Distant, towering trees far larger than any rural tree-manse loomed in the distance.

“If I understand it correctly.” Sara peered at the distant structures as they warped in the heat. “That should be the geometric center of the island.”

“It’s ancient. Most family written histories record the tree-manses coming after that city had waned.”

Maat held a hand over his eyes like a visor as he tried to make out details of the distant mirage.

Their birds carried them further towards this distant cityscape. Long before they could even make details of the nearest tower, they noticed that the land here was divided up. Remnants of short, squat stone walls, like those outlying huts near their base camp, but at an unbelievable density along every inbound avenue.

All that was left of these hovels were the basest of skeletons – a minor imprint on the ground demarking the walls and basic floorplans. Stones had otherwise been removed for other uses.

The first tower came into view. It was a twisted, gnarled, thorny tree many times larger than the mightiest whitewood of the southern shore. They were hollowed out, preserved as if petrified. Bridges of carefully manicured tree branches interconnected each tall tower, though more had collapsed with age than not. It was like a rural tree-manse but on a scale that would have required constant upkeep by hundreds of laborers per tower.

Shade was easy to find amidst this artificial forest of giants they found themselves in. Took some of the pressure off their poor birds, who had traveled for hours without a drink since they left the last spring. It was a scorching but dry heat; so long as they stuck to the shadows of the towering trees things proved manageable.

Sloped canals ran alongside and through a median dividing line along every street. They were bone dry, having perhaps seen a paltry trickle of water the last time a meager plainsland storm penetrated this deep into the leeward valley.

At a conjunction of all avenues sat a squat (at about half the size of a grown whitewood, mind) but thick tree with flat, fanning branches near the top. Roots broke through the streets though this shorter tree was well and truly dead. Tucked between two thick roots was an empty fountain with not a sliver of water anywhere.

“Well, this should be the main spring. Same as at the treehouse,” Sara said. “Don’t think it could ever support a settlement of this size. Even at this size.”

Sam’iel walked right into the squat hollow tree-manse without saying a word.

“Surely it is impossible for any settlement to be this large,” Kur said. “A collection of people all stuffed into towers? Ridiculous.”

Lloyd shrugged. “Dad’s been going on about similar settlements in his world. Called ‘em cities.”

“Sounds like the other islands have a few of these cities as well,” Maat added. “Maybe not on this scale.”

The group fanned out along this central plaza. But there was not a soul to be seen.

“I’m telling you. This was a manse for giants. Maybe a dozen of them,” Kur insisted.

The sun only grew higher in the sky. There was no water for their birds, and once noon hit the shadows would be so narrow as to offer no protection.

No word from Aminia. And given the paltry drops in the holy vial, it was likely he wouldn’t be able to communicate any longer anyway.

There was no proper spring here. Just the empty fountain with some cracks in the bottom due to years of weathering the atrocious heat.

Both the Quarterchief and Aminia insisted that Ma’athiel was his father’s son and that any connection to the river god was more… esoteric. But still, if there was any kind of divine power involved in his spreading of lifegiving water through the valley here, surely he couldn’t go wrong.

Ma’at opened the vial and poured the last paltry drops of the headwaters down a crack in the fountain.

No waters stirred. No ghostly voice informed him he’d succeeded.

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The group detached their birds from their carts and brought them over to the watering hole to ride out the noon heat. Maat and friends would stay in this hollowed out tree-manse growing up beside the paltry spring.

Within were multiple stories of archives. Shelves built into the very walls and lecterns and squad storage racks growing out of the floors, with hundreds upon hundreds of tomes of uniform binding and size.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“City records house,” Sam explained, buried in one of the first books. “Too many to pour through, but they’re arranged in chronological order. Can we stay until morning? I should be able to gleam a bit about why this main settlement was abandoned…

They had little choice but to wait through the afternoon heat at least and try to get back to the nearest working oasis before the heat picked up again.

They made it only a few steps further into this grand library before they heard the din of footsteps. Sam left his book open on a squat lectern, and the group hid, squatting down to their knees, behind a half-sized shelf of records books.

“A font of knowledge. Incredible. Most incredible!”

“Who is that?” Sara asked at a whisper.

The empty vial around Maat’s neck was trembling. As if activated, or in a warning.

Twelve figures appeared. Nine of those priests in the robes, wielding overlarge hammers. Three more traditionally dressed Jean’in mercenaries.

“Such a wealth of knowledge,” said one of the priests. “The translators. By Patron Dewey, we must transcribe these books. All of them. The Grand Library at the Grand Junction must accommodate this knew information. Why, it’s been abandoned here for ages. And so dry. One spark could destroy it all at any time!”

One of the common soldiers spat on the floor. “You tellin’ me these knife ears can write?”

“Well,” said another priest. “There’s no telling the authors or those who carved this city from giant petrified whitewoods. Scholars debate whether a band of ancient, extinct humans could have sailed here and built this place.”

“Those foreign priests,” Maat whispered. “Baptism of the Forge, I think it was called.”

And far too many to fight off with just a group of five.

Priests walked up and down the aisles, trying to find books they possessed the tools to translate.

“Oh, Patron Caelus, he who mastered artificial sunlight, do illuminate these halls so that we may read these ancient works,” said yet another priest.

“And Patroness Kafka, you who discovered the secrets of transformation and transliteration, do commune with the Forge God, oh patroness, and bless us with the tools to translate this knowledge.”

“They’re… praying?” Maat said.

“To what?” Kur asked.

“Some kind a minor gods? I guess?” Sara shrugged.

One of the common soldiers kept his long gun at his shoulder, ready for anything. He noticed a book open at a lecture – the one Sam had left behind.

“Well, damn,” Lloyd said, prepping his war-club.

“Eyes up,” said the soldier. “We’re not alone."

The three soldiers were immediately alert. The priests looked around.

“It was said the locals seldom came here,” said a priest.

“You there, behind the shelf!” A soldier pointed a gun at the very shelf Maat’s group was hiding behind.

Lloyd and Kur leapt out, ready to fight. Maat followed suit.

“Knife ears! Watch out.” The soldier held his gun up, Kur square in his sights.

Only, the gun’s barrel was snapped in half by a blow from a handheld hammer.

“No fighting in this place of knowledge!” cried a priest.

“Out of the way, god botherer! Some of us have bounties to collect.”

“Smoke those loincloths!” yelled another soldier.

Maat’s party was left standing there, clubs drawn, as the three soldiers tried to scalp them and the nine priests drew their hammers and fell in on their own guards. They beat the three soldiers to death with the hammers, careful not to let anyone get a shot off or empower their own hammers with that holy flame magic. It was over in an instant, all three soldiers bludgeoned until dead.

“Pardon us,” said the oldest-looking priest.

“There can be no fighting in this house of knowledge!” said another.

Five of the priests bowed to Maat’s party, while the remainder went about dragging their dead guards out of the tree-manse.

“Uh… thanks?” Maat bowed back.

“We shall commend these bodies to the forge on the morrow,” said the old priest again. “May the patrons bless your search for knowledge.”

The party of forge-priests let Maat and friends be. Everything happened so fast that Maat barely even registered what had happened.

“Huh, that was weird,” mused Lloyd after it was all done.

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The group stayed for the night. Awakening to find their birds having run off from their makeshift pen in the lobby, and Sam asleep with his face in a tome.

“Gah! I’m awake. The tomes – they’re all census records. Bills of sale. Transfers of subaltern from one lord to the other.”

“Ah, so this motte was occupied by giants, trading indentured plainswalkers for sport,” Kur declared.

“Not quite. It provides no indication of clan or status of the indentured. There’s no description of those who did the trading either. Obviously these are supposed to be records, not a narrative history, but it seems that the status of those who were subaltern and those who were, for lack of a term, home-clan, was simply self-evident to the authors.”

“Hey, guys,” Sara yelled from the front door.

“Yeah?” Lloyd said, poking his head into one of the dense census tomes.

“Found the birds.” Sara went outside.

Maat followed, while Kur and Lloyd tried to get Sam out of the books and ready to go.

Outside, the landscape had transformed overnight.

Water overflowed from the fountain, sputtering out with a force that destroyed the austere centerpiece. The basin was much more of a traditional spring now, and the waters poured into canals wide and small as they continued out into the abandoned city. Divots underneath the archival tree’s massive roots allowed the water to flow unopposed out to the north and west.

Their crew of birds weren’t far from the carts, sipping water out of the flowing canals.

Water continued to flow out towards the outskirts of the city. A three-pronged river followed the bird-drawn chariots outwards, showing no signs of reducing to a trickle. Indeed, irrigation channels broke off towards wide-open fields between towers. Previously ignored as dusty and undeveloped, with a single night’s application of clear spring water these arid squares were revealed to be blooming plazas.

Shoots of green even peeked out of the ground alongside the canals. Evidence of long-dormant seeds finally ready to grow.

Water fanned out over the skeletons of stone row houses on the outskirts. The entire plains were slowly, as the water continued out further as the ground was saturated at long last, transforming into more of a marshland.

Would the central valley, too, become a lush and forested preserve not unlike the stormheaths? Only time would tell, and if the Jean’in came back and suppressed the springs with their foreign forge god’s stakes, their actions here would be fruitless.

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