Mutual Feelings

C.39 Wilshire Castle Exploration

The trail leading up to the castle isn't that long, but it has a lot of forks in it that will get people lost easily. The castle here isn't just one big castle but mostly small towers surrounding a main castle where the royal family lives. The small towers are designed with bridges connecting to the other towers and the main castle.

The group of tourists walked through the stone path leading up to the main castle. While walking, the tourist guide sometime stops the group at a nearby tower to explain some history about them. "So in the tower to your left, that's the place where most of the coal miners lived. It's the lowest parts of the kingdom and it's near the mines so they lived there, a lot of the important workers in Coroso Kingdom lives around here as well."

The tour guide stops at a lot of the towers, sometime they do get inside the towers but it's only the ones that are already designed to be explored. Some of the towers are broken to the point that it's unsafe to enter.

"This tower we're in right now is theorized to be the point of entry for the attackers to come into the main towers to assassinate the royal family. The theory goes that the attackers already put gunpowder everywhere across the town and towers to burn the place down. This tower is the only one that doesn't have any explosives planted in and it's also the only tower didn't catch on fire at all. The rest of the burning towers only lasted for some hours before a huge rain put out all the destruction." The tour guide explained.

Finn is awed by the living ancient tower, he's looking at all the stone bricks and candle holders that are still intact to this day, he also noticed the old wooden stairs that spirals up to an opening leading to a bridge outside the tower.

"Hey Ella..." Finn taps on Ella shoulder, "What up Finn?" Ella asked, "Look! Look! I wanna see what's up there!" Finn points to the tower's opening. "Hmm, that must be the bridges that connected with the other towers that they talked about. I don't know if we can go up though." Ella thinks while looking at the opening.

*creak* *creak*

Finn already testing some steps on the wooden stairs. It's quiet but the tour guide noticed the creaking noise from hearing it a lot. "Hey don't climb the stairs to the top please, the stairs are high but fragile so the chance of you falling are high." The tour guide said passive aggressively.

"Oh yeah sorry sir, we were just trying if it's really as fragile as it is haha." Ella tried to cover up the both of them, "Hmm. Let's just go to the other towers shall we." The tour guide now guides everyone outside this tower.

While Ella was about to leave the tower as well, Finn stopped her. "Ella pleaseeee, i spent my whole life wanting to be here and explore this place. I don't want some tour guide guiding where i wanna go! It's boring! I wanna do it myself!" Finn said while blocking the door for Ella.

Ella was shocked and even scared at seeing Finn physically stopping her. "Well.. I guess we could check what's up there... The stairs doesn't look as fragile as they think it is." Ella said.

There are some stone bricks foundation holding up the wooden stairs, so even though if the wood breaks, there's still a stone foundation under it that saved you from falling below the stairs.

*creak* *creak*

Finn is the first to walk up the stairs, slowly walking. Ella follows right behind him, holding to the jagged stone brick wall.

Despite the tour guide warnings and the build of the wooden stairs. The pair reached to that opening at the top of the stairs safely.

"Woah..." Ella looked around the beautiful view from up there.

They are standing at a stone bridge connecting the tower they're in to another tower across it. To the left of the bridge is a small cliff that leads to a more towers that reclaimed by nature. Vines and tall grasses are slowly covering some of the towers over there. To the right of the bridge are where the main castle area is. Some of the towers here are protected by the government for research and history purposes.

The two looked to the left side of the bridge where they can see the gorgeous mountains of Mount Sapphire. "Wow... looked at this view... The ruined castles, the vines, the grass, the trees, the mountain, and that lake... It's crazy how big that lake is that we can see it from around the mountain." Ella is talking about Sapphire Lake that is located in the middle of all the mountains around it. It is huge to the point that if you stand on one of the hills on the mountain, you can't see the full lake just by standing low.

Finn was more interested about the castles more than the view though and tried to cross the bridge. "Ella let's check out that tower across the bridge!" Finn points to the tower's opening at the other side.

Ella just follows Finn wherever he go because she's afraid he might get hurt or worse.

Her worries came true because although the stairs that they used earlier is in quite stable condition. The bridge outside isn't as so.

As the two walked towards the middle of the bridge, the bridge collapsed under them making them fall. "AHHH!" Ella screams as the both of them fall off the bridge.

The bridge has large stone plates covering the floor so the two hold on to those stone plates to try and break their fall. They hopped onto the stone plates as it slides down the cliff that was mentioned earlier. "OH NO WE'RE FALLING DOWN THE CLIFFFF" Ella and Finn slides down the cliff but landed softly in a bed of grass just down below.

Ella's landing isn't as soft as Finn though because she fell off the stone plate right as it stopped sliding. "oughh." Ella said after falling down face first towards the grass, "Ella are you okay??" Finn asked in panic.

"yeahh im good." Ella said as she slowly gets up to sit down.

"Aww mann, it's all my fault! I got a little too curious and now we fell down a cliff with no one to know!" Finn blames himself. Ella was still a little shocked to comfort Finn but she kinda gets why Finn blames himself though. If it weren't for his impatient and rebellious behavior, they wouldn't be here.

But unlike Finn's believe, there is actually one person who heard their cries.

A tall deer walked to their crashing site to check on the two, the steps on the grass was noticeable to the point that Ella and Finn looked at the approaching deer.

His features was odd. His eyes were shining white with bright green iris. His fur has a mysterious aura around it. His antlers are all cut, with most of them being sharp and only some of them are dull. The clothes he wears is questionable too, iron armor that is covered in vines and leaves just like how the towers are around this area.

It is impossible but the features of this deer is only known to be...

"Sir Buckelaire..."

4 November 23