I told Meva about my experience of becoming the mountain and showed her the purple fuzz-ball, but I did not let her touch it. The extent of its power was unclear. What if she touched it and was transferred into a grain of sand? How could I ever find her again?
Meva told me that it was her grandfather who started the search for the legendary “heart of the mountain” many years before. He had convinced the mining company to dig for it, promising them they would own it once his soul was safely transferred into a younger, more virile body.
I started thinking of a device that could control the heart of the mountain's soul transferring powers. But even though I was a capable builder, I did not know how to make the device I conceived.
Meva knew of a tribe of rock beings called Dronk, who lived in secret. They were the guardians of the mountains.
Meva's grandfather had signed a treaty with them, which allowed the Blank mining crews to dig the richest veins, while avoiding the Dronk’s sacred chambers. Her grandfather had honored every word of the treaty. It was the key to the company being able to mine where so many others had failed.
Previous companies had tried to dig further and deeper without the approval of the Dronk. Then, the mining would inevitably break into a sacred Dronk chamber. The Dronk would demand the operations stop. Fighting would break out, but the Dronk always won. They were, after all, made of rock.
Meva said that the Dronk were capable of building complex mechanical structures from a magic rock. They had a mysterious and powerful device that allowed them to create nearly anything. This could be just what we needed to house and control the purple fuzz-ball!
Meva lead us to a narrow canyon, where walls stood adorned with strange carvings I could not decipher. Every angle was perfect and the walls were smooth as glass. I realized that the canyon had not been formed naturally. The canyon walls had been carved by the Dronk.
We came to a circle of polished white stones inlaid into the floor. Meva said that in order for us to see the Dronk, the stones must be stepped on in a precise pattern. Once this was done, the Dronk would come. Her grandfather had studied these stones and eventually discovered the pattern. The pattern had been taught to her when she was a child, as a sort of dance. She thought she was learning a kata or a family ritual. Not until much later did she realize it was the key to unlocking the Dronk's stones.
She completed the dance, and the final stone she stepped on sank into the ground two inches. I could hear the clinking of underground mechanisms as stone slid against stone. Spires of minerals covered in crystals sprouted from the ground in neat rows. Black, tangled orchards of petrified trees rose against the canyon walls. All was silent. We stood waiting for three hours. At one point, Meva pointed behind me, and I spun around to see three stone beings. They had a simple form, like a children's drawing. Their heads were huge rectangles with coarse holes cut clear through the head, allowing the light of the sky to shine through. Their bodies were rectangular stone. Their legs and arms were slabs.
Two Dronk pulled a third from a white stone monolith. They pulled out the body, setting it aside. Then they pulled out an arm and hung it on the body. This process continued until the third Dronk was completed.
"Do you see that, Tzurk? They're giving birth!" Meva whispered to me.
The newly formed Dronk was the same size as the other two, but he walked awkwardly, staggering as they guided his first steps. One of the Dronks used his finger to carve a symbol onto the new Dronk's forehead.
"You will hunt for us." He said. "Your name shall be Hunt."
When this was done, the Dronk turned to us. He welcomed Meva. He said he knew her, from long ago, when she had come to the valley with her grandfather. Meva bowed. The Dronk said he'd seen her as a baby, and he never forgot a bloodline. His name was Grel, he was the one who used the creation table and gave names.
Meva asked him if he could build a device for us to contain the heart of the mountain, and motioned for me to show him. Grel looked long and hard at the purple fuzz-ball, when I held it up to him.
Then he said, "We have no use for this, because we cannot die, but this has been hunted for by mortals for as long as time has spun. Everyone who found it before you, was either killed or vanished."
"Does this mean I will die also, or was I meant to have it?" I asked.
"Neither or both." Grel replied.
He motioned for us to follow him to the monolith, which he called, the Skeev Table.
Grel stirred the shiny white surface of the monolith like it was liquid. It didn’t move at all like solid rock. After a moment, he drew out a device that had an open hatch and two hinged arms on either side. Taking the purple fuzz-ball from me, he placed it in the top compartment and snapped the lid shut. Drel handed the device back to me, "These mechanical arms can pull the soul from one thing and hold it temporarily in the machine or transfer it into another object or body."
Grel put the corner of his stone head on Meva’s hand as if to kiss it. "Visit us again, Meva. Now go in peace."