The detective flipped the journal in his hands to a marked page, ready to pour the mystery in a sieve. 'I've been reading Ernolds journal and what he wrote about expenditure. One of the things he tried to do was keep track of Mowe involvement and made sure to find the name of one of the sorcerers who opened the tomb, Linor'
'Linor?' The investigator whispered. 'An actual name?'
'Sorcerers who are powerful enough renounce their names, there are some very damaging spells that are activated through names a person responds to. Psychologically erasing their names, drastic, but effective in the long run, those too weak to handle that move away from where they're known and take up a new name.'
Alexus paused, his eyes lowered in thought, and continued. 'Ernold was aware of this, or I believe so because of how wrote this as, "....it took considerable effort but I will pick up hollow granadilla no more, I know who you are Linor." An odd metaphor, and he has a ridiculous bunch of these, but it gets the message across.'
Doran nodded in understanding but the back of his mind ruminated over the quote.
'Not something to concern ourselves with yet, it's what went down inside the tomb that I think you need to hear. It took ten days to make it to the east of the continent, where they were told the queen lies in rest. They had to climb Mount Shuher, it took 27 days till they arrived at the tomb and the entrance was described as "a cut in a pawpaws bottom".
Alexus hissed and sighed, Ernolds words were becoming too familiar to his senses, if he wasn't careful, he'd actually use them on someone.
'So they struggled through the passageway till they made it to what he believes is one of the chambers of unknown numerous others—'
'Huh?'
'Hm?'
Doran raised his hand for a pause. 'The pawpaw..... I don't — I don't get it.'
'It's not that difficult, pawpaws are hollow but filled with seeds, the seeds in this case, I'm not sure but I strongly feel it's probably rubble. If there was more to it he would say so.'
Doran found new respect for the youngster who is now able to grasp the concept of obscure metaphors.
'So they ended up in a chamber, and that was where things started to go wrong, they were like shrews on cement. He tried to look around but he started to feel like they were losing balance, the senses blocked from figuring out the center of mass. His men had begun to fall to their knees and he fell flat to the ground then he found the loop in the chamber spell. He told everyone to swim on the hard floor, distribute their weight and get out of the chamber.'
They were both chuckling at how ridiculous it all seemed. 'What a great start to a great adventure.' Says Doran.
'Well now, it wasn't all for naught, he noticed something about the chamber that he overlooked to recklessly go on with the excavation. After wandering for an unspecified time through various passage ways, caves and chambers, he couldn't ignore the ailments his men had slowly succumbed to and he had also begun to feel the effects.
From the map and description of the tomb, the entrance is just below the middle of the mountain, climbing over the pawpaw seeds seemed like it was leading them up the mountain but they reached a cave that had no bridge, they couldn't see the other side and they couldn't see the ground either. They decided to climb down, it seemed to have taken an hour or more but then dropped into a river.'
Alexus tore out a page of his own journal and with a small always on hand fountain pen made a simple illustration of the rise and dips inside the mountain.
'The river flowed and thinned into a passageway that had pillars rising higher than their torches could light up. I searched about Mount Shuher, the spaces they came across sounded too large to fit in total into the mountain. It's either, most of the journey was hallucination induced or some active alchemy and enchantment is in use, if it is the latter, who on Adams land is running the place?'
The fountain pen in his hand tapped furiously on the paper, eyebrows scrunched, eyes narrowed in concentration and hooked on every word translated from his sight.
'Shortly after their descent, the psychosis started and they walked straight forward no where leading up or down just straight. Even after two of them died he didn't want to leave, he was ready to die trying until according to his words "...I couldn't see, I didn't know if I had just closed my eyes, if I was dead or asleep but in that darkness I felt a touch and whispered breath in ear. What I seek is not here."
And then he stopped moving on adrenaline and once again began to function with logic. The chamber, the passages and the caves pointed towards a particular culture and taste of art. Ernold, a queen fanatic, knew through his extensive knowledge about the queen that she took preference to modernity. If a tomb was going to be made for her the designs wouldn't be focused on Marlic constructions.
I had to search for this too. According to him it should be Marlic first century but there's scarcity in information about that period as it is buried under continuous rising variation in human cultures. They had been exploring a Marlic first century relic, very likely a temple.'
Doran voiced his thoughts. 'Something that old that still has active magic inside? And the scale of the place, it's impossible for just one person to enchant, what is going on in there?'
Alexus shrugged in reflected dissatisfaction and mumbled. 'It was at that point Ernold turned around, he didn't find out. So much about seeing things through.'
'They didn't go back the way they came in, Ernold described it as an invisible force pushing his back, his men settled down after leaving the open spaces and they had to go through a tunnel which led them to come out of the base of the mountain.
That makes no sense.'
Alexus tried to draw the path on paper but just dropped the pen and sighed. "The place is riddled with magic, an illogical network of a long lost civilization building inside a mountain shouldn't be pondered on so much. So they went in, and out but it's never mentioned they took anything?'
'No. Nothing.'
'Ok... anything else?' Dorans' eyes pleaded with the detective to give something progressive to work with.
'Don't take a bite off my fork, there's nothing there, I couldn't find anything else to chase after that.' Alexus flipped the book over and put it to the side then folded his arms over the table. His expression was concentrated and he looked directly at the investigator who could sense the shift in ambience and sat up straight to listen.