The Riddle of the Tower

Together, you follow Richalt across the mountain. The air is clear now that the blizzard has settled, and the snow-laced peaks glisten in the sunlight. The journey along the mountain pass stirs a doubt within you about being too quick to help others, and you feel this is just the beginning of a very long quest. Cold seeps into your bones, prompting you to ask Talik to summon a heat spell. A fiery gas envelops your boots and gloves, warming them without burning. Talik is indeed clever and you are glad she is here.

When you arrive at the tower, you find a lime green sprite flitting and floating near the doors in obvious distress. It's completely obsessed with trying to get in, but there isn't any mechanism that you can see. The tower stands tall and imposing, made of white stone that seems to shimmer in the sunlight. Forty steps lead up to the massive doorway, where the top of the tower merges with a mountain peak obscured by clouds. The sweeping sides of the tower meet above the doorway in a V-shaped peak, and the gaps between the stones are impossibly small, creating an almost seamless surface. There is an old guard tower of stone with round wooden door which is bejewelled and obviously once important but the guard room was empty and cold. 

"This is Ivy," Richalt says, worry on his face. "I don't know what's gotten into her. She's never acted like this before."

You step beside Richalt's green and quite lively sprite, Ivy, and examine the doors, laden with runes. The one healer in your party, Alster a young man in his teens of the Wanderer Healer Clan, steps up beside you, his tattooed hands running along the grooves in the stone. "This is the Voek's language. This symbol here means two … and I think that one means mountain? A mountain divided in two? I think it's talking about the Breach."

Richalt frowns. "That might be the Breach. It's near here, to the east, past the lake."

"Maybe there's a clue there that'll tell us how to open these doors," you say.

"Then I'll go with you. If Ivy is determined to get in, we'll just have to get this door open, one way or another," Richalt replies.

As you prepare to set out, you can't shake the feeling that this journey is just the beginning of a much longer quest.

Draw the symbol mentioned in the text in google drawings and upload a copy of it to Mr. Watts in Thy Quests below.

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