As the boy's footsteps faded, becoming distant from the opening in the canvas, Lania adopted her typical mask of sternness and marched back into the central room. A pudgy looking man with eyes filled with guilt immediately waddled up to her stuttering apologies but she just brushed passed him and began collecting the shards of the broken Reveles. It would be costly to replace, the vault keeper would probably throw a fit when he found out but that was a confrontation which needed to wait. The magical essence the crystals absorbed from the boy would not keep long and she needed to analyze them before too much decay occurred.

With her pouch clinking musically Lania strode out of the tent causing the guards waiting by the carriages to eye her warily.

"Headquarters" she barked as she entered a carriage painted with the image of a dragon-shaped flame, the symbol of her society.

Cracking his whip the previously waiting driver drove the enquian, great shaggy hoofed beasts connected to the carriage, forward and towards the middle district gate. Although there were far more people on the streets than usual the drive to her societies headquarters went reasonably fast. Still, it felt painfully slow as every second spent meant further decay of the remaining power in the crystals.

After several frustrating minutes, the carriage passed through the gates marking the beginning of her headquarters, a gigantic black building that radiated an aura of dominance and age. As they pulled up to the massive double doors Lania stepped from the still moving carriage and strode inside heading directly towards her quarters.

Others called her rooms unsuitable of someone with her rank as they resembled a storage closet far more than they did a place to live. With the exception of a small corner in which her bed lay the rest of her rooms were filled from floor to ceiling with papers, books, trinkets from her travels, and miscellaneous devices. She moved a few stacks of papers from a massive iron-bound chest and after a moment of digging through it quickly found what she had been looking for.

The Skopia had been the tool of choice for analysis of new totems they brought back from the ruins although it had become obsolete a decade ago. The new version that replaced it worked on slightly different principles and was therefore much cheaper to build and simpler to use, however, it was ill-suited for analyzing anything containing mixed essences.

With haste, Lania began stacking the crystal fragments in orderly rows beneath the gaze of the Skopia which began spluttering, jumping to life as it began feeding on the trapped power. Wheels turned and the device produced a shrieking whistling sound, it must have been lying in the chest unused for a little too long, while various runes littering the side of the device began flickering.

Lania watched intensely and made sure to note each rune that successfully lit up and remained glowing. Soon the device was bright with half a dozen glowing marks, each carefully written down for later analysis. What she could already judge without consulting the massive tomes that had records of the combination meanings, far too many to memorize, was that the boy had an extremely high affinity for both the shadow and wind elements. Additionally, there were quite a number of runes designating lightning revealing that the boy had a high affinity for that element as well albeit slightly less than then the other two.

High affinities for three different elements were already something that had no business appearing anywhere other than in one of the royal lines but to Lania's surprise the crystal fragments, still glowing, obviously still had some elements remaining inside them. Why someone like him had been walking around the lower district apparently working as a runner she could not guess, the Royals did not mingle with those lower in status and would never allow one of their own to grow up in the slums of the lower district. Perhaps a child had been lost in some political game? If that was the case at the very least there would be a record of the birth.

After considering whether or not she was sticking her neck into something lifespan reducing Lania banished her worries and decided that it seemed time to visit the archives. As they were one of the oldest societies the Dragon’s Flame had long implemented an extensive system of record keeping and archives, these were all located far beneath the ground in one of the numerous vaults built into the bedrock and required a high rank in the society to access without supervision. Thankfully she had that rank so she could wave away the archivist, an ancient man who deeply resembled a root, and head directly towards the books containing records of the most recent noble lineages.

Approximately three hours later Lania gazed down at her notes unsatisfied. From looking through the various births and deaths of children in the various noble families over the past twenty years she had quickly built a short list of possible candidates who Lleu could actually be. As she approximately knew his age all that was needed was to figure out which noble children born in that time range were unaccounted for. This list only had six children listed on it, two of which could be disqualified instantly as they had been girls. What had caused her dissatisfaction was that the parents of the remaining four were all well known to be powerful in either earth or water, elements incompatible with the affinities she had analyzed. There was simply no way Lleu could be descended from any of them which only left the possibility of him being undocumented or not a part of any noble line.

Although the first possibility would be troublesome the second was deeply worrying as the royals and nobles of the upper district had long based their right to rule on the might of their bloodline. The existence of someone with so many high affinities would be a direct challenge to their rule.

After returning all of the books she had studied to their proper place Lania moved over to one of the massive tomes containing the meanings of the different rune combinations and began to work through the list she had copied down earlier.

Much later Lania finally stumbled back into her quarters exhausted. The list of combinations she observed had turned out to be much more complicated than she had thought possible, half the rune combinations implied the existence of others and that had sent her down a track of guesses and assumptions. Her conclusion, much to her annoyance, was that there had been too much essence decay to determine anything other than the wind, shadow, and lightning elements.

Just as she was about to lay down and close her eyes Lania noticed a faint whirring sound.

‘How can it still be active? It should have run out of power hours ago.’ She thought heading over to the Skopia which was somehow still chugging along. A single rune remained alight on its surface although its light had already become dim. Lania recognized this rune as she had never seen it alight before, it certainly had not shown any life when she had begun the analysis hours earlier.

Even though she had never seen it light up before she knew exactly what it signified and why she had not found any trace of the boy in the archives. Sighing Lania prepared to leave once again, she would need to visit an old rival of hers. She had never liked the man but he had lived through the same events she had all those years ago. He would understand the what sort of chance they had been presented with, he would help.