Tales of the Lorekeepers 01 - Rise of the Red Dragon

I’ll go get the watercolors, then.”
    A few moments later, Lucian was back with brushes and the paints. Samuel opened the blue container and dipped the tip of the brush in it. Carefully, he took one of the dice. He paused for a few seconds, then moved the brush a little to the right to create a line that would be the top of a sigil he had imagined in his mind.
    However, the paint did not adhere to the surface and dripped onto the table.
    “What the … ?” said Lucian.
    The water-based paint had slid off the die without tainting the material one bit. Samuel dipped the brush into the blue flask a second time and tried to draw another line, only to get the same result. Again, the paint simply flowed down the side of the die and onto the table. Not a drop was left on the artifact.
    “Maybe this side is too polished or too smooth for the paint to stick,” said Samuel.
    “You think?”
    Samuel flipped the die to try another side, but again the paint would not stick to the surface.
    “How about that acrylic now?” asked Lucian.
    “Yes, let’s give it a try. I guess this water paint is too fluid to work.”
    Before his friend could change his mind, Lucian was back with the acrylic paints. Samuel pressed the brush to the ivory side of the dice, but no line was visible after the stroke. Again, the paint had slid from the surface.
    “Oil paint!” Lucian said.
    “Hold on now, this stuff is hard to remove. I don’t want to risk spoiling the dice.”
    “Sam, if acrylic does not stick, oil will be easy to clean. Assuming it sticks at all.”
    Samuel looked into his friend’s eyes and knew he was not going to win this argument.
    “Fine, let’s give it a try. They were only fifty dollars, after all!”
    “That’s the spirit!”
    For a third time, Lucian went to the shelves containing the art material. He came back with a single bottle of green, oil-based paint.
    “Here goes nothing,” whispered Samuel.
    He repeated the process, but once again, the paint slid off the surface. The die was left without a single spot of green on its rough, ivory surface.
    Samuel took the brush again and tried one last time to draw a line on one side of a die, this time pressing harder on the brush to make a wider line. This time, he noticed an odd phenomenon. Another stroke with the brush confirmed his initial assessment.
    “Lucian, check this out.”
    “What is it?”
    “Each time I try to draw a line, the paint slides off immediately.”
    “Yes, I know that.”
    “But look at the way it slides off.”
    Lucian moved closer as Samuel drew another line, putting as much paint as he could in the stroke. As expected, the colored liquid flowed down the side of the dice, but the paint was following some mysterious pattern, rather than gliding down undisturbed.
    “Do you see that?” Samuel said. “It’s like there’s a force field there that pushes the paint around it.”
    “What do you think it is?”
    “I have no idea,” answered Samuel. “But I have never seen anything like this.”
    “We need a more sustained flow of paint,” suggested Lucian.
    “How about we dip it directly in the paint jar?”
    “We won’t be able to see the immersed side if we do that.”
    “Right. Well, how about we completely immerse it in a mix of water and a few drops of paint, so we can see through the liquid?”
    “That might work.”
    Lucian grabbed an empty glass jar and filled it with water. He handed it to Samuel, who mixed in a few drops of green oil paint, barely enough to color the water. Samuel dropped one of the dice into the mixture.
    The die immediately dropped to the bottom of the jar, a little too quickly for its weight.
    “Oh my God, check this out,” whispered Lucian.
    There were now strange runes on each sides of the die. As if protected by a magical force, the lines of the runes were repelling the water, remaining perfectly dry within the surrounding liquid.
    Each rune was different. The first one, directly in front of Samuel, was a star with six branches, the top and bottom ones longer than the other four. On the top side of the die was a symbol resembling a feather. On a third side was the Roman numeral VI. Samuel slowly turned the jar around, revealing the other sides of the dice. The first one was shaped like the letter X, with perpendicular lines crossing the top of each branch. The second one looked like a curved K, with a dot to the left of it. Finally, Samuel lifted the jar to see the bottom side of the die.