~
MELOVAR Aspen climbed the stairs with complete disregard for the height and the gusting wind that pushed relentlessly against his thin frame. He was barely out of breath; he had tasted the bitter sweetness of the elixir on his way, and could feel the strength it gave him. He may still look an old man, but he felt as good as he had when he was a young priest.
Ahead of him Moragon turned, no longer surprised at the Primate's progression from frailty to vitality.
"Here, Primate. This is where the fourth and final explosion occurred."
The summit of the mountain was once a pure place. The gentle glow of the Pinnacle was all that decorated the level area, and even the Primate himself came here when the trials of the world imposed some much-needed time to think.
The pilgrims came from far and wide to see the Pinnacle, and many of Aynar saw the light from Stonewater's summit and felt in awe of the templars and priests who lived here. Much of the Tingaran Empire's reverence for the Assembly of Templars stemmed from the wonders of Stonewater.
And now the Pinnacle was gone, the mystery of the light solved once and for all.
The light had guarded a building. Whatever it had been, it was now in rubble, the broken blocks covered in dust.
"You say this was where the fourth explosion occurred. How much time passed between this and the explosion at the refinery?" Melovar asked.
"The templars thought it as strange as you do, Primate. Apparently there was not long between them."
"How do you think he made his way from the foot of the mountain, the very base of the vault, to the summit of Stonewater in such a short span of time?"
"I don't know," Moragon said.
"Speculate," said the Primate, raising an eyebrow at the melding.
"My thinking, Your Grace, is that this is completely different. The first three acts shared a combined purpose. The desired outcome was to prevent our production of more essence, and more elixir, and the perpetrator was successful. I am no loremaster, but it seems to me that one machine might be replaced, but three, including the refinery, would be difficult, if not impossible."
Primate Melovar's expression blackened at the mention of the intruder's success. "Go on."
"What happened here was a separate event, executed by someone else. He may have been allied to the first intruder, but he came here with his own purpose, and what was destroyed here was not related to our production of either essence or elixir."
~
MORAGON'S words stayed with the Primate as he went back into the mountain and surveyed the destruction at the extraction system. He pondered as he frowned at the scorch marks and debris, seething with anger. It was impossible for him to reach the refinery; the broken stone would need clearing, a process that would take months.
The world's supply of essence was gone.
Primate Melovar Aspen's role was to know about essence, but no templar had ever understood the relics, not even Templar Zavros, the man most knowledgeable about the world's most valuable substance. It was Zavros who had perfected the elixir, a process still within the Primate's grasp. Yet essence was needed to create elixir; only a small amount of raj nilas could be extracted and processed from a larger amount of essence.
It always came back to essence.
As leader of the Assembly of Templars, Melovar knew the age-old process as well as any. The energy of the sun, the water, the earth, and the air was absorbed by plants. Grasses, bushes, trees, mosses: they all held this energy, and it was only when they died that it could be regained. As the vegetation rotted, it condensed, and over millions of years it formed lignite. Any decomposed plant material could be used at the harvesting plant, but lignite offered the best reclamation potential and led to the largest extraction of essence.
With the relics now destroyed beyond repair and even the wonder that had been the Pinnacle gone as if it had never been, Melovar had nothing left but to look forward to the pain of withdrawal from the elixir, leading to inevitable death.
Nothing left but anger.
As the Primate walked back to his chambers, up endless stairways and through dimly lit corridors; he levelled his gaze at one of the templars guarding his work room.
"Fetch me someone who was here during the attack. Now."