The last letter

Little Diego is 10 months old now and earlier today he made his first steps. I am so proud of him. Leena has been such a wonderful aunt too. I have been feeling she is a little jealous of me for having Lorenzo’s child. So, it wasn’t been such a big surprise for me that last month she announced being pregnant too. I am happy for her. She will now be able to experience the same joys of motherhood as I do. I recognize that neither of us are married to Lorenzo, and so both of our kids with him are officially recognized as bastards. But I don’t care about what other people think. Once Lorenzo has earned enough money, he can afford to marry both of us and then our children will be legitimized.

About the money, most of it is gone now. Lorenzo already had to spend a lot of it on buying 18 sapphires to disassemble. And even more on 14 rubies. These were harder to find and therefore more expensive. Apparently, the church buys a lot of them but sells none. So that’s where another part of the money went into. As for recreating those sapphires, well, it takes him a whole week to make one the same size as the ones he disassembled. So, he had to spend a long time getting his sapphires back. Now he alternates between researching the creation of rubies with the production of sapphires. The interesting part is that rubies also have aluminum in them, but not titanium. They have a metal in them which the crafter’s guild identified as chromium. This time however, Lorenzo couldn’t buy chromium from them, as they didn’t have any. So, he had to send out some quests so a couple of guilds to go collect chromium for him, but that brings other issues with it. First, he can’t legally offer the same quest to different guilds. So, the collection of chromium goes slow. Also, when some adventurers complete one of those quests, Lorenzo has to pay them for completion, and that’s costing us money again. All those costs made it so Lorenzo was **** to keep making fake gems.

Despite Lorenzo promising to focus on making real gems, I fear he may have to keep making fake ones for a much longer than intended. He still needs to afford buying several real emeralds and study them before he can make real ones of his own. There is just a constant need for fake gems to keep up the research. At least he has stopped making fake sapphires. He doesn’t need those any more now he can do the real ones. And hopefully he will figure out how to create real rubies soon.

Amelia starts looking for another letter, but to her surprise, she can’t find any.

“Wait, was this the last letter?” She asks.

Amelia starts searching again, aided by Kiara, but they can’t find any more letters.

“Noooo, I wanted to read about the rubies.” Amelia groans. “Did Lorenzo figure it out or not?”

“Indeed. That is quite the loss.” Kiara agrees. “They also said nothing about the bloodstained tapestry or the diseases.”

I think for a moment about any clues the letters might have given us. Then I get it and snap my fingers to get the girls’ attention.

“The letters did say something about Lorenzo having a workshop. For which he had to go to the garden to access it.”

“Excellent idea, Darx. Let’s search for Lorenzo’s workshop”. Amelia exclaims.

We walk through the mansion and figure out where the dining room is. Now that we know Lorenzo and his girls have been living in this mansion, and made a lot of use of the dining room, it is not a big surprise to see little to no dust here. It also explains the lack of dust in the living room, ballroom and hallways.

Attached to the dining room is a solarium. Something like a porch, but surrounded by glass to permit people inside to look outside while also possessing the shape of a half circle. As I step into the solarium, I look into the garden and see 2 people standing on the terrace. I quickly step back and hold out my hand to signal the girls to stand back.

“Amelia? Are there other members of your guild who took this quest?” I ask in a hushed voice.

“No, we have specific rules on not having multiple groups on the same quest.” She answers.

“What about other guilds having access to the same quest?” I ask as my eyes follow the two strangers in the garden.

“No.” Kiara answers. “Handing over the same quest to multiple different guilds is generally not permitted as it promotes guild conflicts. Only the royal court has the authority to hand the same quest to multiple guilds, and even then, it is exceptionally rare.”

I point at the garden for them and say, “Then who are those two guys in the garden?”

Kiara and Amelia both get close to me and look outside. Just in time to see one of them cast a magic spell that lifts a portion of the lawn to the right of the pond, and then tilt it sideways like a wall. Revealing that under the lawn there was a hidden passage.

“We need to go there and quick.” Kiara says.

I draw my sword, Amelia gets her glass orb ready and Kiara is always ready to cast her spells. We silently open one of the glass doors of the solarium and sneak towards the passage. I peer inside but can’t see the strangers. I do notice what appears to be a metal door at the bottom of the passage and it is wide open. That must be the entrance to Lorenzo’s secret workshop. As a crystal mage, he could use earth magic. He literally has an underground workshop.

I walk through the open door and get into a corridor. One which quickly makes a sharp turn to the right. It is pretty dark here, but not too dark. I wonder who these guys are and what they are doing here.