Happy Mammoth Monday!
I am so thrilled today, because I just finished a challenge from my older brother, but so as to not bore you with the specifics, I will leave those at the end.
Enjoy!
And there are many paths to thread
Loivissa POV
It had been almost a month since the incident in Teirm and Loivissa had come no closer to uncovering just who She was or what it was that She was doing with the criminals of the Empire. There was something at large, something big, and it infuriated Loivissa that she could not figure out what it was.
Upon her return to the dragon rider headquarters in Ilirea, she had immediately handed the bolt over to get it properly examined by some of the dragon riders that were more specialised in such fields, but they had had a lot of other stuff to do as well, so because her case was technically still a low priority, she had had to wait in line for the results.
"How can it be more important for them to figure out the nature of some artefact from Galbatorix's time than to figure out how a crossbow bolt from the present managed to cut clean through all of my wards, twice in a row!", Loivissa exclaimed to no one in particular.
"Shouting about it will not make them do it any quicker, you know", the wise-crack urgal dragon rider named Dalarus, who sat at the desk opposite of hers, said, "besides, it is not you who have to figure out why a quarter of Ilirea's herds have gone missing".
"How did it come to this; dragon riders investigating missing criminals, ancient artefacts and missing herds", Loivissa moaned and buried her head beneath her arms on her desk, "do you remember the time when we actually did something to help people?"
"We are helping people", one of the new riders in the office countered, "solving their everyday problems is just as important to them as solving the international crisis's are to the monarchs".
"You only say that because you have never experienced it yourself, rookie", Dalarus argued, "if you had been an active dragon rider during the succession crisis that occurred the last time the dwarves had to elect a new king, then your words might have carried more weight. Remember that assignment, Loivissa?"
"How could I not?", Loivissa said, "three clans united behind one illegitimate king and only five of the other ten stood against them. It was fortunate that the dragon riders were able to intervene in time to prevent them from going to war with each other".
"Exactly!", Dalarus exclaimed and held his papers up for the both of them to see, "and now they have us doing guard work. GUARD work! How in all of Alagaësia could it ever fall into anyone's mind that dragon riders should be used to find cattle?"
Finding cattle is easy, my dear rider. It is making them stop runningthat is the hard bit, Dalarus's dragoness butted in for all to hear.
"I still maintain that we are helping people this way, and is helping people not what the dragon riders are all about?", the rookie defended his statement.
"I give up", Dalarus said exasperated.
Loivissa giggled at her deskmate's antics. It was nice to once in a while not be too serious about her job and let her mind wander more freely, though it could not wander too far, or it might begin making comparisons, even minute ones, between her current circumstances and Him.
Stars, she hated not being able to get anything done. Her now dead informant had been her only real lead in the case, and even his death was still being denied by the Teirm city guards. No body, no blood and no other witnesses meant that it never happened.
Except that it did, and on her watch too! She had been played from the very get-go, foolishly lured to follow distractions halfway across Teirm while the body had been removed and the scene picked clean of any evidence.
You are too hard on yourself, dear, Adûn comforted her by saying, there was no way that you could have known that they had that many imposters spread out to lead you on a wild goose chase. If anything, the blame is equally mine, if not more, as I should have called the changes sooner.
I hardly noticed them at all, Loivissa argued, how could I not? They were so obvious!
Everything is more obvious in hindsight, dear, Adûn commented, learn from it and take it into consideration when you face off against them next time.
"If that ever happens again…", Loivissa mumbled out loud.
"What was that?", Dalarus asked from his desk, "is there ANYTHING that you need help with?"
"No, there is nothing for me to do but wait some more", Loivissa responded dejectedly
His offer to help might have been a little more flattering if not for the fact that Loivissa had spent the last week hearing him complain about having to find the missing herds. Not that she thought that she had been much better, considering that she had pretty much spent the last month going over what little reports that she had managed to gather and had tried to get in touch with another known fence that had supposedly suddenly gone legit.
No one had wanted to help her, and more than half had even ignored all of Loivissa's attempts to contact them. The official authorities might not believe that something had happened, but it seemed that the entire underworld knew of it, and now they also knew that not even the dragon riders could protect them if they tattled.
"Hey, want to break up for lunch?", Dalarus asked her.
"It is not even noon yet", Loivissa simply commented.
"So? Have you got anything better to do?", Dalarus asked and did not even wait for her answer as he grabbed his hat from its place on the desk and went out towards the cafeteria.
Since Loivissa did not really have anything better to do, she shrugged and followed him shortly afterwards, with only a half-hearted lecture by the new kid about how they did not have a break yet. It was better than trying to make yet another miniature castle out of the things on her desk.
"…So, I had one dwarf by the beard and the other lifted up from his foot, and then our dear leader, Lifaen, comes in, sees the situation and immediately demands that I put both clan chiefs back down on their feet", Dalarus shared a story as they picked at their lunch in the half-empty cafeteria.
He still had his hat on, as hideous and pompous as it was, but he had said that it had been the last gift that he had ever received from his late mortal mate, so he only ever took it off during the tiresome time spent inside the warmer climate of the office.
Personally, Loivissa believed that his late mate had given it to him as some sort of punishment, something that was generally agreed upon by the others in headquarters, but no one had had the heart to tell him that it looked utterly ridiculous on him.
"Liar, I was right behind Lifaen, remember?", Loivissa called him on it but laughed nonetheless, "you just stood in the middle and prevented the two chiefs from clawing at each other".
"Right, I forgot that you were there as well", Dalarus mumbled, "just do not tell anyone else, okay? It is way too good a story to ruin with something as fickle and boring as the truth".
Loivissa remembered a time when He had said something similar about a bard's tale and the truth behind it, back in a simpler time when her heart had not been utterly broken by Him and her dreams of children had not been cut short by the shade yet.
"Are you alright?", Dalarus asked her in a concerned voice, "you suddenly looked so…different, that I almost did not recognize you".
"Yeah, you just…reminded me of something that I would like to forget", Loivissa responded as she forced the thoughts out of her head.
"It sure did not seem like a sad memory", Dalarus commented.
"It is not", Loivissa agreed, "but the fact that it is not, only makes the later ones that much more painful".
"Oh…want to talk about it?", Dalarus offered in a concerned voice.
"No", Loivissa left no room to argue on that point. If she could forget that He had ever existed, then so be it.
An awkward silence descended upon the two, as neither knew how to go on from there. Loivissa picked at her salad, while Dalarus pretended that the surface of the table was very interesting. It was not.
"Wow, who died?", Shaef, one of the human dragon riders that analysed things, said, as he suddenly appeared beside the table.
"No one", Loivissa murmured, still a little touchy about the implication that He might have died.
He could be many things; a coldblooded traitorous backstabbing deceiving manipulative bastard was just one of them, but if there was one thing that she knew about Him, then that was that He was alive. She could simply not imagine Him being anything but alive.
"…Okay then", Shaef said a little uneasily, clearly picking up on the foul mood that she was exuding, "well, I did not spend the last 15 minutes tracking you down just to get depressed, so here is the first report regarding that crossbow bolt that you brought in", as he said the last bit, he put down a stack of papers easily as thick as Loivissa's thigh.
"You finally finished?!", Loivissa exclaimed happily, as she could finally get somewhere with her case now, before a thought struck her as she examined the thick stack of papers, "wait, what do you mean 'the first report'?"
"Exactly what I said; that there will be more", Shaef said, once again somehow cheerful, as he pulled a chair from a nearby table and sat at the side of their table, "you should know that that little bolt that you brought in, not only has the entire department mystified, but have also kind of made us forget the artefact from Galbatorix that we were supposed to be working on".
"YOU ditched a prioritized assignment?", Dalarus questioned with disbelief, "how did that even happen?"
"Well, it is actually an interesting story", Shaef said excitedly as he stole a carrot from Loivissa's plate and started to chew on it, "you see, about a week ago, one of my colleagues needed a break from trying and failing to study the artefact, so he instead picked your bolt up because he figured that that one would be an easy job to get his mind off of the artefact.
As it turned out, the bolt was far more interesting, and to make a long story short, almost the entire department soon forgot all about the artefact and decided to focus their efforts on the bolt instead, though we would very much appreciate it if you did not tell Lifaen that".
"Sure, our lips are sealed, but what about the bolt has gotten you so excited?", Loivissa questioned curiously.
"Oh, where to begin?", Shaef said exasperated, "the coating, the craftsmanship of the bolt itself or the reason behind its ability to penetrate wards with ease?"
"How about you start with how it penetrated my wards, twice in a row", Loivissa suggested, as she knew that Shaef could go on forever if you did not guide him.
"Yes! That is because of a small purple crystal imbedded in the core of the bolt's tip", Shaef said excitedly, "the crystal, oh the marvel of it, is something that I have never before seen. Its complexity, its simplicity, its beauty!"
"Do you know how it works and how we can protect ourselves against it or not?", Dalarus interrupted.
"…Well, no, and not even close to it", Shaef said visibly less excited, "every time we try to use magic to find out what exactly it is and how it was made, it sparks and dispels the magic. We think that it was made specifically, so that it would be impossible to do any magic to it upon its creation, and we are quite frankly afraid of what might happen if we continue to try and drain it of all of its power. It might dissolve and leave us with nothing but dust. That would be such a terrible waste!"
"Do you have any idea of who could have made it?", Dalarus asked slowly and carefully, like trying to calm a child throwing a tantrum.
"The Church of Tosk", Loivissa answered before anyone else could.
"Who's church?", both males said in unison, as they looked at her in confusion.
"Tosk's, you know, the old Helgrind clergy that existed back during Galbatorix's time", Loivissa explained, "your description of the crystal made me remember a tale that my father once told me about having encountered similar crystals down in the tunnels under Dras Leona, but the knowledge to fabricate such dark magic was presumed lost when the clergy was vanquished".
"Well, apparently, it was not", Dalarus said thoughtfully, "could it be that some of them survived and are now starting up trouble again?"
"Perhaps, but it could also just be that someone found one of their scriptures that detailed how they made them", Loivissa murmured thoughtfully, "what were the other things that you found out about the bolt?"
"Well, for starters, it has been crafted with the utmost of precision in mind", Shaef said as he ran his finger across the surface of the table, like he was touching the bolt right now, "you know the standard crossbow bolts from the Empire's army? Yeah, in comparison with that one, they might as well have been cut from an uneven branch. It does not match any of the bolts from the big bolt-makers in the Empire, so I have to guess that it was a custom job. It certainly could not have been cheap, so whoever fired it at you must have a lot of excess gold if they are willing to use so much on just making the bolt, and that is not even taking into account what must have gone into getting a hold of the crystal or the myriad of poisons on it".
"Poisons, what poisons?", Loivissa demanded to know.
"So far, we have found traces of five different poisons that were meant to kill the target, some of them slowly, others, almost instantly, and others that were largely immune to magic healing. I will tell you this; whoever wanted your guy dead, REALLY wanted him dead", Shaef said with a mix of awe and nervousness, "they even added other poisons to the coating that were not even meant to kill, but to paralyse the victim, and then there was an odd one that made the blood coagulate insanely fast, like they wanted to stop him from bleeding out".
"That must have been why there was no blood on me!", Loivissa exclaimed, "do you have a list of all the different poisons that you have found?"
"It is all in the report, though additions may come later on", Shaef said as he gestured to the ludicrously thick stack of papers, before something else caught his attention, "if you two would excuse for a moment, I think that I just spotted the department chief. She has been finding ways to avoid me for ages now, but if I can corner her here, then she has to listen to my proposal about increasing our budget".
And just as fast as he had come, Shaef vanished. Loivissa had always loved Shaef, though only as one would love a funny quirky younger sibling. Despite his centuries of life, he had somehow still managed to retain a childish youth and vitality, although it was mostly only when it came to finding out how things worked.
His dragon was a fiery red male that went by the name Red, which had according to rumours been because of a lost bet between the two back when Red had still been a hatchling. What Shaef lacked in common sense, Red made up for in spades, enough so in fact that he was considered dull even by the ancient dragons that mostly spent the days sleeping and brooding.
"It is always an experience to talk to him", Dalarus commented and Loivissa could do nothing but agree with his statement, before he followed it up with a question, "so, you do not think that it is the clergy reborn?"
"It might be", Loivissa admitted, "but someone once told me to consider things from all sides before taking such a decision. It could after all just be someone that found the instructions on how to make the crystals".
"And when he mentioned that whoever fired it, they had to be insanely rich?", Dalarus inquired, "you did not seem all that surprised at that?"
"If what I have learned so far is correct, then there is a She out there that has managed to wring almost the entire underworld around her pinky. Of course that person would be insanely rich, just think about the amount of gold that flows in those circles".
"Yeah, you are right", Dalarus murmured, "but if the bolt was a custom job, then it should be possible to match it to a maker, and from there on, you can track down its buyer".
"I thought about something along the same lines", Loivissa agreed, "but tracking down a single bolt-maker across the entire expanse of the Empire will take a lot of time and effort, and if She get any news of what I am attempting to do, then She might just make him disappear like She did with my snitch".
"Yeah, who knows how many people have just vanished because they got in her way?", Dalarus mused, "it was lucky that you managed to find this one before he could disappear completely as well…what is it now?"
"It is something that I have been wondering about since I got back from Teirm", Loivissa answered thoughtfully, as she folded her hands under her chin, "why was I spared back then? Do not get me wrong, I am glad that I was, but it is the why that puzzles me. I mean, if She had just had me killed along with the snitch and then hid my body, then there would have been no need for that goose chase across Teirm to distract me from the body and we would never have found the bolt in the first place".
"That one is easy", Dalarus said half chuckling, "if She had had you, a dragon rider, killed, then Her entire organization would have been the focal point for all dragon riders' wrath. We would have invested countless resources on hunting down this new threat, and if anything that you have told me about what is happening is true, then I very much doubt that She would have wanted the attention that killing you would have attracted. Alive, you are one suspicious dragon rider with limited support from the order, but if you were dead, then there would have been an entire order hell-bent on bringing Her entire organization to justice".
"I never thought about it like that", Loivissa mumbled, "but I suppose that you have a point".
"I always do", Dalarus said cockily.
"Oh really?", Loivissa picked up, "then what point does your missing herds have?"
"Arh, but those are all a part of a secret conspiracy that has as its goal to destroy the dragon rider order as we know it", Dalarus answered with a completely straight face, for about five seconds before both of them burst into laughter.
"What are you two laughing so hard about?", Gared, another dwarven dragon rider asked, as he approached their table with a plate of lunch.
"Nothing, you had to have been here from the start to get it", Loivissa said as she finally began to stop laughing.
"A shame, I could use it right now", he said as he pulled up a chair meant for dwarves and joined them at the table, "you have no idea how boring these past six months have been".
"Yeah, you have been on patrol duty since last spring, have you not?", Dalarus remembered.
"And will continue to be so until next year's spring", Gared confirmed as he violently chewed on a chicken wing, "I mean, no one even died when Ghan got drunk and burned down that village, but the boss still made me not only repair all of their houses, manually, but also had to punish me by putting me on this patrol duty for two whole years! It is not even like back in the good old days when there was always some bandit group or another that needed to be stopped. There has been zero activity for years now".
"I know, I am trying to figure out why that is", Loivissa said with emphasis on the I, before she stood, took her plate in one hand and the heavy report in the other and said, "now, if you two would excuse me, I have a report to read through, and I doubt that it will be a quick one".
Loivissa soon after returned to her desk and started going through the thick report. As she had predicted, it was not exactly light reading, and she had to stop numerous times just to relieve her eyes from the strain that reading through technical facts and test after test put on them.
As Shaef had said, they had really tried almost everything when they had tried to examine the crystal, but they had only gotten limited results at best. The part about the coating on the tip was far more rewarding, as it specified exactly what poisons that they had found and in what concentrations, along with what those poisons did in the specified concentrations".
When she had gotten almost halfway through the report, Loivissa began to continue to read the same two lines over and over again without ever getting any further. That was when she decided that she needed a break from reading it, so she put it aside and started to compile a list of how much manpower that she would need in order to track down the origin of the bolt before She could learn of her activities.
"Shadeslayer, a word", the voice of Lifaen, the leader of the western dragon riders and her boss, interrupted her thoughts. He, for some unknown reason, had never stopped referring to her as Shadeslayer.
"Lifaen, how convenient, as I was just about to come looking for you", Loivissa turned around to see the elven dragon rider, "you see, I have hit a major breakthrough in my case, but I need more manpower for a week or two in order to solve it".
"That can wait", Lifaen brushed her request off without any concern, "you are hereby relieved from your current case and put on emissary duty for the diplomatic meeting next month instead".
"What!?", Loivissa exclaimed, "but you cannot! I have FINALLY gotten somewhere with this case, and I promise you that it is bigger than we ever imagined it to be, and now you are asking me to drop it for an emissary mission?! What is the meeting about anyway, and why does it have to be me that goes?!"
"Calm yourself", Lifaen said sternly, "the request for you specifically came from both the Alagaësian delegates AND the Council, and I have to be there as well, I might add".
"What is the meeting about anyway?", Loivissa said as politely as she could muster at the moment, as she was still quite upset about possible losing her one chance at finding whoever fired that bolt.
"Mercury Iridium is the other side's diplomatic envoy", Lifaen revealed without preamble, "he is scheduled to be arriving by ship in Teirm in three weeks".
"He…is coming here…in person?", Loivissa murmured shocked.
Da da da DA! Heh, I bet many of you thought it would be longer before they met again.
So, about the challenge that I mentioned in the beginning. Anyone know Minecraft? Sure, you do! Anyway, while on a christmas holiday with my family, I started thinking that it would be cool to create an ice palace in survival mode in Minecraft(which is a lot of work, because not only do you have to calculate the light levels of torches and other illuminating things to make sure that no ice melts, but you also have to create each layer by making its mould and then allowing the water to freeze, before creating the next layer. And to top it all off, ice cannot freeze if there is even a single block anywhere directly above it, so you have to make sure that every layer is filled with the blocks that you want before beginning on the next).
Long story short, my brother found it amusing that I tried to create it and challenged me to give it a balcony, a tower sticking out from a corner and a lava moat(which was really annoying, because lava emits freakishly much light)...and now I am done with it!
Two floors(15 blocks tall, 25 long and 16 wide) with an attic on top(add another 10 blocks to the height) and a piston-powered ice-bridge that prevents any mobs from entering it(because you cannot make doors of ice ;D ).
I know what you are thinking, and I agree that I should probably be more careful with challenges in the future...but that is just who I am. If I start on something, I WILL finish it(which is also the reason why I have a seven other major projects that are all vying for my scarce spare time, along with another 4850 pages of books that I need to read(it started at 6120, so I am getting there...)).
Anyway, see you again on Before Friday Thursday.