The Last Crusade

[Faith Augustin]

1st Cylus, 719

"Happy new arc," Faith grumbled to Padraig as she stretched. "Did you sleep at all?" When they had got lost in the jungle, it had been a concern that they would end up sleeping on the floor, but Faith knew that she could use the abilities granted to her by Moseke to build them a shelter. However, then they'd fallen down a hole ~ very much their "situation normal" when out and about ~ and ended up in a strange place, filled with puzzles and such. Traps, widgets and all sorts of strangeness had led them here and, rather than sleeping on the ground, they had slept under it, on hard stone floor. Between the two of them, they had made it here, and had decided that this tiny little room would be a good place to camp.

Of course, "camp" was a relative term. They had spent the night on the floor, although they had brought supplies with them, neither one of them actually knew what they were doing and the night they had passed had not been exactly what one could call comfortable. Faith was half amused at herself for noticing the ache in her back, because that certainly would not have bothered her when she'd been a slave. Far, far from it. "So," she said, well aware that she had slept and he, as far as she could tell, hadn't. "Breakfast. Here you go." The bread she unwrapped was accompanied by hard boiled eggs, cheese and some fruit for afterwards. "Eggs, bread, apple. Just like you used to have," Faith smiled at him and sat, happily eating with him. Her appetite was minuscule compared to his, but she ate what filled her and enjoyed what she ate.

"Come on then, Professor," she said and turned silver eyes to him. They could both have gone home by a simple click of their heels, they both knew it. But they weren't going to do that, unless they had to. They were searching for a shard of the Original Fei, and this was too important. There was only one door out of this small area, a sort of almost-alcove they had slept in. They had barred the door in front of them, making it hopefully safer and, in fairness, they'd had no trouble overnight.

Once they had unblocked the door, they could go through it easily enough and Faith frowned as she peered around Padraig and looked in. "Is this.. what is this?" The room in question was huge and the floor was covered with .. "Is that a map?" Faith asked, her eyes wide with amazement. It was - on the floor there was a map of the jungle. Or, a jungle. Faith looked at him and frowned ~ the room's size meant that the map was enormous. And, without a doubt, there was a question on Faith's mind. It was one which it was, simply, impossible for her to even begin to answer. Far too complex and totally beyond her skills.

"What's it a map of, Padraig?"

If this map held the key to them getting out, then he was quite frankly their only hope and her utter incomprehension showed that.

Reminder

In the Temple Ruins, they find a "map room" - Pad works out where they actually are (Faith'll never manage it) - having solved a puzzle about the height of a staff and the headpiece and the sunlight thing. They find the tribe and they go there - Tribe recognises Faith as Famula-marked and Vri marked, she's got a death diri and they worship those, so the tribe explain their sacred stone is lost - Pad and Faith get sent on a "crusade" to find the stone.
That was the original - but now Pad's a Famula born too!

[Padraig]

"I'm a scholar," Padraig complained with a grunt as he pushed himself up with some effort off the ground, and reached up to massage the back of his neck, which seemed to have a permanent crick in it. "Not an adventuring explorer. I didn't. Not a wink." He probably had nodded off at some point near the early dawn. A bit here, a few trills there. But not enough for him to say that it counted.

He might say he'd grown soft, except that he'd always appreciated the finer things. Like a bed. A pillow. A roof over his head. Running water and not the kind that dripped down the back of his neck because of the sky or something else leaking above their heads. "I'm tempted to say that you too have grown spoiled over the arcs," he teased Faith when he noticed how she rubbed her back. A long way from having slept on the floor, on the regular, and he was grateful that now, she very much recognized the difference.

"Just like being at home," he added, smiling as she presented their breakfast. It was something, and they'd need to fill their bellies in order to get through whatever might be laying in wait for them. While they ate, he studied the alcove again, just as he had the night before. One door out, just as before, and the new trial didn't reveal anything different. He'd had to look. Stranger things could happen, after all. So finally they packed up their bags, unlocked the door and he passed through in front of her.

The nature of the floor was so out of the ordinary that it was the first thing that caught his eye. "It sure looks like it," he said when Faith asked. A map, that was, and he moved farther into the room, carefully, always on the lookout for pitfalls, traps and ambushes. The worst that happened was a very large rat that scurried across in front of them, having been disturbed by a door opening up that presumably, hadn't been opened for a very long time. "Jungle," he muttered, crouching down on his heels in order to look at the map from a different perspective.

"A jungle, or the one above us?" he wondered. Frankly, he could pick a single unique star from billions of others in the sky, but all jungles, to Padraig, looked exactly the same. It was important regardless. This was the best clue that they'd found so far, and as maps went, it exceeded the quality of the professor's by leaps and bounds. The perspective helped apparently, and rising, walking forward a few steps, he crouched down again and placed his finger ont the map. "We are....here."

So where was the tribe they were looking for? Somewhere in the great forested expanse to be sure, and Padraig sat down on the floor and had a good look around. The first thing he noticed was near the ceiling, behind where Faith was standing. Pointing up for her to see, he indicated a small man made hole in the wall near the ceiling. The sun was just coming up, he figured, and at some point a shaft of sunlight would peek through that hole. "Look at that divot on the floor, there in front of your foot. It's no accident, not a chip, it's too regular and rounded."

To him..."Something is meant to go there, and maybe it has something to do with that hole near the ceiling. It's about the diameter of a, I dunno. A large marble. The end of a broomstick, a spear or a shaft. See anything that might go there?" he asked Faith.