The Kingdom of Noitcif

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Tower and Tea

  When the last two Ytilaer planes had departed through the sky portal, Wesley's body was taken to the underground abode where all the valiant knights and leaders of Noitcif had been laid. The room was plated with gold, and tapestries of days gone by were hanging upon the walls. Fleet gave a short ceremony to pay tribute to all the brave knights and citizens who had died in the battle with Ytilaer, but Espen could tell by the way he glanced at Wesley's emerald-laced sword – hanging proudly on the training room wall – that his friend's death was the one that hit him hardest.

  However, even though the end of the battle was the finale for many things, it was also the beginning. After hearing that Rosalind Winter was the daughter of Wesley Treegate, Rosalind's true mother - Araceli Treegate - was comforted during the grieving of her beloved husband by now having her daughter to nurture the way she had been hoping to do these many years. Through various sources, Espen discovered the reason for why Rosalind was separated from her parents in the first place. When Ytilaer invaded to set up the Vastuta Tower, a few Noitcif children and infants were kidnapped during the nighttime raids by some of the more ruthless warriors, hoping to make some extra money by demanding ransoms. Wesley and Araceli were victims during this time, and waited in vain to be contacted with an amount they were anxious to pay to get baby Rose back. They never heard anything as it turned out, because Engres' wife, Kinta, longed for a daughter, but could have no more children and fell in love with the two year old toddler. When Engres and Kinta divorced, little Rosalind was left in her hands.

  Fortunately, this time, Ytilaer wasn't able to capture a single person from Noitcif during the battle that had taken place, as Engres' men were taken so off guard by the Noitcif knights' inside knowledge of their arrival. The few knights and citizens that lost their lives were mostly due to the heat of battle rather than intentional staking out, except for Wesley.

  This caused Espen to remember the Vastuta Tower. It seemed to be completely inactive now, as Engres wasn't around to keep it powered up. Indeed, the Noitcif citizens were more alert and feeling better than they had in a long time. But the king didn't want to take any chances in case Jax and his men decided to power it up again. Besides, it was an ugly reminder of many tragic occurrences in their land. They needed to figure out how to get rid of it completely.

  Lee Rose was the one who thought of the idea first, as she was aware of the intricacies of the kingdom through Hyperion, and from King Silas before him. She suggested that if they removed the outer layer of stone from the bottom of the small island that the tower was sitting upon, the entire island would merely sink and be destroyed in the land of Yretsym - the land below Noitcif - and cease to trouble them any more. The unusual outer stone surface was what made the islands float, but if the gravity-defying rock wasn't covering a large enough mass, whatever they were holding would merely float down to the land below. (Luckily, as the stone only worked within a certain air pressure, the islands never floated much higher than nine thousand feet, so where was no chance of the islands getting lost in a different direction.) When Lee Rose brought her idea up to the nobles of Noitcif, they agreed that it would be a long process, but it was worth a try.

  The following day, a few Noitcif knights rode out on their flying beasts to the island where the Vastuta Tower had been constructed long ago. The first day, Fleet sent ten of his knights most proficient with a lance. They arrived for their assignment with full body armor and eye protection on knight and flying steed alike to protect against spraying and falling bits of rock.