443 CDXLIII. The Huge Building (2/2)

Along that busy road, dozens and dozens of people looked at Dag, who felt their eyes on him.

Amid the rumors of the people who wondered who they were and the noises of everyday life, such as the hammers of blacksmiths and the croaking of geese, hens, and other animals for sale at the market, Dag and the others, after a curve that increased the slope of the road, could see the palace of Kranus in its entirety.

It was a tall and majestic building, so large that it had been built purposefully on a small hill of land, to be able to rise to the few houses that surrounded it, as well as a stable and a large armory, including a forge from which came black smoke that spread upwards.

The whole palace was built with a dark grey stone, almost black, certainly of volcanic origin: around the towers and all the base of the structure, irregular beams of sapphire blue ice enveloped the stone surface, giving the palace an incredible elegance, as if they were flaps of fabric.

Reidar and Egill were very surprised to see such an engineering masterpiece, while Dag didn't pay much attention to it, staying focused on what was going on around him and his team.

As they made their way to the stairs leading to the entrance, made of two stone slabs like the city door, they got off the horses and tied them to a fence near the barn, from which came the verses not only of the horses but also of the rhinos, locked in hundreds inside sturdy iron cages, rusted due to adverse weather conditions.

”This way” Kranus said, showing the way to his guests, as dozens of people, warriors and non-warriors, watched scrupulously the three strangers from head to toe, in disbelief that their commander would allow them to enter the palace in their company.

Other guards, deployed vertically along the stairs leading to the entrance, stretched their eyes and moved, making room for their commander and peering at Dag, trying to figure out where he came from.

He did not reciprocate any of those glances and continued to look straight ahead, with a single thought in mind: to know more about the Crystal of Fire.

Dag wanted nothing more, and while his two companions were astonished and afraid to walk through a city made up entirely of enemy warriors and with a culture profoundly different from theirs, he seemed to care not: what Kranus had said about his powers was mind-blowing, no one in Okstorm had ever been able to tell him more about them, not even Weland himself, who even being a God, did not have the same knowledge as the ice mage.

”The same matter of which the universe itself is made... is it of that matter that my powers are formed? Where does it come from? I feel it flowing through my body, how can I generate it?”