Third chapter in the Royal climber story

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Third chapter in the Royal climber story

Chapter 3

Out of the Desert

The Flux started with a pain that felt like her intestines were knotting up in her stomach and it got worse and worse in a matter of a few minutes. On top of that fluid came out both ends not long after the pain started. The pain was so bad she was unable to remove her pants before things started to come out. Luckily none of it remained on her pants. Instead it flowed down her legs and out the other end of her pants.

She was so sick, she didn’t move for hours except when her puke got too repulsive to lay in anymore. She lay there for untold hours, before the flux eased up. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been. What was bad, though, was that she was very dizzy and knew she had to drink or risk death. The thought of drinking water made her want to vomit. Still she forced herself to get her staff and pin the lobster to the ground before taking a drink.

It made her sick almost immediately, and she had just enough time to turn away from the pool to be sick. Her inattention let the lobster go, but he wanted nothing to do with her and raced to the other side of the tree. She promised his death for the indignity as she let her stomach settle down a bit. She tried again some time later, and this time she was able to keep the water down. From then on, she took large gulps of water whenever she didn’t feel sick.

Waking up, she found that she hadn’t made it to her hole in the ground. She was about five feet or so from the pool of water in the shade of the tree. The sky was still bright as it had been the entire time she had been on the floor. She rolled over and got up.

The entire area where she had been laying was smeared with foul looking fluids. Looking down, she saw that while her clothes were as clean as the day she had put them on, her body wasn’t. She picked up her fallen staff and made her way towards the pool only to freeze when she saw it. The water level was very low.

The lobster was still in the pool, hiding from her on the far side of the tree trunk, but there was hardly enough water for him to swim in. His claws snapped at her as she looked down at him. He was obviously not happy.

Thirsty, and knowing she still needed to drink water to recover, she went around to the otherside of the tree and cupped some water in her hand and drank. She desperately wanted to get clean of her filth, but knew that she couldn’t waste the water before she was a hundred percent better. She retreated away from the tree as her stomach knotted up again, but gratefully she didn’t void her bowels or vomit. She laid down and tried to get some more sleep.

Some time later she woke up and drank some more water before going back to sleep. The next time she woke up she felt much better. She was even able to pee which she hadn’t been able to do since she got sick. After relieving herself, she went back to the pool of water and nearly cried at how low the water was now. It didn’t stop her from drinking. She knew she needed water, and now was not the time to ration it.

While she was drinking the water something happened, and it started to drain away. She gulped desperately, but only got another two swallows before getting a mouth full of wet sand. She spat it out then leaned back as the Lobster came around the tree with it’s claws clicking. It was only then that she realized that she had left her staff behind her after getting used to the lobster not attacking her when she drank out of its pool of water.

She turned and jumped for it, but not before the bigger claw nipped her calf. The claw tore through her clothes, and left a deep gash behind on her leg. Crying out in pain, she felt her hand land on the twisted up branch she called a staff. She immediately brought it up and around before bringing it down on the lobster. It landed squarely on the things back, cracking its exoskeleton. She hit it several more times, but it was already dead.

Dropping her staff, she grabbed her calf where the lobster had gouged her. She lifted the torn pant leg and saw a long, but shallow cut. It was bleeding, though. Rocking back and forth she hissed at the pain. It wasn’t the worst cut she had even received, but unlike those past accidents she couldn’t run to someone to have it taken care of. She was on her own, and it hit her hard. She had no idea how long she rocked back and forth, wallowing in self pity and letting her cut bleed. When she shook off the negative feelings it had stopped bleeding she realized that she still needed to dress her wound so it didn’t get infected.

Using the claw of the lobster, she cut a strip out of her pant leg, and wrapped the cut up in it just like her father had shown her so long ago. She tied the bandage off, but kept her pant leg rolled up so that the cloth would try to attach itself back to the pants when it repaired itself. It took about ten minutes, but her pant leg regrew the part of it that she had torn off. Only then did she let her pant leg down past her ankle and keep her modestly.

She ate the lobster raw, knowing that she needed to eat something before she moved on. It was just as salty as the last one, and it made her more thirsty, but she put a small stick from the tree into her mouth and ignored it. She got up and started walking away from the tree looking for another one.

Time seemed to drag on as she walked. Without a sun that moved to judge the time everything seemed like it took forever. She stumbled onward even though she felt like she would fall asleep at any moment. She knew she had to find a new tree or die, so she ignored the feeling and kept walking. Hours or maybe days later she spotted another skill stone high on a hill. She ran up towards it and looked around hoping to find a tree. To her horror she didn’t see anything in the distance. No skill stones, no trees, no nothing.

She started to cry as the horror of it all hit. She was out in the middle of a red sandy desert dying of thirst with no signs of water anywhere she looked. She knew if she accepted the skill she would survive, but her climb up the tower would be greatly affected. Still, she might have to accept that she had to give up on her and her fathers dreams of beating the Tower.

Feeling the weight of her decision on her shoulders she walked towards the skill stone and touched it. The Tower told her without words about the skill. It was a dagger fighting style skill. If she accepted it then the tower would teach her a fighting style that incorporated a small sword or dagger. It was based on the climber's attribute body. The stronger her body, the better she could use the style.

It was a nice skill. Almost as powerful as her fathers, with a lot of room to grow. The problem was that she didn’t want a skill that was almost as powerful as her father’s skill had been. She wanted to be stronger than her father. Her father had died because his skill wasn’t as powerful as it could have been, and she didn’t want to make the mistake he had made.

In a fit of anger that seemed to alway be just under her skin she turned away from the skill stone and started down the dune. She knew she might be doing something monmentally stupid, but she couldn’t, no wouldn’t, settle for something that was only halfway good. She wanted the best, and she was willing to risk her life on finding it. She bit the piece of wood in her mouth and slid down the dune.

Days or weeks later she saw something in the distance. It was black amongst the ever present red of the desert. It was hard to see as everything was blurry, and had been for a while now. She knew she was close to death, but she kept going. She would not come so far to fail now. For the past, however long, she had been plagued with doubts. Why didn’t she turn back and accept the skill. Why did she keep going? What if there was no better skill or worse, what if there were no more trees and she was stumbling to her death.

The thoughts steadily got worse as time went on. It would be so easy to stop and lay down. All her problems would fade away. There was no one left who would mourn her. Her father was dead. Her uncle who really wasn’t her uncle but a long time close friend of her father had also died with her father. There was father secretary Howard, but he probably already thought she was dead. Why was she still walking and hurting herself. What was the point?

Pride and anger. She had come to realize that both pride and anger drove her. She was angry that she was going to die out here in the middle of the first floor. She was too prideful to let the Tower kill her over something so stupid as eating a mouse. She forced herself onward when beyond what she thought her body could do. She kept on walking like one of those artificer machines that ran on mana crystals. She wouldn’t stop, not even in death.

Everything changed though. As soon as she saw the black thing on the horizon she knew she would live. She stumbled after it not caring if it was a tree or a skill stone. She knew whatever the case was, she was done. She half ran and half stumbled towards the black mark on the horizon between two dunes. The blurriness slowly faded and the black thing became clear. She had found a tree. Out of everything she had found a tree.

Sitting at the base of the tree, just like every tree she had seen so far on this floor, was a small pool of water. She ran to the water too tired to care about anything. Her fist flashed out and caught the unsuspecting lobster around it’s back. With just her hand she held it down as she buried her face into the water and took long gulps of water. She forced herself to stop drinking knowing the dangers of overhydration. She sat back on her backside letting the lobster go. It clicked it’s claws at her at the edge of the water, but it didn’t break the surface. Kat ignored it, and sat back feeling a little sick even though she had stopped drinking.

The sickness persisted and she got a headache, but luckily she didn’t vomit up the water she had just drank. She did put the stick back into her mouth and just let herself lay there beyond exhausted. She looked up at the clouds through the branches of the tree and let her mind rest. It wasn’t too later until she fell asleep.

Something brushed itself against her hand and woke her up. Jumping up she looked and found another mouse which had gotten too close to her. It raced off into the distance away from the tree leaving tiny tracks behind in the sand. It only took about a minute and Kat lost track of the stupid thing. It blended in with the red sand so well that between one step and the next it was gone.

She got up and used her hand to pin the lobster to the ground so she could get some more water to drink. Once she was done she let it go. Feeling naked without a stick in her mouth she reached up and broke one off from the tree above her. She put it into her mouth, and sat back down. She had a lot to think about now. She needed to find her second skill, and soon. She had no idea where to start. Her father told her he found it trying to constantly spot birds that were the only thing edible on his first floor. He had found his eyes getting better and better until one day the tower awarded him his second skill, Hawk eyes.

Biting the stick in her mouth, she wondered what she needed to do to get her second skill. She came up with nothing. Promising herself that she would think on it at a later date, she started her day. First off she checked over her skin for sunburns, but found fine aside from being very dry. The light apparently didn’t give her sunburns which was very good. Next she checked on her cut on her calf. It looked like it healed without any problems. The strip of cloth had lost whatever kept it clean so she tossed the now smelly brown colored thing away.

Next she checked on several places where she had been chafing. Her butt was so red that it was almost purple. She had to splash some water on it after taking off her pants. She had pinned the lobster with her hand so it was very annoyed with her until she finished. She was also careful not to soil her water source, and dunked her pants in the to wash herself well away from the pool of water. She left her clothes off to air her body out not caring about propriety anymore.

Once she had taken care of her body, it was time to plan. She had no idea how to get her second skill, but that was fine. For now, at least. She did have to find skill stones if she wanted to leave this floor. That was now a must. She was not sure if she could do what she did to get here again. No, she told herself, she knew she could, she just didn’t want to. She forced herself to admit that if she needed to do it again, she would. Either way, she still needed to find a good first skill. The only way to do that was go out and look for it.

Once her body stopped hurting from the chafing, she put her clothes back on and with one last stop at the pool for a drink she started walking. Her plan was to go about a mile out and then circle around the tree looking for a skill stone. She broke off another tree limb and dagged the staff behind her. She had lost her last staff somewhere along her journey. She had no idea when she dropped it, but it was now lost and she had no ambition to find it again.

Hours or maybe a day later she stumbled back to her tree not having found a skill stone. She drank her fill and wishing the lobster a good night, went to sleep not bothering with shelter. In the morning she got up and repeated what she had done the day before, but this time went out much further.

This time she was successful and found a skill stone. The skill the Tower offered her was empowering ax. It was all about how to empower an ax with magic to do all sorts of things. The skill was based off Magic and Body. It was a skill that was equal or maybe a bit better than her Father’s skill, but it wasn’t what she was looking for. She left it alone and went back to searching. She smiled as she thought of her uncle and how he would be rolling in his grave, if he had a grave, that she passed the skill up. It had his precious Magic skill that came with it along with another attribute. Her father, she knew, would have understood.

She returned to her tree two more times unsuccessfully after that. On her third trip out after finding the ax skill she found another tree. She didn’t return to her old tree, but stayed at her new tree and started searching again from that location. She even left the lobster back at the old tree live. She wasn’t feeling that hungry yet. She also wanted to keep that tree and watering hole as backup in case something happened to this new one.

The second time she left this new tree she was biting a new branch she had broken off the tree before she had left when she tasted something amazing inside of it. At first she thought she was imaging it, but she brushed her tongue over the center of the stick and tasted it again. It was like she was licking marrow like a dog. There was a thin ribbon of something in the middle of the tree, and it tasted far better than rock candy that Miss Rosenburg made out of honey back at her little village. This was so much tastier.

She sucked on it until it was gone. She had to bite and chew at the stick until she got all of it, and when she was done there was nothing left of the stick. She spit out the bits of wood that was left and thought about going back to get some more. She told herself she was being foolish and kept on her journey. Some time later she had to return early because she got very thirsty.

She drank her fill then broke off another tree branch small enough for her to chew on. This time she found the thin ribbon of flavor almost right away and instead of heading out sucked on it until it was gone.Then she got a new one from the tree and sucked that one dry as well. Feeling full for the first time in a long time, she broke yet another branch off and stuck it into her mouth, but didn’t suck at it. She just let it hang from her lips.

She did go around the tree looking for bees or whatever infused the tree with that amazing flavor, but she found no trace of any other animal. What she did find, which disturbed her, was that the mice avoided the tree like their life depended on it. They did, she saw, take sips of water, avoiding the lobster who seemed keen on eating them. They otherwise did not stay around the tree for long. Shrugging her shoulders, and hoping she wasn’t eating poison she left on her next journey. She couldn’t stop herself from taking a few more sticks along with her. She found that it wasn’t just that one tree. It was all the trees now that she was further out past where she entered the floor.

She felt like she had been out for much longer than any other time when she found her next skill stone. It was a earth skill. The Tower explained without words that it would allow her to manipulate the earth into any object she desired. It was an amazing skill based on Magic. Anyone who wanted to be a Magi would kill for this skill, but Kat found it lacking. Manipulating the earth into objects felt limiting to her. She felt like there was more to earth magic than just manipulating it. Even though it was much more powerful than her fathers skill, she let it go and continued on her journey. She knew there were better skills out there.

She found another tree on that journey and she stopped to rest there. While she felt thirsty, she didn’t feel it as bad as she expected it to be. She felt like she had been traveling for a long time, but she wasn’t dying of thirst like she felt like she should have been. It was very odd.

“Maybe my sense of time is really off?” She rationalized to herself. “Maybe it only felt like a long time because there is no night.” She felt like she was wrong in thinking that, but she had no other explanation to justify her feelings.

She took a bunch of branches and left after drinking her fill. She didn’t feel tired, so she skipped sleeping for now. She took that as another indication that she hadn’t been out there that long. If she had been then she would have been much more tired than she was feeling at that moment.

It took her a while and several sticks until she found her next skill stone. This one was simply amazing. It was a sword art that felt very deep after the Tower explained it to her without words. She could feel the echo of the art deep within the skill that would take years if not decades for her to even begin to understand. This was a skill worthy of taking. Just, it didn’t feel right to her. She wanted something more. Not sure why, Kat let the skill stone go and without another thought continued on her journey.

She ran out of sticks looking for the next skill stone, and she was thinking about turning back when she stumbled onto another tree. She broke off another tree limb and put it into her mouth before taking her fill from the water in the pool. She was an old hand at keeping the Lobster pinned so she didn’t think about it anymore. She just waited until she spotted it, and then pinned it to the ground with her hand so she could drink in peace.

Not wanting to run out of sticks, she poke a hole in her pants around her waist and slipped several sticks into them. She had to hold them when her pants repaired themselves otherwise it forced the stick out of the fabric. Just for fun and because she thought it looked good, she made a fake belt out of more sticks. She punched holes and stuck a bunch of sticks into them so it looked like she was wearing a belt. Not that she was, nor that the sticks had any ability to keep her pants up. It just looked pretty to her so she did it. She went to sleep at the tree and woke up to a world that changed while she slept.

The clouds had descended while she slept covering everything in thick fog. It was so thick that she could only see about ten feet in front of her. Not wanting to risk wandering around and missing a skill stone or worse a new tree, Kat sat down and tried to wait the fog out. Time passed and she quickly got bored. She started trying to catch the thousands of mice that seemed to come out of nowhere. She had only seen one mouse at a time before the fog descended, but now there were thousands of them scurrying all over the place. The lobster was having a field day with pulling the mice into the pool of water and eating them.

One thing she noticed as the lobster at the pool of water grew bigger. At first it was about a foot or so wide, but as the lobster at the pool got bigger. After watching the thing eat for what felt like a very long time she found the pool had grown to about three feet wide from the base of the tree. The tree also grew leaves during this time. Nice oval leaves that ended in a point at the far end. The tree became very beautiful during the time of the fog.

Kat also experimented with the sticks she had broken off the tree. She dug into the stick looking for whatever she had been eating since she discovered the tasty thing. To her surprise she found it after digging into a large tree limb the size of her wrist. It was a thin ribbon of opaque white sticky substance. At first it resisted her tugging, but after a while she figured out how to pull at it with her finger so that she could stretch some of it out of the branch.

She played with the substance for what felt like a few days when she realized she was hungry. Looking down at the substance she lifted it to her mouth and drank it down. She was able to suck it out of the wood so much easier than when she had to bite and chew it out. It also left the piece of wood mostly intact. She decided to do it like that in the future.

Time continued and the fog stayed. She wasn’t scared that it would stay like that forever. She honestly didn’t care. She felt like she could beat the floor pretty easily now that she had a portable food and water source. She only knew that because the ribbon of whatever it was also helped cure her need for water.

She hadn’t really drank that much water in what felt like days. It seemed to her that the ribbon took care of most of her thirst. That said, she still got thirsty, it just took much longer than before. There was also a point where she couldn't eat any more of the ribbon. She would get a feeling of being full that got more and more painful until she stopped eating it. She wasn’t a glutton but she was very bored. She played around with it for a while until one day she ate too much of it and puked. She didn’t make that mistake again.

One day feeling very bored, she was playing with the ribbon of stuff again. She had it wrapped around her finger. Feeling a bit playful and wrapped it around her finger and tried to absorb it threw her skin. To her utter surprise, it worked. The ribbon thing got sucked into her skin and then pulled more from the branch she was holding, absorbing it. Then the Tower spoke to her. She had found her second skill.

The Tower spoke of vitality and that her skill, which was called Dhampir, used it to temporarily raise her vitality and increase her health. The skill sort of felt like the sword art skill she found in her last stone skill. There wasn’t as deep of an echo within the skill. But there were things she couldn’t begin to imagine just yet.

So many things started to make sense after that. How she had survived her long trek looking for a tree. How she felt like she was spending more and more time wandering around after that. It had been keeping her alive for much longer than she realized now that she thought about it. It was literally a life saver.

She found that the skill wasn’t limited to just the tree later that day. She caught a mouse that had been annoyingly running over the back of her legs as she lay on her belly. She had no idea what made the thin fascinated with her legs but after the fourth time it ran over her legs she got angry and caught it. It was only after holding it in her hand that she thought to try to use her skill on it. She didn’t want to put it in her mouth after her attempt to eat one of them a while ago. So she tried to pull vitality from it with her finger. It didn’t work, and she was about to let it go when the little monster bit her.

She squeezed her hand and crushed it, but it didn't die right away. What happened was that as soon its blood touched her, she was able to feel the ribbon of vitality in the thing. She used her finger and pulled on it, drinking the things vitality dry in less than a second. It was a drop compared to the tree limbs she had been using her skill on, but she was still able to absorb the vitality from it. As soon as she pulled the last bit of vitality from the thing it died.

She tested her skill out a few more times, and every time she had to penetrate the skin to get access to the mice’s vitality. Sucking the vitality from the mice made her question if she could reverse the flow and give the mice some instead, and heal it. She caught a mouse and like before used a piece of wood to cut the thing's skin, but instead of sucking the ribbon of vitality out she tried to send some vitality to it.

The poor mouse exploded. She froze and watched the gore slowly slide off her shirt and plop onto the ground. It was the most disgusting thing she had seen. Once her shock faded she thought about what had happened. Thinking it over, she decided that she gave way too much vitality to the poor mouse. She decided to try again.

Six more mice and she finally succeeded. She learned a few things from it as well. First, when she sent out vitality it shot out like a musket ball that had some twine trailing behind it. The front part, the musket ball part, was almost physically solid. Once it hit the mice it caused the skin to boil upwards which made the skin part. Once there was an opening the rope behind the front part latched on and connected her vitality to the mices. There she could suck or send vitality into or away from her target.

Through practice, she learned that it was the hard front part, the musket ball, that made the thing explode. The vitality of the musket ball made the poor mice become overloaded with too much vitality and explode. She also learned how to bypass breaking the skin to get at the mice’s vitality. If she font loaded more vitality it would tear the skin apart and once that happened she could easily attach her vitality ribbon to it’s ribbon and take control.

To heal the mouse, she had to reduce the size of the musket ball to something smaller than a grain of sand. Normal sand and not the red kind. At that size she could still front load more vitality and piece the skin, but not in a destructive way. Once in she could, for lack of a better word, place a seed or droplet of vitality inside the mouse's body and let it heal itself much faster than it could on it’s own.

“I wonder....” She muttered to herself as she watched the mouse she just healed run away.

She didn’t do anything to the poor mouse that had a droplet of her vitality in it. Instead she drew some vitality away from her center and sent it upwards towards her hand. She held it there for a few seconds front loading the tiny pin needle size musket ball of vitality. Once she thought she had enough she threw it at a nearby mouse. It shot out of her hand, but fell short of the mouse who hadn’t moved. She did it again, but this time used much more vitality. This time the musket ball hit and she connected to the mouse's vitality. She sucked the thing dry.

She spent the next couple of sleep cycles shooting mice. They were much harder to hit when they were moving and more often than not she missed. When they were standing still, it was simplicity itself to hit the stupid things. She also learned that the mice’s vitality was too small to justify spending the vitality to suck it dry. She had to use a stick from the tree, and suck on its much more powerful vitality to keep shooting at the mice.

Kat had no idea how long she sat there shooting mice. No matter how many she killed, more would return after a short time had passed. She fed the dead mouse to the lobster who seemed overjoyed to get them. The poole grew from three feet from the base of the tree to nearly ten feet. The lobster itself didn’t grow at all, or at least she didn’t think he did. He just gobbled up the dead mice and that was that.

Then one day the fog started to rise again. It started low to the ground and she was not sure if it burned off or rose, but after a few minutes she could see below the fog. Over the course of several hours, or maybe a full day she was not sure, the fog slowly lifted until it was high above her again.

The leaves on the tree turned from beautiful green to red before turning brown and falling off the tree. The size of the pool retreated a bit, but still was much bigger than it had been before. The mice became scarce again. The lobster didn’t do anything but defend his territory much like he had before the fog descended. Without the influx of mice he did slow down and settle near the tree trunk.

Kat decided now was the perfect time to take a bath. She stripped down until she was naked and stepped into the pool. The lobster came after her like a crazy dog. She simply stepped on it. Not enough to kill it, just enough to pin it to the ground while she washed. She used the sand to help scrub her body, all the time wishing she had a proper bar of soap. Her hair was a tangled mess. She ran her fingers through it, ripping out the snarls until she couldn’t find any more.

Once she was done she stepped out of the pool, careful to let the lobster go only after she was mostly out. It went after her anyway, but she was too fast for it. He sat at the bottom of the snapping it’s claws angrily at her. “I’m sorry Mr. Lobster, but I simply had to take a bath. It has been many weeks, at least, since I had one. I was turning into a barbarian. Please excuse the mess.” The lobster didn’t look amused.

Back in her clothes, Kat knew it was time to move on. She had placed two more circles of branches in her clothes. One on each bicep. Along with not wanting to go without a meal, she also liked how it looked on her clothes.

Her footprints and thin line from her staff that she had carved into the red sand when she walked to this tree was still there, so she chose another direction and continued her journey. This time her journey seemed to take a very long time. Much longer than the one where she nearly died. She had eaten both her circle of sticks from her arms and had made a pretty big dent in her belt circle when she saw a skill stone in the distance. It didn’t look any different than any other skill stone, but she was glad to see it anyway. To be honest she was glad to see anything at this point.

She reached out and touched it. The Tower showed her without words what the skill was. It showed her taking attributes from anything she killed. But it was more than that. It showed a picture of her with her identical self next to it. They were both her. One self got all the attributes while the other one only got the one she chose. The Tower called one form her combat form and the other her primary form. It didn’t use those or really any words, but Kat used them as they were the closest words that fit.

But that wasn’t all. She felt a depth to the skill that dwarfed that of the sword art that she had come across. She could sense things, but things, buried in the darkness behind the skills waiting for her to discover them. If the sword art was a lake then this skill was an ocean of untapped potential. It was also based off of vitality. The more vitality the more she could steal from her kills. This skill felt right. This one fit some unknown thing she had been looking for. She didn’t hesitate and accepted the skill into her.

The Tower spoke again. It granted her a power that she could use to increase one of her attributes. She expected it as climbers got the power to increase their attributes after they cleared a floor. Since both her skills were based off of vitality she chose vitality to use the power on.

The power felt like ice as it entered her body. It focused on what she had come to think of as her vitality’s stomach. It coalesced around it and then collapsed inward where it exploded increasing the size of her vitality she could store. If she had to guess, it nearly doubled in size. Then the Tower spoke again.

It told her that since she spent more than fifty days on the first floor and remained among the living, she earned a power coin. Then it spoke again without words. It told her that she earned a second coin for remaining on the first floor for greater than a hundred and fifty days. The power coins would wait for her until she reached her residence in Massachusetts city.

She knew that the power coins were coins that she could use in the Tower store in any city that she could buy anything from weapons to power up her attributes similar to when she cleared a floor. They were incredibly rare in the early floors, but got more and more common the higher one rose in the Tower. And she got two of them on the first floor. As she contemplated her gifts as everything went quiet and she floated for both less than a second and for all of eternity before she was returned to the Tower. Opening her eyes, she found herself standing in the middle of a knee high yellow grass field.