We slept in the next day. Isaac was a bit of a dick and made no effort whatsoever to be quiet and let us sleep. Well, let me sleep. Isaac didn't manage to wake Seth up. I swear that kid dies in his sleep every night.

Sleepyhead finally woke up a little bit before lunch. While he was rummaging for clothes in his trunk I gave the dorm door a try.

It opened. Just a crack too, just barely wide enough for me. I backed up and it closed, all on its own.

Thank tiny tin boats, I don't even need thumbs for this. I was so excited, Seth almost stepped on me.

"Woah! Mau! Why are you spinning in circles?"

Oh, my friend, I'm not sharing this secret. I did give him a shoulder bump on the leg and he gave me a head scratch.

"All right then, come on. If you're that excited about lunch, we'll start with that."

Oh, yes. I'm famished. Let's go.

Outside it was breezy, and the temperature felt like it had shifted. It would be chilly tonight. I spotted a shadow winging off, and a moment later another one. I paused for a moment to look for more of Duvessa's shadows. I should get in the habit of looking for them.

Seth kept walking, oblivious to the fact I wasn't following him anymore. He might've never noticed if he hadn't spotted Selendrith crossing the courtyard. She spotted him too, and beelined right for him. She was carrying her school bag with papers in it even though it was Sunday. So studious.

"Hello Selendrith," Seth said when she was close enough. She didn't answer, and wouldn't look at him. She walked right up to him though.

"Is everything okay?" Seth asked.

She stared at the ground for a moment more, then her head snapped up and she stared at him. "I owe you an apology," she said.

Seth was taken aback. "How do you figure?"

Selendrith pulled papers out of her bag. "I've been over all the receipts. There are discrepancies. I had written some of the originals, and that's not what's here." She shuffled the papers and pulled out a specific sheet. "This is a list of all the discrepancies I found, and what was on the originals as best as I can remember."

"Somebody messed with your stuff before we did," Seth said.

"Yes."

Ah, That meant someone else got there first, or grandpa was sketch. I'm leaning towards someone else. Grandpa would have just cooked it from the start and never had different records that needed concealing. I kept an ear pointed at the two of them.

"So you were right to be suspicious, and didn't deserve me being so angry and hostile last night."

"You weren't hostile at all, Selendrith. You made us tea."

"No I didn't. I made you do it, and that was rude."

"You have nothing to apologize for. Seriously. What we did was a lot more rude than you were."

There was a long awkward moment as both avoided looking at the other.

"I should–" Selendrith started.

"Join me for lunch?" Seth asked. "Mau might eat me herself if I don't feed her soon." He looked around for me. He spotted me before I could decide if I wanted to play hide and seek or not. Maybe next time.

"I don't–"

"I have been looking everywhere for you!" Duvessa declared as she trotted up next to them and linked her arm in Selendrith's. Selendrith squeaked in surprise. "You're coming with me. I have questions!"

Of course you do, Duvessa. My question this minute is where is that damn raven, and if the bastard is done with his dropping rocks phase. I'm gonna make a pie outta him one day.

Selendrith's mouth hung open and she looked over her shoulder at Seth, unable to prevent herself from being dragged away by Duvessa. Seth and I tailed them. In the dining hall Duvessa plunked Selendrith down at the table in between her and Blaise.

Owen and Booth arrived together, Owen with a split lip, Booth with a black eye.

"You two were in a fight!" Blaise said.

Owen looked guilty. Booth waved a hand dismissively.

"We had a disagreement. It has been resolved," Booth said.

"With who?" Blaise asked.

"Me and him," Owen said, indicating Booth.

Teenage boys sorting out who was right with their fists. Checks out. Now they'll be friends. Or at least, not assholes to each other.

Owen looked like he was going to sit beside Duvessa before moving to across from her. Isaac was not there, and in a look around the dining hall I couldn't spot Arnold either.

"Uh, Seth?" Selendrith said. "Is there a reason you don't have Mau get her own food?"

What now?

"You should have Mau sit on your lap or on a seat, at least until dinner arrives. The formation will detect her then and she'll get her own dinner."

I cocked my head at Selendrith and meowed. I also did the 'tell me more' ear flick, not that she knew what that was.

"Oh! Yeah. Each table is a formation and is linked to the kitchens. Portions are granted based on the seats being occupied. That's why empty tables stay empty, and food isn't wasted at a table with only one person," Selendrith explained.

"You know a lot about formations?" Seth asked.

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"Yes. It's my focus." She shifted like she was going to say more but stopped.

"Mau?" Seth indicated an empty seat.

Ugh. I hate not being able to see the table. I feel like a toddler. I paced around the table for a moment before it struck me that I was, in fact, a toddler. Just a feline one. What shit.

I hopped down and sat on my own seat like a little kid invited to the adults table. I tried not to gouge the seat with my claws. I just wasn't in the mood to be patient.

The conversation moved around the table. Selendrith was introduced, Blaise didn't have any towels with her nor did she need them, and Owen and Booth were sitting next to each other. I was relieved the kids were smart enough to not directly mention last night. But they weren't smart enough to not refer to it. Blaise figured out something had happened pretty quick.

Suddenly I felt a thrumming in my whiskers. Lunch was arriving, and it felt just slightly differently to me from the seat than the table.

Platters of fruits, salads, and sandwiches appeared. Yuck. There was also a plate of lightly grilled fish. Selendrith, I now love you.

I devoured my fish. I wasn't trying to be messy, but I very soon had a pile of napkins surrounding me as I tore my fish to pieces and inadvertently flung fish chunks about. Seth was trying to hang a napkin off of a pitcher to better shield his plate from my enthusiasm.

The kids talked about Blaise's power loss, and her family. Her brother, Brand, would be staying at school for a bit with her, so she wasn't leaving just yet. As they discussed that, my thoughts wandered.

I had one good night of my new ring. Maybe two. I had to decide where I wanted to go.

So many possibilities. So many choices.

I could go anywhere I wanted to in the city. Maybe even the Palace. There would be treasures there, no doubt about it. But there could be other types of protections than just locked doors. Something like crystalline spiders or murder wards. Ugh.

For some things, I'd need a broader education on what's possible in the world before I can do that kind of thing. Some day though. Some day.

To be honest, there was nothing specific I wanted there anyway. Until I could do a little recon or get a guest tour or something even the Palace wasn't all that high on my list of excursion destinations.

I should use it for something I probably wouldn't be able to do later. Something that wasn't likely to be dangerous, but still had interesting secrets.

The towers called to me. These were the bastions of magical power within the school. And I already liberated one magic toy from one of the towers, there were likely to be others. Or did I want to explore elsewhere in the school instead? On one paw, the towers were crazy magic and powerful. On the other paw, they were just dorms and classrooms.

Sure, the classrooms might be on fire sometimes, but they were still just classrooms.

Am I getting jaded?

Nah.

Actually, there was one tower that was likely different from the others. One I probably wouldn't get the opportunity to go in for a few years, if at all.

The Last Tower.

The tower of the headmaster, whom I'd never seen nor knew the name of. The tower for which you needed to have access to all the other towers first. A dark and mysterious tower.

A restricted space is always so much more mysterious. And I was a curious creature.

I finished my fish and looked around at the kids. I walked over to Seth's plate to see if he'd taken anything interesting.

"Stop it, Mau. You had your own food."

I meowed at him, a short 'mua' sound. I decided on the spot that this would be my sound for 'Bye' and I hopped down. Nobody even noticed I walked away. Heh.

Outside I took an indirect route to the Last Tower. I paused briefly to look at the Water Tower on my way by. I always liked looking at this tower.

It looked like an aquarium. The blocks of the tower looked like the glass of a shark tank, and the water inside was deep and dark. And the most amazing thing about it was that you could see things living in the blocks.

Right this moment a bioluminescent jellyfish swam by. It looked like it swam right through the tower and kept going. These towers were somehow connected to weird shit. I had no idea why or how, but what you saw was from somewhere else.

Some of them anyway. I couldn't see how the Circle Tower could be connected to anything.

I sat outside the Last Tower. It looked like it was made of glass, but it was dark. It was like a window with the shades drawn on the other side. Wherever this tower went to, I couldn't see it.

I waited for a while, but no one went in or out. No one was nearby either.

Okay. Time to go in.

The door opened as easily for me as the dorm room door and I stepped inside. I let the door shut silently behind me.

The place was empty. Like empty empty. There wasn't even furniture. This was easily the narrowest of all the towers, the whole interior space was at best twenty feet in diameter. Which was crazy, because the outside was bigger than that. Who ever heard of bigger on the outside?

A spiral staircase was made out of the same glass and wound up the outer wall. As I followed the staircase up I realized where all the rest of the space had gone.

Up.

And up.

Climbing those stairs all the way to the top was going to be brutal. Do I really want to do this? I'm a lazy kitty. I don't want to do that work.

I heaved a sigh and started up the stairs. I may be lazy, but I was way more curious than I was lazy.

I got tired a few times and stopped to rest. I lost track of the stairs somewhere around three hundred and started over. Then I lost track again around four hundred. At that point I decided, screw it, and took a nap. My kitten body just couldn't deal with this. It was a bad idea anyway, because when I woke up, I was super sore. I kept climbing though.

Finally, finally, I reached the top. The top floor was a ring around the walls of the tower with the middle open to the ground far below. There was almost nothing here. Just three stone slabs resembling gravestones. All three were covered in text. The light had changed in here, and the place was filled with dim light and long shadows.

I could see out the walls of the tower, but I couldn't see the mountains that surrounded the city. I was looking out at somewhere else.

Leaning on an arm and gazing out the side of the tower was Professor Kaban.

Well then. I'm caught. If that means I don't need to walk down all those stairs, I'm perfectly fine with that. Stairs suck.

But first, let's take a look at these stone slabs. I've been studying hard with Seth and Owen. I couldn't read yet, but I had memorized the new alphabet. Maybe I could memorize what's here and have Seth translate it for me later. I headed over to the first stone.

Nope.

It wasn't the local language. I walked over to the next one. Still no. None of them even had the same language. But I recognized them. I didn't speak them, but I recognized them.

Chinese. Japanese. And German.

If I really worked at it, I might be able to puzzle out some of the German. It wasn't a language I knew, but it felt really familiar, like I had studied it at some point even if I hadn't fully learned it. Or maybe a language similar to it. I couldn't actually remember. But I could look at these and know what they were, even if I didn't know how I knew them.

So the million dollar questions are how and why were these three languages here? There was also a million dollar answer in these stones.

I'm not the only one like me here.

"How the fuck did you get in here?" Professor Kaban asked. He walked over to drop off - there were no railings anywhere - and peered down. "There's no way I left that door open."

I ignored him and studied the stone slab in front of me. After a minute or two he walked over next to me. "Got your interest, hmm?"

Out of habit I flicked my ear in 'tell me more'. Professor Kaban obliged even though he hadn't noticed the gesture.

"These were made by the enemies of your species. The enemies of the world, really. I'm not surprised you're drawn to them. These ones are relics from before the Sundering, so somewhere between one and two thousand years ago."

What the fuck. I gave Kaban the side eye. Languages don't exist unchanged for over a thousand years. I recognized these.

And Kaban here thinks people from my home world are enemies?

Maybe it's better that I can't speak yet or that could've been a sticky wicket.

What shit.