The three of us joined a group of maybe a dozen, two dozen people that were all around our age I’m guessing, just waiting for the person who’s going to be leading our group, when the large glass doors of the tower smoothly and silently slid open.

              “Whoa…he’s hot” Da whispered as she nudged me in the side which I just brushed off as he walked over. The guy that walked over was extremely tall, well over six foot with muscled shoulders and a matching chest, but generally fairly long and lean, like a swimmer almost, very warmly tanned skin that was heavily speckled with scales of creams, gold and neon blue, heavily pointed ears adorned with a thick fringe of ivory and gold feathers off their backs, loose hair that hung to his mid-back in this blinding cobalt blue color and feathery in texture while also adorned with matching feathers of cream, gold and neon blue, upturned and large, angular eyes that were a harsh neon orange color with…no whites to them nor pupils, just featureless voids of orange, extremely sharp, angular and upswept features matching his eyes giving him a very reptilian face that, a very elongated neck with white/gold banded scales down his throat matching the underside of his arms and tail: his entire jaw and hairline were scales, they feathered and peppered out across his temples, cheekbones, around his eyes, nose and mouth as they fully covered his ears too, he was more scale than skin. He smiled showing sharp teeth as he folded his hands, long scale covered fingers ending in gilded claws, a long bullwhip like tail swished out behind him of cobalt with a white/gold underside ending in a large puff of ivory feathers, a large pair of matching ivory wings folded against his back and limbs entirely scaled with lizard-like digitigrade feet and legs, a blue-black forked tongue, blue-black gums and a singular set of extremely upswept, elegant and delicate looking ivory ram horns that were at least a yard or so tall in this sleek, loose corkscrew shape. As he shifted, his scales had this off-white sheen to them where they looked white at a point or blue at another, the feathers that hung down across his person looked like peacock feathers with cobalt blue centered surrounded in white, golds and ivory tones. Multiple earrings went up his pointed ears, a handful of pieces of very large gold jewelry across his person which clashed with how he was dressed; a tucked in and fairly open button-down of plum colored velvet that was tucked into black slacks, all black pieces with all those masses of golden jewelry, all of them adorned with stones of pale blues,

              “Hello, everyone, I’m Dominus and I’ll be your guide for the tour” he said with that sharp toothed smile, softly folding his hands in front of him, voice; rich, smooth and almost purred with a bit of a…I’m guessing Swedish accent to it. “Come on, let’s get to the tour” he added as he gestured for all of us to follow.

              The interior of the towers were just as impressive as the outside of them:

The interior of Urek tower had marble flooring, white stone walls adorned with gold fluted pillars, art deco artwork and décor and matching art-deco elements across the interior, centered in the bottom floor was a massive statue, arms held out as these floating panels and things moved up and down around it, the interior of the tower was also much, much larger too; the tower was many, many floors, but the interior of the lobby felt like it had to be a handful or so of stories up too: the statue of Urek was probably…eighty or so feet tall, open catwalks looped around all of the floors past fifty feet up or so, the statue’s base was golden and looped with built in dark purple couches, depicting a feminine looking figure with these large sprawled feathered wings of geometric shapes, a long golden scorpion tail coiled out behind her and around her lion-like legs, a beautiful, but stern face with these massive sapphires set for her eyes, wild hair out and around her and depicted in a mix of robes and 20s style clothing, her left hand raised with a giant purple sphere where her right was lowered atop a tall, thin cane with a matching purple sphere, gold astrolabe like fixtures floated around her.

Silklily was almost the opposite of Urek inside, everything and anything you saw was living, growing plant-life, artwork made of sculpted vines and pliant, young tree limbs, roots grew through the ceiling wrapped and coiled around raw edged glowing stones, lichen and mosses grew along the pillars giving sections of the wall an almost carpeted appearance, the floor was still stone, but there were rugs of clusters of various mosses, grasses and other softer ground lying plants, strings of flowers grew up from spots of the wall or hung down them from wherever their vine base dangled, just…the world’s densest greenhouse would pale in comparison to the interior of the tower, however because of all of that plant-life, the air was rather heavy; both in scent and humidity, not muggy, but it was almost rainforest like inside and as expected, serving as the elevator, was this central statue of Silklily. The statue was shorter than the Urek one, still making it upwards of sixty or so feet, entirely silver with the base looped in white velvet couches, a tall and elegant fairy man, feet balanced on tip-toe with his arms raised overhead, crossed at the wrist as he looked upwards, hands holding a large white sphere of glass, the X shaped wings that spread off his back were of delicately sculpted and caved silver, inlaid with frosted and clear glass giving them a vaguely monarch butterfly like appearance, his face lifted, despite the angle, was serene and peaceful, large eyes set spheres of rose quartz, soft pixie like features set with no visible emotion, silver sculpted hair as if caught in a wind to his collar, cloud-textured bands fell down his back spanning between bands that wrapped around his upper arms and appeared to be actual clouds by the way it fell and rippled along the base letting wispy fog trail off along the floor, the clouds all were focused from the sphere he held overhead and despite the ornate suit of velvet, brocade, jewelry and finery, entirely barefoot.

As for Vyls tower, the only time I had seen that kind of styling and architecture was in sci-fi movies, everything was cold, metallic and with a strict color pallet of white with shades of gray and blue. Everything was metallic and made the interior almost medically sterile feeling and made every and any sound echo like thunder. Everything was of sculpted seamless metal or glass like so many sci-fi movies do, sculpted acrylic forming tables, chairs or artwork that was clear with an under-lit blue or white tone that glowed through the glassy material, everything was polished to a near mirror finish and all of the artwork, what of it there was, was made entirely of chrome or glass. Floating around the large statue of Vyls, were hundreds of these floating metallic pieces that would randomly and very quickly shunt off to the side and turn to form a stairwell, pathway or bridge for someone on a higher floor before returning to where it floated before. The statue of Vyls was shorter than the others, I’m guessing due to proportional height of all of the people depicted, maybe only forty or so feet tall and where the previous two were gold and silver, Vyls appeared to be of solid jade depicting a very androgenous goblin figure; face somewhat pixie like, but exaggerated with bat-like ears, sharp teeth, an almost too thin and pointy of nose and too big of eyes, a long ponytail that was suspended around them to hang to the knees, dressed in these massive diaphanous robes carved from the jade, one arm curled in and around a softly glowing yellow sphere of pure sunlight, the other slightly aloft holding a staff taller than themselves wrapped in vines and plants, but with a large burst of carved flowers at the top with matching glowing yellow stones as their centers, large amber stones set for their eyes and blue toned sofas around the base with motes of light and those metallic shapes floating around them.

Then there was Elemenece, everyone instantly started shifting in discomfort at the warmth within the fiery tower, inside was of all dark woods, dark stone and magical false fire for lighting, everything was rich and decadent in velvet, brocade and silks, tapestries and things along the walls matching the other artwork showing a focus on birds, specifically phoenixes, across the tower’s interior, the air was pungent with the smell of warm spices mixed with floral tones that stung the nose a little, but only for that initial few seconds of walking in, same with the warmth, like an inverted feeling of walking into a shop that had its AC on full-blast. The statue central was the tallest of all of them at roughly a hundred or so feet, I’m guessing by the layers of exposed catwalk hallway that surrounded it: entirely copper and depicted a tall, lanky woman, one of her legs lifted and huge wings spread out behind her, wings only metal at their top ridge where the rest that should be feathers were instead flames that were so consistent that they looked fake till you could see the edges ripple a little, bird like legs and bird-like, sharp facial features with large emeralds for eyes, a massive mane of loose hair caught in a strong wind, flames filling the basin without heat or smoke looped in black couches, dressed in looser clothing with lots of jewelry, with a black sphere held in her left talon like hand with a second one set in the center of her forehead, the flames crackled along various points of her, but heatless and silent.

Lastly, there’s Onnezohr, the interior I’m guessing would be the most “classically magical” in its styling, but along that same vein, something about magic went well with a collegiate style; all the marble, brick, dark colors and jewel tones. It felt like walking into an old, old college building, not a floating tower, my mind’s first comparison even though I’ve never been, was the feeling of grandeur, age and professionalism that one would feel walking into Oxford. Floating lights, astrolabes, weird rings, spinning fixtures, floating magical instruments and things that I couldn’t make head nor tails out of, slowly and ceaselessly floated about the tower interior, though all centered around the statue at the tower’s center. Onnezohr, depicted in pure bronze, was a seventy foot tall human man, a Seer I’m guessing based on the fact his left eye was topaz and the other onyx, strong and broad features, broad shoulders and far more muscled than one would think a wizard would be, long hair in protective braids down his back adorned with various charms, clasps, beads, rings and pieces, his left arm curled around a heavy tome with a glowing green sphere set in the cover with his right hand raised holding a scepter with a glowing green top, dressed in flowing wizard robes with gold rings floating in orbit around him, other colored spheres of random size in random orbits between and around the rings, a base of uneven, random tiers of stone looped in dark green couches. There was almost something vaguely Statue of Liberty like about the statue, it was definitely the pose, I knew that much was giving me the comparison, but there was a similar emotional response based on how people reacted seeing it.

“Hercules?” a voice asked