For a second, they simply pointed down towards the ground far below.
He let go of them, and they fell into the darkness.
The knight turned around to face the gates.
He seemed to have understood what we were here for.
But even for a giant like him, the gates were far too heavy to simply push open.
He didn't try to push them open, however.
He slid one foot back, pulled one fist back, and deeply inhaled.
It was obvious what was going to happen next, and yet, I simply was not able to believe this was supposed to work.
At first his fist seemed almost still — then it blurred forward, faster than my eyes could follow.
In the blink of an eye, his fist crashed into the gate, the impossible impact forcing it to groan and shift.
Slowly, meter by meter, they swung back, opening the view into a high hallway.
The light fell through colorful mosaic windows from both sides, slowly shuffling pictures over each other like a kaleidoscope as we walked down the hallway.
After what felt like an eternity, the corridor opened into a garden; trees I had never seen stretched over our heads like umbrellas.
Weird animals hung down from the branches of some; they looked like monkeys, but their skin was white like snow and glistening like it was wet.
But the scariest thing about them was their eyes.
Their eyes were far too large for their skulls, wide and unblinking with a raw, unnatural terror.
As soon as I looked into the eyes of one, I was absolutely certain that this wasn't the first time one of these had observed me.
The moment our eyes met, I knew — this wasn't the first time it had been watching me.
I kneeled down to pick up a rock to throw at them, aimed, and a cold yet high voice stopped me.
"I would advise strongly..."
I could feel the temperature behind me dropping.
"...against doing that."
A hand shot forward and grabbed the stone.
Behind me stood a man of maybe 30, with black hair falling down to his shoulders.
His clothes were light and not those of a fighter, yet his chest and left shoulder were covered by thin plates of glistening ice.
As I met his gaze, the temperature dropped yet again.
His eyes were blue yet almost white, stinging into everything they fell upon.
At his side stood a young girl, roughly our age, maybe a little older.
She looked similar to him, presumably his daughter.
The girl looked at me like I had just murdered someone.
Were the monkeys maybe scared?
I looked at the monkey again, who was now climbing up through the roof of leaves.
While he climbed, he still constantly kept staring right into my face, now seemingly muttering something to himself.
"With your survival instinct, you don't belong here. Without meaning you harm..."
A grin snuck on his face, a cold, false smile.
"...you are destined to die."
He turned around and started striding in the opposite direction, his daughter hurrying after him.
The only thing that he left behind was the cold.
And his threat.
That I would die.
Phil placed his hand on my shoulder.
"He was just trying to rattle you. Some people live for that."
But I knew that wasn't true. He had meant every word.
But I knew pondering over the strange man wouldn't get me anywhere.
Now that we were actually inside the headquarters, I had no idea what we were even here for.
Where were we even headed?
But as always, Thessa seemed to have a plan.
She was staring at the tallest of all towers, a wide dark rise that stretched over all the others.
"What's up there?"
She paused for a second, grasping for the right words.
"The strongest."
———
Of course the tower was not accessible for just everyone.
In the weeks of ascending the tower, I had seen many gates.
Yet none were as strange and revolting as those before us.
It was hard to tell if what lay before us even were gates or a living being, since the entire surface of the gates was covered in eyes.
Eyes of all colors and shapes, the eyes of animals, creatures, and humans.
The only thing they shared was a restless tremor in their pupils, as if each was trying to escape its own gaze.
But there were even more eyes.
I turned around and almost stumbled back against the door.
The weird watchdog apes had returned, but there were far more than before; there had to be hundreds of them, each staring at us.
They didn't seem aggressive; they simply observed us.
They had cornered us.
And just in this moment, all the eyes turned up, as if they had seem something move in the sky.