Donte had a smug smile on his face as he hopped down from the boulder. “What do you think? Isn’t this amazing?” Donte shouted as he motioned towards the floating castle in the sky.
I could not help but scowl at Donte before glancing over the edge of the floating mass of rock towards the mountain range spread out below. “I would have preferred spending time figuring out what this building can do before turning the ruin into a floating beacon for all to see.”
“Oh! I can fix that!” Donte shouted excitedly as the orb appeared on his forehead again.
I cursed Donte’s impulsiveness as he once again became completely deaf to the outside world. Luckily, this time the building did not shake or throw us to the ground. Instead, the walls began to shimmer and turned see-through, as if the entire building was suddenly made of glass.
Donte woke up quicker this time as he smiled proudly. “Now nobody can see Dragon’s Nest.”
“Yes, because a giant floating mass of rock is so much less conspicuous,” I replied as I kicked a small piece of rubble off the edge of the floating island.
Donte looked confused for a moment as he looked down at the stone island under our feet.
“I don’t think this is supposed to be here. It is not part of Dragon’s Nest. I will fix it.”
“Stop!” I shouted before Donte could once again connect with the Preateritum ruin again. It took all my self-control not to slap Donte as hard as possible. Donte hesitated as he looked at me with muddled uncertainty. I placed my hand on Donte’s shoulder, forcing him to look me in the eye. “I know there is a lot of information flooding your head right now, but I need you to focus. First, and most importantly, do not destroy the rock we are currently standing on and send us all plummeting to our death.”
Donte’s face turned bright red as he realized what he had been about to do. His words were barely a mumble as he stared down at his feet uncomfortably. “Sorry. I got a little carried away.”
I nodded, happy he had started to calm down slightly. “That is ok, just remember to think before you act.”
“Do you want me to undo the camouflage?”
I looked over at the giant glass building. The see-through surface did not hold up to close scrutiny, but from a distance, it would probably be difficult to see anything there at all. More importantly, I noticed that the camouflage Donte activated hid all the external markings on the exterior of the building.
I bit my lip as I started to consider the full ramifications of Donte becoming the master of this Dragon’s nest. “No. Unless you have no other choice, you should never undo the camouflage on this building.”
“Why?” Donte asked. He seemed surprised by the seriousness of my tone.
“Put simply, Preateritum ruins are too valuable for someone like you to control. If anyone learns the truth of what this place is, they will not stop until you are dead and the ruin is under their control. They will not hesitate to send assassins and even armies after you to get what they want. The Preateritum insignia on the front of the towers are too iconic for you to ever show this building’s true form. Do you understand?”
Donte nodded. His face was slightly pale now as he glanced back at the building behind us. “I understand. I can make it look like something else right? I do not have to always keep it clear like this so long as there are no insignias showing, right?”
“If the ruin is capable of that, then yes, you can make it look like something else.”
Donte bit his cheek for a second and before I could stop him, his eyes once again glazed over. I once again wanted to slap Donte as I realized he had connected with the ruin without giving any warning. With Donte completely cut off from the outside world as he focused on the ruin, I could only stand here and wait until he finished whatever it was he was trying now.
Once again, the ruin began to shimmer. The four tall towers remained camouflaged, but the base of the building slowly began to change. A large manor, built in the style popular in Aktaio, started to appear around the base of the building. The new image somewhat reminded me of my grandmother’s mansion we had once stayed in. The walls of the bottom floor were entirely made of white marble that had been so common in Aktaio with the upper floor made of wood. Flowers even lined all the windows just like they had at my grandmother’s giving me a nostalgic feeling.
After several minutes of making adjustments, Donte opened his eyes. Once again, he had that proud smile plastered on his face as he examined his work. “What do you think?”
“Can you make it look like anything?”
“Somewhat,” Donte replied hesitantly, “I have to be able to picture it in my head first and I cannot make the camouflage bigger than the original structure. So, it is somewhat limited.”
“And the best you could come up with is my grandma’s house with a bit of added wood walls?”
Donte coughed and mumbled something I could not hear while blushing, followed by him saying, “I just thought it would be nice.”
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“Well, you are the master of this place. I guess you get to decide what it looks like,” I replied with a shrug, “Now, tell me, what else can this ruin do?”
Donte instantly brightened up as his excitement returned. “All sorts of things! I am still figuring it out, but I control every room in Dragon’s Nest as if it were my own hands and feet. Most rooms can’t do much but there are a few really cool ones. There is one room where I can make everything really heavy, or lighter than a feather. There is one room with these puppet things I can control. There is even a room I can fill full of a bunch of bouncing orb things. I haven’t figured out what everything is used for, but it is all so incredible!”
“Is that it?” I asked skeptically.
Donte hesitated as he looked over at the nearby building. “No, but for some reason, I can’t reach a bunch of the things I know are there. I am not even sure what they are supposed to do. It is like… like seeing a bunch of islands just offshore. I know they are there, but every time I try and swim out to them, the current pushes me back towards shore.”
“It is probably because the core is damaged,” I mused as I remembered the shattered stone from before, “There might not be enough energy to activate whatever those functions are. For now, we will just have to make do with what we have.”
Donte nodded then grabbed my arm and ushered me towards the ruin now disguised as a mansion. “Come on, let me show you around. It is really incredible!”
As Donte led me back inside, I saw my family. They were still enraptured by the fact we were flying. More than one of the mercenaries still had their butt planted on the ground as they stared out at the mountain range that stretched out before us with their jaws hanging open.
Charly was the first to recover from the shock and started examining the camouflage around the outside of the building instead. He tried to touch one of the flowers sitting on the windowsill of the mansion, but his hand was stopped by an invisible wall before he could. In the end, the mansion was just a projected image. The entire ruin still retained the same shape it had before Donte disguised it.
This led to a discussion between Charly and my dad about how many glyphs it would take to create a similar effect and what type of glyphs would be needed. I did not stick around long enough to hear the full conversation as Donte pulled me deeper into Dragon’s Nest, but from what little I heard, the two of them suspected it would take hundreds of glyphs acting at the same time to replicate a building with such detail.
Following Donte’s lead, we explored many of the rooms not found in our original search of the ruin. There was an entire section underground we had not seen in our initial walkthrough full of rooms with special functions that Donte did not understand. I had more knowledge and was able to tell that they were labs for specific experiments. Each lab seemed designed for replicating different conditions. Unfortunately, they were not of much use to us since most of the equipment inside was completely ruined by the passage of time. Only the functions of the rooms remained.
We were far more interested in a series of rooms that seemed to be designed to help train a person’s body. The room Donte mentioned that he could fill with bouncing orbs was his favorite. It seemed to be conceived to help a person train their perifocal vision and how to dodge multiple fast-moving targets.
My favorite room was the one I had been so fascinated with when we were exploring before. The hundreds of veins that filled that room released energy in such a way that only someone with an innate talent or similar ability would be able to stay inside for long. The constant strain on your talent could strengthen it over time far better than normal training could.
I was also delighted to see that there was a massive room just for taking baths. It was a sauna large enough to put some swimming pools to shame. Unfortunately, there was no water available right now, but Donte said that if he sat the mansion down in a lake somewhere he would be able to restock enough water to fill the entire sauna several times over.
The entire building was a luxury I had not been able to experience in a long time. Even with most of its higher functions disabled due to the damaged core, the ability for us to travel this way was infinitely better than the cramped horse-drawn carriage. However, I quickly realized it was only slightly faster.
“Is this really as fast as this thing can fly,” I asked Donte after our tour. I looked down at the ground below as the island of rock slowly floated past the treetops.
Donte nodded. “I have tried to make it go faster a few times, but every time I try, everything just goes dark. I feel like we should be able to go faster. I just don’t know how to do it. Do you think that it is because of the damaged core as well?”
“Probably, but it is very unfortunate,” I said with a sigh as I leaned back against some of the debris scattered around the floating island of stone.
“Why? It is still better than going everywhere with the wagon.”
“Because Irene has found us,” I replied, pointing down at a few figures moving among the forest down below. Even through the canopy of limbs, I could still make out the telltale glow of orange eyes, watching us with hatred and fury.
Donte froze as he looked down at the sprinting figures following after us. The full horde was not here yet. Many of them were probably still underground, endlessly scouring the tunnels for any sign of us. However, now that Irene knew where we were it was only a matter of time before they caught up to us.
“She… she can’t get us up here though, right?” Donte stammered.
I shook my head as I met the stare of one of the undead tailing us. I saw it mouth a few words, but we were too far away to hear what she was saying. I made an obscene gesture back at the corpse with a grin. It brought me no small amount of joy imaging Irene’s confusion and rage when she found us flying here just out of reach.
“I doubt Irene has enough flying undead to be any major threat, but we only have a couple days’ worth of food left. Unless you want to starve up here on this floating rock, eventually we will have to go down there to restock. We cannot avoid her forever.”