Wellspring was a fun trip. After a short discussion, everyone elected to skip a restock trip into Sunshade. It was Sunshade and they needed no more reason than that. Cyrus and Alfyn were somewhat worn out after conjuring up ice for cooling sessions along the way. The two ice magic users soon became Linde's best friends. Last time through it had just been Alfyn. This time Cyrus greatly improved the party's comfort level. Cat hair levels on his clothing intensified.
After a couple of chapter bosses, Wellspring was cooling down for the evening. Defense of the town from the lizardfolk had been a success and Olberic had been talking to his old friend in the tavern. Everyone could see he seemed happier with a great weight gone from his mind. Therion's mission came after. It was a success and he was urging the party to leave, preferably five minutes ago. "Tressa, do you have a minute to help me search? I seem to have misplaced a book. I cannot seem to locate the tome among our belongings."
"Okay. What does it look like?"
"It has a blue leather cover and appears to be an older volume. I would say while it is not as old as my missing one, it is older than myself. It is about an inch thick and the covers are about this size." Cyrus held up his hands to indicate the other dimensions.
"I think I saw you with it earlier. Is that the one Therion picked up at the market for you?" She didn't say 'pilfered' but it had been snagged on the way through as Cyrus steered the party clear of a cursed artifact in pursuit of the Dragonstone. Therion had some interesting reflexes. The fact it was a gift from the thief meant it was unlikely he would have taken it from Cyrus. It's not like they were going to have a way of returning the stolen goods to the original thieves.
"Of course, I was hoping it would have more information on bones in magic. It would be safer and faster to adapt existing spells to fix bow-leggedness rather than make my own." That was going to a rarely used spell in the medical field, but a useful one.
Tressa had a flicker of suspicion creep into her thoughts. "It was on bones?"
"Why yes, it had some detailed skeletal anatomy diagrams included. Mid-Hornburgian is much easier to translate, so I knew right away that it was the focus of the book.
Before Tressa could say anything, Primrose walked by. "Olberic's calling a meeting. Can you guys come over real quick?"hr /
Olberic glanced around the table and folded his arms. Since Ophelia had been sent upstairs for a much needed rest, now was a good time to ask a few questions. He looks at the six people around the table.
"I would speak with you all about Ophelia. She seems to be suffering some anxiety this week."
Olberic saw six different expressions of guilt around the table. Cyrus was the one he knew would sheepishly look down to the table immediately. H'aanit cast her eyes to the floor. Therion very slightly moved his scarf to cover more of his face. Primrose covered part of her face with her hand. Tressa muttered something to herself. Alfyn turned beet red and scratched his neck, which was the last person Olberic had expected to be guilty of causing Ophelia distress.
"...Cyrus."
"Miss Clement was worried about my latest project. I was trying to chip off a piece of light soulstone for getting the right amount of energy. To this end I had borrowed Tressa's set of weights and scale. Precision is important after all. We needed an exact amount of light elemental energy to dissolve this jar of blood crystals" Cyrus held up a jar with a few grains of red sand in it. There was a small fleck of volatile soulstone in there. Olberic could not say if he was more concerned about the potential explosion that could result from cutting a volatile soulstone, or the fact that Cyrus was making his own blood last time Olberic heard of an amateur cutting a soulstone, it coincided with a house losing a roof.
"Why do you have that and where did you get it?"
Cyrus held up the bottle. "It's my own blood here. Each of these grains is as much blood as I could safely afford to spare from my own body in a single session." The fact that it was from his own blood did not help because now, the party was aware the man was bloodletting himself in the name of science.
"Why are you making crystals out of your own blood?!" Therion asked.
"Well I wasn't about to put anyone else's blood in my body! But of course, it's much more sanitary and efficient than you saw-"
"I don't want to know. Just..." Olberic groaned and rubbed his temples. "Cyrus can you stick to more normal study topics, at least for a while? " Olberic decided to worry about these experiments after the other guilty parties.
Alfyn decided to confess his crimes. "Well, um, that's partly my fault. Therion got me this contraption from, uh, maybe the market?" Alfyn said. He held up a syringe. The wicked looking metal and glass apparatus didn't reassure Olberic. "I was talking to him about how people could put blood back into bodies and stuff and we thought it would be a good idea to have an emergency supply of blood?"
Olberic decided that medical experiments were not something he wanted to know any more about at the moment. He went for someone who probably did something less likely to spark accusations of heresy. He went for a problem that was bound to be less... esoteric. "Therion, what did you steal?"
"I just acquired things from the black market. Wasn't anything that belonged to the sellers. I nicked that thing for Alfyn in case he needs it to fix one of us up." Therion muttered into his scarf, "...And maybe a new book for Cyrus." He had been planning to get Cyrus to shut up for a while with the offering. He should have known it would come back to bite him.
Olberic knew telling Therion off for thievery was going to go absolutely nowhere. "How about you, H'aanit?"
"...It was a lapse in mine judgement to capturen the restless skeleton instead of some other more natural beast. I released it when Ophelia did expresse her concerns." Ophelia had expressed them loudly and had initially assumed the skeleton was Cyrus' fault when H'aanit had first brought it out.
Olberic could feel at least some of the headache which Ophelia had as a near constant in her life now. "Primrose, it's the spell, is it not? Or did you do something else?"
"I have been asking the Professor for his help a lot haven't I..." Every day. Everyone knew what spell she was talking about and that it was intended for Simeon.
It was now Tressa's turn. Olberic looked at her. He doubted she did much to warrant that guilty look. "Tressa, was it only letting Professor Albright borrow your scales that you are worried about?"
Tressa said "I know I should have been more careful, but I kinda maybe helped him with cutting the soulstone? I'm sorry! Ophelia's also been having recurring dreams about some stuff, uhm that's why she's really worried about Cyrus and skeletons. She said it was silly, nothing too bad, but..."
"We all haven't been helping Ophelia out as much as we should, huh? Sorry. I'll have to do better about that." He looked at the women of the table. "Maybe you guys should check in on her? I'd hate to wake her up if she is asleep."
Primrose and Tressa went upstairs as H'aanit went to tend to her beasts. When they opened the door to an empty set of bunk beds, they then began to worry. In the next room over they could hear Cyrus rummaging around trying to find his newest book.
Captain Bale's men were patrolling because although the Lizard Men were not about to attack again, there were always monsters around the desert. One man, simply known in the game files as 'Guard" saw a wisp of smoke coming from behind a rocky outcrop. He decided to check it out because although things were cooling down, it was still hot enough people weren't lighting fires for warmth. It also seemed like an odd place to go cooking.
Guard carefully stuck his head around the rocks to look.
On the ground was the fire. Above it, there stood a cleric he recognized as Olberic's traveling companion. He wondered why she was alone and what she was burning. A serene smile graced her lips and the fire caught her eyes so they seemed to sparkle. She poked at the burning object and her smile grew a little wider as the destruction continued. She giggled merrily as Guard realized the object was a book with a blue leather cover.
Guard decided to just keep walking.
Your reputation in Wellspring has suffered
I don't think that is what the Flamebearer is supposed to do on her pilgrimage... This is another one of my writings with arson in it. Made some minor fixes here, still not terribly polished but then again, lot of my writing isn't. Am I gonna go back and fix stuff instead of writing new chapters? Probably not.