Chapter 52: Ch. 48: Confluences Part III

“ Jhordic giantkin might be large intimidating fellows and the only ones that can drink a dwarf under the table barrel for barrel but they are one of the most peaceful races around. Seldom seen outside of their mountain and hill villages, these are a people who pride themselves on being farmers and hunters of great beasts. Though their smithing cannot contest that of the dwarves, they make mean farming tools…never ever try stealing from a giantkin's farm. You were warned” – excerpt from Saelethil Greatstrider’s Wanderlusts: Peoples and Places.

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It was cold, yet Elenaril felt feverish. Her limbs were still unresponsive; in her fugue state, she felt where her joints connected existed a gap of nothingness, as though disembodied. Her body was failing, and her mind knew that; her tears had long dried.

And that was to say nothing of the severe dehydration setting in and her skin rapidly paling from the cold. And as if spitting on her hopelessness, the potion vials from her guild satchel laying just a handspan away taunted her with their broken pieces which contained the last of the potions long gone impotent by contamination.

At least now her jaw could move a little, and she even considered herself lucky that her tongue didn’t become numb to the point of choking her as she moistened her cracking lips.

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Dusk had fallen fast, and it was soon going to be difficult to see where Nora was riding off. None of them were encumbered by the darkness, for Arthur had his dwarven made goggles enchanted with Dark Vision, while Nora had her vampiric sight. However, galloping in the dark was a fool's errand if the mounts didn’t have the same , and so Arthur sent [Light] spells zooming ahead of the herd.

The lead mare was also surefooted. They knew the way, like they'd passed there many times before. As a matter of course, they did. The herd was raised by Vylora's Hearth of Draughts and Steeds, and the sylvmaid did not breed dumb beasts.

Arthur was right in the midst of them, kicking up dust with his hoverboard as he soared close to the ground. He too, would have loved to learn how to ride—

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Her lips had long gone dry and wetting her lips did nothing but expose her tongue to the foul air of the Fetid Woods dungeon. Her chest was sore and it hurt to even retch. Not that it would have made a difference anyway, she could barely feel her tongue swollen and heavy with the cottonmouth sensation in her lips.

She deprecatingly thanked her inadequate mounds for not being a nuisance; otherwise, she would have been nursing a sore pair. It spoke volumes about the level of morbidity her thoughts were spiralling into.

Regardless, that was no better than suffocating on her own vomit, with the prone position she was in. Her thoughts slowly descended into a muddle, and her awareness of her surroundings became increasingly clouded.

Heartbeat by faltering heartbeat, the darkness encroached the edges of her vision. Perhaps there was respite to be found elsewhere beyond the reach of her senses. Elenaril let go—

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The duo and five mounts came to a stop in front of the dungeon. The sun had fallen beyond the trees, and the green sentinels of the weald loomed even more. Darkness had already overtaken the longest shadows of the day by the time they had arrived. Nora dismounted, patting down her mount as Arthur pulled alongside.

“Anything?” Arthur inquired as he let his hoverboard idle by his side. There was a clearing, and there, in one of the knolls, was the dungeon’s cavernous entrance, foreboding like the lair of some beast.

“Save for a dungeon that smells like bog? No,” Nora shook her head. Her countenance was serious. In fact, the most serious Arthur had seen her, so he put his game face on likewise.

“Only a beastkin can distinguish the smells in that hole, and even then, I doubt they'd want to try,” Nora said, scrunching her nose.

Arthur readied Overkill and rearmed his arcane pistol. Nora drew her kukri-like Khxishos. The two shared a look, and then, with hurried steps, neared the dungeon’s entrance.

Meanwhile the herd of brunhorn huddled together, following the two ways before stalling at the gaping tunnel, showing trepidation. And for a good reason too, the dungeon had a hostile aura as if daring any that would dare its depths. It had a different sort of atmosphere from the one Arthur had entered in the Dust. However, both he and Nora were not ones to shy away from it as they stepped into the entrance tunnel.

The air changed as they set foot past the dungeon’s threshold. The mana was richer, albeit disturbed, as Arthur could tell from his [Mana Sense]. Having experienced one other dungeon, he pulled his scarf over his nose to keep out the smell of stale, musty air and wet earth reminiscent of a swamp.

Their boots squelched underfoot on damp sod. They could scarcely make out the tell-tale bubble-like shimmer of the ward ahead. Then Nora saw the glint of metal on the ground—a rapier.

“Arthur,” Nora called out as she picked up the weapon. “There is someone…or someones in the dungeon.”

The two broke into a run.

-------------------

“Hello, is anyone there?”

Voices at the edge of her perception; was she dreaming? And what in the pits were they talking about a hallow?

“We found your saddled beasts; they led us to you!” Another voice, female this time. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her. She was already far gone. Just a little more and she would cross the veil of nothingness. But her strength—her strength failed her. She could barely croak for help—

Her eyelids were like leaden weights; her ears couldn’t be trusted to convey if what she was hearing was true or figments of her delirium. The parts of her body that had yet to become numb could feel the minute vibrations of two pairs of feet thumping against the moist ground.

Her body couldn’t lie to her, could it? She could only hope. Even if she was woolgathering, at least it was a dream where someone came for her—

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When they passed through the barrier, Nora was the first to react. She grabbed Arthur's hand to stop him from stepping on the body that lay in front of them. A satchel was strewn on the ground; two vials like glass salt-shakers lay broken, the dregs of magical liquid long dulled by exposure to air. Blue-green for healing and orange for rejuvenation.

A wand lay broken. And the body, no, the person, a sylvmaid as they could tell from her long ears, lay prone, soiled, and almost unbreathing. One of her hands was stretched out towards the wards; the other held fast to the strap of her satchel.

Were it not for the moss glowing overhead, they would have thought it was a sculpture by some degenerate artist who had a flair for morbid exhibitions.

Healer’s instincts kicked in, and Nora was already firing off orders to her companion. Arthur took to them like he’d been trained for it all his life. They turned the woman on her front and laid her upper body against Arthur’s knees. Arthur let loose more mage lights to dissuade anything that might take that as a moment of vulnerability to attack.

“Her heartbeat is faint…” Nora said, passing her arm over the sylvmaid's cuirass. Arthur had learned that was her tell for using [Insight], another type of inspection skill that worked on living and organic materials like people and plant life.

“Blood pressure is falling…she’s hypothermic. We’ll have to warm her.” Arthur remarked. His mind whirled as he thought about using [Affinity Augmentation] to temporarily imbue rocks with the ability to generate heat, but he was wary of how the mana in the air was behaving.

“Blight! She’s far too gone. None of the skills and spells I have can wake her…” Nora hissed. She really was playing into her sylvani persona down to her curses.

“She’s in shock. Frag! I don’t know any heat spells—we need to get her out, get a fire going or something,” Arthur said.

Nora ran her hands through her hair in frustration. A patient was losing her life in front of her. What could she do?

None of her blood arts were useful when she could not see any injuries that directly contributed to the ill state of the sylvmaid. The injuries [Insight] found were bites and scratches where her stockings had ripped. She scanned the floor and saw monster carcasses, which looked almost too convenient, as if they’d been staged. However, Nora drew one conclusion.

“She’s poisoned—” Nora said with finality. “ I can't sense it but it must have been an undetectable paralytic if she is still alive.”

“Damn, can you purge it?” Arthur grimaced as he felt the cold, clammy skin of the sylvmaid whose head rested on his lap. Her blonde hair was matted and clumped with mud.

“A moment, I should think about what I want to purge first; paralytics that leave no traces and disease,” Nora said, as she paused for a breath. She seemed to have come to a decision as she cast, “ [Purge Toxin], [Purge Infection].”

The magic took hold; the paralytic agent was purged—a lucky break because otherwise she would have missed it. She could purge something she had no knowledge of, so long as she had an inkling of the underlying cause.

It was a risky endeavour, but they were grasping at straws. The magic had the side effect of rekindling the sylvmaid's nerve endings. Pins and needles bloomed from a sudden return of sensory feedback—the woman in Arthur’s lap started seizing up.

“Restrain her tongue!” Nora called out.

Arthur retrieved one of the Sylvani wooden ceramic spoons from the [Inventory Chest] and interposed it between her jaws. They held her down yet the seizures did not die down. Instead, she was fading before their very eyes as Nora tried to diagnose what the problem was with healer’s [Insight]. She was slipping like fine sand between their fingers.

“Her heart…it's stopped,” Nora finally gasped. “ I can’t do anything―tell me Arthur, what do I do?” she whimpered, hands hovering over the sylvmaiden’s body in vacillation. Tears welled up in her eyes as she was overcome with healer’s remorse.

Arthur, too, felt helpless.

‘Think damn it! How do you restart a stopped heart?’ Arthur racked his brains. ‘How does the heart work?’ he almost facepalmed as he remembered defibrillation.

“Use the lightning magic you mimicked!” Arthur suggested.

“Huh? —” Nora gawped.

“Just do it, trust me! I’ll show you where to put your hands…”

Arthur used his dagger to shear away the fastenings of her leather cuirass and then unbuttoned her blouse as low as it could go without exposing her dignity. Nora caught on, already offering her hands, which Arthur got hold of. He placed her palms above the sylvmaiden’s chest just between the sternum and above the heart.

“Follow my lead and use the smallest amount of magic you can. I don't know how you can see her condition. Try to feel how much magic I’m using. Increase it only when I say so and release it in short bursts on my mark—” Arthur said. He had gotten most adept at estimating the magnitude of his lightning spells.

Nora assented, blinking back the tears from her eyes. A crimson glow overtook her aquamarine glamour as she prepared to release the spell. Arthur noted that and decided he’d correct that in due time.

“Mark!” Arthur prompted her as he released a moderately high voltage. Nora barely twitched as she felt the pulse of [Spark]. A dhampir’s body was remarkably resilient compared to a human's. The thing with her [Blood Art: Mimicry] had driven that home and given him a metric of how much she could take with no damage to herself.

Nora barely hesitated as she released the first burst. Crimson sparks flickered and the sylvmaid’s body arched.

From Nora's expression, there was no response, but that was understandable—with his own palm atop the dhampir, he was measuring the amount of voltage by feel. He wished there was something like a thaumometer for more accurate measurements. Another project that he would soon look into.

“Again! —” Arthur said,amplifying the output of [Spark] through Nora's hands.

Nora twitched, registering feeling and sent another burst, matching the amount Arthur had sent into her palms. Crimson sparks flared and the sylvmaid's body arched again, but judging from Nora's frustrations, there was no response yet.

“Another! —” the third burst, the sylvmaiden’s body bucked under their hands—

Then she wheezed and her eyes flew open. She clawed at Arthur, croaking pitifully as a scream failed to materialise from her raw throat.

“Water!” Nora snapped Arthur out of her daze. Arthur retrieved a mageflask from [Inventory Chest] and handed it over to Nora. Arthur helped tilt back the sylvmaid's head as Nora ministered to her by gently dribbling the water into her lips.

“Slowly, sip…thatta girl,” Arthur whispered as Nora paced her drinking . Her breathing evened out and her hands stopped twitching.

'There's more—’ the sylvmaid's pleading gaze seemed to say as they flitted from his gaze to the murky dungeon. Arthur followed her line of sight and cursed silently as he saw the debris blocking the passage. Satisfied she had delivered her message, the sylvmaid's eyes closed and she fell asleep.

“What can we do?” Nora said, looking from the sylvmaid to Arthur.

“First, we take care of her and try to see if we can call for help. I think that will have to wait till she wakes up,” Arthur said.

Looking towards the obstruction, he worried his lips and added, “ If we choose to mount a rescue before that, we’ll be going in blind. I have no idea what caused this, but I’m betting it wasn’t a monster; whoever they are must be long gone by now.”

“ I don’t think I can [Shadow Walk] through that pile of magically impervious dungeon rock either. But surely you can do something? “ Nora said, almost pleadingly. “ If we found her in this state, who knows what condition the others must be in?”

Arthur’s heart twinged as he thought about the souls trapped on the other side of the rubble. They must have been pinned in with monsters, running out of supplies and injured. Sitting around and waiting for the sylvmaid to recover seemed like a bad idea. For all he knew, she might not even wake up until the day after.

And so Arthur’s mind whirled at, well, the speed of thought. He went through the list of skills and resources he had at his disposal and juxtaposed them against the problem; he found something he could use.

“ Fine then―” he muttered, seeming to come to a conclusion as he hefted the sleeping sylvmaid in a princess carry. “Remind me of the prerequisites for [Shadow Walk] again?”

“For obstructions, so long as I have the smallest line of sight, a crevice, a crack, or a hole the size of my pinkie finger,” Nora hastily said, hands clenched in front of her bosom as if in supplication.

“ Come along then. I think I have a plan―we’ll need to work fast,” Arthur said. Nora nodded and the two jogged towards the exit. They needed to make the sylvmaid comfortable before they mounted a rescue.

 

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Nora’s POV

[Blood Healer Level 27!]

[Skill-Blood Art: Vivification Acquired!]

[Skill-Detect Death Acquired!]

‘Vesper’s pits!’ Nora swore as she jerked awake. It had been a while since she’d heard that impersonal facsimile of her voice declaring the World’s recognition. It was the seventh time after the consolidation that wiped off the taint that she considered her previous class. And yet there they were, her [Blood Arts] dogged her at every turn; it never got easier, heritage skills stayed for life.

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Shunting morose thoughts to the back of her mind, her awareness latched onto her surroundings, taking everything at a glance. She was inside a tent; she could feel her patient’s steady breathing and heartbeat even beneath the cocoon of blankets. A brazier of pyrstone coal lent a soothing warmth to the inside of the tent.

Sidling closer to the sylvmaid, she put the back of her hand against her forehead.

‘She’s fine,’ Nora sighed, corroborating the flushed cheeks with the feedback from her healer’s [Insight]. She panned her awareness elsewhere, catching the sound of the fire crackling outside.

The ambient sounds typical of the Faeriweald’s night remained undisturbed, and the nickering of brunhorns hitched and grazing nearby told her all she needed to know.

‘ But blight it Arthur, you let me oversleep!’ Nora fumed, chagrin as she tossed aside her shawl. The dhampir scrambled on her knees to get to the tent flap and got to her feet as soon as she crossed outside.

She gave the clearing in front of the dungeon a once over and, trusting the alarm wardstones to do their job, she shadow walked into the entrance of the dungeon. While she was not above using the skill to just port into Arthur’s location, her companion had warned her about the anomalous mana misbehaving in the dungeon.

‘The last time something like that happened I got someone killed,’ Nora mulled. She might not have shown it, but guilt at Livierre’s probable death and frustration at the clan’s betrayal still ate her on the inside.

The dhampir felt like naivety and complacency had become chinks in her armour. She felt more vulnerable than ever, and she didn’t know whether she could give Arthur her wholehearted trust.

And speaking of Arthur, she saw his mage lights straight ahead. Through the ward that separated the dungeon proper from the entrance tunnel, she saw the orbs of light refracted as though she were looking through water. Every step that brought her closer to Arthur suddenly felt heavier and almost hesitant. Doubt was beginning to creep in about her association with him―

‘No,’ she berated herself, slapping her cheeks as though that would dispel the budding mistrust.

‘ He told me about his origins in good faith; if I were in his shoes, I would have also kept that secret away from him,’ she thought, palming the bulge of the phone inside her pocket.

‘Ugh, when was I ever this petty?’ she cursed softly. Buoyed by jealousy, she’d been about to give Arthur a piece of her mind. Realising that she was detracting from the main issue, she reexamined her priorities; a chaste, uncalled for kiss by the sylvmaid was not worth spurning her only companion for days to come.

Exhaling as though to loosen the knot of frustration in her chest, she stepped past the ward. The ward clung to her person like a film of soap, and then, as soon as it came, the transient probing sensation was gone, and she was on the other side.

The number of magelights flickering around the pile of debris made her pause, but what caught her interest was the rune workings etched onto a single slab of dungeon stone. A casual glance wouldn’t have pegged it as a weak point in the obstruction but knowing Arthur and his skills, he had to have found a way

Hands on her hips, she came to a stop right behind a preoccupied Arthur. He didn’t even seem like he’d heard her come in, as he was engrossed in his task. Crouching, he had on his lap a tome with metallic bracing with an esoterically embossed cover, while his other hand held a mageslate in a wooden housing and a rune scriber. The scrawling motions were not lost on Nora; the parallels between what he was doing and the operation of the artefact she now had in her pocket were uncanny. In the dungeon floor, another artefact, a rod with gems ensconced along its length was impaled. One of the orb-like gems was lava orange and pulsed at intervals.

“ Arthur…why’d you let me fall asleep?” Nora inquired.

 

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Arthur's POV

Arthur visibly winced at the bite in the dhampir's query. Whether the scathing tone was intentional or it was just post-sleep grumpiness he could not tell. However, he gathered that it was better off that way.

At least they wouldn't have an awkward shuffle of words; he wasn't sure if the dhampir would still be hung up on the events that had transpired back at the strumpethouse.

“ Sorry about that,” Arthur said. “ As you can see I've been occupied with these—” he motioned towards an incomplete rune workings etched into the dungeon stone. It was a chain of runes in an incomplete circle awaiting the final touches.

The task had been painstakingly delicate, like working on a live powerline. Were it not for the [Null Field] he'd put up, the slightest deviation in dungeon mana could have set off the rune workings.

“ Apologies—you should have told me where you were going at least,” the woman said. “ Besides, it's dangerous to be in here alone—who knows what lingers about?”

“Relax,” Arthur reassured her. “ Everything is on the other side of this pile of rocks, see this,” he said pointing at the modified mageslate in his hand. Beneath the mageslate’s seemingly eccentric embellishments was an attachment housing the dungeon core; that was something Nora had seen Arthur labour over.

Arthur displayed the contents to Nora. It had been a spur of the moment thing to rig up the dungeon shard and attune it to a new mageslate. Arthur was gratified that his hunch had worked, and therein lay the results rendered in black against the mageslate’s grey surface. They were even properly encapsulated in dialog boxes.

｢Subsys.Comm.Start

[Detection]...6 Signatures

Subsys.Comm.End ｣

｢Subsys.Identify.Start

[Bog Pack Rat | Tier 1]

Comm.Scan.End ｣

 

“ Nothing is sneaking up on me within a radius of 75 metra,” he said with a grin. The range of [Detection] was a bubble that was only a little longer than the range of his spells, but still inside the reach of his arcane pistol. He could literally hear the squeaking of the infamous bog rats on the other side of the debris.

’ Though the [Detection] range could use some tweaking,’ he thought. Also, unlike sapient races who also had levels, monsters and beasts were only ranked based on tiers. However, between the latter two and the former, the tiers had a different weight to them. A tier 1 bog rat for example, could still overwhelm a tier 1 human that had no combat experience.

“ And how was I supposed to know that just by looking at a mageslate ?” Nora asked, peering at him from beneath hooded eyes. She seemed exasperated with his aloof situational awareness.

“ Never mind—I hope that plan of yours is ready,” Nora hastily corrected. If he started having to explain it, she would never hear the end of it. Nora had first hand experience when Arthur taught him to use the mundane artefact she was carrying in her pockets.

“ It is,” Arthur said, some of the pep draining from his face as he magicked the aetheroglyphic grimoire into [Inventory Chest]. The book contained a breakdown of some basic runes derived from the aetheroglyphs of the six primary affinities. It cost him half of what he'd spent on other enchanting sundries; he was inclined to think that the enchanted paper was a contributing factor.

Sighing, Arthur drew himself up from his crouch and closed the mageslate in its customised housing that looked like a rugged tablet case. He picked up the bejewelled rod from the ground, waving it in the air, and timed the pulses emanating from one of its gems. It was a Weisermann Thaumoflux Counter that measured the flux of ambient thaums per heartbeat.

Depending on the highest density around, it could also indicate the affinity. Strong ambient mana concentrations were easy to pick up, but the instrument’s sensitivity failed to detect an average mage's auric field or mana depth.

As of then, the arcane instrument indicated that the densest concentration was of pyr mana. That raised a lot of questions in a dungeon whose affinity leaned towards Ter and Aqer.

Satisfied that the mana fluctuations had stabilised, Arthur went ahead with the next part of the plan. He retrieved two small orbs, the size of marbles, aqua and scarlet; monster cores. In the field, they could be triggers for rune workings.

“Here we go—” Arthur murmured, slotting the gems into their respective recesses and completing the rune workings.

“[ Delay Matrix]! You might want to stand back for—” Arthur started, suddenly whirling in the direction of the dungeon's exit.

The alarm ward was pinging in his head. Nora appeared to have already caught on as she immediately took off running towards the camp.

“ Frag!” Arthur swore, putting the mageslate into his magical storage. He took off after the dhampir, leaving the rune workings on a countdown trigger.

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“What are you doing?! You’re in no condition to be moving around.” Nora snapped, incensed.

“The party—Yssinia—must save them,” the sylvmaid stuttered. She'd crawled and stumbled out of the tent, dragging the blankets with her and upsetting the wardstones near the tent.

“ We're doing everything we can,” Arthur said, as he pulled up the rear. “ The rubble is too ingrained in the passage, and between the two of us, we have no skills for dealing with the debris of dungeon rocks. The material is resistant to magic.”

‘ Otherwise I would have magicked the boulders away using [Inventory Chest].’ he left unsaid.

“My satchel—beacon crystals,” Elenaril quivered as the cold started getting to her. She looked imploringly from Arthur to Nora; her eyes told of her resolve to get to her acquaintances.

“Hold her,” Nora said, letting the woman lean against Arthur. She entered the tent and returned with Elenaril’s guild satchel. They helped her move towards the fire, where she’d warmed up .

In her stead, Nora rummaged through its contents, throwing out a dungeon map, alongside the other miscellanea from the satchel, until they found what she was looking for.

“Is this it?” Nora inquired when she found the crystals. Attached on a looped string, they resembled certain holiday ornaments as they twinkled with an inner light.

Elenaril squinted at the crystalline orbs shaped and nodded weakly.

“ How do you even work them?” the dhampir asked.

“Let me,” Arthur said. Nora handed over the golf-ball sized orb to him. He ran [Diagnostics] through the crystals and hummed in realisation.

There were three runes that triggered a particular resonance inside the crystals. They were psionic crystals and operated to a degree, like the sylvani telecry. Perhaps, he would have even deemed them the magical equivalents of a pager.

Focusing on the rune that conveyed a sense of urgency imprinted its matrix on his consciousness; Arthur empowered it with mana, and a thin pillar of red light strobed up into the night sky like a flare.

“They’ll come,” the sylvmaid rasped in a whisper. She smiled wanly before she closed her eyes and fell into another bout of convalescent sleep.

“ It’s done,” Arthur said, turning his gaze towards the entrance to the dungeon. The mental timer that made him aware of [Delay Matrix]’s countdown had gone off a couple of heartbeats after exiting the dungeon.

“ I am going in,” the dhampir said with unflinching resolve.

“ Yea―no,” Arthur corrected. “ Change of plans actually, I am. You have to stay behind and look after her and talk to anyone else who might come .”

“ That’s absurd Arthur,” Nora gawped. “ What if they need healing?”

“ Yeah, about that,” Arthur trailed off, looking askance at the slyvmaid, who had fallen fast asleep.

“ What is it?” Nora asked with suspicion.

Arthur motioned with his chin, and Nora got the memo. They delicately conveyed the sylvmaid to the tent, and after that was done, they went and stood some way off to the side. There, Arthur began to gear up as they talked while pulling his armour from [Inventory Chest]. They’d wasted enough time as it was. Their sense of urgency was lacking.

“ While you were asleep, I went through Elder Volemhir’s letter. There is a vouch of identity attached but we need to get our story straight, so I’ll give it to you,” Arthur said. He was visibly hesitant

“But that does not explain why I shouldn’t be the one to go in,” Nora said, narrowing her eyes sceptically.

“ Yeah, well…I found potions lying around in my [Inventory Chest].” Arthur winced as Nora grabbed hold and tightened the straps on his armour too tightly. “ Ow ow, sorry. I forgot; we both got caught up in the moment with the rescue.”

“ And time is wasting while we dither,” Nora fumed.

“ Yes, and why exactly you cannot go in is because when you use your healing skills, it shows. I am not sure crimson is the hallmark of normal healing skills,” Arthur said. Nora faltered.

“ Look, I found the appraiser’s loupe along with the rest of the stuff in the satchel. I am sure we can find a way to work the pendant so that it hides the emanations of your skills. It’s doing a fine job of hiding your aura so far,” Arthur said.

He tied down the last strap of the wurmhide armour. Nora stood back as Arthur donned a cloak over his armour. Leery of getting grime and stink on his nightstalker’s robe, he donned the drab sylvani cloak he’d used in the undergrove.

“ What else was there in the satchel?” Nora asked, folding her arms under her bosom.

“ Besides the grimoire, loupe and thaumoflux counter I ordered? Lots of things―and expensive parting gifts,” Arthur grinned. He rummaged around in his pocket and picked out an earcuff with one of those gems he’d seen on Sylvani telecry. It wrapped around the ear like ergonomic wireless earbuds.

“ This is mine,” Arthur stated, donning the ornament. It had obviously been fitted for him. “ This is for you…” Arthur said, retrieving a pair of stud earrings.

“ Are those what I think they are?” Nora asked as she put her palm out.

“ Yeppers,” Arthur chimed. “ And here’s the letter from the Elder―” he said, almost half shoving the wooden scroll case that contained the letter into Nora’s hands.

“Now I’ll be off; lives are on the line,” he added, voice cracking nervously as he made off to the dungeon.

“ Huh? Arthur? Wait a moment― Arthur!” a confused Nora called out after his back. Arthur had already ducked into the dungeon entrance.

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