Chapter 14
Findings
It had only taken a few minutes for Tyroth to find his mother and Patch, and while both were a bit worried about what studying under Zaleria would entail, they were far more excited of what she had to teach. The trio had then left for the forest, without any additional members of the village.
After that, Tyroth sent for Raphael to meet him at the inn, and when the turtle arrived, several other people had gathered, all curious on the contents of the chest.
"Can't believe you're letting Patch and your own mom go back into the woods alone with that elf." said Raphael as he sat down with the chest and started working on the lock. "Even if she can be trusted, do you really think she can keep the others safe?"
"She's a druid, Raph, they have a very close bond with nature, and great powers because of it." said Tyroth. "She'll be more than enough to keep them all safe."
"If you say so. But I wouldn't have let Mona or Pandora go with someone we've just met."
"Fair point, but those were her conditions. Besides, you all accepted me and Sephie pretty quickly."
"Whatever. I just don't want to be the one who have to tell you 'I told you so'."
"Just zip it, and open the damn thing." said Sharky. "I'm dying of anticipation here."
"I'm already done, just wanted to get it all out in the open."
Carefully opening the lid just a bit, a faint puff of slightly stale air escaped, signalling that the chest was airtight, and thus its contents untouched by the water. Waiting a short moment to see if anything else would happen, Raphael opened the lid fully when nothing happened.
Inside were a lot of small silver coins, probably more than a hundred all shaped like half circles and with an X stamped on both sides.
"These were odd coins. They are coins, right?" Raphael said, picking up one of the silver pieces and taking a closer look.
"Oh, they're coins alright." said Ragnir. "But not necessarily the good kind. You see, those are half-silvers, worth, well, half a silver, or five coppers. Back in the past, those were paid to mercenaries and the like, giving them literally half of the agreed payment, while the other half, same kind of coins but with a circle instead of an x, was held until their job was complete. Once they had both, and a certificate, they could exchange them for proper coins."
"Sounds… strange." said Michelangelo.
"It was, but it was also a way to stop hired help from just taking the money and leaving. The half-silvers were basically worthless, as it was illegal to accept them without their other half and the certificate, so mercenaries had to uphold their end of the bargain. Not a perfect solution, but it worked well… until they realised that they could just smelt the half-silvers into ingots and use that instead."
"Can't imagine why." Raphael scoffed.
"Joke all you want, but it actually took over two hundred years before people stopped using the half-silvers. In fact, the last time was just a hundred and fifty years ago. And if the wreck that these were found in were from those that were hired to hunt that Kraken, they would very well have been paid in half-silvers."
"Then there might be more down there." Sharky mused, a greedy glint sparkled in his eyes.
"Don't get your hopes up, fish-boy. Even though no-one uses half-silvers any longer, they are still illegal by law. They never revoked that."
"But we can still smelt them down ourselves." said Loki. "Once we get the forge up and running again, we can make our own ingots. Heck, with the right molds we could even make our own coins."
"Is that even legal?" asked Chloe. "I mean, like, back home it was against the law to make your own money."
"There shouldn't be any problem." said Ragnir, though he took a while to really think about it. "Having been an adventurer for many years, my group got hold of coins from other nations, ancient civilisations and so on, and all of it was accepted as payment, as long as it was gold, silver or copper, as well as the occasionally electrum and platinum. People might just give you a curious look if they don't recognise the shape or blazon on the coins."
"So, what do we do with the money?" asked Rose. "Divide it up?"
"No." said Tyroth. "Right now, it doesn't really matter for any of us to have money. It will be of much more use if we put it in a sort of treasury so the whole village can have use of it in the future. And it's not like we got anything to spend it on here. Once we have enough, Loki can smelt it like he suggested."
"Thanks, dad!" the geckoling replied with a big smile, looking forward to the time he could get to work.
"Can we at least count the coins before we put them away?" Sharky asked, and Tyroth nodded in response.
Instantly, both Sharky and Michelangelo started digging their fingers into the coins, pulling out handfuls and starting counting them. Raphael sighed and shook his head at his brother, while Kate rolled her eyes, but not without a warm smile on her lips.
"Hold on, I found something." Michelangelo said after a short moment, and held up a small object. "There's a ring here."
"Let me see." said Tyroth, and Michelangelo handed the ring to the dragon without any hassle. It was a standard sized ring of silver, though slightly broader and with a wave pattern etched into it, as well as small pieces of ocean blue sapphires in said pattern.
Looking it over a few times, Tyroth then let his magic gently pour over it, covering it in a red glow, and as it did, it confirmed his suspicions.
"It's magical." he said.
"It is? What kind of effect does it have?" Michelangelo asked, genuinely curious, yet strangely casual about it all.
"How about I show, rather than tell." Tyroth said and walked out of the inn.
The others followed him, and in short order they all soon stood by the river that flowed through the village, once there, Tyroth brought the ring to his right hand. It was clear that the ring was too small for his fingers, but as he slid it on, the ring grew to fit as if it had been made for him.
Taking a final look at the ring, Tyroth stepped out into the water, but rather that what should have happened, he now stood on the water surface, just as if it was solid ground, despite that it was a flowing liquid.
"Wow! How are you doing that, boss?!" Sharky asked.
"This is a Ring of Water-Walking." Tyroth explained, holding up his hand with the ring on. "Anyone that wears it can walk on water without any problems."
Before walking back onto dry land, Tyroth removed the ring and instantly sank to the bottom of the river, which was a mere two feet, again demonstrating his point.
"So, what do we do with the ring then? Who gets it?" asked Kate.
"For now, I'm gonna put it away with the other magical items that we brought with us. We might have use of it at some point, or we might be able to trade it for something else."
"I hope we don't have to trade it." said Loki. "I'd love if we could collect as many magical items as possible."
"Then you will be happy to know that such things are pretty common." said Ragnir, giving Loki a pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure you'll find more soon. Let's head back to the forge, and I can tell you of a few that I've run across during my years as an adventurer."
"You two do that." said Tyroth. "It's high time for the rest of us to get back to work as well."
"Off I got to the shipwrecks then!" Sharky cheered excitedly, really looking forward to what else he might find down there.
As the others left for their own missions, Tyroth took the chest and walked to one of the rooms in the inn. Pulling out a key from his belt, he unlocked the door and stepped inside.
As it stood, it was the closest thing they had to a treasury, and for the time, they stored their valuables in it, such as their money, gems and magical items.
Opening a wooden box, Tyroth placed the ring together with their other items, including the quartz die and the soul swapping crystal, which was still in its own glass box. Closing the box, Tyroth then placed the chest next to another box, in which they had the gold and gems left from their adventure in Skyrim.
The half-silvers numbered two hundred, which meant they were worth one hundred silvers, while their own gold were worth about a hundred and forty silvers, give or take, and it was fair to assume that the gems were worth at least a similar amount, giving them a total of nearly four hundred silvers, or forty gold.
All in all, they had a decent little fortune now, for a single person. For a village of roughly thirty people, little more than one gold each wasn't much to brag about.
But what were they going to spend it on?
Unless merchants visited them, or they travelled to another town, there was nothing to spend the money on.
And having looked at the maps provided by Ragnir, there were only two roads leading to the village, and they both merged several days before reaching it, so no-one would simply be passing by on their way somewhere else, with the possible exception of going to sea.
But that seemed unlikely as well. While the dock was large enough for a few smaller ships, it didn't seem like the previous inhabitants supported any more ship traffic than their own fishing and the occasional visitors from other coastal settlements.
In short, almost no-one would come to Mutopia if they didn't intend to. Which raised another question; why did Ragnir come there in the first place?
He knew that the village had been abandoned for nearly a year, and the Mutopians had only been in the world for less than half a week, and only two days in the village, when the dwarf arrived.
He had said that he saw the smoke rising from the inn, but with the travel time between Mutopia and the nearest settlements being a week or more, he would have had to already have been nearby when he saw it.
And why was he all the way out here in the first place?
Questions, but no answers. And unbeknownst to Tyroth, there would be even more questions in the near future, as well as plenty of other events.
Seems like as good a place to end this chapter as any.
I'm sorry if there's a lot of world building and not so much action, but it will be worth it in the long run. Besides, things will start happening in the next chapter, to an extent at least.
See you all there.
Note: The items Tyroth had in the box are from some other stories; the quartz die is from my other DND crossover (Roleplaying Gone Wrong, Book 1), and the crystal that swaps souls is from Bloodrayne666's story (Switched!). Go check 'em out, or at least Bloodrayne666's story, it's great fun! :)