Chapter one hundred fourteen

We passed miles of frozen wasteland covered in nothing but sparkling white snow until we reached a mountainous area that was shrouded by a thick layer of mist, a layer of mist so thick that it looked like a ground bound cloud. Surprisingly enough, our helicopter started to descend into the cloud without any hesitation and suddenly we couldn't see anything through the window anymore except for white cottony clouds.

Seeing the worried looks on our faces, Boris decided to allay our fears by giving us an explanation, "This is a very remote part of Northern Siberia which rarely has any human activity. In fact it is so remote that these mountainous regions don't even have a proper name, we just call them purple crystal mountains. Anyways, these mountains are located in an area where the earth's crust is extremely thin so they exhibit some volcanic activity, not enough for an outright explosion but they are the home of some hot springs. Since we are technically in the arctic circle , the weather here is always cold and snowy. This snow combines with this area's simmering volcanic activity and it produces a dense cloud of fog that constantly covers these mountains all year round. This is the reason we chose this place as our base. Not only is it inaccessible by any form of ground transport because of the incredibly unfavorable terrain, but it is also impossible to get to even if you use air transport but you don't need to worry about that, not only are our pilots specially trained to be able to enter and leave through the thick mist without any mishaps, we also have special equipments on the choppers and stationed on the ground that help us guide the helicopters during their descent. We are completely safe."

Really? My grandfather actually lived in a secret volcano lair? Was my grandfather Doctor Evil?

I shook that ridiculous idea away as we finally passed through the layer of fog and we could finally see what lay beneath the thick shroud of mysterious mist, what we saw was a large military encampment nestled into a valley that was surrounded by mountains. We saw other choppers similar to ours taking off and landing from and to various helipads at various locations. Various buildings were strewn allover the valley. Most of these were obviously hangars for aircrafts but there were also many other buildings from which soldiers swarmed into and out of like a disturbed anthill. I also noticed that there were tons of equipment everywhere, most resembled satellite dishes and long tubes which I suspected were some sort of radar system and missile launchers respectively. Overall , the place looked like it would be extremely hard to locate let alone to attack.

Delilah let out a cold breath when she saw the entire setup, "Sophie dearest, I think your grandpa might just be a tad paranoid."

Boris shook his head and replied, "No, this is not paranoia, it is simply necessary. Your grandfather has many enemies, some of which are governments of large nations. This is the only way he can keep himself safe."

As we made our final descent into the heavily militarized valley, I was getting really curious about my grandfather's identity.

* * *

Once we landed, we were not led to one of the many buildings around us. Instead we were taken deep into one of the mountains. We traveled through a system of maze like tunnels until we reached a massive cavern.

It was huge, larger than any football field and we finally saw why they called this place the crystal lake mansion.

There was a fancy looking mansion made out of some sort of purple stone that was as smooth as marble and this purple mansion was resting in the middle of a lake, not a lake made out of water but a lake made entirely out of crystals.

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, a lake almost entirely made out of sparkling purple crystals, some were large and towered almost twice my height, some were the size of grains but the entire area was covered in purple crystals although I could also see shades of green and blue amidst the purple.

Boris was once again smiling when he saw our reaction, "This is our destination, the crystal lake mansion; the largest natural deposit of geodesic crystals in the world and the home of your grandfather."