Kain and Luna stepped onto the square platform and pressed the higher button. The elevator-like contraption was dark, but not completely. Other than the two buttons, it was featureless. The platform seamlessly and silently ascended the shaft, climbing at a steady, unhurried pace. It took less than 30 seconds for the two to reach the upper floor. The platform that they had seen from their earlier position was actually the ceiling for the elevator-like contraption. Kain poked the outer wall-like force-field with the giant dagger he had taken from the battlefield below. He was unable to make the forcefield tremble, even after striking it with the weapon.
Eventually, the lift stopped 20 feet below the ceiling. The wall in front of them opened up like it did at the bottom level, revealing a room loaded with boxes. There were shelves filled with boxes. There were pallets filled with boxes. There were boxes everywhere. Despite this, however, there were clear areas made for the creatures to walk through. Luna’s flames, which had not been dispelled despite the generally bright lift they had just left, scoured every inch of the new environment, only finding more boxes on shelves, pallets, and the ground. The room was not very large, only about as large as a dorm room and, surprisingly, there was no blood nor holes in the walls, a rarity in the tower. Kain walked up to one of these boxes, inwardly lamenting the height difference as the box was as tall as he was. He took the dagger and jammed it into the lid of the box aiming to pry it open. Then nails of the box gave a great deal of resistance, but it eventually gave in to Kain’s strength. The box lid slid open, revealing a set of bags with what seemed to be rotted food. The smell overpowered Luna’s sensitive nose, forcing her to jump off of Kain’s shoulder with a start. Kain blocked his nose and observed the bag. On it, there was a line of strange symbols that had some similarities to the ones on the kitchen door on the second floor. Other than the line of writing, he saw a symbol emblazoned on the front that looked to him like a lunch tray from a cafeteria. He closed the box only to see Luna staring at him with teary eyes. He tried to ask what was wrong, but she spoke before him, ‘That was disgusting! It smelled so bad…’ She paused for a moment, ‘So what was that, big brother?’
Kain calmed down after she spoke her grievances. He had assumed that she had thought about the one-eyed monster again and was having another panic attack, so hearing her complain about the smell put a warm smile on his face. He replied, ‘I think that it was supposed to be food.’
‘They ate that?’ Luna replied in a bewildered expression, ‘Or… was that the rotted remains of the former food?’
‘I would assume that would be the case,’ Kain chuckled, ‘but I find this quite strange.’
‘How so? The fact that the food has rotted is not that surprising. It should have rotted after so long, right?’
‘I agree that it is normal for the food to have rotted, but the fact that there is this mush here at all, still smelling like rotten food, makes me wonder how long it has been here. I am no scientist, but I’m not sure if the food can last this long at all. If it has been as long as you said it was, then I wonder how this food is still rotting.’ Kain turned back to the box to look inside, walking a bit away from Luna. On her part, she stayed as far away from the boxes as possible without disrupting their energy-based communication that Luna had been maintaining.
She replied in a similarly questioning tone, ‘I wonder as well. Maybe they used something with energy.’
Kain gave a start and whipped back around to look at her, ‘Energy? But how?’
‘Well, we know that the energy of this place seeps into everything. Both of our experiences confirmed that; you were nearly unable to break that dead, dry stick you told me about and I know that the energy in this forest rose through time because of my memories. What if these people injected energy into the boxes and used it to somehow slow rotting? I felt a bit of energy from the thing we came from, but I assumed that it was because of some other type of ‘technology’ as you call it. I didn’t feel anything from the robots down there, but who knows?’
Kain went silent for a while to digest the new information. It was indeed possible for the creatures to create energy-based technologies, but he was not sure how far that went. He had never been able to feel what energy felt like before, so he had no idea if something he was near was filled with energy or not. Instead of responding, he tried a new test. He drew his energy out of his body and created a tentacle-like limb with it. He cut off all other sensation and felt the ground around him with it, trying to find other energy. It took most of his concentration, but he felt it, faintly. It hummed with a low, dull feeling that he could not describe. He could feel its state of being: pure, unfocused, radiant. It felt like the heat from the sun on a sidewalk or some other incidental heat like the warmness of the summer wind. He felt it also trying to push its energy out, to spread it, but it was stopped by the ambient pressure of the energy around him. His new limb slithered its way over to the box he had just opened and scoured it for energy. He had a much easier time of doing it for the box, because it felt like the energy was layered onto the box, not seeped into the floor. The energy he felt from the box was drastically different from the ground; it was converted, directed, and absorbing. It felt like it took energy from the outside air and used it to complete a task. He scoured the box even more closely, nearly fainting from the exertion, but he finally found what felt like the ‘code’ for the box. It was a system of energy-based lines and shapes, all wrapping around each other and collaborating to complete a final goal: isolate the box from the outside world.
He was about to study it when he heard a voice next to him, ‘You figure anything out yet?’ He snapped back to reality with a start, calming down after seeing Luna on his shoulder, enduring the awful smell and looking at him with concerned eyes. He breathed out a sigh of relief and backed up from the box for her sake.
‘Yes I did. I think it has to do with that concept-based stuff we were talking about earlier. They did indeed imbed their energy into the box, but they did it in a way that… I guess it’s like clockwork- an intricate system of parts all working together in harmony to achieve a goal. You try looking at it, you have better energy perception than me.’
‘Hmm… lemme look…’ She withdrew her energy, creating a tendril-limb like the one he had made that began to examine the box. Soon, she asked in defeat, ‘How did you do it?’
‘Close off everything else around you, and try to listen to the energy. Ignore everything else and just try to feel the energy in the box.’ Kain replied.
She tried once again, but withdrew after a while of visible struggle. She sounded defeated when she spoke, ‘I… couldn’t do it. I’ve spent so long always being on high alert that I can’t just withdraw my senses. It’s… frustrating.’
Kain began to walk to another crate, saying, ‘It’ll be alright. You’ll get there eventually. Think about it, I can’t do most of the crazy energy stuff you can. We all have our faults.’ He walked up to the crate and quickly pried the lid open, finding another mound of rotted food; the bags had slightly different symbols on their fronts, but they had the same cafeteria tray. He repeated, ‘We all have our faults, the goal is to work around them.’
Luna sighed, saying ‘You’re right. I know you are, it’s just… frustrating.’
‘I know it is. But we just have to get through it, work on our faults, that sort of thing.’ Kain said. He walked around, opening the different boxes, finding rotten food and slightly different variations of bags within. He even examined the energy in some of the other boxes, finding the exact same clockwork-like system in each. He checked the boxes and moved to the door on the other side of the room. It was a large double door made of the same black metal of the rest of the tower, but with ornate carvings running up and down the 15 foot height of the door. The carvings depicted vines and flowers running up and down the door, swirling into the center where a large creature sat. To Kain, it looked like a dragon from eastern mythology; it was a long serpent coiled around itself with a mane of feathers behind its head. The image was split down the middle by the door. He stared for a few moments before he pressed his palms against the doors and pushed with a bit of energy. Despite using his strong energy, only made stronger by his constant use of it, the door slowly crept open. Inch by inch the door swung open. The two explorers were blinded by light that they had not seen since exploring the tower as they opened the door.
The door eventually swung open, and the two walked in. The room was closer to a giant greenhouse rather than a room, filled with plants and walls made of a glass-like substance. What set the room apart from a normal greenhouse, among other things, was the fact that the entire floor was made of dirt. The room showed the full magnitude of the tower, being tens of thousands of feet in area with only the small warehouse-like area to occupy it. The room looked overgrown and dilapidated, with holes in the ceiling all around and one giant hole in the center. The room was the last of the tower, as the peak of the tower could be seen at the top of the room. Other than the ridiculous amount of plants that even began to grow on the walls, there was a large stone structure in the middle, stained with crimson blood. It was flat on top, with five sides of about 50 feet each and a stairway leading up to it.
Kain and Luna gawked at the ridiculous scene in front of them. The roof, which was still a few hundred feet high, was not supported by any pillars in the massive room. There was little blood in the room aside from the center stone structure, most of it was on the walls and the blood that fell onto the plants was nowhere to be seen. It was likely all taken by the plants to feed new generations.
‘This is… amazing…’ Luna said. For the first time, her excitement was overshadowed by pure awe. The scale of the room was something that she had never could have imagined, so the sight of it was simply mind-altering. She realized, for the first time, the power her new mind had given her, and she began to want to do something with it.
Kain, for his part, was just as overawed as Luna. He looked out to the bluish-green forest beyond the glass and saw the mountain. He realized why he had not seen such an amazing thing, as he had emerged from the other side of the mountain. To Luna, he simply replied in a dazed tone, ‘Yeah… yeah it is.’ Kain and Luna took a good long time gazing out into the impossibly large greenhouse before silently walking toward the bloodied central structure.
