All three dwarves as well as Seraph and Sylva stopped beside him, while Rory and Genevieve wandered on, their eyes skimming over the painting as if it were no different from the rest.
‘This is what we are fighting against,’ Othello said, his voice barely above a whisper as he traced the fallen figures in the painting with the tip of his fingers. ‘It could happen all over again. I have studied our historical texts, learned how swiftly the hatred can take root, on both sides. Four times the dwarves have rebelled, and failed. Four times our race was castigated, reduced to vermin in the eyes of humanity. We must break this cycle. Only through unity can we be truly free.’
Atilla strode away in disgust, and Fletcher could not blame him. The image was loathsome, not something to be glorified in the hallowed halls of Vocans. Seraph ran after him, but the arm he draped over the young dwarf’s shoulders was shaken away.
‘Come on,’ Fletcher muttered. As he turned to walk on, there was a strange crackling sound. He looked over his shoulder to see that the painting’s surface had been charred black, and there was an etched fire-spell symbol floating before it.
‘Oops,’ Cress shrugged, patting Fletcher on the back as she walked by, ‘my hand slipped.’
They jogged to catch up with Rory and Genevieve, who had almost reached the top of the north-western tower. The stairwell had layers of dust coating all surfaces, broken only by a narrow pathway where it had been disturbed, as if only one person ever used it.
Finally, the two teams crushed together before a barred door, deeply embedded with iron mechanisms to keep it secure. Lysander lifted his front claw and tapped against it, a strange mix of scratches and knocks that were a code of some sort. After a pause, the locks began to twist and rattle. Then, with an ominous creak, the doors swung open.
The inside was as gloomy as the stairwell, the main lighting coming from a single chandelier in the high ceiling above.
‘Come in, come in,’ a gravelly voice called from deep within. ‘Don’t knock anything over!’
Fletcher and Sylva led the way, releasing wyrdlights from the tips of their fingers to illuminate their way forward. The blue light cast an eerie glow over a vast array of shelves, tables and workbenches, each one covered in glassware and tools.
To his left, Fletcher saw demons hanging suspended in jars of pale green liquid, just as the goblin had been at the council meeting. Many were missing limbs or heads, and the surfaces of the tables displayed their dissected remains. On the right there were potted plants instead of demons, as well as bubbling beakers of viscous liquid, slow boiled from below by miniature furnaces.
Each plant was stranger than the last. One had heavy, bulbous flowers that pursed and opened at them like kissing lips. Another was almost entirely comprised of tuberous roots that seemed to twitch towards the light as they passed by.
‘Don’t be shy, make yourselves at home,’ the voice uttered, and a figure stepped out of the shadows.
Her skin was darker than Seraph’s, with a cap of tight, greying curls on her head. She wore a long coat of white cotton, with blackened leather gloves extending over the sleeves. A bright, almost mad grin was spread across her face, and she peered at them through a pair of thick spectacles that made her eyes appear twice as large.
‘You’ll have to forgive the mess,’ she said, motioning at the tables covered in vegetation and body parts around her. ‘Jeffrey was supposed to clean up, but he snuck off to watch the Tournament instead.’
The group remained silent, and she shifted nervously, as if she expected them to speak.
‘Cup of tea? Or was it coffee?’ she asked, motioning to a simmering cauldron a few feet away. It was filled with an unidentifiable brown substance that shared the consistency of mud. ‘Maybe ginseng? Cocoa? It was something tasty, anyway.’
‘Umm, no thanks,’ Fletcher said, politely. There was a glop as a large bubble burst on the surface.
She stared at them some more, the grin slowly leaving her face until Fletcher cleared his throat and asked what they were all wondering.
‘Who are you? What is this place?’
Her smile returned and she motioned them over to the table beside her. It was better lit than the others, with a lantern suspended above it.
‘I am Electra Mabosi, from the land of Swazulu across the Vesanian Sea. I am a botanist, biologist, chemist, demonologist. Little bit of everything really. Alchemist is probably the best word. But I am not your guide, if that’s what you’re worried about. Haven’t left this room in four years and I don’t plan on doing so any time soon.’
Fletcher looked around the gloomy room and tried to picture spending the past four years of his life in such a place. It was better than his prison cell, but not by much. What kind of person would want to stay there for so long?