The five of us stood before the mesa, our necks craned up to gaze at the city above us and the massive ramp up to it. To our right, a massive complex of elevators and lifts carved into the rock of the mesa itself. Designed to allow wagons and travelers to enter the city without the climb.

  Originally, we’d gone towards the maze of stone columns and wooden platforms that made up the lifts, but Maggie pulled us back and directed us towards the ramp. The path up was switchback and carved into the mesa’s stone. Massive murals depicted moments of the city’s history, and inscriptions wrote of the figures in the murals and the craftspeople who made them.

  “it’s tradition. Your first time in Dustreach, you have to brave the ramp.” Maggie said goadingly.

  “I’ve already been to the city.” Ellen complained. “You can’t make me climb it again.”

  “You’re right, I can’t.” Maggie agreed. “Feel free to get onto the lifts. But I am going to force your party to climb the miles long ramp. How are they going to feel if you’re the only one who doesn’t climb it with them?”

  The rest of us looked at Ellen. Nora and Mika adopted pitying looks, lost puppies begging for scraps at the porch. I tried to copy the look, but Ellen flinched when she saw me. Worried I was scowling, I dropped the expression.

  “Fine.” Ellen groaned with a smile. “But don’t say I never did anything for you guys.”

  By the third switchback, I’d decided that this ramp had to be the worst thing ever carved from stone. The city still loomed above us half a mile, if not more, away. Wide enough to fight two wagons abreast and just flat enough to not pose a risk to livestock, the ramp would be a challenge for any mortal.

  It was past the fifth switchback and three teams of wagons when the first mural appeared on the stone walls beside us. Masterfully carved by a [Mason] named Stelen Ritesgrave, the mural’s focal point was the mesa. Bare on top and undeveloped, no human hand having touched its stone before. Off in the carving’s background, two forces rushed towards the mesa, one significantly smaller than the other.

  “Did you guys know they built Dustreach around a makeshift infirmary after a battle with Latell?” Nora asked as she read the bronze description plate.

  “I didn’t.” Mika said absently. His finger traced the lines of the mesa, his attention drawn into Ritesgrave’s beautiful work.

  As we ascended, the murals got closer and closer together, until they became an unbroken stream of art. What they depicted began with vast time differences between each, but the closer they got physically, the closer they got temporally.

  We passed murals of the first Dustwarden, commander of the fortress raised on the top of the mesa, being raised to the peerage. Murals of the discovery of the Under Tunnels. Of important moments in Dustreach’s noble court. Of the first homestead founded on top of the mesa. Murals of the first mining expedition. Murals of constructing the lifts and elevators.

  A different [Mason] carved each mural. Some were further decorated with wood accents, or glass mosaics, or inlaid with gemstones. With every addition came a new name and profession added to the bronze description plate.

  By the twentieth switchback, we had to stop for the first time. Mika soaked through his robes. When he took off his bag, the grey cloth on his back was soaked black with sweat. His short-cropped hair, which had grown out in our week away from a city, plastered to his forehead and his breaths came in ragged gulps.

  The rest of us weren’t much better off. Nora was similarly sweaty, and I was sure that if I took off my jacket, I’d find my back in a similar condition. Some of my hairs which had escaped the bun I kept my hair in clung to my face like veins of black across pale marble.

  Maggie was the only one of us who seemed none the worse for wear, and that amused the woman to no end. She never made a joke at our expense, but the smirks she shot our way when one of us fell behind or sighed louder than normal were enough to declare her feelings.

  The higher we got, the steeper it became and the more wagons we passed. When we began that day, passing a wagon was rare, but now it was barely twenty minutes before we passed another.

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  Almost every member of those wagon trains was off their wagon and either worked with the animals pulling, or they helped to push the wagon up the hill.

  Another thing I noticed as we climbed were the small alcoves that began to appear. They were rare, but every so often we’d come across a small square section cut off the path and kept dark.

  “Oh, those are pit stops.” Maggie said in answer to my question. “They’re there so wagons can stop before they kill their teams.”

  “It used to be tradition to try and have your wagon climb the ramp in one go.” Ellen added. “But one noble had family visiting who refused to strain their horses and had their guards carve places for them to rest.”

  “Once that started, it snowballed into the pit stops you see now.”

  “The workmanship’s not bad, not great either.” Mika said, seated on the raised edge where a pit stop met the ramp.

  We wound up eating lunch at that pit stop. As soon as Mika sat down, everyone realized else that moving without resting first was going to be impossible.

  The interior of the pit stop was a plain stone box about a thousand square feet. No one had ever worked to install sconces or engrave the walls with runes for light. Sunlight fought to get past the walls of the ramp and into the small cavern, illuminating half the room.

  One thing I found interesting was spotting where the soot marks were densest. It was a neat exercise to see where all the people before us ate.

  After lunch, Nora and I took turns trying to find the darkest one, and eventually Maggie joined in as our judge.

  Nora wound up winning. She’d found the darkest section of soot, oddly, in the very far corner furthest away from sunlight and fresh air. At first, I hadn’t believed her because the soot was too hard to make out in the dim.

  Maggie had been the one to solve that problem and take out a torch from her storage ring. A quick hit with the striker revealed the entire squared off corner of rock blackened by soot, from the floor to ceiling.

  We continued the march two hours later, and by the time we reached the top, Ellen had Mika around the shoulders supporting his weight, and I had Nora in a similar hold. With a sigh, I dropped my chin to my chest and felt the sweat pour out of my soaked gambeson. My breaths came hot and heavy, and I had to fight not to put my hands on my knees.

  Compared to the rest of the party, however, I might as well have been completely rested. Ellen was the best out of them, panting and close to hyperventilating, but otherwise okay. Mika was bent over, his hands on his knees while he struggled to breathe. Nora was the worst off out of all of us. Once she got to the top and her feet hit level ground, they simply gave out from under her and she flopped bonelessly to the ground.

  Seeing the plight of my party, I gave Nora my waterskin and lifted her back to her feet. She gave me her hand as if she wanted to be pulled up but was complete dead weight.

  “Come on Nora, you’ve got to cool off. Take a walk.” I said and righted her.

  “Why would we ever want to walk? My legs feel like they’re about to fall off.” Nora complained.

  “Helps the body adjust if you walk around for a bit. You’ll just cramp if you stop.”

  Nora opened her mouth to complain again, but Maggie cut her off.

  “He’s right y’know. You won’t be as sore tomorrow if you listen.”

  Nora didn’t respond, but Ellen groaned as she joined us. The three of us walked in circles in front of the guard towers. The gate guards looked bemusedly at us from where they were passing a three-wagon caravan through. Mika was the only person who didn’t end up walking beside us and instead spent the whole ten minutes we circled the ramp’s exit hunched over his knees, trying to get his breath back. Maggie checked on him after a while, but everything was alright. He just didn’t want to walk.

  It took me three minutes to get enough air back into my lungs to be conscious of the world around me again, and when I did I almost stumbled at the sheer size of the wall in front of us and the view off the mesa behind.

  In front, the wall loomed hundreds of feet into the air, a massive beacon of shimmering green that stretched for miles without reaching the end of the mesa. This close, I could tell that the runes on the wall pulsed faintly as something interacted with them, but I couldn’t say for sure what was doing so.

  Along the wall, small towers built just far out enough from the main wall to have a murder hole faced downwards. The effect made the wall look like a massive jaw with the towers as its teeth.

  Most of the wall was bare, the only decoration being the runes, but on the small gate house a myriad of banners flapped lazily in the breeze. Most of the banners were small, limited to barely the size of the window. At the highest point in the wall, drifted three truly massive banners. Dyed in a myriad of amazing colors, each one draped a quarter of the way down the entire wall.

  The central of the three banners depicted a gauntleted fist gripping a red sun on a field of gold, while the banner to its left contained three crimson moons on a field of silver. To the right, the final banner had a white goat climbing over a field of black and a silver halo above its head.

  “Whose banners are those?” I asked over the panting.

  “Center is the Dustwardens.” Maggie answered. “Couldn’t give you the exact houses for left and right, but I know they’re the ones in command of this tower. The smaller banners all belong to officers stationed on this section of the wall.”

  “The moons. Are, house Othwell.” Ellen panted. “The goat’s, house Cliffport. They own most lifts.”

  I accepted that with a nod and turned to face the horizon behind us. From this far up, I could see further than I ever had before. The plains of the Telesian frontier stretched out seemingly until the edge of the material plane. The only sign of its end was the faint section of trees I could spot at the end of the horizon.

  Vast stretches of gold and green were dotted with small splotches of grey where hamlets lay. Thin tendrils of smoke from dozens of hearths made them easy to spot. During a clear sky like then, being this high up made me feel like I stood between the boundary of two worlds. This far away, the ground looked almost fake. A model made by a general to plan troop movements, but the sky was still far enough to look painted, a backdrop for the material plane laid there by the Dao at creation.

  The only thing around me that felt real was the stone beneath my feet and the monolith of red rock that stretched to the clouds behind me.

  We had to pass through a series of five gates, two of which came before a curve that led into a tunnel in the wall itself before it curved back out and deposited us in another courtyard protected by three other gates.

  Within the tunnel, I noticed that murder holes appeared almost every foot of the tunnel roof and, slightly elevated on both sides, were arrow slits and wand holes for easy access. Each gate that we passed had a raised portcullis on either side of a wooden door and a team of several guards.

  Despite all that, we passed through all the guards with no issue once we flashed our Adventurer’s Guild badges to those at the first, showcasing that we were, in fact, members in good standing with the Guild.

  There was no check process like there had been at Woodsedge. The guards simply saw our cards and allowed us to enter.