CHAPTER 36: UNDERGROUND

It turned out that the discussion about the light source was pointless - the moment Calen entered the staircase, a line of dim gems lit it up all the way down.

"Convinient." He commented.

Whatever was at the bottom, Trent, or whoever else built it, went to great lengths to hide it, it took them almost five minutes to reach the secret chamber.

The room was relatively small, but filled to the brim with all kinds of things.

"I was expecting more of a planning room, a lab maybe - but this is just a storage." Lydia said, while inspecting an empty source oasis she found on a shelf.

"Don’t be to quick to judge, I doubt he only stored old baubles here." Vinifer retorted, studying the contents of a dusty bookshelf.

Following Vinifer’s example, they all started going through the contents of the chamber.

"Why was he storing all this junk anyway?" Calen asked, throwing away another broken runestone.

"Easier to hide the stuff you actually care about." Baor smiled. "Aha!"

"What is it?"

"I found a stack of letters, some are ancient while others are fairly recent."

The large druid showed a thick bundle of envelopes and scrolls to the rest of the group.

"Give me that." Lydia took the papers without waiting for a response, and started leafing through them.

After a few moments she took out two pieces of paper - one scroll and one envelope.

"These are two different correspondences, the scrolls are addressed to the "Puppeteer" and are newer, that’s obviously the one Trent was recieving."

"What about the older one?"

"I’m pretty sure those belong to Trent’s master."

"Were they talking to the same person?"

"No, the pseudonym and handwriting are different, but I’m pretty sure they were both from the Enlightened." She rolled her eyes. "I mean, just look at those names - ’the All-seeing’ and ’the Thinker’. Why would they come up with such obvious pseudonyms?"

"Well, their enlightenment is supposed to be spiritual, not intellectual" Baor quipped. "Did you find anything important in their exchange?"

Lydia shook her head.

"I don’t think we’ll learn much from it, we have the wrong half of the conversation to learn about Trent’s plans - though on a positive note it seems everything Conto said was true."

"Should we send it to the sage’s summit? It could help them find a traitor in their midst."

"Too much of a risk, we don’t know how high in the hierarchy is Trent’s ally, and our relationship with the Enlightened is already strained. If they don’t believe us we would not only inform the traitor of Trent’s passing, but also have a political scandal on our hands."

"His ally will piece things together sooner rather than later, from the looks of it they exchanged letters fairly often."

"Because of the issues in the Order and Mountainfall the runners aren’t operational, we’ll be fine for a while, unless he recieved this letter in someone alternate way." Vinifer chimes in.

Vinifer and Lydia began reading the letters more carefully, while the rest returned to searching.

"Look a that..." Calen murmured.

On the underside of the desk standing in one of the corners he found a miniscule keyhole, almost too small to be real.

’Did this guy have a thing for tiny locks or something?’

He was fairly sure the bronze key would be too big, but he took it out anyway. The moment Calen brought it closer to the opening, he couldn’t help but yelp in surprise.

The metal became molten, quickly reshaped itself to fit the keyhole, and then solidified again.

"Did you finall figure it out?" A voice came from right behind him.

He almost jumped, and quickly turned around.

A familiar smug smile greeted him

"You almost gave me a heart attack Isa."

She rolled her eyes.

"Sure, sure, but do you get what it is yet?" Isara pointed at the now comically small key.

Calen considered all he knew about the key - it could reshape itself, it belonged to someone with a lot of secrets to hide... and it appeared only when Trent’s body was destroyed.

"It’s a personal key!" Calen exclaimed.

"Ding ding ding! We have a winner. Honestly I’m surprised it took you this long."

"In my defense you wouldn’t normally expect a druid to have something Ike that."

A cough came from above them.

When Calen looked around, he realised they got the attention of everyone present.

"What’s a personal key?" Lydia and Cassian asked at the same time.

"Do you know what personal locks are?"

Lydia shook her head, but Cassian nodded.

"Right, sir Vandrel uses one for the armoury" He faced the Archdruid. "To put it simply, a personal lock is a magically sealed lock, that only you can open."

He twirled the tiny key between his fingers.

"A personal key is a safeguard in that mechanism - in the event that someone with at least one personal lock would die a key like that would be created, and it’s job is to open all the personal locks of the deceased person."

"Why did it appear only after you destroyed the body?" Lydia questioned.

"Normally the key is reveled once the body starts decomposing - No, I don’t know why that’s the trigger - me destroying the body must have had a similar effect."

Vinifer looked intrigued by the concept.

"Is there a way to check how many locks does a particular key open?"

"Not directly, but once you open a personal lock with it, the mechanism will cease to exist, and once you open all the locks the key will disappear as well."

Calen put the key inside the lock, and twisted. There was a barely audible click, and he took it out.

"It seems like Trent had more locks, depending on how many he had and how close together they are, you might spend at least a few years looking for all of them."

"That’s all fascinating, but would you just open the damn thing?" Baor said.

Calen shrugged, and pulled down to reveal the hidden compartment.

There was only one thing inside - an old, shriveled up root. While his companions didn’t show to much of a reaction, the druids all had various shades of disbelief in their faces

"A Goldroot? I thought they went extinct before the invasion." Lydia said.

"Judging by it’s state it might have been laying here since then, I wonder if it’s still usable." Baor replied

Elira narrowed her eyes.

"Are you sure it’s Goldroot? It looks nothing like what I seen in books."

"Positive" He grabbed the root and handed it to her. "Go on, snap it and you’ll see."

The plans was dark brow, full of wrinkles, and unpleasantly squishy. It took some effort, but Elira managed to break it in two.

Its interior looked like the outside, brown and withered, outside of one detail - the core of the root was like molten gold churning in a crucible, but somehow completely solid.

"Wow..." Elira whispered.

"I assume you know its effects then?" Vinifer asked.

The young alchemist nodded.

"It has the ability to increase the potency of any other herb several-fold, be it a medicine, elixir or poison."

"Yeah, I’m not sure about the multiplier considering its state."

Elira squinted at the golden substance.

"I think there’s enough here to at least double the effects of something." She turned to Calen. "Which substance would you rather enhance?"

"...The one that’s not painful?"

She sighed.

"You’re lucky the material has to breathe for a couple days before it’s formed into pills."

"Will you need my help with extracting this thing?"

"As much as I enjoyed our last talk, you won’t be necessary this time. I only need to crush it and add it to the pill mix."

Vinifer chimed in:

"Speaking of your elixirs, how are they going?"

"Good - I’ve perfected the tea over the last few days, the pills are almost ready to be formed, and the powder from the silver lotus is ready."

"...and your secret project?"

Elira hesitated.

"To be honest not very well... but I feel like I’m onto something, I just need more time for tests."

The Elder smiled.

"That’s good, I hope you share your results once you’re ready."

"Of course."

"It all sounds great, but can we focus please? We only searched a fraction of this room, and I really don’t want to stay here all day." Lydia said.

"Do we really have to search everything? Vast majority of this stuff is straight up junk, there’s no way he actually hid something between all those things - he wouldn’t be able to find it himself." Baor retorted.

"You don’t know that." Lydia crossed her arms.

"I think I do, no sane person would hide something like that."

"Guys!" Isara yelled. "I have good news and weird news, which one do you want first?"

"The good one?" Lydia said.

"I’ve found something."

"...and the weird one?"

Isara knocked in the wall opposite to the entrance, and a hollow sound resounded.

"There’s a second room here."