The two companions walked hand in hand through the darkness, untill they arrived at the dome like cave Reverie saw before.
Michael was amazed at the beautiful view. Ren understood completely, as she herself was taken in by the beautiful scenery once again.
She approached the stone plate and knelt down in front of it.
She knew there must be some kind of mechanism, yet she couldn't figure it out.
She placed her right hand on the sigils engraved on the plate, tracing the carvings, when suddenly she chanted the words. She didn't know the language that was carved into the stone and she didn't know about this spell, yet her lips moved on their own and spoke the spell engraved on the plate.
After she finished chanting, loud noises could be heard. The plate actually started to move.
Michael, who had been standing behind her ,now stared from Reverie to the stone plate and back. He was utterly surprised and excited at the same time. Things like these usually only happened in video games or movies, he thought.
The plate split in half and each part slowly moved in opposite directions from one another.
After about two minutes, the stone plates made way for a hidden passageway, just as Reverie expected. She was still puzzled over the whole chanting thing from before but she decided to just accept it. Sometimes you gotta be lucky, she thought and approached the stairs.
She picked up the torch, that lay on top of the stairs and lit it with the fire stones in her bag.
Now that they had light, they would be able to climb down into the darkness.
The boy gently grabbed the girls coat from behind her and they slowly climbed down the stairs.
The spiral staircase was endless. They climbed down them for almost hours, till they finally arrived at the end.
Reverie was wondering how deep into the volcano they were now and whether they would be fine down here.
The boy behind her was tired from all the stairs and sat down on them to rest.
Ren took a look at the grand hall they arrived at. It looked ancient with stone pillars supporting the ceiling. On closer look, she could see carvings at the foot of the pillars. Probably spells against crumbling she thought, given the age of them.
There was no light, except from the fire of the torch and the air was really dry, warm and sticky, making breathing hard for the two.
After Michael rested for a while ,the two continued walking down the hall.
The further they walked the more the surroundings changed. From an ancient looking temple style to a modern metallic high tech look.
The walls started to be covered by metal, the floor was plastered at some point and they gradually got more light from all around them, the further they moved. Reverie started wondering where the energy for the light came from. There shouldn't be electricity down here, yet they walked through a fully lit tunnel.
They finally arrived in front of a big metallic door. It was obviously locked and the wings looked too heavy to try to push them open. The two looked around ,trying to find a way to open it. They certainly wouldn't leave after travelling this far ,not until they knew what was behind this door.
They couldn't find anything to open the doors. Reverie stepped closer to it and placed a hand on the cold steel. She thought maybe a weird chanting miracle like earlier would happen again but it didn't. Just when she was about to give up, Michael excitingly started chanting children opening spells, like abra kadabra and the sorts. He was almost singing them, when Ren tuned in on it. It wouldn't hurt to try ,also it was quite fun to do she thought.
The two were happily singing away, when they could hear the clattering noise of a gear system moving.
The two turned around in surprise, as neither of them expected it to work. They watched as the heavy wings of the door moved open with unpleasant screeching noises and revealed a brightly lit room.
They slowly entered the room and noticed it was a laboratory of some sort.
On the right side were six big tubes, filled with a greenish liquid and many monitors connecting to them via cables. The monitors seemed to take notes on the activity of the tubes but neither of the two companions could see anything within them.
The left side of the room was covered in book shelves, overflowing with documents and books. There was also a desk with some papers spread out on it.
The central part of the room was covered with a giant coffin like stone case. Many tubes and cables were coming from within the coffin and connected to monitors and a Laptop.
Reverie stepped closer to take a look at the monitors. Heart rate, blood pressure, CO2 oxidation meter, EEG brain activity measurement. Reverie knew all of these monitors and their functions, from her many stays at hospitals.
Technology to measure someones life functions were connecting to the coffin. She couldn't see into it but she was sure, that a human was inside.
She tried to push open the lid, but it didn't move at all. Michael tried to help without asking any questions. He started trusting Reverie's judgement awhile ago and just followed whatever she did.
After a couple tries the two gave up on it and Reverie eyed the laptop instead.
-it's probably password protected...No way I get into it without a root kit, Internet and another PC...
Even though she thought this, she approached it anyways and pushed the power button.
The pc slowly started, it was probably a couple years old already and thus not the fastest anymore. Reverie was still thinking about how it was possible to have all this electricity down here. And having a person in a coffin like box nonetheless. From the looks of it, no one has been here in ages. The dust piled up in centimetres, it was dirty and there were spider webs all over the place.
Then, how does the person inside that coffin stay alive? They hadn't eat in a long time, usually they should be dead by now, however the monitors said something different.
Reverie was deep in thought when the laptop finally started and showed the home desktop. She got out of her trance and stared at the screen in surprise. It wasn't password protected! But why?! This was a laboratory somewhere in the middle of nowhere, most probably conducting illegal tests and yet the security here was lacking enormously.
Was the person responsible for all this sure, that no one would ever find this place? Were they really so sure about the safety of this place?
No matter how many times she thought it over, it just didn't make any sense at all.
Michael stared at the girl in wonder. He wanted to say something to get rid of that frown on her pretty face, but nothing came into mind.
He tugged at her sleeve and looked up at her with a concerned expression.
The girl smiled reassuringly and petted his head. She felt bad for making him worry so much, so she decided to give him a task, befitting of his adventurous personality.
"Hey Mik, could you do me a favor and look at the documents in these shelves for me? If you find anything cool let me know. It's okay if you don't understand the content, but if something catches your attention, show me okay?"
The boy nodded in excitement and ran off to the shelves. He would probably filter out the documents with pictures for her, which would make everything easier to understand, she thought. She knew enough about child psychology and behavior, to know how to make them feel useful to adults. She had to deal with children most of her current lifetime and she liked it alot.
She focused her attention back on the screen. She opened the documents app, in hope of finding something of interest, or how to open the lid of that cursed coffin.
To her surprise she could find many documents on the pc, yet whenever she opened one she was greeted by a blank page.
She was getting impatient and annoyed the further she scrolled and encountered empty pages. She scrolled down till the end of the folder and clicked on the last page, she thought maybe the last one had something written on it.
The moment she clicked on it a system message popped up;
[Do you want to proceed?]
'yes' she clicked and the screen started to flicker. It pixelated for a couple of moments with noise and then suddenly showed a girl with long stark white hair on it. She couldn't see the girls eyes or face clearly, due to the lack of light but she was sure she had seen that face somewhere before. She just didn't know when or where.
The girls voice spoke in a soft and calm manner to Reverie who stared at the screen. Reverie was sure she was watching a video recording, as she listened to the girls words.
"You are finally here."
-to be continued-