Rummaging

In a flash, Aeolia and John shrunk, the winged woman returning to her normal size and John reduced to a comparable height. The compression hadn’t relieved the strain on John’s shoulder, however, and he twisted slightly as Aeolia lifted them further into the air.

“Stop… squirming,” she shouted back at him, her raised voice cutting through the roar of the wind.

“Kinda hard not to when your arm is being slowly pulled out,” John shouted back through gritted teeth.

“Just hold on for a second,” Aeolia retorted, her wings flapping as they ascended higher, now nearly to the ceiling of the hallway. They flew towards a turn in the hall and John briefly wondered how much of a strain turning would put on his shoulder. His musings on that point would not come to pass as Aeolia sped up even further, her trajectory set for a portion of the wall.

"Hey," John shouted out, fear creeping into his voice, " what are you…."

He couldn't finish his question as Aeolia dragged him through the wall, the solid brickwork parting like smoke as they passed. Beyond the faux wall was an expansive arched hall of grey stone, with several sporadic doorways leading to further rooms. A number of tiny gems were fused with the walls, each glowing with a yellow light that gave the hidden passage a comfy feel.

Aeolia flapped her wings to arrest their forward motion, causing her and John to pivot forward. The sudden shift in momentum caused a sharp stab of pain to lance through John’s shoulder and he reflexively twitched, the motion causing Aeolia’s grasp on his wrist to falter.

John hit the ground with a dull thud, the impact shaving three points off his health bar. John shot an annoyed look at Aeolia as she landed next to him.

“What?” she said, extending a hand. “You shouldn’t have twitched.”

John took her offered hand and she helped him to his feet. “I’ll remember that for the next time.”

The Gamer rolled his shoulder as he took in his surroundings, the pain from both the short flight and hard landing already fading away. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Our quarters,” Aeolia said with a distant voice, her face taking on a melancholic tinge. “My brother Zeph spent way too much time making it.”

“‘Making’?” John queried.

“Remember what I said about tweaking Barriers?” Aeolia asked, continuing when John nodded, “Zeph had something of a talent when it came to that. Still took him ages to reshape the Barrier into this.”

John cast his gaze around the hall once more. “Doesn’t look like those guys found this place.”

“That’s because the way in only works if you’re going over a certain speed,” Aeolia said, her voice taking on a hint of pride. “Any slower than that and it’s just as solid as any wall. Zeph was pretty happy when he worked that one out. Spent around two months thinking of leaving to join the Fateweavers.”

“Well, that explains why we had to go the Evel Knievel route,” John said, “just wish you would have told me before dragging me around like a ragdoll. And what are Fateweavers?”

“A neutral guild of Barrier specialists. And we’re in a hurry,” Aeolia said, eyes carefully avoiding looking at John, “so no more questions. Let's get moving.”

She briskly headed down towards the far end of the hall, her talons clacking against the hard stone floor. John quickly followed after her, catching up after a few steps and stuck closer to her.

“I’m not going to grow back to my normal size randomly, right?” John asked nervously, eyeing his arms as if they were about to balloon up at any moment.

“Not without warning,” Aeolia said, “I put enough into the spell to keep you mini for an hour or so and I can feel it working, so worst case, I grab you and fly out. But I can just add to the spell if it starts to fail.”

John let out a sigh of relief. “Well, let’s not risk it and find whatever it is we’re looking for and get back to looking for clues. What are we looking for anyway?”

Aeolia’s steps slowed a bit. “Zeph had a habit of collecting magically charged trinkets. He liked to see what they could do if they served as an anchor for a Barrier or in other spells. I think he said he was working on getting samples of elemental mana for his experiments. Hopefully, he got them before, well…”

“Yeah,” John said quietly.

“Anyway,” Aeolia continued, her voice a tad tighter than before, “we pop into his room, grab whatever he got for his project, and get back to work.”

Their short conversation ended right as they reached an arching passageway obscured by a peculiar bit of fabric. As they approached, its color shifted from off-white to a harsh mix of pale green and black, mixed in a tye-dye pattern.

Skill Level Up: Observe Lv. 5. Emotional information now revealed.

John closed the Observe sheet and its level up notification and kept the question about auras to himself for the moment. He shot a glance at Aeolia. Despite her efforts to maintain a calm facade, her tight jaw and clenched fists gave away her discomfort at being at the threshold of her brother’s domicile.

Unable to stop himself, John cast Observe on her.

‘Damn it,’ John cursed in his head, leaving the Observe sheet open to keep Aeolia from suspecting he had used his Skill on her. It was obvious that Aeolia had a lot to deal with and work through, problems John was not comfortable or capable of helping her with.

‘I can’t help her deal with them,’ John thought, ‘but, I can at least distract her.’

“So this is the place?” John asked as innocently as possible.

Aeolia jumped slightly at John’s voice, then shook her head as if to clear her head.

“Yes, it is,” she finally answered before coughing slightly. “We might want to be careful; Zeph isn’t... wasn’t the most organised person.”

She pulled back the curtain and the pair were exposed to the madness within. The chamber itself was split into two sections; a large square area that was meant to function as a catchall living space if the desk, couch and table were any indication. At the back of the room, a smaller piece of color shifting cloth blocked the sight to what John assumed was a bedroom given the lack of a bed in the visible room.

At least that’s what John assumed, given that the vast majority of the room’s features were obscured by an unbelievable amount of paper and knick-knacks. The floor was the only surface not covered in layers of paper, though in exchange most of the various bits of what John assumed were magical items or the pieces to make such things were strewn across it. Pieces of metal and crystal in a variety of shapes and sizes stretched out like a minefield. The hard surfaces were dominated by papers covered in symbols John didn’t recognize, many of them arranged like math equations.

“Well,” John said, “I see what you mean.”

A nostalgic look passed over Aeolia’s face, then a pained one before she schooled her features.

“Yeah,” she said softly, “he always was jumping between projects and ideas and leaving them lying around half finished. Come on, there shouldn’t be anything too dangerous.”

Aeolia took a breath and strode into the room with determined steps. John followed after her, eyes wide as he took in the half finished bits of artifice.

“Any idea just what we’re looking for?” John asked, carefully stepping over a partially constructed cube of icy blue metal, mindful of its jagged edges. He was tempted to just cast Observe on everything, but a quick glance at Aeolia as she picked up a piece of her brother’s writings put that notion to rest. ‘Better to keep an eye on her than get distracted.’

“Huh,” Aeolia responded, her attention snared by one of her brother’s pages. “Oh right. I really don’t know. I never really paid that much attention to what he was working on.”

John winced and hurriedly tried to think of something to say, but no words came to mind before Aeolia began to speak again.

“It would probably be a crystal,” she said softly, “like the Tracer Crystal. Can’t really say how big it’ll be though.”

John ventured further into the room, slowly panning for any sign of such an item.

“Is all this stuff its normal size?” John asked as he headed towards the paper covered desk, hoping that random questions would keep Aeolia’s mind from dwelling on the deaths. “Or have they been shrunk down?”

“Some of it’s shrunk, I think,” Aeolia responded after a short silence, an orb of smooth blackened stone cradled in her hand. “It’s not like I’m the only one with that kind of magic. But it's not like there aren’t craftsmen who are our height. You can find almost anything on the Auction.”

“Auction?” John questioned, picking up a thin, cracked, and dull purple piece of crystal off the desk, Observe revealing it was an empty and damaged Mana Retaining Crystal.

“The Abyss Auction,” Aeolia replied, putting the stone she held down to rummage through a crate she found near the couch. “If those bastards hadn’t taken all the computers, I could show you.”

She paused as the sound of knocking metal, wood and crystal emanated from the crate as she dug through it. A wicked smile stretched upon her face when she touched something that was slightly cooler than the other items.

“Think I’ve got something,” Aeolia reported, pulling out a slender crystalline cylinder of deep purple. John turned from the desk and trained his eyes on what Aeolia held aloft, casting Observe upon it.

John closed the screen, ignoring the unknown Attribute and Evocation in favor of getting a closer look at the crystal. As he drew closer to Aeolia, he understood why the crystal only had about half of its Durability: a number of thin cracks ran up and down the length of the cylinder.

“Well, this has Dark Mana,” John said, carefully taking the crystal from Aeolia, “but I don’t know how long this will last. When I use my Evocations, it takes a bit of an item’s Durability to use. I can only guess that drawing the Mana out will wear it down more.”

“How badly damaged is it?” Aeolia asked, her yellow eyes tracing the cracks.

“About half way to complete breakdown,” John reported, turning the crystal around in his hand, “and only has 33 out of 50 points of Dark Mana stored. Can’t say for sure how much I could draw out at a time, or how quickly it might ****. And I can only read about seven minutes total with the amount of Mana I have right now. Even if we wait for me to fully recharge, that only gives us nine minutes.”

John stopped his explanations, giving Aeolia an imploring look, cueing her for input.

“We’ll do what we can for now,” she said after a moment of thought. “If we don’t get anything useful before you run dry, we’ll just have to wait for you to recharge. And if the crystal breaks before we can drain it, we can use that knife of yours.”

“Sounds like a plan,” John said. “Do you mind if I carry the crystal in my Inventory?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Aeolia replied, already navigating her way out of the room. “It’s probably safer in there anyway. Let’s head for the main room. We’ll probably get the best info there since they went after our computers.”

“Right,” John said, depositing the crystal, “guess we’ll need to take the flying route back out, huh?”

“It’ll be the fastest way,” Aeolia answered as she slipped past the curtain, the fabric shifting from pale green back to white with her passing. John moved after her, pausing as he noticed something poking out from under a piece of paper upon the desk. Unlike the more flexible notebook-like pages, it appeared far more rigid, almost like cardboard.

John pushed aside the papers atop the curious bit of stationary, revealing it to be a business card of some sort. John picked it up, eyeing the simple black text upon the white card.

“Renox Solutions - A new approach to old problems,” John read aloud. “That doesn’t really explain anything. No contact info either.”

He turned the card over to check if a website, phone number or address was printed. Instead, he saw in black ink an elaborate pattern of symbols and lines, encased within a circle.