Orphan At The Edge Of The World 87 Crystal Cage 25

The next morning, the young mage dismissed the twenty-four hour warning by Osomo that his family status was about to be suspended for dereliction of duties as he skimmed through his messages to make sure no one he knew was trying to reach him. After discarding all the names he didn't know and flagging ex-royal family hate mail, he left it for Osomo to deal with. Next, he read through what essentially was just updates on chaos with promises to give new information once someone actually knew something worth relating.

Orison thought, "I'm sure Mo, I mean, King Moskvander considers his incredibly stuffy and formal public coronation to be highly important but I wouldn't go to that even if I was paid to. You can really tell the difference between people when stuff like this happens. I thought I was going to laugh myself to tears when I read that Emris is going to throw a barbecue for his nearest and dearest to celebrate the return of his Ward family's royal honor."

Shaking himself out of private thoughts, Orison turned around to see Gan poking his bleary eyed head out to see what the young mage was chuckling about.

"Who are you flexing topless for? This is a private courtyard, Gan." Orison sighed in exasperation at the total lack of vigilance his friend was portraying.

Gan said, "I need you to mend my gear. It's too tight."

From inside, they heard Duran say, "It's done."

While Gan looked over his equipment for something to nitpick, the young mage and guardian went to get the last freshly prepared meal they might have for a few days. "Remind me to go apesh*t on Gan the next time he complains that I slept my way to greater fitness. Part of me is hoping he makes the mistake of trying to grow that peach fuzz he's sporting into a full beard while we traipse through the jungle."

Seeing the lack of comprehension on Duran's face, Orison explained. "It'll itch like crazy."

Duran replied, "Gan told me he misses his beard."

The boy grew contemplative for a moment before he looked back at Orison in shock.

Orison smiled wryly and said, "Yup. You can talk like a regular person if you want to. It doesn't do a thing for how you feel about talking or what being nervous and scatterbrained will do to how you talk but now you won't struggle to form complete sentences. The damage to your spiritual seat should be resolved completely now."

Feeling a little unsure how he should breach the subject, Orison said, "I didn't have a lot of time and my sub-mind had to make a lot of hard calls quickly. I could only heal you through the father's side of your blood and my conduit took it upon itself to alter that to be a bit more like my spiritual blood is."

Duran shrugged. "Wick thinks the gold dots are pretty. It's fine."

The young mage was about to ask Gan a question as the scout slogged his way over to them but then what Duran said fully registered. "You said gold dots? They're not a bluish or greenish color at all?"

Duran closed his eyes and communed with Wick as Gan dully shoveled his portion of breakfast in. After a couple of minutes, Duran confirmed that his spiritual blood motes were gold and that Wick said they 'tasted' faintly of heat and metal. Wick also had Duran tell Orison that Gan had silver ones that 'tasted' cool and metallic.

Gan said, "If Wick is licking everybody, what does our little boss taste like?"

With black lines running down his face, Orison said, "That's sounds wrong on so many levels..."

Duran said, "Where lightning strikes the sea? There's too many things at once."

Orison muttered, "Maybe there were more than one tribe? There were more than one elven race on Amoril."

The young mage decided to pack it away to think about later. "Since breakfast is pretty much done and everyone is functional, let's get this expedition underway. Yesterday, you said that we're getting close enough for the drawing sensation to get stronger, Gan. Today, we're going to do a couple more jumps to see if we can triangulate which starting point is closest and then make sure that there aren't any overt death threats."

Everyone on the same page, Orison beacon teleported two more times. Two hours of morning burnt after a little consulting with a local retired Chosen, they were ready to forge out. With sudden stinging rain that only lasted for a few minutes, hara.s.sing local wildlife and fairly dangerous terrain hazards, the brief feeling of awe and appreciation for the lush jungle quickly dwindled.

Six hours out, Gan stopped the group. "Up til now we've been in the zone cla.s.sified as safe for Children to access things but from here on, it's the stomping ground for lower mid ranged Chosen. It looks like your guess was right, Little Boss. Our destination is going to put us in the Deep Green. Not too far ahead, there's a gully called The Gem Vault. I'd suggest calling it an early day and using the place to camp. If we started in the morning from there, we could push through to Clay Barrows between thirty to thirty-six hours."

Orison considered and saw no reason to deny a small delay. As far as the young mage knew, there wasn't any pressing matter that would cause them to not make their destination but he had a faint premonition that if they took it too easy, something might stop them from getting there. It was a small feeling at the moment but after the 'Night of Horrors', he payed close attention to his intuition.

Around an hour later, the trio walked into the entrance of The Gem Vault. It was eerily silent. Aside from a few guards in a pensive mood there were no other visible personnel at the mining site. After a quick chat, it was discovered that due to the fall of Fortune's royal family and a growing magic energy crisis, operations had been temporarily suspended. The trio weren't restricted from any part of the gully as long as they didn't approach the equipment warehouse.

With a good chunk of daylight left, after they ate a quick meal, the three 'visitors' decided they'd go check out the main emerald mine. Not too far past the entrance of the mine, Orison cast out a light. The suddenly revealed off duty guard froze in his tracks. A few seconds later the man started chuckling sheepishly.

The ropy muscled, long armed rabbit beast man introduced himself as Theo. "Sorry if I spooked ya. I figured I'd take advantage of the situation to snag a couple of gems but without all the other personnel, the tunnels have been reclaimed by chirping beetles. They aren't that dangerous but if you make too much noise and scare em' they'll hit you with a confusion. There's a lot of ways to accidentally die in here if your confused."

Since they were here primarily as a chance to net Gan some 'satisfaction'. Orison let him handle the situation.

Gan chuckled and said, "Yeah, I could see how that would shut your idea down. Tell you what. If you show us around, our little buddy Duran over there can probably get you a couple."

Theo's eyes lit up. "You're a miner profession?"

Duran shot Gan a slightly annoyed look but nodded at the excited beast man.

The rabbit eared man quickly agreed. "I wanted to take mining but my mother pressured me into taking herbalist and dismantling instead. They let me take this job because it's pretty safe and remote." Chuckling in false humor, he added, "If I hadn't became a Chosen I think mom and my aunt would have broke my legs to keep me from leaving."

As Theo lead them deeper into the tunnels towards a place simply called Quartz Cave, he regaled the group with increasingly more candid stories of his home life. Gan seemed interested enough, although horrified at how controlling Theo's family was. Duran was agitated and seemed to pity the rabbit man while Orison used a dagger to clean his fingernails, bored out of his mind.

Walking past yet another large dog sized armor tank of a beetle sh.e.l.led cricket, Orison asked why talking didn't bother them. Theo shrugged and went back to sharing some other random factoid about his home that Orison found Gan and Duran to unfortunately be riveted by. The young mage pushed down a dark image of Theo being torn apart by pruning shear sized mandibles.

Once they reached an old stone bridge over a chasm, Theo said, "From here on until we reach the cave, we need to be as quite as possible. There's these things that drop from the ceiling and if they wrap around your head they'll have your skull open and slurping down your cottage cheese in seconds. If they miss you though, they're easy pickings and they have good loot too. When there's mining going on, they tend to make themselves scarce but they'll probably be out in larger numbers than usual right now."

Gan and Orison shared a look before the young mage's eyes let off a faint glow. Contrary to his earlier feelings about it, the young mage encouraged Theo to share stories as he and Gan scanned their environment. Taking point, Duran kept Orison from tripping over things while Gan stayed at the ready with his bow out. Theo was nervous at first but after a couple of umbrella shaped creatures were sniped before even getting close, the rabbit man eased into his role as bait even though he looked like he was moments away from trying to climb into Gan's back pocket.

Orison was almost disappointed when they reached their destination. After the condensing of crystal into tiny little glowing motes had finished, it was already spa.r.s.e looking around his new upgraded Osomo spark formation. Using the Danann Key had all but completely cleared it out again. While the proud looking rabbit man lead Duran and Gan around the light refractive cavern, Orison sat by a clear basin of water formed near the center, inspecting himself with spirit sight.

Satisfied that everything inside was back to a relatively natural looking state of asymmetry where it should, Orison was about to join them when traces of something was picked up in the basin. Little tadpole marks at the bottom sparkled in the young mage's spirit sight. At first, they didn't make any sense to him until he had rotated around the basin some. It suddenly clicked where he saw something similar.

Within the memories from the First Family children's trainer were a couple of simple songs placed within to demonstrate how to read sheet music. His sub-mind had removed most of the nonsense but had kept the gist of that particular part. Unfortunately, reading and being able to sing it were two different stories.

Orison called out. "Theo, didn't you say that your mom had you join choir for a couple of years?"

The rabbit man looked up from where he was ogling some bit of the wall with Gan. The split second of frustration that the scout shot him had Orison baffled but the thrill of accidental discovery had his full attention at the moment. After cutting Theo off from a retelling, Orison described the notes to see if the tune might be familiar. Between a person who could read the music but not sing it and a singer who couldn't read it after it had been copied, it became a trial and error process for awhile. That process became far more stress inducing when a timer message went off from Orison's spark.

Running through a spartan musical drill session, Orison managed to 'beat' the right musical sequence out of Theo, using everything just shy of physical violence, with less than a half of a minute left. Spurring bad childhood memories almost had the man in tears but all was forgiven as soon as a portion of the cavern's back wall slid in and over.

As an unspoken apology for being somewhat of a jerk, the young mage tolerated the surge of animated victory dancing, yells and rounds of excited physical contact Theo was dolling out to everyone. Fortunately, the rabbit man wasn't completely oblivious to Orison and Duran's discomfort and threw most of his enthusiasm at Gan who was happy to return some. Seeing Orison and Duran moving towards the secret opening, Theo stopped trying to climb the scout and jogged after them.

At the end of the secret pa.s.sageway was a set of doors that looked as if someone had cut through them with a blow torch. The funny thing was, as Duran and Orison approached, they were scanned and the remnants of the doors opened. It seemed pretty obvious that the previous visitors hadn't taken kindly to being barred entrance.

The next room was circular and riddled with a honeycomb of hexagonal panels. Judging by the superficial damage marks and intact set of doors on the other side, the visitors hadn't made it very far. Despite obvious Osomo design, Orison couldn't help but draw parallels between this place and the deceased artificer's Construct Three.

Once they had reached the second set of double doors that didn't open to them, the young mage turned to Duran and asked, "You got the engineering gig added to your list of duties. Is there any requests for this place?"

Duran closed his eyes and around a minute later said, "This place isn't listed. Some family members had private facilities. Maybe this is one of those?"

Orison said, "With the authority invested in me by the council, I demand entry."

The young mage felt an invisible scan once more and a monotone voice said, "Please leave your name and a brief message. *****'s personal a.s.sistant will schedule your appointment for the nearest available time."

Fighting irritation, Orison said, "The owner is deceased and line of inheritance has been disrupted. All properties and a.s.sets require itemization to be submitted to the council."

As soon as the doors opened, Orison saw a myriad of activity within the facilities with spirit sight before everything went dark except for a beating heart-like object a couple of floors down.

Orison growled, "Trolling douche bag!"

With everyone looking at him, Orison explained. "Best guess, I activated a search and seizure protocol. Everything potentially incriminating has been locked down and the whole compound's been powered off."

Duran told Orison, "Security is still on. This level's safe but past that it won't be safe for them."

The young mage took in the disappointment on Gan and Theo's faces. "Alright, you two. Sweep this floor. A lot happened quickly but I caught sight of three secret stashes. One's in the kitchen under the pantry's floor. There's another behind a cabinet in the bathroom and there's a big one in the master quarters that are locked the same way as the front door was.

"You guys work on that while we check out their bas.e.m.e.nt and what I guess is a warehouse. Don't get b.u.mmed out. If my guesses are even close to the truth, all their main wealth will still be up here. That stuff down there are just their big toys and some illegal junk."

Before Orison had even finished, Theo had taken off to find the first hidden stash with a nearly manic grin.

Not really able to do much about Gan's flagging enthusiasm, Orison said, "Preservation methods are pretty amazing for these guys. Who knows what you'll find in the kitchen. Since the outer door's closed, we won't need a sentry tonight. You can cut loose some as long as you stop early."

Gan turned slowly to follow Theo with a weak smile on his face. Suddenly, the scout's smile became wider with a trace of predatory gleam as if he had a wicked epiphany.

Sighing in mock depression, Gan said. "I got it, Little Boss. How much time do you think you'll be down there?"

Orison shrugged. "A good sweep will probably at least take two hours. Depending on how tough certain areas will be to manually open, we could be busy til I give up at midnight."

Duran said, "I'll be there to keep him safe. Don't worry."

Gan reached over to give Duran a shoulder pat.

Before he walked off, the scout said, "You're a good kid. Message me when you're heading back up."

Some time later, as Orison pulled off the maintenance panel on the door that led from the second level to the third, he said, "We haven't seen a single bit of threatening security. I mean, I get trying to keep the rabbit man from trailing down here and seeing potentially useful secrets but I thought you were serious."

Duran said, "It was Gan's idea. He messaged me to say that. I thought you already knew."

A light bulb that had been flickering in the back of Orison's mind just clicked on. "Oh. He was volunteering for baby setting duty as soon as I said the place was powered down."

Looking confused, Duran was about to ask questions when Orison cut him off. "He probably thought he might have an opportunity to make a new friend when he realized it might take us awhile."

To keep the boy from asking anymore questions he didn't want to answer, Orison showed Duran how the manual overrides worked.

As the young mage slid another triangular piece into place, he thought, "No wonder the old artificer tested for this. His inheritance probably covered all kinds of ways to break into these First Family places. That old man sure was ambitious. I knew he was ultimately trying to free this world from their dead masters but had he found some clues on how to do that?"

With one last solid snapping sound, The thick bolts in the door released. On the second floor, there had been a rather generous amount of strictly controlled pharmaceuticals and the method of their creation so Orison had high expectations of the third. He wasn't disappointed.