Intriguing mountain.

Intriguing mountain.

Chapter: 27

Rodolfo was currently meditating to restore his used energy. He had only started to do that and would need the whole night to restore his energies completely. But he was awoken by a wonderful smell, that he had never smelled before.

Not being able to ignore this heavenly smell, he then opened his eyes and searched for the source of it.

There were trees all around him and only a few meters away of him was a fireplace, which was brightly lit and on that could be seen a pot. The pot was full of vegetables and right next to it were put many skewers with meat on it. The freshly meat was making sizzling sounds, while a rich aroma was wafting through the air.

Rodolfo could not look away from the food, that was only needing a bit more time to be ready. He did not even see the tent and the people walking around to get everything ready. His whole visual range was covered by the sight of the dripping meat and the good-looking vegetables soup.

Richard and Sniffy were running around to set up everything for their improvised meal. Sniffy had wanted to eat in the dining area of the tent but Richard was strictly against it.

He had argued with.

"Camping is all about eating in the wilderness, around a fireplace while sitting on logs or stones. The feeling of being completely out in the open will make the meal taste so much better, than it would be in the dining room."

Sniffy could understand some reason when she heard Richard's explanation and was looking forward to the meal outside around the fire. She never had such an experience and therefore was against eating out there in the first place, but Richards words hit some chord inside her and now she could not wait to eat outside. It only took her a minute to place a few spells around the camp, to make sure no insects or other wildlife could interrupt them. She also set up a few silencing and masking spells around to be on the safe side.

Kyle was more then enthusiastic about this whole situation, since he was living most of the time of his life in the city. He was training or learning everything he could from teachers about vampire customs and about the machinations of ruling a city.

He only ever got out of the city on one or two occasions. It was to follow his father to visit some places like Witch Town. His earlier trip to Rome was his first time alone in the outside world and he needed to kind of sneak out there. He was really glad that he could now spend some time with his friends doing all of this stuff.

Now, coming out of the woods was Kyle with a bundle of wooden logs in his hands meant for the fire to maintain it. He had heard many stories about camping from Richard in the past 2 months and wanted to experience it thoroughly.

All the stories were about sitting on the fireplace till late into the night and telling each other horror stories.

That was what life should be like, amusing and interesting and adventurous.

They were all looking forward to reach their destination tomorrow, but wanted to make the best out of this night and Richard and Sniffy had taken out as much of their cooking skills what they could and produced a delicious meal.

All was ready in a bit and Sniffy called them to the fireplace to eat. The trio was really surprised as they saw a fast blur and then felt a strong wind on their faces. Seeing the father of Kyle happily munching on some meat skewers really surprised them, because a moment earlier he could be seen in the distance meditating.

He had a content look on his face and let out a sigh after his first bite, after that he said.

"Huh, amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing, that is one of the most delicious things that I have ever eaten in my whole life."

Taking some vegetables out of the pot and eating them along with the meat, he looked like he has found a new love. The Mortals heaven treehouse in the city had a really great variety of food but the cooking of Sniffy and Richard were on another pedestal altogether.

All three were stunned at this sight and they could only laugh a bit at the antics of "Lord" Rodolfo and they also placed themselves around the fireplace and sat down on a few logs and began to eat happily.

Richard then said while he happily slurped some soup.

"Thanks, Sniffy and I gave it our all. We are usually not cooking on a fireplace. Therefore, it was a bit of a challenge to make it like this, but seeing you how it suits your taste buds, I say we did a good job."

"Dad I thought you needed to recharge your energy?" asked Kyle while he was eating one skewer in one whole bite. If there were tasty things involved, he tended to devour them in a few mouthfuls.

Swallowing a mouthful of vegetables down, Rodolfo then explained. "How could I not eat such delicacies, a few minutes will not hurt. I guess. Either way, I was not able to concentrate on restoring my power anymore after I smelled this."

Rodolfo was quite the honest fellow and said this with a straight face. His whole person looked nothing like a Lord should look like anymore right now. Grease could be seen all over his mouth and his left hand was fully wrapped around a skewer and the other hand was holding a vegetables pot.

The meal was soon wrapped up and they sat around the fire to relax their stuffed and overeaten bellies for a bit. Rodolfo was the first one who got back to his old place to absorb energy into his body. The trio could be seen sitting around the fire till late into the night where they told each other different horror stories.

Sniffy was one of the most underestimated story tellers, Richard and Kyle had goosebumps all over their bodies after Sniffy told them a few of her loved horror stories. They did not know that Sniffy loved to read such stories before bed. She usually only read it for herself, but after Richard had said that it was essential to tell each other horror stories on a camping trip, she told them the most scary and gruesome ones.

After two of her stories, Richard and Kyle interrupted her at the same time and stopped her telling them the next one. They explained why and that they would not be able to sleep anymore, if she kept telling them more like these stories.

After that, Richard began to tell them a few stories of his old world, who would not see the light of the day for at least 3 decades. He did not know if the movies he had seen in his last live would be reproduced in the future or not. It was a different world after all.

The moon was now high in the sky and the flickering fire swallowed the last pieces of wood and they saw this as a sign and decided to head to bed.

Kyle and Richard needed some more time to sleep than usual, but after they calmed their minds, they fell asleep easily.

Awaking the next day in the morning, like they usual did and after cleaning themselves they then made breakfast.

They shared it with a recently awoken Rodolfo, who said good morning when he walked into the tent. They got curious at the exact timing as he came in and breakfast was ready. Breakfast was gone in a bit and all of them were energetic to go and they packed their things away. The tent vanished with a snip of Sniffys fingers and they got in place around Rodolfo.

The same feeling as yesterday occurred 3-4 times and they appeared on a weird looking plain. Good 100 meters behind them began a forest and in front of them was a mountain chain. On the plain on where they were standing, was no grass altogether and it only consisted of some rocks and dried mud.

It looked completely out of place, because the forest behind it was vibrant and full of life. At the end of the forest seemed to be some kind of invisible line. Behind that line grew no more live and everything that could be seen were stones and mud. No grass or flowers grew in between.

This fact alone let the alarm bells inside Richard's head ring out loud.

"Shouuuuummmm"

They heard some sound and a bit to their left appeared Kellam with the guards. All of them looked like yesterday and it looked like they too, have had a normal eventless night behind them.

Kellam greeted all of them all with a smile on his face. They also greeted him back, but not with all of their enthusiasm and friendliness behind the greeting like Rodolfo had. Richard had told Sniffy and Kyle of yesterday's happenings with Kellam and Kyle got really angry after he heard this.

Moreover, he told them instantly that he would make sure to get to the bottom of this. However, Richard told him that he would settle this himself and that Kyle should not burn the whole bridge down for this as they are family.

Thinking about what Richard said, Kyle calmed down but assured that after this whole thing was over, he would find out about the reason why his uncle had done this.

"Kellam how long do we have for the supposed event to happen?" asked Rodolfo in a complete serious tone and lost all of his carelessness, that he had since yesterday night.

"Hmmmm."

Looking at angle of the sun was and contemplating for a moment, Kellam answered.

"It should happen every minute now, at least that was the case for the last ten days, but while I was gone for 3 days to fetch you all, I am not so sure now.

There could have been some change while I was gone. The only thing we can do is wait."

Hearing this Kyle, Richard and Sniffy got curious about what would be happening and looked around for some clues. Scanning every detail that was found around here, but they were not able to find anything. They gave up after about half an hour and looked at Rodolfo with a questioning look on their faces.

Rodolfo was shaking his head and said. "Don't look at me like that, I also have only heard of what should be happening, it is supposed to be quite the magical sight. Anyway, just be patient and wait for a bit."

Now knowing that they would not be able to get any clues out of him, they decided to just wait.

Anyway, because he had a bit of free time and was hoping that he would feel something, Richard sat on the floor in a meditative stance and began to feel the magic around him.

Richard found out about sensing magic some time back, it was like a sixth sense. At first it started with feeling the golden energy around him which he could not absorb or do anything to it. Along the way this somehow changed and while he couldn´t touch the golden energy, he could now feel normal magic particles floating around when he began to concentrate on it.

The radius in which he could feel his surrounding was about 10 cm in the beginning and widen to a now 15 meter radius.

Rodolfo and Kellam saw this and were not really knowing what Richard was trying to achieve with that. They did not know that wizards would be able to feel magic around themselves, or at least proper wizards would be able to do this.

To this conclusion came Richard when he read some texts that explained this. In there he found out that every wizard would be able to feel the surrounding magic.

Richard, he decided that every wizard that was not able to feel magic in or around themselves by meditating, as false wizards. At the beginning, wizards would only be able to feel the magic around them by concentrating on it but with time that would change into a proper sixth sense. When that happened then they would be able to feel the surrounding magic all of the time.

He named them "false wizards" because they could only grow so strong and would forever be limited by their own "disinterest" or lack of knowledge in magic.

Real wizards should be wizards like Merlin or the four founders of Hogwarts, there should be a lot more, like the one who put the spell on the Everlasting city and so on.

Richard used this as a dividing line and everyone who could not go past that line would be forever doomed to mediocrity. Yes, some of the more dedicated ones would be able to reach heights far ahead of normal ones like Dumbledore, but they would also never be able to reach a level like the 4 founders. At least that was what Richard concluded when he studied magic a bit more in depth.

He felt the magic around himself and then was stumped at the feeling of absurdity of this place. 'There are almost no magical particles around this place, they are spread so thin that it is almost impossible to feel them. It also feels like they are gradually sucked into the ground. They are slowly moving towards one place inside the mountain. What does that mean?'

Thoughts flew around his head while he felt the magic in his surroundings. Doing this for a bit over 10 minutes and then there was a sudden change in the particles.

Suddenly, the ground beneath them started shaking and Richard was kicked out of his meditative state, but right before that happened, he felt a really big wave of magic come out of the mountain and impact on the ground around them.

"It has started, now we only need to wait a few moments." Kellam said and looked at the surroundings.

The whole group saw the ground around them shake for some time and settled down after that. There was a blurry line slowly appearing in the middle of the deserted plain. It looked like some kind of magical line but was badly damaged and had cracks all over it.

The line came into view for only a short moment and vanished as quickly after that. After it was gone again, there was a change in the wall of the mountain in front of them and they found a section of the wall got blurry and faded out of existence.

Everyone besides Kellam and the guards stood there stunned with their mouths gaping open. Kellam then began shouting at them and immediately moved towards the now disillusioned wall and entered inside the mountain.

"Come on, we need to get in there at this moment, it will only be like this for about half a minute at most and if you are too slow, you will be left behind."

Hearing this, they came out of their stupor and all of them moved inf front of the wall and entered inside the gaping hole in the mountain.

Stopping after a few meters in the cave, they were standing there and Richard and Sniffy cast a lumos sphere above their heads to have some source of light.

After standing there for 3 seconds a loud sound was heard.

"Ruuuuumps"

There was a rumble sound behind them and the opening in the wall was gone. It happened from one second to the next. No being able to get out of here and listening to Kellam's explanation that they would be able to get out of it tomorrow at the same time. They stared at the only way that was winding down into the mountain and it was immensurable to know how long it was going on like this.

The path they were standing on was really big, they would not have had any trouble even if they would have had 10 more people with them and they would be able to walk side by side without any problem at all. The height of this cave like path was also about 10-15 meters, but it was hard to guess with only so much light. The lumos spell from Richard and Sniffy was a variant of the spell and formed a light sphere that floated above their heads.

Richard then got into back into his thoughts and thought about what had happened earlier.

'The magic line looked quite strange and it was definitely old, all the fractures and cracks on it were enough indication for this. If that is an array or something similar to it, then whatever it is for, it will not hold for much longer.

Also, the magical pulse that I have felt from the depths of the mountain is quite strange. It cannot be a coincidence that the magic line came into view after the pulse of magic happened. There is something else going around in here. We should be cautious.'

"We need to be careful." Richard said in a complete serious voice to Kyle and Sniffy that stood next to him.

"I agree with you kid, I have never seen something like this magic line or the blurry door like mountain wall. Its better if we are more careful on our way down, also thanks for your 2 light spells, they come in handy in this place." Rodolfo said after he overheard what Richard had said.

"No trouble, at least we are a bit of use inside here. Now what are we exactly looking for? It would be quite dumb if we searched for something that we don't even now what it looks like."

Said Richard while he and Sniffy nodded at the thanks of Kyles father.

"We received some information about a seemingly extinct plant which has been sighted inside this cave. The plant is named the plant of Imaginera. It looks like a single brilliantly green shining leaf, it grows on one blue stem and it was only found ages ago, inside dark places full of magic.

It also has a drop of water hanging on the leaf, which will change its shape depending of what you think at the moment when you look at it, from that is also its name.

We got this information from some wizard who came back from this place, he explained everything about it after we rewarded him handsomely. But only after he took an oath to his own life that his story was true.

The plant, that he explained about, is described in the books as a plant that can heal almost any ailment and we are hoping for it to be working for Kyle.

Now let's go deeper inside, Kellam you will guard our back with one of the guards. Another one will go with me to the front and the last one will defend you three."

Rodolfo explained everything that they had on intel about the plant and now, that they each knew what they were looking for, they began their journey into the unknown.

What they did not know was that there was a pair of eyes watching their every move from the moment they walked inside the mountain.

A figure could be seen sitting inside the mountain and it said while it was watching all the people who had entered the cave.

"It has been so long already, may lady luck bless at least some of them, or not who really cares. I am looking forward to see how far they will come. I only need one of them alive.

Haahahaha, that will lessen my boredom a bit."

The figure could be seen with a normal look on his face at the beginning and after a few words it changed into a crazy expression on its face.

After that it began laughing in a shrill tone and the light around it crept away and it looked like the light was scared of the being.