At questions too foolish to bear.
With a roll of her eyes,
She groaned at the skies,
And mumbled, "Dear Lord, grant me air!"
- Goldie Honorhide.
“Firstly, if you are not together to make coin, why are you a team?” Makara asked.
“I wouldn’t be too hasty in saying we are not here to make coin, lass,” Yoboc said. “It is only Ivan who is not really interested in coins, and I figure that is because he doesn’t really know what you can buy with them yet. You haven’t been to a town yet, let alone a city, have you, Ivan?”
I shook my head.
Makara looked puzzled, “Where have you been all your life?”
“Wandering the Arctic,” I replied.
“What all of it?” she asked.
“Not all the Arctic, but all my life. Yeah,” I shrugged.
She shook her head, “You will get eaten alive in a city.”
“No, lass. Not with us here,” Yoboc said.
“What are you, his guardians?”
“No, his teammates, obviously,” snarked Goldie.
“So what makes you a team then? Why are you together?” Makara asked.
“We removed ourselves from a difficult situation,” Yoboc said.
“So you are fugitives,” Makara said.
“No, we are not fugitives, and there is no bounty on us,” Goldie rolled her eyes, “bloody mercenaries.”
“So you are not a Mercenary Guild team then?” Makara asked.
“Goldie and I are members, and Ivan will be joining as soon as we get to a town with a guild hall,” Yoboc said.
This was news to me, but I guess so. I will have to find out more about it.
Makara looked at me, “Arctic, huh? So, if you are not here for the coin, what are you here for? Running like these two?”
“I like to wander and explore new areas,” I said.
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much. I also like learning new skills. I am young, so that is what I am interested in right now,” I replied.
“New skills around this secret affinity of yours, which may or may not be around magnetic fields.”
“That's right.”
“So you two are running, and you are exploring. Why are you guys together?” Makara asked.
“They helped me a lot with my classes and skills, so I am helping them,” I said.
“It doesn’t seem like enough,” Makara said.
“And coin is enough?” Yoboc asked.
“At least it is an easy thing to measure. Am I getting richer?” Makara said.
“Getting along with your team members is more important, and at least having similar values. Otherwise, you will break apart quickly,” Yoboc said.
Makara looked at Goldie, “Get along, huh?”
“You survived the last five days alright,” Yoboc said. “It can happen.”
“Similar values?” she asked, “How do you know what my values are?”
“We have been watching,” Yoboc said. “You haven’t tried to murder us or steal from us, even when there is something you really wanted,” Yoboc indicated the bone knives. “Goldie put you under stress, and you complained but didn’t lose your temper or run. You can stick it out and control your temper, and those are big ones in my book. You didn’t strike out or use your affinity against us. Now, we find out if you are satisfied with avenging your mentor's death or are seeking more than death for a death.”
Goldie piped in, “And we find out how attached to coins you are.”
Makara looked at the three of us. “What about me being incompatible with my classes and skills?”
“Different skill sets bring versatility to a team, and you are already a long way to getting a land-based class. That is nothing that can’t be fixed over time,” Yoboc said.
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Makara frowned. “You are a sneaky bastard, aren’t you?”
“It is best you know that sooner rather than later,” Yoboc replied.
I was learning a new side to Yoboc, although there were hints of this before.
“Do you have anybody waiting for you back in Asasaga?” Yoboc asked.
“Not particularly,” Makara replied. “Shark Mer don’t tend to swim in Schools like other Mer.” She took a deep breath, “Ok, I am in. If you want to walk away from this, then I will go with you. My personal opinion is we should at least look at it with this mysterious sensing skill of Ivans before we walk, but that is just my opinion.”
Yoboc nodded. “Welcome to the team.”
Goldie grumbled under her breath.
“What is your opinion about this cache, Ivan?” Yoboc asked.
“I think we should take a look. You can watch from the bluff with Farsight and warn us of any trouble,” I replied.
“Yeah, that was my thinking as well,” Yoboc said. “But this is just to take a look and report back. We will then decide as a team if we think it is doable. It has already collapsed once on Makara. Ivan could easily drown if it collapses on you.”
I nodded. It didn’t take long for us to be ready. I caught a sad look in Yoboc’s eyes and wondered what that was. Then Godie was there muttering to him, and he was fine again. It then occurred to me that he was going to watch for ships and other issues from the top of the bluff, and this would be a poignant reminder of Sheila and his missing her. This worries me. The death of a bond really does affect you deeply.
We move along the shore to the cache, which is only a few hundred meters offshore. It is a grey day with low clouds and a grey, choppy sea. Yoboc was quite pleased, as the low clouds meant any flying bond would have to fly low. He warned the sea-based bonds or Mer would be the hardest to see in the choppy waters. Boats will stand out.
Felix is up next to him. With our strengthening bond, we are able to communicate feelings more easily, so if there is danger, he should be able to pass that through the bond.
Goldie is on the shore next to us. She will stay there on close watch. The Cache is out beyond her axe-throwing skill, so she won’t be able to help much. She has a line of sight to Yoboc, and they have some basic signals worked out. She also has our packs and gear with her in case we need to run rather than walk.
We stay with Goldie on the shore, watching Yoboc scan the area and then rescan it. After almost an hour, he waves the signal to proceed. The next stage is Makara and me entering the water and scouting the area for threats. Makara is much faster than I am and will do the bulk of the scouting. Her Hearing Aid and Olfactory are higher than mine, and her Ocean Stealth is something I don’t even have.
When Makara signalled the all clear, I moved to where she said the Cache was and looked around. It was a large rock shelf, but not high enough to be above the low tide. We timed this so the tide was on its way out, which made everything shallower for me. I circled the entire rock shelf before moving closer to the crevice with a lot of loose rocks. I stayed on the surface and focused on my now level 8 Cosmic Aura, and I filled it with Spiritual Sensing and Void Sensing. Void Sensing had just bumped into the Apprentice level.
I pulled up my Map skills and started to map what I was sensing, not just what I was seeing. My Void Sensing shows me clearly where the voids are. Rock is a harder and denser material, so it has fewer voids. Water has a lot of voids, and air has even more. In this way, I could trace the passage that had been cut in the rock. It was small. It's big enough for a large person like me to swim through, but only just. My back and chest would be scraping the top and bottom, and it was barely wide enough. I could pull myself through on the rocks, but it would not take much to trap me. It was definitely built with Mer in mind, who don’t need to surface for a breath.
The tunnel twisted in several directions. I have never tried mining underwater, but somebody dug this tunnel. Then, the tunnel opened to a larger cave. It was larger, but not large at all. I could turn around in it, but that was all. There were several indented areas in the wall of the cave where his treasures were placed. All of it was submerged in water. There were no air pockets anywhere.
Once I had mapped this, I switched to focusing on my Spiritual Sense. I would not be able to use my Spiritual Sense like this without my Cosmic Aura. I need to work out what else it can do, or more specifically, what other skills it can synchronise with.
My Spiritual Sensing was not that sensitive, but it was at the early Journeyman Level. This should be enough to sense non-expert enchantments. There were several places in the tunnel that stood out to the senses. I don’t know what they were or what they would do, but they were probably part of a trap. The chamber had a number of areas shining as well. Several shelves had items that shone, but several walls had things as well.
When I added this to the map, I picked up a small rock and swam back to shore. Goldie signalled Yoboc and Makara to meet.
Once we were all assembled, I moved to a patch of sand on the rocky shore and drew a rough map of the tunnel and the cave, highlighting the spiritual points.
“The good news is that I am pretty sure the safe is there, and it is small enough to have gotten through the tunnel.” Makara’s eyes lit up. “There are a number of other spiritually enhanced items in there as well.”
“But?” Yoboc asked.
“But, this is the entrance, and it is buried under several tons of rock. It is loose rock that could be shifted. The tunnel is narrow and twisty, which you can’t really tell from this flat map. This point here it dips and then suddenly rises, and then there are these spiritual points after it.”
“That looks like a standard cave-in trap to be triggered after you have passed and are trapped in space,” Makara said. “Most Mer would run out of air in there quickly unless the water can circulate somehow.”
“Not that I could sense,” I said. “The cave is small—barely my length across and in height. The tunnel comes out near the top of the cave. There are shelves cut into the wall for storage. I think the safe is on this side and about halfway up. It is the most dense material I have ever sensed. I could not sense inside it. It is about an arm's length long and the length of my forearm wide and high.”
“How would you suggest we safely get in?” Yoboc asked.
I tossed him the rock. “That is what the rock is. Do we have anything to mine through it?” I moved to another patch of sand and started making a large mound of it, and then I started shaping it into the rock shelf. I got out a knife and started Carving the wet sand into the right shape.
“This is the rock shelf,” I said. Then I cut my knife into it, “This is the crevice with the entrance.” I moved to one side of the sand model of the rock. “Overlaying my maps, if we were to mine here, at this angle, it is only about twice my body length, and we should come out near where the tunnel meets the cave.” I was 2.6m tall so that was over five meters of rock to get through. “If we tunnel up, then gravity will help pull the rocks and potentially the goods out.”
Yoboc was examining the rock sample I gave him and was tapping it. Neither he nor Goldie were miners by class, but they both had a high Mineral Lore and grew up in and around mines. “This is a type of Schist. It is quite a hard rock, but you can see these lines. These are planes of weakness that can be exploited.” He looked up, “We don’t have the right gear, but I have my small pick, and we have our chisels and the axe spikes.” He paused.
“We could clear the entrance in a day,” he said, “but then we have to navigate the traps. By we, I mean Makara. Two apprentice miners with inadequate equipment digging through this? Probably three days, maybe less. Not less than two. Mining is safer but slower.”
“I vote to clear the entrance and send Makara in,” said Goldie with a grin. Makara gave her a rude gesture.
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