Scourge Thirty-Eight - Mine

Flying is fun, but even that grows... normal, I guess, after a while.

We cross over woods that become thicker, then more and more sparse as we continue north. After a while the trees below are replaced by big piles of stone and the occasional little peak. A few rivulets cut around some of the hills, with large patches of wild grass around them.

I make a game of spotting monsters and wild animals in the brush below, but as we follow along the edge of the mountains they become less common except for the odd fox or herd of wild goats hanging onto the sides of nearly-sheer cliffs.

It’s mid-afternoon when we finally arrive at Lake Casselfella.

The body of water is huge. Stretching out nearly to the horizon, even from as high as we are, I can't see the other end of it as anything more than a blurry line way out in the distance. Esme points to the side, and our mounts swerve around in a great big circle.

There are a few homes along the shores of the lake. Even a few little villages that are all about half a day’s walk apart from each other. We never get close enough to the shore for them to notice us.

“It should be around here!” Esme screams back once we circle this one big hill a couple of times. It’s a big feature of the landscape, with several more hills popping up alongside it. Each turn around it takes a good twenty minutes, and we’ve circled it twice already.

“Where?” I shout back.

Esme points, and I can’t quite tell what’s below. Still, I direct our bird friends down, and we coast towards the ground and into a large clearing with enough room to land.

Esme and Felix climb off their mount, so I help Bianca down, then hop off myself. “I didn’t see what you were pointing to,” I say.

“A trail,” Esme says. She turns towards the downwards slope of the hill. “It’s just a few hundred metres that way, I think. It switches back and forth.”

“Ah, alright,” I say. I guess the vault needs to be reached by carts sometimes. It makes sense that someone would cut a trail to it that isn’t too steep.

I gesture to the bird monsters to follow us, and we head downhill. It was nice to just walk after so much time spent riding a monster. My thighs are killing me already. I’m glad we only had a day and a bit of flying to do, because any more than that and I’d be unable to walk. As it is, Bianca’s walking a bit crookedy and Esme’s muttering complaints under her breath.

The only one that’s fine is Felix, and she’s cheating by being all light and bubbly.

We find the road a little ways down the hill, through a stand of trees. It’s a rough path, obviously someone with some earth-based cultivation ability passed through here and smoothed out the entire hillside to make a road, but that must have been ages ago. Bushes are growing in that little hump in the middle of the road, and even the ruts worn out by cartwheels are filled with grass.

Felix drops to one knee next to the road. “Someone drove by here,” she says. “Look, the grass in the middle is squished. Some of its broken, and there’s marks in the mud there. Is there a village or something like that?”

Esme moves over to our bird friends, rummages around in her packs, then comes back with a map. “No. Nothing up there except for the vault. Well, the vault, and the mine it’s hidden in.”

“What kind of mine?” Bianca asks.

“Salt,” Esme says. “It’s an old salt mine. Don’t spread it around, but a few of Semper’s vaults are hidden in abandoned mines like that.”

“Because of the salt?” I ask.

She nods. “It makes the air dry. Most of the stuff we’re archiving in a vault will be written down, and paper doesn’t age well when moist. So salt mines. Or you know, just normal hidden places where the Archivists can bring a lot of salt to. There’s other ways to keep things at the right level of humidity, but... yeah, that’s a topic for another time.”

I grin. “You’re cute when you go off on a tangent.” She smacks my arm. “And when you get all blushy about it.”

We start to follow the road up, and even I can’t help but notice that someone’s been by. There’s lots of markings and tracks and they look somewhat fresh.

“Was anyone supposed to go to the vault?” I ask.

“No,” Esme says. “The mine’s closed too. There’s another one closer to the city. They use that one for their salt now. This one is much further away. Besides, it was bought by one of Semper’s companies or something.”

“Could be another Archivist that climbed over to check on things,” I say.

“Maybe,” Esme says. She frowns and is quiet for a while as we walk up the road. “I hope not,” she finally says a while later.

“Why’s that?”

She shrugs. “It’s going to sound stupid.”

“That never stopped me from saying anything,” Felix says.

Esme chuckles. “I guess... if Semper sent me just to check on something that someone else had already looked into, then this whole mission, or my part at least, was all busywork. I guess I’m still at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to Archivists and such, but still.”

I wrap an arm over her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’m sure these tracks were left behind by some marauding band of thieves that we’re going to run into while they’re leaving the crime scene. Then you’ll have saved the vault and aunty Semper will be super pleased with you, and then she’ll... what does she even give to Archivists that have done well?”

“Better books?” Esme tries.

“Oh... well, if you get those, do remind her that I helped, okay?”

Esme grins, and I think her melancholy’s past.

We continue onwards, finally arriving at a spot where the road stops switching back and forth along the less steep side of the mountainous hillside. Ahead of us is a wall of stone, with clear marks on it that show where different minerals have settled over the years.

There’s a hole in the wall. Not a cave entrance, but a properly dug out hole, with smoothed edges and a small shack next to it.

“That’s the mine?” I ask.

“Looks like it,” Esme says.

There’s no cart around, but the ruts in the ground left by whatever passed by are still visible in the weed-choked gravel.

We crunch our way over to the entrance, eyes on swivels to spot any signs that there’s anyone watching, but I see nothing.

“Okay then,” I say as I peer into the tunnel. It goes on for further than my eyes can make out. “We need light. I can find a dark pool and then make a small swarm of monsters which glow. That’ll let us see.”

Felix steps over to the shack, then swings the door open. “Oh, hey, lamps,” she says. She steps out with a hard hat with a mirrored cup on the front and a space to place a candle.

“Or Felix can just find a tool to do what I want,” I say.

Felix pauses, then half-turns back to the shack. “I can put it back?” she says. “Pretend I never found it, if that’ll make you happier?”

“No,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “It’s fine. Let me call up a few local monsters though. There might be some around here that can see in the dark.”

“Bringing monsters into a vault is kind of heretical, you know,” Esme says.

“Is Semper having tea with mom heretical too?” I ask.

Esme scuffs a shoe on the gravel. “A bit?”

I giggle, and Felix and Bianca join in too, though Bianca has a hand over her mouth and Felix doesn’t giggle so much as she guffaws.

Moving to the edge of the clearing, I send out a couple of little friends to scout around and find some bigger monsters in the area. Ideally they’ll find a few that can handle the darkness well. Maybe a mountain lion-like monster or two?

I don’t know what to expect of the vault, or even if I should expect trouble at all. I’d rather expect it with a small army by my back though. A small army and some trusted friends.

A few wolves pop up, big black fluffballs with glowing red eyes and sharp fangs. They sniff at Bianca, but are well-behaved after I give them a few introductory scritches.

The bears and monster moose that show up I leave at the edge of the entrance, in case anyone tries to sneak in behind us.

“Alright,” I say. “Let’s move in.”

***