The storage room did not have a door to the final area, so Kain and Luna had to leave through the front door of the storage room. On their way out, there was a clipboard-like item hanging on a hook next to the door. On it was a long list of random symbols, lines, and dashes. Luna knocked it down with her shield and Kain stored it away for later study. His logic was that if he had more writing, then some future archeologists could learn what any of it meant. They opened the door and quickly shuffled to the final area of the tower. Above the doors was a sign with a line of symbols and a large slab depicted. Kain slowly pushed open the doors with a giant dagger in his hand. The floating flames rushed forward into the space, illuminating the area as Kain gazed inside. The room was simple and undamaged, with only a desk, some of the cloth-paper, 2 doors, and some of the circular devices that they had forgotten about in the workshop area. Kain made a mental note to go back for them and silently scolded himself for forgetting it.
Luna hopped off of his shoulder and hopped over to the desk. She leaped up the tall desk and began to gather all of the papers into one pile. ‘Luna, what are you doing?’
Luna looked back to him, ‘I’m getting the papers all in order. We may be able to use them!’ Luna resumed her task, redoubling her efforts.
Kain sighed, asking, ‘Couldn’t you just do it with energy?’ He proved his point by using his much less potent control over energy to move all of the papers on the desk into one pile, sucking them up into the amulet. ‘See?’
Luna huffed, ‘I knew that! I can do that too.’ she rebutted. She grabbed the few circular devices in the room and placed them near the desk, beaming with pride at her accomplishment.
Kain threw them into the amulet, ‘Yeah yeah, I get it. It would have taken longer to move everything with your tiny paws.’ He looked at the doors on the other side of the room; one had the symbol of a book and the other had a symbol oddly similar to the ouroboros, with a snake-like dragon swallowing its tail in an endless loop. Kain gazed at the door with the ouroboros and walked up to it, pulling up his sword. Luna understood his intentions and brought the floating shield by his side after hopping onto his shoulder. The flames danced around the room, flying to his side. He pushed open the door and let Luna do her work, sending the flames into the room and putting her shield up to defend them. When the shield lowered, they saw an untarnished room with white a floor, walls, and ceiling. There were a few desks in the room which were in front of long in-built shelves that contained a myriad of empty glass containers. The desks were clean and there were no drawers on them.
Kain rushed over to the shelves, taking the hundreds of pieces of large glass equipment into his amulet in an instant. Luna raised a singular eyebrow, but held her comment back as she remembered his passing mention of wanting to take some of the Dragonoids’ dried blood with him for whatever reason. Other than the shelves and desks, there were a series of beds lined up spaciously and a large storage device powered by energy. As Kain went to observe the rest of the room for anything they may have missed with the help of her flames, she hopped onto her floating shield and sent it over to the large metal storage device. It was a full 10 feet tall and 6 feet wide; flying to the back, she saw that it was 6 feet deep as well. The front was bare aside from two large handles which opened doors that spanned the entire front side of the container. Before opening the strange device, she decided to ask her brother for any hints, ‘Do you know what this could be?’
Kain looked over to the device, quickly walking toward it, ‘Hmm… it’s probably a storage cupboard for something. Open it, see what’s inside.’ Kain said. He walked next to Luna as she opened the cupboard, letting a blast of cold air overtake them. The cupboard opened and inside there were dozens of liquids stored in glass containers, all labeled with more incomprehensible writing. Kain closed the cupboard, stashing the whole thing in his amulet. ‘Those were likely different medicines that needed to be kept cold. We will probably not be able to use them, as they were made for Dragonoids, but we may be able to study them and learn about how we could make something similar later.’ he said.
Luna gave him a blank look, ‘Medicine? What’s that?’ she asked.
‘A question to answer later. Damn… how much do we have to do later? We have to develop our energy usage, figure out the whole formation thing, study the robots, explain a whole host of concepts and ideas to you, figure out the metal thing, study the series of boxes we found, and avoid going hungry while doing all of that.’ He sighed, ‘Well, the best things in life are worth working for.’
Luna laughed, ‘We can do all of that once we go to your home planet! We’ll figure something out along the way.’
He smiled at the rabbit’s cheerful attitude, ‘I think you’ll like it back home.’ The two explore the rest of the room, finding nothing of note but noticing that the room was not dusty in the slightest. The room was completely clean, giving Kain the idea that the room was a medical ward. Luna also tested the softness of beds, finding them extremely comfortable.
‘We should take them with us!’
He chuckled, ‘Alright, fine.’ he said, ‘We’ll take it with us.’ He pulled out the amulet, and sucked the bed into the spatial storage. Upon the bed’s removal, a collection of clinks rang out in the room. They looked to the bed’s former place and found dozens of large black metal screws lying on the ground. ‘Hmm. Good to know. This thing can remove something even if it’s bolted and screwed to the wall. We’ll have to test the limits of that later.’ He picked up the screws and threw them into the amulet to use later, if anything came up.
The two left the room with the ouroboros picture above the door and entered the room with a picture of a book above it with their usual methods: open the door, send in the light, and check inside while using the sword and shield. The inside was different from any previous room as it had in-built carpets that were soft to the touch. The room was also packed full of metal bookshelves from wall to wall, and inside each bookshelf were countless books. There were thousands upon thousands of books all lined up along the bookshelves and they were all nearly untouched; the only thing that had affected the books was dust. Deep in the room, past countless bookshelves, there was a single hole in the wall, and next to it blood splattered on the ground around it. Luckily for the two book-loving explorers the area was set up similarly to an elementary classroom in that area. There were desks lined up in rows, all with a piece of paper on it along with a bar of black metal. The two gazed at the hole for a moment before finding a piece of paper that had not been touched by the blood splatters.
There was no writing on it, but a series of illustrated instructions for the presumed Dragonoid student to follow. There were 6 pictures with the first showing a Dragonoid student holding their arms above the bar of metal. The next showed a glow appear on the student’s forearms. At this point, Kain decided to try his luck at whatever the activity was meant to teach, so he sat in the chair that happened to be the perfect size for him and condensed energy around his arms. The third picture showed the student lowering their arms onto the block of metal, letting their energy envelop the block. Luna watched in curiosity as Kain lowered his arms and enveloped the block in his energy. The fourth picture showed the energy being infused with the metal, making lines of energy along the length of the metal, and each line connecting to both of the student’s hands. Kain did as indicated, feeling his control over the metal as each individual line of energy connected to his body, allowing him to make any minute change he desired. The fifth image indicated such when the student stretched the block out, making a long pole of metal. The sixth and final picture showed an adult Dragonoid, presumably the teacher, petting the scaly head of the student. Kain jolted out of concentration as a furry paw gently landed on his head and he felt it begin to rub his head. He sighed, ‘You don’t need to do that you know.’
Luna chuckled, ‘Maybe I just want to do it. You were following along, so I should too.’
Kain groaned, but then grinned, ‘But this is saying that the teacher should rub the student’s head. You’re not my teacher because you didn’t know this lesson, now did you?’ he remarked with a teasing tone.
She pouted, turning away. He laughed, disconnecting the energy lines, he rubbed her head at the base of her long ears. He stood up and twirled the long metal stick he now held in his hands. He felt a sense of achievement because he was now able to use all of the metal he had plundered from the storeroom. He decided to perform a quick test as he reconnected the energy lines once more in the same way he had before. He held the stick with his feet as he slowly realigned the lines to connect across the width of the stick instead of along the length of it. It was much more challenging, as he had to deal with many more lines than he had to previously. To lighten the burden on his mind, he cut every line other than the ones near the top of the stick. He wanted to test his capabilities in using energy in this way, so he decided to make an axe to use at a later time. He shaped the top of the stick to take the shape of an axe head, sacrificing the thickness a bit to do so. Noticing the dullness of the blade he realigned the lines of energy to run into the blade of the axe and easily made the blade sharper by moving some of the metal to the other side of the axe head, making a counterbalance of sorts. In the end, he was left with an extremely sharp two-handed axe. Seeing the finished item made his pride swell, giving him a sense of accomplishment. He stored the axe away in his amulet, looking to Luna. She simply gave a small smile that he had been becoming more accustomed to as he spent more time with her.
They finished their business quickly after that, emptying the library of every bookshelf and book there, taking every stray piece of metal in the classroom area, taking the fancy sword they had found on the first level, and going back to find the cylinder object in the workshop. He figured out how to open it, learning that it was a filing cabinet of sorts and that it contained a great many detailed blueprints for various robots that were lying around the tower and the workshop. Luna became very excited at the news, wanting to dig into its contents immediately, but was told by Kain to wait until they had finished their business. The final undertaking they performed was to collect as much blood from different creatures as possible, which led to them spending a few hours collecting hundreds of blood samples by wetting the dried blood and storing it in the glass containers. They paid special attention to the massive blood-covered stone structure on the top floor, collecting an entire large bottle of blood-water. Once they had finished all of their business, they left the tower through the hole in the wall they had entered from, waving goodbye to the massive metallic monolith.
Well, that does it! We’ve finished the, what I’ll call, Dragonoid Tower Arc! I have plans to give the characters a bit of downtime and give myself some time to flesh out the next arc which (slight spoilers) I’m calling the Soul City Arc. Between this and that will be one lore chapter where we hear back from our pompous friend Seviki, one side chapter where we talk about some one other than Uncle Trunks, and a few chapters of downtime, allowing for our explorer duo to experiment with some of the new information and items found. Thank you all for your continued support for my series!
