Ali and Miles followed Sarina, who held a small metal plate with a candle on top, lighting up their view through the darkness of the corridors leading below. Even though Miles and Ali didn't need the candle to see clearly through the darkness.
Sarina stopped in front of a thick metal door. The edges were rusty; it was clear this door had not moved an inch in many years.
"Tell us the history of this fortress…", Miles said to the maid who was looking through her ring of keys for the right key. She stopped and turned to Miles.
"The fortress was built about three hundred years ago when the kingdom finally liberated the south from the demonic forces. Lord Stork's ancestor was a knight who accomplished many great things during the southern war, and he was awarded the fortress and this plot of land.", Sarina explained what little history she knew.
"Found it", she said out loud when she finally held a thick old key for the door. She pushed in the key but struggled to turn it around in the lock.
"Move", Ali ordered the maid, who bowed to him and moved aside for Ali to try.
Ali held the key and used his iron grip…
SNAP
The rusty key snapped the moment he used his strength, and he was left with only the upper part of the key in his hand.
"I can open it..", Miles commented, but Ali raised his hand at the lock, and slowly Sarina and Miles could hear loud mechanisms and metal turning from behind the door.
"Wait for us back in the hall…", Ali said to Sarina as his Force sense alerted him of something dangerous from below in the torture chambers.
"Yes, my lord", she turned and left the dark corridor as Ali waited for her to completely exit before he used his Force to unlock the door. He used his right hand to push forward.
CREAK
The door only slid a couple of inches. Miles raised his eyebrows. For Ali to struggle to push the door means it must be very heavy.
"It weighs more than half a ton", Ali said to Miles, who was surprised at the figure.
Ali used both hands and black veins covered his hands as he pushed forward and finally the door started moving and the way below opened up for them.
VVVVVV
A gust of nasty air hit them in the face and Miles closed his nose as the air smelled like rotten corpses. Ali walked forward into a much wider corridor of old stone, he then turned around to see what was behind the door.
"This is some advanced engineering", Ali commented as he and Miles looked at the large mechanism that scaled up the wall above the door, it was the lock of the door that Ali managed to open with only his Force Sense and Telekinesis.
The two walked through the corridor until they entered a large room with multiple cells all around them where torture tools lay on the ground along with the bones of whoever was locked down here, the tools were rusty and there was nothing special about the cells either.
"There's something below, it's dead though, I can't feel any life signal…", Ali told Miles.
"I can send a drone down there to check", Miles responded.
"Do it", Ali walked forward and down to the floor below with Miles behind him throwing a small cube forward which transformed into a small drone that flew past them and down the floors.
On the second floor was the same as the first floor but with even more space and more cells, there was nothing else of significance.
"You're going to want to see this", Miles said as his eyes shined blue.
"What?", Ali asked.
"Let's just go down there, it's safe", Miles said as the two stepped down the stairs and the moment Ali was halfway down the stairs he felt a connection to whatever was below, the same as the one he had with Shadow.
He entered the bottom floor to see a giant black organ covered in metallic chains attached to the walls of the chamber, there was a stone slab in front of the chained organ, it had scripture engraved on it, one that both Miles and Ali couldn't read.
"It's a heart, of something very big", Ali commented.
"Yes, but it's not a heart that is biologically close to anything from Earth", Miles said as his AI compared this heart to all the data he had.
"Leave it as it is, you need to decipher the language.", Ali told the teenager who nodded and started walking back without taking his eyes off the heart. His cybernetic eyes were taking pictures and examining the large organ.
"I will set up on the first two floors of the underground. I will live there from now on.", Miles told Ali.
"Sure, also take out your human robot, cover it in a hood and send it upstairs to the former Lord's study. There are many scrolls and books that I want translated. Have Sarina help with deciphering the writing. Also, I will use the robot outside too.", Ali said to Miles.
"Sure, and I will start making a map for us based on the information I find", Miles responded.
"Good, I'm going upstairs", Ali turned and went up the stairs. 'Shadow was disgusted by the heart…', Ali thought as for the first time his Dragon that would eat anything lost its desire to eat.
"Lord", Sarina bowed to Ali when she saw him come out of the lower corridor.
"Tell me everything I need to know about my new land", Ali ordered as he walked up the stairs with Sarina following him.
"The fortress is smaller than what it used to be as we had to close some sections that were falling apart. Three upper floors and a lookout tower, and a large bath was closed below too. It is connected to the spring that runs through the village. There are fifty houses in the village, but the situation has become much worse recently. As you have seen, there are no crops or farm animals as our village relied on travellers that passed through the village on their way to the Southern Forest but since the conflict started between the inheritors of the Rancia Dukedom, visitors have become scarce", Sarina said to Ali.
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