened legs and pulled the sword from its sheath to examine it. It was a single bladed, thin blade. In all honesty, it looked like a giant katana to Kain, especially with its curved bladed design. Along the body of the blade, red, blue, violet, and green markings ran up and down like bloody veins.
Kain put the sword back into its sheath. There was no way he could carry it with him. It would be too big for him to carry and would get in the way. While Kain put the sword away, Luna noticed an upright panel the size of Kain’s leg on the desk where Kain stood. She called out to him, ‘Hey, big brother, what’s that?’
He turned after sheathing the sword and looked at the panel, ‘Luna, I think that it’s a picture.’ Like everything in the room, it was caked in dust which Kains spent over ten minutes cleaning to get a complete view of the picture. In it, they saw three figures, two of similar size and one a bit smaller. They were all scaled creatures with large horns on their foreheads and snouts like lizards. The one on the left was of a sandy color with a figure that could tempt many human men were she not 10 feet tall. Her eyes were crimson red that seemed to blaze in the sunlight of the picture. Above and below her eyes were horn-like protrusions that looked like eyelashes. Finally, her horns were straight, pointing forward from her forehead into the sky and being more than half a foot long.
The creature standing next to her was muscular with emerald green scales. It had eyes like sapphires and a body of muscles that could put any human bodybuilder to shame and was half a foot taller than the figure on the left. Its horns were slightly curved inward with many spiky branches breaking off from the forehead. To Kain, they looked like a perfectly happy couple living in a lizardman society. The last figure was a smaller creature with soft green scales and ruby red eyes that seemed to shine like its father’s. It was small, being below average adult human height and had horns that simply curved inward without any spiky protrusions. By the way the presumed female was holding the smaller one, it seemed like it was an infant.
‘So this is what they looked like, huh?’ Kain commented.
‘Woah! I wonder if I could be that big someday!’ Luna stated.
