The Fabric Of Reality Read Online Free PDF Page B

below. But not before having a nice long nap. At least taking refuge in the castle would provide her with some solitude to contemplate her limited options. No one would dare to look for her there. The villagers were too afraid of the things that they believed lived within. No matter what happened now, she’d not see another sunrise on her world.
    The outer gate, which had most likely been made of wood, had long since deteriorated, leaving the main entrance open for all to pass. Deer trails led up to and around the perimeter of the outer wall, but none ventured inside. The forest vegetation grew along the ground but refused to encroach on the stones, as if they had some property preventing it from taking hold. Not even a bit of moss was visible on the stone anywhere she looked. Alesia placed her hand flat against the wall. The cold, smooth stone soothed her hand, but nothing unusual happened.
    She stepped through the entranceway in the thick, high wall and emerged inside the compound. From a distance, the scale of the castle was deceptive. Under the canopy of the forest it was hardly visible, but up close it was truly colossal. Six cylindrical guard towers capped with pointy roofs rose above the highest part of the main building. Dozens of smaller buildings were scattered throughout the compound. All were joined by a series of interconnecting walls obviously intended to provide people safe passage between the buildings during battles. Archer’s gaps lined the tops of every building and ringed each of several shorter towers. Narrow windows dotted the walls here and there, apparently intended as additional defensive positions.
    A set of the wide stone steps led from the walking path up to the castle’s main entrance. As with the outer wall, the door was missing. Alesia took a deep breath and proceeded inside. Flickering light from the lamp cast shadows from every outcropping on the walls and through every doorway. The massive structure had maintained its integrity for centuries. Other than a slightly musty smell, it showed no obvious signs of decay, a testament to the craftsmen who built it.
    She could only wonder about the lives of those who once called the place home. Romantic images of knights in shining armor riding white stallions and rescuing damsels in distress filled her head. Those were the stories quietly whispered among the women of the village. Alesia overheard such tales when the mistress loaned her out to cook at parties for the ladies of high society. No one knew the truth of the structure, and nothing but the stone remained. Some claimed it had been there for many millennia before the Great War and had been the only structure in the entire world left standing at the end. After nine centuries, so few records from the war survived that people doubted the validity of the ones that did. The odds were slim that the ancient structure could have remained intact when entire cities fortified with the best technology humankind could create were completely obliterated. Many outlying towns were said to have been leveled by nothing more than the concussive force from attacks on the metropolitan areas.
    At the end of a long corridor, a doorway led to a steep spiral staircase that wound its way around the inside of one of the cylindrical guard towers. That would be a perfect place to jump. She could ascend to the top of the stairs and simply step into the central void. Impact with the flat stone floor from such a great height would kill her instantly. But if anyone ever found her, they might believe she had accidentally slipped. No. It would be better to dive from a window so everyone will be certain that I jumped deliberately, to escape the baron.
    How resilient the human spirit is, desperately clinging to hope when the mind knows for certain there is none. Despite the revelation that her hero was merely a fantasy, she had never truly given up hope of finding someone living in the castle until she saw its emptiness for