“It’s a thousand-year-old… hex-beacon!” my voice vibrated jubilantly as I reassessed the abandoned tower. “Built in the height of the Alanian Empire. It goes down into the bedrock as far as it does into the sky! The Astral Engine obelisk it possesses... is absolutely massive, at least seventy times that of the one below our house. It’s also got the most intact batteries. If we can fix even one of them, we’ll have the best defence against the damn Phantoms in the valley and a source of power for our own Ward!”

Delta whistled.

“That’s pretty neat,” She brushed silver hair out of her face, stepping closer to the derelict. “How long do you think that’ll take us?”

“No idea. There’s a lot of damage. It hasn’t been maintained in over a thousand years. Almost all of the ley lines are decayed beyond use.”

We walked around the small lake and entered the tower.

The front door of the tower had crumbled long ago, exposing the interior. There was a huge tree growing inside of the structure, the lower floor looking like a wild cavern, randomly strewn with flowers and grasses.

“It’s... beautiful,” Delta commented.

“Beautiful, but sad… all of the stuff exposed to the elements is gone… all of the controlling runes are erased… at least the good stuff like the batteries and the obelisk are safe underground,” I observed. “This place is a shard of the past, just like me. An old shell, waiting to be filled with purpose...”

“Pffffff. Don’t downgrade yourself,” my sister said. “How are the batteries below?”

“Three out of twelve seem... functional,” I replied as I directed the Infoscopes.

"Yay!"

“We’ll have to be smart about it, once I figure out how to access them,” I said.

Delta nodded, silver-blue eyes glittering with excitement.

“Do you think we can find an echo of this place in the Astral, try to rebuild it... as it once was?” She inquired, looking up at the rusted, warped stairwell leading to the metal platform at the top. “In Kopusha’s memories... this place was once perfect, surrounded in gardens and statues. Skyships docked up there!"

“There was a lot of magic here, long ago. Thousands of times that of what was ever in our parents house. It actually might have left a decent imprint,” I mulled. “We can certainly try to fix this place… and if nobody tries to murder us, we might even succeed at it.”

“Woo,” Delta grinned.

White clouds sailed across the deep-blue sky could be spotted through numerous windows and gaps in the ancient structure.

I circled the old tree that grew in the middle of the derelict slowly and carefully, trying not to trip on piles of uneven rubble. My investigation revealed a small, dark cavity between two enormous roots. It looked like a decent place to put up my dad’s tent.

The large tree was a mixture between an Oak and a Willow. The thick, purple leaves of the tree shimmered ever so slightly with orange, yellow and pink colors. It was similar to the pink-leafed trees surrounding the Church of Equality, but also very different.

“Is this a magical tree? Why are the leaves doing that?” Delta asked as I unpacked the tent.

“Yes. The Infoscope is telling me that this is a seven-hundred-year-old Mystic-Willow-Oak. I think it’s been changed by the magrad seeping from the broken batteries beneath the ground. The slowly leaking mana mutated and twisted its genetic structure into something stronger, far bigger than it should have been. That’s what makes it a [Mystic] tree, as opposed to a regular one.” I replied.

“Magrad?"

"Magical radiation," I specified. "Over-abundance of wild mana. I think that one of the batteries is fractured in the Astral."

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"Leaking mana? Is that... dangerous to us?” Delta inquired.

“Nah, the Astral Engine is nearly dead and the ley lines leading from the Obelisk to the batteries are all decayed now.” I answered. “There is a lot of residual mana excess in the tree, but this area is actually pretty safe overall."

"What about... phantoms?" Delta inquired.

"As far as I can see, whatever little power remains in the Obelisk is keeping them away," I said.

"I’m going to climb to the top of this magic tree,” Delta pulled a rope out of the backpack.

“That sounds like a somewhat unsafe idea,” I commented. "Why must you climb everything you see?"

“Because I can,” Delta said. She was already throwing the metal hook. The hook caught one of the top branches on her third try.

She started climbing before I could say anything else.

“Come on! It’s awesome up here!” She yelled down to me when she reached where the rope ended.

I sighed and grabbed the rope. Delta was incorrigible.

I met her atop of the tree after about ten minutes of climbing. She was sitting down on a branch, looking out onto the distance. I sat down next to her, rubbing my sore hands for a few minutes. I didn’t have Strength or Dexterity modifying skills like Delta.

The clouds slowly parted, revealing a view of Skyisle valley. Waterfalls came down from the glacier-capped mountains, shimmering with azure shades. Countless rainbows manifested wherever the water struck the rocks. Grass-covered rooftops of the village peeked from between the trees. A snow cloud passed overhead, pelleting us with flurries that melted instantly.

“Aren’t you happy to observe the world from up here in person?” She asked.

“I am,” I nodded with a smile. The ancient tree swayed back and forth, hundreds of colorful leaves whispering softly. I looked up. The metal room topping the tower was decayed beyond saving, featuring hundreds of jagged holes. It didn’t look safe.

“What’s the metal there?” Delta asked. “It doesn’t look like magisteel.”

“Ferrotitanium,” I said, scanning the metal beams. “A lot of this decay isn’t natural. I think the tower might have been attacked. There's nothing of value up there. If there was a hex-beacon there, it’s long gone.”

Delta looked down. “Do you think it fell, or was it taken?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll have to scan the ground… very slowly and carefully. If there was a beacon and it fell… well, it probably contains no-spy runes.”

“Lame,” Delta said. “How did you not find this place sooner?”

“It’s too close to the magogenic fault,” I explained. “My Infoscopes crash quickly here, plus the outer defense Ward is still somewhat operational. It makes the tower invisible when observing it with magic or even from afar with human eyes.”

Having grown bored of sitting on the tree branch, I slid down the rope back to the ground, pulled a shovel from the backpack and started to dig a hole between the two roots, deepening the small alcove.

Delta joined me in a few minutes. In about an hour of digging, we made sufficient space to fit dad’s tent.

We spent another half hour putting it up, placing it in the hole we dug, so that it was mostly hidden in the ground like a Russian peasant’s hut called “Zemlyanka”. We covered up the tent flap and hid the entrance and all exposed parts of the tent with brambles, shrubs and branches, making it nearly invisible at a glance.

With enough time I could eventually bury the tent in earth and branches, making it more akin to a Soviet World War 2 sniper’s hut.

I unrolled a wrapped up sandwich made by Delta and sat down.

We enjoyed lunch, taking a break from labor-intensive work. I walked to the broken wall of the tower, the view featuring the Valley of Death. It was far beneath us, completely covered in thick, white misty clouds. Whatever poisons resided there, didn’t reach the tower on the cliffside.

When I was done with the sandwich, I pulled out a guitar from the backpack. The increased mental coordination provided by the Infoscopes made me pretty good at playing it.

I started to play songs by Soviet composer Vladimir Vysotsky. Though the Soviet Ministry of Culture largely ignored his work, Vysotsky had achieved great renown amongst the regular, hard working people like myself.

My voice was young and imperfect but it didn’t matter. Delta sat next to me, listening to the words. In a minute, she started to sing along sounding similar to Alysa Selezneva from the "Guest from the Future" film.

We sang songs about comrade Stalin, the wolves of the gulag, friendship, gymnastics, the circus, the drunk genie in the bottle, the butterfly collector and many other songs by Vysotsky that NeuroVista could help me recall. Delta leaned her head on my shoulder and her positive presence filled my heart with pure joy, one which I never managed to find in my past life.

I knew that we were facing practically insurmountable odds, but I also wasn’t afraid to deviate from the path. The mists of the Valley of Death in front of us called out to me, a sinister mystery that hid the ancient past.

Somewhere out there was our Legacy. I hoped that we could find a way to retrieve it, and succeed where the other Sentinels of Skyisle failed.