Adyss' Diary: The Tower (Part I)

When we crossed the small river, we were struck by silence. The river was actually a small stream, but it had a bad aura, something was not right with that place. I've read too many books on magic to understand that the eeriness of this place was not created by the full moon and the sky devoid of stars. I was lucky Karsten was holding by back, because fear was crawling inside my bowels and made me jumpy. I could have stabbed someone by accident, so tense my nerves were.
At the stream, we made the young peasant cross the river first. He was hesitant, poor lad, but his desire to impress us took over, thus he stepped in the water. Nothing ate him, so we decided to cross it, too.
It was on the other side of the shore that we noticed the unusual silence. The stream didn't eat people, it ate sounds.
The tower rose above us, magnificently. It looked very old, ancient. While admiring its scarred walls and complicated architecture, Karsten noticed a weak light in one of the windows. He showed it to us, but by the time we looked in that direction, the light disappeared. I looked at Karsten suspiciously, he didn't seem drunk. But I knew my friend and how resourceful he was. Who knows what kind of strong beverage he's hiding in his backpack to relieve anxiety and stress. Speaking about stress, I could have used a few drops of that magic potion. But decided against it, as I needed my wits about me at that time.
We went around the tower to find an entrance. Valthares, or how he liked to be called, Valth, found a cave in a rock under the tower. We presumed it must be some sort of an entrance and sent Valth to explore it. He hesitated again, the boy turned out not to be very courageous. Lucky for us, he didn't seem very smart, and it was easy to make him do things for us.  Karsten pushed him easily towards the entrance whispering something in his ear and the boy complied.  He went inside alone with a torch I helped him lit. You should have seen his face when the torch ignited by itself. Poor ignorant child.
We waited a bit but were impatient. As scared as the boy was, it could have taken him ages to explore the tower, provided he came back. Karsten looked at me inquisitively and I knew what he wanted to suggest. I nodded and we followed Valth  inside.
The first thing we saw was a dark corridor barely lit by Valth's torch.

There was a slight smell of rot, because of the humidity, we assumed. We could even hear invisible drops falling from the ceiling now and then disturbing the absolute silence that reigned there. Valth mentioned he used to play with his friends in what they thought at that time was a cave. Morons. How could they not see this place was made by a human's hand?
We moved along the corridor carefully, taking notice of any sounds or movements. We saw our shadows on the walls, and heard our footsteps. Valth's hand holding the torch was trembling. He was walking ahead of us, shoulders hunched, defending himself from invisible threats. Karsten walked close by, hand on the hilt of his sword. There were torch holders nailed along the wall and at a closer inspection I saw that some of the torches were surprisingly dry given the humidity  of the underground. I lit those torches. More light never hurt anybody. Valth seemed to have appreciated my gesture. Nevertheless, with all the light, the corridor looked gloomy and ominous and we sighed in relief when it finally ended at the foot of a spiral staircase. We looked up to see how far it went up, but darkness covered the upper levels.
The three of us climbed the stairs and reached a round empty chamber which harbored only dust and darkness. We returned to the staircase and climbed it to the next level and entered a room with a few dark and small windows. There was furniture scattered around the room. Furious giants unleashed their anger upon chairs and tables, or so it seemed. While I and Karsten were examining the rubble, Valth kept himself busy examining the dark edges of the room. Suddenly, he shouted victoriously. We looked at him and he showed us a small pile of dung at his feet. We were not impressed, shit was not our thing.
Valth told us with enthusiasm that he is some sort of an expert in excrement, he saw lots of types of shit at the farm where he was living and working, but never this type of shit. He said it didn't look human, although the size told him it was children's shit. I looked at Karsten and he made a gesture with his hand telling me the boy was nuts. Valth didn't seem to care about our sarcasm. He took a small piece from the floor and put it in his mouth. Fucking gods! After a few moments when it seemed he was pondering on the taste in his mouth like a fancy wine taster, he came out with the repulsive verdict - that shit was not made by any creature known to him. Disgusting.
We left that room and climbed the stairs higher not before noticing that Valth grabbed the small piles from the floor and put them in a bag. That kid was such a weirdo.
The following room up the stairwell was smaller than the one below and had a window that drew our attention because we could see the light of the moon getting trough.  Karsten looked outside and told us that he was sure that was the window in which he saw the light. I looked out too, and saw the stream and the trees nearby.  I asked Karsten why does he think this is the window and he said he just knows, got a hunch. I wanted to lecture him about the need to his judgement on facts, not hunches, but it was neither the right place nor the right time. Later, then.
Valthares was busy examining the floor, I supposed he was eager to discover some more exotic shit. I looked up the stairwell and it appeared we reached the top of the tower. I didn't dare to go up alone and got back to call Karsten, but he was nowhere to be seen in the room. Valthares was alone, on his knees, absorbed with blowing the dust off some stones on the wall. I shook my head disapprovingly. If we kept the boy with us, the trip would turn out to be the wrong type of fun.
I asked Valth if he saw where Karsten went. Valthares looked at me puzzled than looked at the empty room and shrugged. He pointed at the far wall, where darkness was the thickest, and said he saw Karsten last near that wall. I sensed that strange feeling again, the feeling of magic doing its thing. I couldn't pierce that darkness with my eyesight, and that was out of the ordinary.
Valthares approached the wall first and we witnessed amazed how the dark swallowed the light of his torch. This phenomenon was known to me, I read about it in my books. It was a protection spell, it must be. Then we heard light footsteps coming from over the wall. It couldn't have been Karsten, he was too heavy.  Valthares touched the wall and his hand pierced right through it. He gasped air, being surprised dead. I got closer, too, and did the same thing. My hand touched the wall and I felt no resistance. It didn't take me long to make up my mind. I stepped through the wall. This is why I came here, after all.