Chapter Eighty-six

Questions of Trust

We headed back to our dwelling. My mind was full of so many thoughts. This mission was extremely more dangerous than fighting K'varn had been. There was no thought of killing the kraken, only avoiding it and getting away. I couldn't put my friends' lives at risk without first asking them. Not again. Was the council being fully truthful with us? Was this actually a test to see if we'd put the Stones we already had in danger?

Everyone in the group stopped suddenly as we were passing by the statues in the center of the city. I broke out of my thoughts to see what was going on. They were all staring at the statue of the elf, but I realized it was actually a drow. Not just any drow, it was the spitting image of Aleena. Her hair, her facial features, her style of clothing, her staff. There was no doubt.

I looked at the plaque again in front of the statue. I nearly gasped as I read it, "Aleena Harridon - Founder and Guardian."

Guardian. White glove. The Water Stone was said to be white, and in a gauntlet. The Earth Stone had been said to be in a sword, and that wasn't quite right, so it wouldn't be too far off for the Water Stone to be in a glove rather than a gauntlet. Aleena had to be the guardian of the Water Stone. But how could she be a founder of the city?

Sephra spoke as if in answer to my unexpressed question, "Ari'yasa, druids can live to a crazy old age once they advance enough, right? I thought she seemed older than she looked."

Ari'yasa nodded. "Archdruids are able to slow their aging to about a tenth of what is normal. And with the lifespan of elves..."

Sephra shook her head in awe. "She looks like she's my age. If her aging is that slow..."

The implications were astounding. Aleena could be thousands of years old. How long had she been a guardian? If she was a founder of the city, had she been around for the Acantum Focatus?

I expressed my thoughts once we were back in the privacy of our dwelling. "Friends, the Water Ashari Council has made it abundantly clear that this mission is extremely dangerous. I do not want you to feel obligated to or feel like I'm making the decision to risk your lives like... like... like last time. I am confident we will succeed, but I do not know what the cost may be.

"Ari'yasa, you and I are guardians of two of the Astral Stones. I don't know about you, but I'm not very comfortable with the idea of risking one or both of them being lost to the kraken. The world may be doomed if that happens. But I don't know what to do, because I also don't think letting them lie around while we are gone is a good idea either.

"I don't feel like we're being told the whole truth. Part of me wonders if this is, or is at least part of the test. They've probably heard that we have at least one of the Stones and maybe they're trying to see if we'll put it in extreme danger."

Jörgen sat up quickly. "I have the secret chest spell. We can stick those stones in the chest, and then just pull them out before sixty days. We could also put the lodestones in there too when we get them, if they are not crazy big. We can also put a lot of stuff valuable to us in the chest for safekeeping."

He explained the spell to us. He could hide a chest on the Ethereal Plane, keeping a miniature version on our plane. When he wanted, he could touch the miniature chest and bring back the original. It got tricky where if it was there longer for sixty days, there was a chance the spell would end, leaving the chest irretrievably lost on the Ethereal Plane. The same thing would happen if the miniature was destroyed.

The idea was great, except for... "Jörgen, are you the only one that can access the chest?" I asked. "Because that would be worse if we lose access to it with both Stones inside."

"Uh, yeah. I'm the only one that can bring it back."

"Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea."

The wizard chuckled. "Just a little treasure hunt on the Ethereal Plane would do the trick!"

I cradled my forehead in my hand. "I don't think that's what 'irretrievably lost' means. While I like the idea of keeping them somewhere with limited access, I think we need more than one person who has access, including a trusted person not in our party.

"The more I think about it, the more I realize how insanely difficult this mission is, and wonder if it is a test of our sanity."

I buried my face in my hands. "Ugh, I hate games like this. I sure hope I'm not close in line for the Wood Elven throne, I'm not cut out for politics."

We talked about options we had while down there, both for hiding and dealing with the kraken. Melima suggested the orb, forgetting it only worked on humanoids. My goal was to not wake it up. If we did, teleportation spells were going to be extremely important.

Melima started listing out what we knew, and what questions we had— It would be cold and pressured, we only had ten minutes, and we needed to travel light and bring only what was essential. How big was the search area? Could the kraken sense all movement through water? Did it have a cave, or just swim around?

Melima asked if Jörgen could contact her father or Allura to hold the Stones for us. He gave a sheepish grin. "I can contact Allura through my sending stones, but I realized that the sending spell I'd been using in my spellbook was a bunch of scrolls I hadn't copied down yet, and now they're all gone. So, no more sending!"

My hand was back on my forehead. So much for letting King Moonfeather know how things were going. We would have had to figure out how to get the Stones to someone else anyway. That idea wasn't going to work. We were probably just going to have to ask the Elders if there was a safe place, as much as I was starting to not trust them. Thinking about it though, Aleena would probably be a good person to ask about keeping the Stones safe in general, since she had been doing it for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Jörgen asked if the Stones did anything that we could use. I felt that mine was somehow affecting my health, giving me more energy, though if I was away from Ari'yasa for very long the effect went away. Ari'yasa said she felt a hair faster or more dexterous when she was by me, but not enough to make it worth taking the Stones to fight the kraken. Not to mention the fact that they glowed.

Jörgen said he wanted to ask the council who else had dealt with the kraken before so we could talk to them. I wanted to know how easy it was to find the lodestones. I also wondered about splitting up to find three stones in the ten minutes. It seemed like not all being in the same place might be advantageous if the kraken woke up. If we did split up, we needed to make sure that Ari'yasa and I went with Jörgen and Sephra, since they had teleportation spells that they could take another person with them, while Melima could only take herself.

Ari'yasa wondered about using a spell that created waves of thunder. It would work underwater, but we weren't sure how useful it would be. Jörgen mentioned he had a spell that could hold monsters and keep them from moving. Melima mentioned that she had that as well, and a spell that could turn a creature into something else.

Ari'yasa asked me if I thought pretending to be dead would help. I figured it would just get someone eaten. She did have a spell that would charm monsters though, that could be useful.

I remembered that creatures as large as the kraken would be—like dragons—had highly acidic stomachs that would not be fun to stick around in. Though if someone were to hurt the creature enough from the inside, it would force the creature to regurgitate.

Ari'yasa mentioned that if there were plants down there that she could ask them to do things, like grab someone or part for us. I didn't think it would be useful against the kraken, but maybe at another point in the future.

We talked about the idea of Jörgen conjuring an elemental to distract the kraken so we could get away if it was coming after us, but it would take him a full minute to cast the spell to do that, way too long to be useful. It was sounding more and more like we would probably just have to get in and out silently, with ways to escape quickly.

I asked Ari'yasa to the side about her opinion on what to do with the Astral Stones. "Well, I don't trust anyone to leave them behind, so I guess that answers that question. Unless we can convince Jörgen to stay behind with the stones. But then, do I trust Jörgen?"

"Well, and we're using Jörgen to help us find the stones with his spell."

Ari'yasa clarified that we weren't trying to find the Water Stone, we were going to complete a task so that the Water Ashari would give us the stone. I nodded. "I'm pretty sure I know where the Stone is, but I don't know for sure."

"Could we leave the rest of the stones with the person who has it?" Ari'yasa asked. "Or would we be worried they'd just take off with all of them?"

"Yeah, that's a conundrum that I'm having, because they're acting kind of weird."

"Wait," Sephra said, coming over, "Tawariell, where do you think the stone is?"

"I'm pretty sure the archdruid has it. Did you see the plaque? It said she was a guardian."

We talked about a spell Ari'yasa had that would allow her to control a beast. It wouldn't work against the kraken, but it might against large fish— if there were any around. She also asked about a spell that would give her control of other types of creatures, but that one took an hour to cast.

I remembered that I'd learned the same spell Ari'yasa used to see in the dark, I could cast it on Jörgen so he could see. I also could prepare some spells to detect or protect against certain types of creatures, but I wasn't sure what the kraken was classified as— an aberration or a monstrosity.

I wondered about using my spell to detect magic—which Ari'yasa also had—to help find the lodestones. We decided that it wouldn't be useful because it didn't have much of a range. Ari'yasa and I both realized that we could cast the same spell as Jörgen to find specifically the lodestones. That would be more useful.

Ari'yasa had another spell that could locate a creature. We thought about using it to tell where the kraken was, but she wouldn't be familiar enough with it for the spell to work.

I asked Ari'yasa again if she thought it was more dangerous to leave the Stones with others, or risk them being eaten by the kraken with us.

"Do we have to do this?" Ari'yasa asked." If we say no, are they going to say no?"

"I don't know. I'm wondering if it's a test of our sanity."

"That would be really manipulative."

"I think it has something to do with that druid lady," Sephra said.

"Well, she probably has a lot to do with it, since she probably keeps the Stone as its guardian." There was a pause. "What do you think about asking them if there is a safe place that the Stones we already have can be stored? Because that's kind of my inclination, saying 'hey, you know that we have at least one Stone. We don't really want to jeopardize it. Do you have any suggestions?"

"I mean, I don't know," Ari'yasa said. "We are their guardians. Would they be safer with anyone but us? Or do we just need to have a little more faith in ourselves?"

The question struck me. I had complete faith that I could accomplish the task, it was more Ari'yasa I was worried about. She'd fallen unconscious more than once in battle.

We decided for sure that we wanted to see if we could talk to the council before we chose our spells the next day. We had several questions for them. Ari'yasa wanted to ask if there would be anyone willing to come with us as a guide. I guessed they wouldn't allow that, they wanted to test us, and it would be one more person they'd be putting in danger after so many failures.

Melima suggested asking who was the last person to successfully find a lodestone, and ask them what they did to get it. She also wanted to tell the council more about what we were doing in general, and see if they had any advice.

Melima asked me what vibes I was getting from the council. I frowned. "For some reason, I'm having a hard time trusting them, but we don't really have any other choice. I kind of want to, when we go back, to ask permission to cast zone of truth."

"Okay. I don't know what that means, but it sounds awesome."

"You could just do it anyways," Jörgen said.

"Yeah, but trust is a two-way street. That's why I want to ask their permission."

"What else do you think they know?" Melima asked. "About what we're up against, about the Tree, what's happening with our overall objective?"

"I think they probably know... They at least know that we're retrieving the Stones to reverse a ritual, which is part of why I'm wondering why they won't... why...? Ugh."

Melima nodded. "Why make it more difficult for us when they are of the same objective and alignment, it seems odd that they would want to put a near-impossible task in our way before they help us. But the other tasks that we have done to receive the Stones were difficult and we didn't question that."

"Right, but with those, there was no other option, there was no other way to retrieve the Stone," I said. "Where, with this one, they're more like, 'yeah, we just want to see if you can do this. We know where the stone is—it's fine—we can give it to you right now, but you have to do this first.'"

"That's an interesting concept," Melima said, folding her arms. "Because it could be this situation, and then another one, and then— I need an agreement. I need to know where it is, I need to know, are you going to... I don't know. Are we returning these Stones to their rightful owners? I don't think we ever talked about that."

"I have to return mine, or else my life is going to be like, cut in half."

Melima stared at me in shock for a moment. "Wow. Yeah. Maybe we should talk to the council about the consequences of wielding this particular Stone. Because it doesn't sound like Ari'yasa has that problem, because she's been assigned the guardian. Then why is it different for you? Which means that every Stone may have differences in wielding its power and its consequences. So, I want to know that, I would love to talk to the council about it."

I mentioned that we might want to have two different lists of questions— one about how to accomplish the task they'd given us, and another about the Stones.

Jörgen rubbed his chin. "You know, Ari'yasa already had her Stone, we had to go find the Earth Stone where it had been put for safekeeping... This one is obviously being guarded by someone, like Ari'yasa guards hers. Ari wouldn't give hers up easily, so this person probably won't either."

"Isn't it the drow? What do you think, Tawariell?" Melima asked.

"I'm almost positive she has it," I replied.

"Oh? What makes you say that?"

"I'm pretty sure I got a glimpse of where it was."

"Where is it?"

"On her person."

"Can you stop being so coy? You're with us! Just tell me where you think it is, woman!"

I was shocked by her outburst. Was it really that important that she know exactly where it was? Aleena obviously didn't want it to be seen. "I feel like that would be betraying her trust, because she doesn't want our group to know where it is."

"How is that betraying her trust, if we never promised her anything?" Jörgen asked.

"I just... I respect the desire she has to keep it hidden, and I respect why, because I'm doing the same thing with mine."

"Wait, Tawariell, how do you know?" Melima asked.

"I'm the super observant one..."

"Tell me these abilities you have."

"I'm just really good at catching details."

"Okay. Tawariell, do you trust us?"

"What?"

"Do you trust us? Your campaign, your team?"

"Yes!"

"Then share!" Melima said. "Help us understand what you see so we can all come together in this conversation."

"For some reason, I just don't feel good about it. I don't know... I can't explain totally why. I feel that it's something that I'm not supposed to know..."

Melima gave me a look. I wanted to tell her, I really did. There was just something deep inside of me that refused to tell another person's secrets. And then there was the question of—

"Well, even if we did know, what are we going to do with that information?" Jörgen asked.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Right, that's just what I was going to say. Even though we know, there's not really anything we can do with it."

"Yeah," Jörgen said. "We all know who has it, you're just asking where it's at on the person."

"Do you respect them more than you respect your team?" Melima asked me. "You want to be private with these strangers, but not your entire lifeline, who you've been fighting with this entire time? Where do your loyalties lie?"

"I think she wants it, but she wants to do it the right way," Ari'yasa said.

"I think that's where she's coming from, that she wants to be respectful to knowledge that an average person wouldn't have," Melima said.

"That begs the question, does Tawariell not trust us?" Ari'yasa asked.

"That's what I asked!" Melima said.

Jörgen laughed, looking at me. "Now you're twinging between two people!"

I cringed. How could I make things right, keeping the trust of my friends, while still doing what I felt was right? I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Melima was still talking "...maybe you don't trust yourself, but you openly admitted to us that there is vital information you are not going to tell us, based on principle, but your principles are not in alignment with mine. I have risked my life— This has now gotten past—"

"I guess the question is, do the ends justify the means?" Ari'yasa asked.

That was just what I needed to hear. "I guess what's really important, is that we know they do have it."

"Yeah, so we already know who has the Stone," Jörgen said. "The question was, where on the person it was. Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't the vital question we should be asking right now. We should be focusing on the lodestones, finding out how to locate them quickly and easily so that we can complete the task. Because none of us can steal the thing easily from the person anyways. So we should just drop the whole— we already know who has it."

I was somewhat amazed by the wisdom coming from Jörgen. Usually, he made things worse, not better. Melima held her hand up though. "Alright, hold on."

"I didn't think our plan was to steal it anyways, was it?" Ari'yasa asked. "So, it's all irrelevant."

"It's not irrelevant!" Melima shouted. "The reason why I'd like to know more about the Stone based on its location on the person, is if the individual is using it as a power source, it could teach us more about the Stone's capabilities."

"If we go to her and ask her these questions, do we think she won't tell us?" Ari'yasa asked.

"I asked Tawariell, and she said that she's not quite sure she can trust them. So, now I'm all combobulated, because now I'm like, 'girl, I don't know that I can trust you! Why aren't you telling me what you know?' But, I love Tawariell— I love you Tawariell, and I know that you tend to do the right thing. Even if I don't understand what that even looks like."

"Is it one of those 'it's not my secret to tell' kind of things?" Ari'ysasa asked.

"I think so," Melima said. "Right? Is that where you're coming from, Tawariell?"

"Yeah." The conversation finally changed to wondering if the Water Ashari had a secret agenda for the Stones, and we'd just brought ours to them for them to take from us, while we asked for theirs.

We realized that they might not know that we just intended to borrow the Stone. That might make them a little more willing to part with it. We'd actually done very little to gain their trust. I'd assumed it was said in the communication from the Air Ashari, but maybe it hadn't.

"Here's my pitch," Melima said. "Beforehand, Tawariell, you ask for the cone of truth, or whatever that spell is, and based on their response, follow up with what questions would be appropriate under their trust level. Does that make sense? Because then if they're not comfortable doing a cone of truth, then we only ask questions about this task and what the Stone can do, and what people we can refer to or talk to that have completed this task and what information they can give us, kind of thing.

"And if they are open to a cone of trust, and prove their loyalty, or whatever we decide, I don't know, then we open up further about our intentions for the Stones, the information we have about the individuals that we are looking at, our struggles with the Tree, what situations we're facing, and help them better understand our intentions for the Stone in the long run. Does that make sense?

"Now, I don't know how we plan to test their loyalties or their intentions, other than to cast the cone of truth and ask them, and be like, 'what intentions do you have, if you had the power of all Stones?' Or like, does that make sense? Or 'what is your alignment? What do you want to see happen for the world at whole? This is what we're facing, what is your outlook on it?' kind of thing. That's my pitch. Do any of you have anything to add or subtract? Confirm or deny?"

"Yeah, the only other question I want to ask Aleena is if she has any tips about protecting the Stones," I said.

"While we are on this mission?" Melima asked.

"Yes."

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Ask them ways we can protect what's most precious while we have a light jaunt to the depths of the ocean."

"Oh, I was just meaning in general, as we continue on our mission."

"Oh, that too." Melima laughed. "I was trying to get all poetic. But I think with additional information, and possibly more help, or direction— I'm really curious about talking to people who have completed this task in the past."

"And lived to tell the tale..." Ari'yasa said.

"Right. What did they do? How did they complete it? What was their game plan? How many people died? Like, is this kraken krack-a-lackin'? Or is it—"

"Like me!" Jörgen said.

"Right, like Jörgen, in a nutshell."

We went back to talk with the council, but they had already adjourned. We requested to speak with them again, and were told we'd be informed when they were ready for us again.