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"We should hurry inside," said Paulie, "before more hail arrives." He didn't wait for Caster and ran ahead.

It was true. The kid wasn't looking so great. His clothes were in tatters, and apart from his missing arm, he was also covered in blood, having been skewered by hail on several occasions. Caster had been able to protect him from a lot of it but not all, especially when the hail whipped around in the wind and attacked from the different angles.

Caster's own attire was still mostly fine, though. A bit of soul-strengthening applied to the cloth was all it took to prevent it from being shredded. Alas, he hadn't thought to do the same for Paulie's clothes until it was a bit too late.

If they'd known more about what they would be facing, they might've brought some soul-strengthened hazmat suits. The time crunch would've made that a bit difficult, however.

Caster approached the building at a more leisurely pace, uncertain if it would truly prove to be the refuge that Paulie was obviously hoping for.

How in the world could any manmade structure still be standing in a place like this? Even assuming it was strong enough to prevent the Dáinnbolg from battering it to dust, how had all these feldeaths not blasted it into oblivion? It couldn't be luck that had allowed it to survive all this time.

Which was another issue. When could such a thing have possibly been built? And by whom?

Frankly, he hadn't even expected this so-called "Tower of Remoria" that Paulie had been going on about to even exist. Sure, he couldn't deny that a sliver of hope in the back of his mind had been there, quietly nagging at him--an absurd notion that they might actually discover something relevant to the path of destruction.

But now that he was looking at this tower, that notion didn't entirely feel like hope anymore. It felt more like worry. Deep, terrifying worry.