The duo shuffled across the dark road with all the stealth that they could muster, the soft pitter patter of their footsteps falling lightly against the cobblestones below drifted through the dark street. Alina led them past the main manor of Drelk's home, around the outside, and into the rear yard of the property.
Soon Leor was able to see where they were headed. It was a large building in the shape of a pentagon sunken into the hard stone floor of the mountain, like a basement without a house on top. Runic inscriptions like the ones that filled the main gate covered the exposed roof of the sunken building, constantly thrumming with activity. Leor found it odd. They were already underground, inside the dugout interior of a huge mountain. What was the point of putting the workshop underground, in the underground?
As it turned out, he would discover the answer soon enough, but first they had to overcome the locked door.
As the duo stepped down a small flight of stairs, they reached the large stone door of the workshop. The door looked like it might weigh a thousand pounds, and it seemed to contain a strange locking mechanism like Leor had never seen before. An elvish mechanism of some kind, with dozens of small symbols lined up on a circular pad.
Leor glanced between Alina and the door with hesitance, but the girl seemed well prepared for this moment. She reached forward and placed her fingers against the symbol lock, her eyelids falling tightly shut as she focused. Leor couldn't help but hold his breath as his heartbeat began to quicken. They were quite exposed at this moment, standing before the door of Drelk's workshop in a cloak. There would be no talking their way out of it if they happened to be discovered now. Glancing over his shoulder at the dark manor behind him, Leor swallowed hard before turning back around to face the door.
A few more minutes passed in silence. Then, Alina's eyes shot open at once. Her face carried a hint of strain, as if she was forced to exert quite a bit of Willpower before she got the answer she was looking for, but it seemed to pay off. Her fingers rose up out of the long sleeve of the robe, lightly tapping a series of symbols with the quickness of a practiced hand, as if she had done it many times before.
Thunk
Leor winced hard as the sound of the large door's interior mechanisms unlocking echoed through the small stairwell, but Alina seemed wholly undeterred. She turned to Leor, gesturing toward the large door as she wrapped her hands around the handle, she was asking for help opening the heavy door. At once Leor understood why she needed to bring him along. Before this moment it seemed like it would have been smarter and easier for her to go alone with the single cloak.
The door was incredibly heavy, probably designed to be opened by a Beast, much like the main gates of the fortress. Leor wrapped his fingers around the cold stone, sharing a glance with Alina as they both nodded in unison, then his muscles tensed and strained as he pulled with all his might.
The door barely budged. Leor's eyes went wide as he realized it was not going to be easy getting inside. They continued to struggle against the mammoth weight of the door for a few seconds, then Alina huffed in frustration as she placed her leg up against the wall beside the door, lifting her entire body off the ground as she leveraged the power of her legs and back to help them pull.
That did the trick. Leor redoubled his efforts as he watched the edge of the door slowly move away from the doorframe. His fingers began to turn numb and the blood rushed to his face from the great exertion. When it had only opened a third of the way Alina dropped back to the ground, pulling Leor along with her as the two hastily rushed through the narrow gap. Barely had they passed through before the stone door slammed itself shut again behind them. Leor winced again at the noise, but there was nothing he could do. What was done was done.
The first thing Leor noticed inside the workshop was the bitter cold. As he turned away from the door a flicker of light spread through the vast underground room. Alina had slipped out from under the cloak and activated her Willpowered torch. The soft white light of her Willpower filled the room.
"The inscriptions covering this place will muffle our voices and hide our presence, you can speak freely now." She explained, her breath visible in the air from the bitter cold.
Leor hugged his arms around his chest as he followed Alina down the long hallway towards the interior of the workshop.
"It's as cold as a winter night here. I understand now why they built this place into the ground, it's probably to help save energy on the cooling formation." He mumbled softly as he followed her from behind, "What do you hope to find here, anyway? You never explained what we are looking for."
Alina shrugged her shoulders in response, pausing for a moment as she turned around to speak. "I'm not sure exactly. I have some suspicions that the Elder dragon had hidden something quite precious in this world. Even a greedy and jealous dragon would not feel the need to spend such an enormous fortune blocking portal travel just to protect any normal treasure. The old beast was so nervous that he hid this entire realm, keeping a city of dark elves trapped here." She shook her head softly as she continued, "No, I expect there is something truly miraculous hidden somewhere in this realm. But I don't expect to find whatever that is here in Drelk's workshop. Maybe it's not even in this mountain fortress at all, I can't be sure. My only goal today is to learn a bit more about what Drelk has been working on for all these years since his master fell to the defilement, and also maybe get an idea for what kind of precious spells, training manuals, or herbal potions he does have access to. A fully grown dragon is a powerful and brilliant creature, it should have stored a great deal of valuable information here. Once we know what exactly Drelk has got, we will know what to ask him for during our negotiations. No more questions, let's get this done and get out of here before someone finds us."
With that, they moved in silence down the rest of the long hall, and down a flight of winding stairs, before stepping into a wide auditorium sized room. The light of Alina's torch was hardly enough to fill the large area, prompting Leor to ignite his own torch and add to the lumination.
The first thing he noticed as he glanced around were the hundreds of tall bookshelves lining the walls, all the way around the massive room. Thousands upon thousands of books, more than one man could ever hope to read. Maybe not more than a dragon could read, however. The center of the workshop's interior was sectioned off into many separate areas.
One area seemed to be where Drelk stored precious spiritual herbs and other ingredients that needed to be kept chilled. Alina and Leor stepped passed with a casual glance, moving swiftly toward the center of the room. In the next section, there appeared to be the dead bodies of defiled beasts, dozens of them, all laid out on operating tables with their arms and legs tightly locked down.
Alina stepped closer to the row of bodies, her brows knit together tightly as she closely observed the scene.
"What purpose could there be in locking the arms and legs of dead creatures?" Leor mumbled, as much to himself as to Alina.
Without glancing up, Alina picked up a piece of parchment from the table nearby, quickly skimming through the contents.
"It's because they weren't dead when they got here. Drelk has been running experiments, searching for a way to cure the defilement from powerful beasts. No doubt in the hopes of someday saving his master. A hopeless task indeed. It would require Elyon himself to descend from the heavens to dispel the corruption from such a powerful beast." As she said those words she seemed to think of something, glancing towards Leor with a look of uncertainty. "Although, with that talent of yours, what might you be capable of if you reached the level of a Willpower master? You managed to wake the mind of a Twisted one as an initiate, after all."
Shaking the thought from her head, Alina continued through the workshop. Eventually she found something interesting. It was related to the research the Elder Dragon had been undertaking before his defilement. Viridrak was a green dragon, blessed with instinctual knowledge about the natural world. That much could be seen by how many powerful spiritual herbs were growing all throughout this mountainside. Viridrak's research was the reason that the Beasts here were all capable of taking humanoid forms. He was searching for a way to imbue a Beast with the ability to wield the Willpower of a man, but it seemed that he was unsuccessful in that endeavor. Still, his achievement of granting the Beasts a human form was already groundbreaking. If that knowledge was spread throughout the realms, it would change the very nature of Beast society. Perhaps even tipping the balance of power away from the humans and towards the Beasts over time.
The information Alina had found was the ingredient list for the spiritual potion that was used to grant the Beasts the rare ability.
"Remarkable. Something like this is truly groundbreaking. How exactly was Viridrak able t—" Her words stopped short, her breath seeming to catch in her throat.
"That's impossible…" She whispered, barely loud enough for Leor to make out her words.
He rushed back over to her side at once, glancing between her and the strange list of ingredients written in elvish in her hand.
"What is it, Alina? What have you found?"
She glanced up at him, shaking her head a few times before returning her fiery gaze to the parchment in her hands.
"Look at this ingredient." She pointed her finger to the page, staring at him expectantly for a few seconds before realizing her mistake. "Oh, right. Sorry, Leor. I forget you were an orphan at times. You won't be able to read elvish." She took a deep breath before turning to look up at him once again, "It says here that the final ingredient in this spell is the crushed up leaf of a sapling of the world tree!"
Leor's eyes went wide at the mention of the world tree. It was the sacred symbol of the realms of the Beasts, the most precious possession of Eres mother of chaos, herself. Even a sapling of such a treasure would spark a war throughout the Beast realms, and probably the human realms as well.
"That explains how Viridrak was able to do something no other being had ever done. Granting any Beast he wished access to the human form. The world tree is the greatest of all spiritual plants. Combined with the knowledge and ability of an Elder green dragon, it would have the power to overcome many natural boundaries! Doing something like granting Beasts access to the human form suddenly becomes possible." She glanced at him, the excitement clear on her face. "It could also do the opposite, Leor! Granting humans access to the powerful body of a Beast!"