In the Shadow of Ribbons: Part 1-05: Meliath: Hidden Archive
Scene 5 of 'In the Shadow of Ribbons, set Within Thalenra. A hidden room is found, that might answer all their questions.
The previous scenes can be found Within Thalenra, or to go direct to scene one here.
We briefly return to the investigation underway at the Renegade’s house.
Anybia had just finished flicking through the papers, when Meliath re-entered the office space
“There is some useful stuff, but most is for his cover.” She said looking up at him. “A few textbooks, papers that match with the licensed ritualist work we’ve got on record for him. There is documentation for the training camp confirming it had approval to become an outreach program.” She flicked through a thin bundle of papers. “I’m not surprised he convinced the Low Council to licence them with these reports; they look authentic. We could have ended up with his ‘Quiet Haven’ recruits getting funnelled into the Foundation Project, and no one the wiser. An entire generation of Academy-trained Order oathbound, ready to go.” She finished placing it all in a box. “I heard Erian. Did he find someone?”
“Yes, a woman called Marnie. Sounds like she was held a long time.” He took out a notebook, and wrote a few things on it. Passing the note to Anybia, he said “She gave Erian the name ‘Nab’, and I think she might be mentioned in Kaela’s files. See what you can find on her, in them.”
Anybia glanced at the note, slipping it in her robes. “‘Purple hair and eyes?’ that should stand out. ‘Nab’ rings a bell too. I should be able to find something with that. She say anything about Belaine?”
“Enough to get Erian to believe her. And if what she told him is true…” He focused his thaumic sense of the area of the wall that Erian had mentioned, and felt for soft thaumic threads that you had to know were there before they appeared; and found them. “Then we might finally have some answers.” He stripped that obfuscation veil, revealing a switch.
Anybia looked at the spot and shook her head with irritation. “I should have caught that. I knew he was good, but obfuscation that advanced takes far more skill that I was crediting him with.” She walked over to stand next to Meliath, and pulling out her focus, quickly recorded the fading threads. “If he did that himself, then we may have missed a lot at the training camp.”
Meliath was running his senses over the door, checking for additional wards. “I don’t think he did. The aura signature on it was different from most of the other castings I’ve unravelled tonight. It could be Marnie. Her aura had a similar feel to the obfuscation technique here.” Meliath pressed the switch. “It would explain how she knew about this.”
An entrance appeared in the wall. “No wards, but there’s bound to be more hidden thaumcraft if this is important. Keep an eye out.”
Through the door was a narrow staircase. Meliath headed down, and Anybia followed. Both had their foci out, ready to dissipate any thaumcraft they spotted. The stairs didn’t go down too far, and they quickly reached an open space with a low ceiling.
Meliath crouched slightly as he looked around, taking in the neatly arranged rows of boxes filling one side of the space, while on the other, the wall featured several dark smooth panels. The glow of his focus showed him the space spread far further than he expected, almost the full length of the house going by what he remembered from the blueprint.
“This is above the basement.” He said, and ran another pass of his focus, surprised not to find any additional wards. “It seems clear, but I don’t trust it. Check each box closely before you take it upstairs. I’ll take a look at those thread mirrors.”
Anybia nodded and ran her focus over the first box, slower that Meliath would have been, but just as thorough. Meliath had finished clearing the first panel for traps when she left with the cleared box. The thaumcraft attached to the panel was as he expected, a thread mirror designed to display the thaumcraft present in the viewed location. Focus at the ready just in case, he activated it.
An image appeared on the panel of a small bedroom, where Jaxmil was standing, holding a book. Meliath could see the thaumcraft he was using to check it for anything untoward. He moved on to the next panel, repeating his checks, and this time saw an empty cell. With the third there was a ritual circle, presumably the one Erian had mentioned. He frowned on seeing the runes carved in it, definitely prohibited combinations in use. No wonder Erian had been worried about the woman.
He was about to move on to the fourth, when Anybia, picking up her second box, asked “Do you hear that?” As soon as she said it he heard a low hum, getting louder.
He cursed, and dived towards Anybia, pushing her towards the staircase, even as he activated his strongest protection ward around them both. He fell on to the bottom step, Anybia beneath him, and the contents of the box she’d been holding spilled out around them. And less than a second later the hum crested; the room behind him filled with forks of lightning.
He rolled off Anybia, and faced the disaster. They were going to lose it all if they didn’t act. “Dispel 3” he commanded, and pointed his focus towards the space. Quickly pressing 3 indents in its surface, he flicked his fingers in a dismissing motion, intended to set the path for the threads to follow.
Without hesitation, Anybia did likewise, mirroring his action. Pale yellow lightning came out of their foci and combined, cancelling the energy that careened around the space in front of them, grounding it.
They sat there breathing heavily for several moments. The dispel commands of the foci Gretham made were extremely effective, but took a lot of energy to power. Meliath was going to be feeling drained for at least an hour, and Anybia looked like she would be similar.
“Are you alright?” He asked her as he stood up. He reached out a hand to help her to her feet. “Sorry for the rough landing.”
“Just a bit bruised. You’ve done rougher in training.” She grabbed his hand tightly, and got to her feet, looking up at him, her face slightly red in her focus’s light. “I’ll take a few bruises over lightning any day.” She looked away, into the room. “At least we got a couple of boxes out before it went off. Any idea what triggered it?”
“Now the threads have been cancelled, we’d need Erian’s talent to tell for certain. My best guess is it was tied to the number of mirrors activated. He could have had a dormant strand between them, with that noise you heard linked to the individual threads activating. I’ll remember this one.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, letting frustration show, where it was normally hidden. “What do you think are the chances of salvaging any of it.”
“Not high, but Gretham has been working on that object history idea of his. It might work.” She went to one of the boxes, singed and filled with holes, and opened the lid. She grimaced as she saw the contents, and looked at Meliath. “Or maybe not. This one’s barely more than scraps.”
“Sunder it!” Meliath cursed under his breath, and opened another. He reached in and grabbed a couple of the paper scraps. There were a couple of words here and there, like ‘soulbind’ and ‘Marnie’, enough to indicate they had been important. He couldn’t see much chance of restoring them. There were remnants of memory crystals as well, their recording turned to dust. “This is worse than when we thought Belaine got everything out.”
“No, it’s not.” Anybia went over to where the spilled contents of the narrowly saved box lay, and began flicking through one of the books. “We got two full boxes out, and enough potential data in the scraps to keep the Archivium going for months.” She gave Meliath a small smile, and handed him the book. You’ve done more with less.”
The smile slipped past his self-reproach. He took a slow breath, and straightened, activating the self-care routines in his clothes. The few tears he’d received repaired themselves, and he once again looked the confident CCD commander. “You’re right. Let’s get it all back to base.”
Thanks for reading! This was going to be longer, but thanks to finally doing a proper outline this week, I avoided repeating myself. I think it worked (if I ignore the part of my brain shouting I need to document every moment in the house).
Look forward to finding out what was in the surviving boxes further down our narrative tale.
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