Miri strolled towards Anne to look at the same painting she’s staring at. It was a portrait of an old man in purple mage robes with a balding hairline and a thick, greying beard that extended down to his chest. Down at the bottom border of the portrait was a nameplate, likely with the name of the person in the portrait, labeled as “Frank Victorstein.”

  Seriously? Frank Victorstein? Miri thought with an eye roll upon reading that name. Well, that certainly isn't a blatantly obvious reference to some famous literary character.

  “So this is the main guy responsible for this whole damn place, huh?” Miri commented.

  “From the looks of it, yes. His name was regularly mentioned in some of these books around here,” Anne replied, taking one of the thick, heavy tomes from the shelves and laying it onto the table. With each page she flipped, there were diagrams of various mythical creatures accompanied by paragraphs of text. “These are all detailed records in regards to the ritual that created the chimeragon. Back then, Frank Victorstein was the archmage responsible for leading the group of royal mages into creating the beast.

  “It says here that they have studied creatures of different kinds, trying to see which beasts they could magically fuse together to create the ultimate war beast for the army of the Witch Queen of Ananke, one that is both powerful and obedient. From the start, they had always wanted to use a dragon as a base for their biological fusion, seeing as how they are basically infamous for being the most powerful and most revered of all magical beasts.”

  “Yeah, but why even create a brand new creature to begin with?” Miri asked. “Why not just attempt to tame or domesticate dragons in the first place?”

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  “Dragons are notoriously difficult to tame and domesticate. And not with the lack of trying,” Anne explained. “There had been many failed attempts in doing so throughout history, some of which have ended in catastrophic disaster. While there exists a few isolated cases of dragons being tamed, raising an army of them for battle seemed too troublesome and impractical overall to be worth the effort. Dragons are not like dogs or horses, they have a deeply ingrained sense of pride that makes them resistant to being subservient.

  “However, Archmage Victorstein had decided to go into a different direction. Rather than taming an actual dragon, he simply decided to borrow the traits of a dragon and put them into another creature—a chimera. It says here that chimeras are ideal because they are innately resistant to the side effects of biological fusion. When two animals of different species are magically fused together, their individual immune systems would often attack and reject each other, which ultimately results in the creature dying.

  “Chimeras are one of the few creatures that can bypass this problem since they are already the result of several individual creatures melded together, thus making them more ideal for this specific ritual. And thus, the idea of the chimeragon was born—a chimera fused with a dragon, creating the ultimate beast that is both powerful and obedient. To that end, Victorstein’s team had even developed a highly specialized set of runes to perform this ritual, one that cost a substantial amount of money to be produced.”

  “Well, that’s good and all, but does it tell us where these runes are located?” Miri asked.

  “If these records are not mistaken, it should be…right at the main ritual room,” Anne said, flipping over the pages to see a map of the keep itself. “Here’s the map of it. It should guide us to the main ritual room.”

  “Okay, then. Now we know where to go,” Miri said, reading the map carefully in order to memorize the path towards their destination. Years of playing video games had made her very good at memorizing maps, to the point where she didn’t even need the map for a second or third playthrough of a game. “Let’s hurry before the chimaeragon finds us—”

  All of a sudden, Miri and Anne heard a low, rumbling growl in the far distance. From the sound of it, it seemed to be that of a very large beast—quite possibly the chimeragon itself.