“We lived alongside them, you know. At least my great grand patriarch did. He saw the folly of their ways; of a people who grew too proud, reaching towards the sun like the sprout of a plant's first greens. But their hubris was their undoing. Unfettered, they grew too fast, with no reservations for the damage they were doing to the land. They were warned but, success after success in their magitech blinded them. However, there is a time when even a gambler of fates must cede a loss to the whims of nature. And to them, devastation came so fast they didn’t even see it coming. We…our bloodlines survived merely because we lived beneath the ground; some of them anyway, bless Eog’s Great Beard. As a seeker then, it is my sworn oath to sniff out their artifacts, from their dust blown ruins, beneath the sea of sands or in the Vesper damned trap rigged contraptions they call dungeons. The Triad was built for the sole purpose that no civilization would use such outrageous magics and magitech to bring about the end of a people ''-Gindalvan Ruinwend, Dwarven Antecessor Archeologist and Seeker of the Triad.

The thing is, Nora had abandonment issues. Abandoned as a child, later abandoned by the family that bought her after they used her for their nefarious deeds. She was separated from a mother she never knew and actually sold like a doll.

Unlike some who were put to the sword because they were fiend spawn, she would have been considered lucky. Nonetheless, her childhood was just a blur, of crimson and killing. Those were the old memories buried beneath the abyssal recesses of her mind.

The only reminder of that past was her class, [Blood Healer], a red mark which told her history in one word—blood. And who better to have been more acquainted with the weight of blood than an assassin?

Or more specifically…a [Blood Assassin]? She had skills a healer should not have, those she remembered because they were literally beaten into her. [Shadow port] for dispatching hard to reach targets—

[Purge] for clearing up evidence that the deed was done; [Black Out], short term memory erasure and disorientation for infiltrations; [Blood Art: Blood Crescent] ranged attacks for ranged foes; [Blood Art: Reaper’s Scythe] for threshing heads from their owners in melee range ; [Blood Art: Creation]—Blood…blood everywhere. Even in her nightmares.

After being saved by the Nightcrawler clan, she’d found a mother in Venera, well almost. She could stay with the clan as long as her lifespan would allow because she, happy, or with the illusion that she was content to be where she was.

But sometimes she got flashes of that life; parts and snippets of who she might have been. They called her to the world outside; of many places she’d visited. Nora would have pointed them out if she saw them, but she barely remembered the names of the places she went on assignments.

Should she have known? She was in limbo, until he came. The enigma. That’s why she was so ready to leave with him; to have the self-deception of being taken away even though it was her whims that ported them out of the settlement.

She took on a subordinate position, just so, just so she could stay close to him. Wherever he went, she’d shadow; after all. Though she walked in the day, hers was the world of shadows. But she would be the first to admit that there was nothing between them. He just didn't see her that way…and neither did she.

Shadows conveyed her, shadows hid her; but shadows were lonely places… Ultimately, she had to step out of them like she was now, in the alley behind Griffin’s Roost. She let her vampiric senses tell her if there was any being with a beating heart nearby before she exited from her port state.

What Arthur didn’t know was, the [Shadow Port] she used with him was instantaneous because he, unlike she, couldn’t hold his breath and not suffocate. [Shadow Port] could also have delayed exits as well.

Today was rather rainy, that was good…there was nobody in the immediate vicinity because everyone was indoors. There was the occasional person here and there in their rain gear or sheltering away from the cloudburst under awnings of stalls and shops or eaves of buildings, but that was a non-issue.

She stepped out of the shadows into the rain, pulling the cowl of rain leathers around her ears, as the torrential downpour continued unabated. The sound of rain was a calming duet to the sloshing of her boots in the run off.

Trundling over the puddles, and rivulets draining into the gutter, Nora ducked under the eaves of a nearby building to adjust her cowl as the wind was splashing the rain into her face. She then stepped around the rain-water being conveyed to the ground by a convergence of eaves-troughs overhead finally reaching the back entrance of the Griffin's Roost. A short rap of the wooden door caught the attention of the [Innkeeper].

“Oh, it’s you Miss Nora; what are you doing out here in the drencher?” the buff half-sylvani half-dwarf man said, in mild astonishment. He’d been a constant in the inn, besides the moping girl upstairs.

Thus he barely raised a brow when he saw the sylvani with a ruby hairdo. It was highly unusual for a sylvani to have such a color but perhaps, their human side had won out, Halen thought.

“Greetings Innkeeper Halen; was just around town when the clouds decided to bring down the wrath of Diane over my head” She lied, smilingly.

“Uh, don’t let me hold you out there, come in…I’ll take your raincoat; will dry it by the fire.”

“Thank you Mister Halen,” Nora said, divesting herself of the wet rain gear and handing it to him. The man returned to his duties while Nora crossed the kitchen, entering the inn’s main hall through the counter. Today’s patrons were rather subdued, as if the rain had washed away their cheer or as if they’d reached an accord that today was a moment of contemplative silence.

Nora ascended the stairwell, stealthily, without creaking the wooden steps, out of habit rather than necessity and made it to the first floor. She stopped in front of Elena’s door, composed herself, scowling at her wet shoes which she sent a purge spell to soak up the water. Done, she exhaled in preparation for what she was going to tell Elena today.

“Hello Lena,” Nora chirped, stepping into the room.

“Hello Nora.” She rasped. “You came,” she smiled, weakly as she propped herself up by her elbows.

She hurriedly dabbed off a tear with the back of her palm but the tear lines on her flushed cheeks betrayed that she had been crying recently, and harder at that. That nobody heard through the porous walls of the inn was because the rain was that loud. Nora let it be; perhaps it had allowed her to let out her grief one last time.

“Yes, I came to see how you’re faring.” She closed the door behind her as she looked around the room. She saw that everything was neat and well put together. Things had been gathered up and packed into a wooden chest save for the beddings, a few clothes folded on a chair and a pair of boots.

‘Well, I think she’s ready to move on for sure. She’s pulled up her boot straps for sure.’

“I came with news. My master decided that he would put you in his employ sooner rather than later.”

“Oh? How come?” she pressed her knees, covered in beddings to her chest as she looked at the rain falling outside, through the window slats. Nora went to sit beside her, doffing her shoes before clambering up the bed and pulling Elena to her shoulder—thankfully her stockings were dry.

Elena let herself lean against the smaller girl pulling her covers over them so that they could share. “You are pretty cold for a sylvani, and shorter too…you know that right?”

“Ha-ha, I get that all the time; it’s a sore spot,” she pouted in mock sadness. Switching up, she added, “Things are moving fast now I think.” She stroked the bigger girl’s messy tresses, “He needs all the help he can get; people are starting to take notice and he is only one man. Also I can’t help him all by myself.”

“He’s started building his aership then?”

“Sshhh, the walls have ears…” Nora shushed her, placing an index finger on her lips. “You’ll know it when you finally see it. He’s even given her a name already.”

“What’s she called?”

“Stormbreaker…”

“It’s a worthy name,” Elena supplied, peering from beneath Nora’s chin.

“Are you ready then, Lena?” Nora mumbled.

“Yes, I’m ready to meet the world…I hope,”

Both girl’s smiled. Then the world rumbled and shook. Their smiles dropped in alarm as their mana senses were jolted as if struck by lightning. They felt the ripples of mana pass them by like concentric waves from one direction. The inn groaned as if being buffeted by a giant. Nora jumped out of the bed and ran to the window throwing open the slats—and got a faceful of rain.

The invisible mana waves were shearing through the rain as if they’d physically manifested. There were buildings in the way but she could see what was happening. The mana phased straight through them and it reminded her of the time they fixed the weather enchantments back at the oasis.

Realization hit her like a slap. “Arthur you fool,” she mumbled. “Lena, wait for me!” she called out, before disappearing into wisps of shadow, leaving behind her boots in Elena’s room.

(Half a bell after Nora left)

The archives vault; the room where Arthur and Nora had found the original binder of parchments containing workshop inventory and research notes had remained virtually untouched ever since they’d found it. The organization and filing system was already impeccable so, whenever Arthur would find something interesting, all he had to do was look for the serialized characters that dictated the filing system.

They were all marked in Erythean characters that Arthur had been able to read ever since the time at Sturm’s keep. However, he did still write his own notes in English while Nora handled the letters with a much neater handwriting that would have put a forger’s to shame.

Mind made up, Arthur had already stepped into the vault. Oh, [Eye of the Storm] was no precognition alright, otherwise it would have told him he was about to set a cascade of unforeseen events in motion. There was no hesitation, no second thoughts…Arthur was going all in.

He could grasp the implications of what he was about to do. Especially when the final piece of the puzzle about ‘the enemy under people's noses’ from Ascal Conierva’s journal fell into place. That the dwarves had gone as far as to sabotage anything that came close to a semblance of their magic technology even if it was merely a coincidence did not escape him.

At first it had merely been a suspicion. A suspicion that had him tell Nevine to leave the fact that the library had been vandalized a secret. Who knew how many wrong sorts of ears there were in Aldmoor? He might have been paranoid, but he was justified; this was a world he was barely months into.

He recognized that he had already made a splash and upset some form of status quo but someone was bound to come calling in the long run. And here was something else that was a rock to his pebble; he’d already made ripples…what was a wave? He was going to find out what Ascal’s contraption was and why it had to have the original creator disappear off the face of Eryth.

Arthur approached the section of the archives that the journal had directed him to. He walked along the last row at the back of the room. The only thing remotely close to a book among the rolls of bound up and dusty parchment was a black, leather-bound tome placed cover down on the shelf. He picked it up, blew off the dust, revealing the embossed letters; Magestone and Control Runes.

Carefully, he opened it at the center where his fingers found purchase on indentations. The pages were actually two painted slabs of wood, curved with lines to give the illusion of bound sheaves. It opened like a small box. There, in the middle was a slate made of mage stone just as the book said.

He scrutinized the gray soapstone colored object with metallic braces around its corners and saw no runes curved on the surface. Deciding to follow the original user’s directions, he infused it with his mana. Not a moment too soon, the slate lit up, runes appearing on its unblemished surface as if being viewed through a touchscreen.

He touched the sequence mentioned, supplying the pass key as fast as [Eidetic Memory] could recall it then waited. The unselected runes dimmed. The archive’s room shook, as the wall Arthur was standing before, receded, then slid to the side with a gust of stale air and dust that made him hack as he tried to contain a sneeze.

Beheld before the youth was cube. It had a heft that required him to use both his hands to lug the thing out of the vault despite his new strength. He set it up in a special area designed for experiments that would include blowing things up. Far away from the Pyr canisters even; regardless of whether they were made of sturdy null-steel or not

‘Now what? It doesn't tell me anything beyond finding a cube that I reckon weighs as much as an engine block’. He exhaled, letting loose the strain of having done the equivalent of deadlift and a rock-run. “Damn, my back.” he swore.

He crouched down to see if he could glean something from the dull brown and unmarked construct; his [Mana Sense] was blind to it as was his [Mana Sight]. It just baffled him. Knocking it with his knuckles yielded nothing; it wasn’t hollow either. He was left at an impasse.

“Welp,null-steel casing. Appraisal will be no use if neither of my arcane senses can penetrate the thing. That’s some nasty piece of Obfuscation without wards,” he sighed, pacing around it while crouching. “ Maybe the slate is the key too?” he muttered. Arthur retrieved the slate of magestone from the vault and repeated the sequence of runes. That seemed to evoke a reaction.

The inert cube flared with magic before the top face split along the middle with a pneumatic hiss. With anticipation, he pried them open…and there, sat the Tellusphere — Ascal Conierva’s retort to the dwarve’s aership technology; It looked just like the schematics.

“ Q.U.E.S.T Engine sounds apt. Even Q-engine sounds cooler, “ Arthur murmured.