World Of The Fallen Dragon

6

They repeated these lines over and over again, saying each word in unison. The lines drawn on the ground glowed faintly, and the blood in the goblet began to seethe little by little. It remained cold, did not boil, did not steam, but twitched and gurgled, as if writhing in writhing.

— Bekvim talvimat!

— Bekvim fegatar!

The blood in the goblet frothed violently, and Marin dropped it, but the contents did not pour out, but rolled out like a mobile and elastic ball of mercury. As if sniffing, he twitched to one side, to the other, crawled towards the corpse, but stumbled upon a barrier of broken lines and moved in the other direction.

“It worked,” the gray mage whispered, looking fascinated at his handiwork. “Another spell in my piggy bank.

“Char Thobius, does he have to move so slowly?”

- How should I know…

The gorewort crawled along the ground slowly but surely.

“I think he took the lead.

- I doubt. At this rate, we won't find the maleficarum until tomorrow morning.

- Let's fix it! Bully, come to me!

One of Tobius' companions approached. The magician unbuttoned the fibula of his cloak and pulled back the hood. The observers saw a hemispherical wooden head with painted eyes and a smiling mouth.

“It's one of my puppet golems, Ruffnut. As you can see, it is better not to fall under his hand.

Instead of brushes, cast iron balls gleamed dully on wooden forearms. Tobius carefully picked up the bloodstone from the ground and, reading the magic formula from the field of artefacts, painted the wooden body of the golem with it.

"Now run!" the wizard shouted, buttoning his cloak back.

The golem turned and rushed away at a speed not available to any rider.

— Char Maren, cling! Brothers, keep up! Reaper, follow me!

The chase began, hard and long. The bully, connected to the bloodstone through an artifact spell, rushed to the nearest source of blood. He did not understand the road, he went straight, through a windbreak, skirting only trees, jumping over streams, jumping into ravines. The monks quickly fell behind, for a horse in the forest without paths and roads is not so much help as a burden. Tobius, on the other hand, clung to his creation with his eyes and followed it relentlessly, avoiding hitting thick branches only by a miracle.

The golem swept along the edge of a steep bank over a particularly wide river, jumped down, somehow got over to the other bank and broke into a thicket of hawthorn.

“He is… going to the rocky… mud…” shouted the necromancer, the sounds of whose voice were stolen by the wind.

- I see!

The golem ran towards the rocks in the distance, and Tobius looked out for him until he completely disappeared between the rocky slopes. The wizards descended onto a thick leafy carpet among mossy ancient boulders, on which small trees grew at strange angles. Thobius felt for the faint trace of his magic left by the golem, and began to clamber up the winding narrow track that had been carved into the rock by the brook. Climbing was difficult, a couple of times he almost got stuck, but a strong flexible body that had gone through directional mutations each time appropriately twisted and squeezed into stone cracks. So Tobius got to the cave, a very small hole in the body of the rock, leading deep into the depths. From all sides, a stone pressed on him, only a weak light penetrated from above through the crack, and a thin stream flowed under his feet.

— Char Thobius!

I'm here, don't make noise.

The necromancer squeezed his way to the gray mage, the Reaper was right behind him, pounding on the stones like a ratchet.

- Just think about it. We found!

“I don’t feel any presence of someone else’s magical power.

Me too, but what else could it be? Do you hear a knock?

- It's inside. Someone has to wait for the monks.

“They can feel us as we feel them, so they won't get lost.

Nodding to each other, the wizards somehow dodged in tight quarters, took out magic wands and began to slowly descend into the abyss. Tobius cast Raccoon Eyes on himself, the necromancer preferred Grave Vision. Under the influence of the spell, the darkness dissipated, every ledge, every bump, every cobweb became visible, but at the same time the world lost most of the colors. The magicians descended lower and lower, ducking so as not to touch the ceiling, and the knocking became louder. The stone gut twisted three times before they hit a small expansion, an artificial cavity inside the rock. In the pitch darkness, the Bully pounded with his whole body against one of the unevenly hewn walls. The golem pounced on her, jumped back half a step, and pounced again.

"Stop," Tobius ordered, and the doll froze.

— It looks like a hermitage, don't you think?

“I have never been to a hermitage. Oh, there's a decayed couch, don't step on it.

The stone bag really looked like a living room. I once lived. There was a bench on the floor, and the stone against the wall could be used as a table. It even had a few half-decayed goose quills sharpened for writing on it. No sign of alien magic.

“This isn't a wizard's dwelling, it's some kind of hole in the ground,” Marin muttered.

“Or it’s still a wizard’s dwelling, but very skillfully protected. Keep your eyes peeled.

Tobius pushed the golem aside and drew a magic circle on the wall with a piece of coal from his bag. The Gaze of Kutrub spell allowed you to "look" through stone and earth. The disadvantage of it was that the spell only worked if cast on the appropriate surface. After reading the right words, Tobius put his hand on the line and, closing his eyes, smiled.

“Looks like we saved ourselves from the investigators of Investigation. I observe vast voids behind a barrier literally two feet thick. Secret move.

“I don’t feel any locking charms.

“And there aren’t any, char Maren. Everything is mechanical. Lever at full height with arm outstretched. See that hole over there?

The necromancer stuck his fingers into the recess, and there was a click. After a moment, part of the wall smoothly moved inwards. The magicians took a deep breath of the air escaping from the passage and smelled a smell surprisingly inappropriate for a musty cave lost in the forest - the smell of an apothecary's shop. They realized that they would most likely see a laboratory below, full of magical and alchemical ingredients. Powders and mixtures, dry herbs, mosses, salts, crushed minerals, various reagents, fragrant and barely smelling substances.

Ordering both golems to follow, Thobius stepped first onto a rock-cut spiral staircase that led down in wide circles. After the fortieth step, dim reflections of light began to appear on the stone walls, and the wizards continued to descend slowly, very carefully. Tobius sincerely feared every step - after all, if there was a mechanism for opening secret doors, then why not find a mechanism that throws arrows or fiery streams when pressure is applied to some step?

The magicians descended into the high round hall.

“We did find it,” Maren breathed out in a whistling whisper. - Incredible.

They froze, carefully studying the situation. Metal cylinders of various sizes stretched along the walls of the hall, connected by a network of pipes. There were tables filled with all sorts of alchemical utensils, from cauldrons to elaborate stills; shelves with books and shelves with bottles, bags and boxes. Magic circles of various sizes and levels of difficulty were carved into the floor.