The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son' Chapter 502 - The Organization That Failed To Protect A Sing

The stairwell luckily hadn’t changed any from the mories she’d buried. Sa worn stone steps, sa narrow gray walls. Corde’s hand found the hidden groove in the glassfra and pushed without much thought, for it had been hundreds of tis over those years that she had perford this action. The chanism resisted for a mont, like a small proof of disuse but a big proof of ’things really happened’, as dust billowed when part of the wall slid aside with a scraping sound.

’Sigils that kept this quiet must be broken... or whatever she used to power them are missing.’

The plunging passage spiraling beyond was a bit narrower than she rembered. Everything was smaller when you returned to childhood places, sotis because of physical changes in height that altered perspective. However, in this case, it was caused by experiencing the fullness of the world and comparing it to the tiny part of it which had once seed like everything. The Frozen Duskblade’s scope of things now took up more room than a re frightened teenager bouncing off the walls to get out and away from there ever had.

Frost crept along the walls as she moved slowly down the sharp spiral and into the hidden workshop. She could suppress it and maintain control - her emotions had evened out after the rush from the archive - but she didn’t particularly want to. The Elentalist wanted every bit of humidity that was already helpfully condensed on the surfaces to co under her power. She didn’t know what she would find, but a battle wasn’t out of the question... and preparing the field was in her nature.

The workshop door hung ajar, not properly latched after the last person had left from inside. This detail saved her from needing to break in, as she no longer held the key that she dropped into the ocean from over the side of the ship she escaped in seven decades ago. Velauyn had trusted her with a lot of things which a manipulative person perhaps should not have... but confidence in the thod of control tended to let decisions get looser and looser.

One particular illusionist, in her past life, would have been the first to admit that overconfidence in a sche had ruined the whole thing for her far too often. Elua had been forced to adapt with improvisations to survive too many tis to ever think she was infallible. However, even in her hard gathered wisdom, it was still easy to fall into the ntal trap of ’worked fine once, should work again’... which is why even the improvisations were eventually done with a layer of contingencies mixed in - as offramps toward acceptable outcos.

To Corde, all of that would only sound like soone who was extra untrustworthy. An individual unable to commit to a course of action and always looking for the way out. A particularly martial cultivator mindset of being the firm rock - or iceberg - on which the waves of others break against. Rather than being the flowing river that changes course if the environnt happened to suit that whimsical bend in another direction.

Just like the way down, the workshop’s forr location was sohow different than it was within the swordswoman’s mories and nightmares. Totalling perhaps six lunging steps across and seven or eight deep, it was much emptier than she had the ntal picture of. Reaching out and activating the essence lantern, she saw that a single mirror pane remained embedded in one wall, but the shelves held none of the books or objects that once filled the space.

Tos on elental theory, a few on spiritual cultivation, and advanced physical energy techniques which Initial and Enchanter ranked students (most of the Youth Guild) were not given leave to practice. Jars and wooden boxes of specins, both flora and fauna parts. She rembered thinking it looked a bit like a treasure hoard, but now it looked like decades old Dust had taken over in thick layers. Only a long table against the far wall held anything.

Essence-asuring instrunts with tarnished tal sat around an extra sharp and pointy artifact once recovered from a relatively nearby ruin. Slow steps took Corde hez Iralev toward the murder weapon. Toward the sa spot she’d been standing that night when she’d co for her usual evening lesson and had climbed down the spiral like always. She had pushed open the door expecting to find her ntor reviewing texts or preparing sigils.

Instead, Velauyn stood facing the Mirror, speaking into a device held in her hand.

"Turns out what I thought I knew then is the sa that I know now. Nothing. What was going on? What really happened that day?"