Explorer
It was taking a while for Rin to get back to Shirou. She had left Malfeas without much issue before setting off towards Chiaroscuro but it seemed that each day she encountered something that slowed her progress. Her first day out of hell it had been an abandoned traveler that she had ferried home on Rubinrot. Then she had to deal with the fact that she had rode a demon into a town.
The realm was to busy fighting itself to send a Wyld hunt but she still got out of there quickly.
The day after that she had needed to land for supplies and ended up in the middle of a gang war and no one was willing to sell to her while it was going on. It turned out though that a Lunar and three demons could put down a gang war in little time so she had been able to set off immediately the next day.
Now though she looked below her to see something that looked like a massive building poking up out of the dry and cracked earth of the south.
"What do you think it is?" she spoke out loud to the demons who surrounded her. Rubinrot was being ridden of course but her other demons were hanging around her in a non-material state.
"It looks something like a long-broken Manse." Rubinrot answered after a moment "It was likely picked clean decades ago."
Rin shook her head and sighed "You are probably right but there might be something helpful in there." she looked toward the low sun and sighed "We will need to set down soon anyway, night isn't far away."
Silber made a guttural sound that Rin had learned was his way of coughing for attention "My lady, you can sleep on an Agatae's back comfortably. If I may advise, we should continue to head towards our target."
Rin shook her head again "No, I get the feeling that it means something that we reached it now. We'll leave tomorrow at daybreak."
There was a sound like a grumble from both sides, it seemed Blutspucke agreed with Silber.
Rubinrot set her down just outside the Manse before becoming incorporeal like her other demons. Rin walked towards the door as her knowledge of Manses came to mind. They required perfectly positioned architecture to make use of the local geography for magical use. If it was long broken it would likely be completly without power.
The front gate was ajar, likely so looters could get in and out easily. She walked inside followed by her demons. Inside was a wide room which held three doors deeper into the building and a large pit in the center that seemed almost to consume light.
Rin walked up to the pit and peered inside. There was no light and she couldn't see anything that would lead her to think that there was anything down there at all. For all she knew it went right to the heart of the planet.
The question was when was this pit installed? Before or after the Manse broke, it could have even been the cause. She wiped her finger along the pit's edge and looked at it. Dust and sand were all she found but the edge was smooth. That could mean it was man-made but it could have also been sharp and been worn away by time.
She focused her magic and allowed her Caste mark to glow to try and light the pit but nothing happened, the pit seemed just to absorb the light.
"Rubinrot, do you think you could fly down there and see what it was?" Rin asked in a nonchalant manner. Rubinrot nodded and began decending.
A moment later it rose quickly to report the first thing it saw "A few meters down there is another room, it is filled with skeleton's picked clean."
Rin nodded, her head still glowing "Take me down there."
A few minutes later she stood in the room examining the bones that were in mostly in the right place. She was skipping over the ones that were now just piles.
She turned to another one and after only a minute of looking gasped, Rubinrot approached and as it did, Rin pulled at the skeleton.
"String." Rin looked over towards Rubinrot "This one was held together, by string. Why?"
The last question was mostly for herself. As she looked round the room some more she found more fibers clinging to bone. Most had rotted already but in some spots she could find a tiny hole through a bone that would have been fed through with string.
She continued around until she had checked all the bodies before coming to her feet and talking to herself "Someone would have needed to have thread these, these skeletons predate the abandonment of the Manse. There are two possibilities... three actually."
She took up a pose that she used when teaching Shirou. Only the demons were listening but it was easier to think while explaining something.
"Whoever did this needed skeletons that could be held together. They might have been a cult who did this as part of their rituals, likely an underworld cult."
No one questioned her so she continued "The second possibility is that this a place to create necromantic constructs, but I don't see any residue from any method of awakening that I know of."
"You were taught necromancy miss?" Silber asked quietly, not wanting to interupt.
"No." Rin answered quickly "I just have a strong feeling about it so I'm trusting my Exaltation. It tells me there should be signs."
"So...?" Silber asked.
"We will need to search the Manse further to check that. Regardless, my third answer is the least supernatural. This could be some medical school. The could have used these skeletons to teach people about the skeleton."
There was quiet for a few moments before Silber made his coughing sound again and Rin nodded "Yeah, I don't agree with it either. We will need to look around some more, Rubinrot could you-"
She had been about to ask Rubinrot to check out the pit again but before she could she coughed, it felt like she had just been punched in the gut. She collapsed and found it hard to breathe in. It was like suddenly all the air had been removed from her lungs and the space around her.
Vaguely she could hear her demons calling out to her. Honestly, they seemed much more trustworthy than her tutor had said demons would be.
Her vision went black and she slipped into unconsciousness.
End of chapter
I'll be honest, I got bored of writing Shirou chapters again.
Rin's fine but her trip back to Shirou might be a bit delayed.
Sakura is still working on getting her nature in check so she likely won't be around for a while longer.
