[Faldrass] Finding Von Smooglenuff

[Balthazar Black]

5 Ymiden 720

Smooglenuff Manor... Balthazar was certain he'd never set foot in it again. He was both correct and incorrect in that certainty. The rubble he stood among now was nothing like the grand manor had been but it was still the land. Balthazar still felt the etheric signature he'd familiarized himself with so that he could conjure portals but everything was different. Everything was ruined. A landslide and a volcanic eruption had done the damage Balthazar and his small excavation team were working to undo now. Coming back to the start of it all hadn't been an easy decision for the mage but Fuego insisted they try.

The baron deserved better than the death he had. Death- Balthazar had learned, was simply another part of life. It was the final step in the grand race that every breathing being was part of. The baron deserved a grander step than one covered in volcanic ash and the destroyed remains of his home. The baron, and all who'd been inside with him, would have the funeral rites that Balthazar believed they were worthy of... but the baron's body had to be found first... and perhaps his will.

Balthazar hadn't come with any interest of finding the baron's will but when he heard a few other volunteers whispering to each other about it, he decided the will would be better left in his hands than their own. At least Fuego might have been able to convince Balthazar to do the honorable thing with the will- those volunteers certainly had no intention of seeing it properly carried out. So the team approached the ruins of the manor with anticipation and eagerness. Balthazar's group was assembled mostly of himself, Fuego, and a few other workers who'd been helping Balthazar as he moved around Faldrass cleaning up damage. It wasn't much, but it would be enough to get the job done by nightfall.

""

[Rei'sari]

5th Ymiden, 720

Location: Ruins of Baron Von Smooglenuff's Manor


Ari'sora's body still ached from everything she had done yestertrial, but in an odd way, the pain felt good. It meant that she had managed to help someone. She had been of use...unlike the time when she had responded to Baron Von Smooglenuff's call for help. And being of use to someone was the best way that she could live her life.

That was why she was on her way to the Baron's mansion now. He, and all of his people had died when his mansion had collapsed. They deserved a proper funeral...and for that, their bodies had to be found. Ari'sora wasn't certain how much use she would be to that end, but she wanted to try. No. She needed to try.

As she winged her way to the place where the manor once stood, Ari'sora saw that she wasn't the only person who had had the same idea. At least, from what she could tell from the air, the small group of people standing among the ruins were planning to do some digging. And if not to find the bodies of the Baron and his people, what other reason would they have for being here?

Ari'sora drew closer, and she saw a man that she recognized. He was the same man who she had helped fight the river of lava the trial before. Not knowing anyone else, she decided to land near him and see if she could help. She circled the area until a space opened up for her to land. When she did, she approached the man she had helped the trial before.

"It looks like you had the same idea that I did. Can I help?" she asked hopefully.

[Darius Baer]

Arc 720, 5th of Ymiden

There had been moments during his time on Faldrass when Darius had sworn to himself that he would never return.

And then he'd become Fireforged. That had changed everything. It was, he was sure, just another game the Immortals were playing, as they pulled the strings of his life and made him their plaything.

Perhaps it was his rather unpleasant introduction to one such Immortal that had made him so cynical. And then, for the godling - as Cassion liked to call him - to refer to the group as heroes?

The description did not sit comfortably with Darius. Why should it? A thousand people had died, or so he'd heard. A thousand! There was nothing heroic about that. They had ventured to Faldrass to assist Baron Von Smooglenuff, and a thousand people had died. The whole experience had been one unmitigated disaster after another.

But he had kept his promise to Yeva, and that was what had kept him from losing his mind in the immediate aftermath.

Now, though, there was work to be done. Darius had spent the fist few trials ferrying survivors to the main island, but his crew was tired, and so he had left them in port so that they could rest. But that was not something he could afford himself, and so he soon found himself sifting through the remains of what had once been Smooglenuff Manor. The dust that had been kicked up by the building's collapse had yet to settle, small clouds forming with every awkward step he made over the unsteady rubble.

There were others there, too, but he didn't recognise any of them at first. That changed when the movement of a pair of wings caught his eye, and he looked across to see Ari'sora, whose argument with ChiChi had been but the first of many unfortunate incidents during his time at - and beneath - the manor. Darius felt his jaw tighten at the sight, which only loosened when he saw that she was talking to Balthazar and a woman he didn't know. He hoped the part-avriel wasn't planning to hoard anything...

The seafarer moved, then, cautious steps taking him across the scree until he joined the small group, nodding at each of them in greeting. Isabella was not a familiar face, but he and the others had once captured a thief together, though that suddenly seemed like a distant memory. Much had changed since then, not least the presence of Katara, his hawk familiar whose talons dug into him as it clung to Darius' shoulder, though no pain showed on the human's features.

"You look like you've recovered somewhat," his gravelly voice spoke as he looked over Balthazar, before catching a glimpse of Fuego. "How are you faring?"

The mage was no longer bleeding everywhere and he was upright, which was certainly an improvement compared to when they had both become Fireforged. Darius didn't want to have to drag his unconscious body again if he didn't need to.

[Balthazar Black]

5 Ymiden 720

"Well I'll be damned." Balthazar mumbled to himself as he saw Ari'sora circling in the sky for a place to land. It hadn't even been a full 24 breaks since he'd last seen her and the half-avriel was on the prowl to provide some help again. He could only hope she had better intentions with the Baron's belongings than the other volunteers Balthazar had managed to gather. "And here I thought I was the only one from the... incident, who wanted to set things right." Balthazar said to Ari as she landed. At the moment a lot of the cleaning seemed to consist mostly of moving the larger chunks of earth out of the way. The volunteers were trying to achieve this with shovels and axes and buckets but Balthazar would put his mastery of the elements to a little better use in a few moments.

"Honestly I think you'd be most useful back where you were." Balthazar admit with a gesture up towards the sky. "We've got enough hands digging. A set of eyes in the sky could be useful. If you could call out for any bodies, valuables, or openings in the ground that you see we might be able to get all this done a little faster." It would certainly help to have someone watching from above when Balthazar started moving bigger sections of earth out of the way and more importantly, it would give Balthazar a spy in the sky he could trust. He knew Ari'sora enough to know she probably would also call out if she saw some of the volunteers looting the place. While Balthazar didn't have an explicit issue with looting the dead, he did feel the baron deserved better than that.

Then Darius arrived. Balthazar turned to the adventurer who he'd met a few times now. They'd stopped some crime together so that made Darius a friend in Balthazar's book. Balthazar didn't even think back to the time he and Darius had bumped into Ari'sora- no instead Balthazar was thinking of his time with Darius and Yeva. That had been quite the case but at least it resolved better than the first missing children case Balthazar had been on.

"Darius! It is good to see you!" Was he another noble soul who had come to give the baron the funeral he deserved or another looter? Balthazar assumed Darius was better than the average looter and given that they were both Fire Forged, he felt like Darius had come from the same sense of duty Balthazar had. Darius asked about the mage's health and Balthazar grinned slightly. That wasn't an easy answer by a long shot. Nothing had been the same for Balthazar since the volcano. The bleeding, headache, and flashing lights had faded completely but Balthazar was still working against his sense of depression and loneliness. Fuego helped a lot in that regard. Isabella couldn't be there all the time but Fuego could. Then there were the mutations. Three of them. They'd been... unpleasant to discover and so Balthazar had practically cut away his ability to use Rupturing.

When forced to choose between Rupturing and eyesight, he had chosen eyesight... for the time being. He was almost always soothing his Rupturing spark in order to suppress his more obvious mutations but he didn't need to tell Darius that. "I'm well enough. I had a good trial's worth of rest." Not that one trial had been enough. His body had been sore and numb for a few trials after. "It'll be some time before I try to attune to the spirit of an island again though."

[Rei'sari]

5th Ymiden, 720

Location: The ruins of Smooglenuff Manor


Another man arrived. Ari'sora didn't know who he was, but she recognized him. He was the other man she had helped catch a thief with; the one who took the thief away. She hoped that the man had punished the thief or seen that the man was punished appropriately for his crime. More recently, she had seen him in a cavern in the volcano while she was safe in the Spectral Forest. Part of her felt very guilty for that. She had been safe once she had been rescued from the collapsing manor. This man hadn't been, though. Neither of them had been safe.

The second man's words reminded Ari'sora that the man she had helped cool the river of lava with had been seriously injured when he was in the cavern with Faldrass. How had she managed to forget that? He looked okay now, though, and Ari'sora hoped that that meant that he was. She wondered if she was supposed to ask if he was okay too, but that felt weird to her, so she didn't. She didn't know the man who had been injured. Not really. Would he want some stranger asking him about his business?

The formerly injured man said he thought that he was the only person who wanted to set things right, and Ari'sora shook her head.

"I wasn't able to be of any use when Baron Smooglenuff asked for help. Instead, I had to be rescued. So I want to help now...if I can."

When she saw that several others were trying to move large chunks of earth out of the way, she had her doubts about being of any use to anyone. She wasn't strong, and she didn't think that she would be of much helping the others dig at all. But when the man she had approached suggested that she could be a set of eyes in the sky keeping an eye out for bodies, valuables, and openings in the ground, she nodded. She could do that. And if it would help, she would be happy to do so.

"I can do that." she promised.

The man she had approached addressed the second man as Darius, and Ari'sora made a note of the name. He also said that he was feeling better after a trial of rest, and Ari'sora was glad to hear that he was better. He said something about attuning to the spirit of an island that made no sense to her because she didn't know what attuning was. But like the trial before, now wasn't the time to ask. So she took off into the sky, and began circling the area. She made certain to fly at a height where she could see the whole area clearly, but was still low enough that she wouldn't miss seeing things on the ground.

[Nir'wei]

Of all the many disasters to befall Faldrass in the wake of the eruption, there was one that he felt particularly bad about. The death of Zach had been a horrible thing. The death of Maxine, well he still didn't feel great about it. The deaths of over a thousand people felt really bad, no doubt about it, and he could only feel thankful that there were none among them that he knew. The death of Baron Von Smooglenuff, however...

He could have saved him. Well, strictly speaking, Greyhide could have saved him, but in that moment the wolf hadn't really thought about the Baron at all, or many of the other staff that resided in his manor, nor any of the people down below in the caverns, nor many other things. The only thing that had mattered at that moment were the two young girls. Still full of life, and still with long lives awaiting them... about to be cut short by the mansion collapsing around them. They'd struggled until the very end and even that hadn't been enough. He'd offered a prayer, and nothing more - a hope among hopes that someone would help them, and a prayer that they find some manner of safety, either in this life or the next. It was nothing more than blind chance that the prayer had been answered, in his mind.

Still, it had worked. He was glad that it had worked! Alyssia and Ari'sora were alive as a result. But because Grey had only seen two young girls... the Baron and his staff had remained behind, to be crushed under the walls and ceiling of their own family manor, along with all their prized possessions and generations of heirlooms and family heritage.

It was a mistake he really didn't want to face. Especially not since the rumours had started about his potential involvement in the catastrophe, and the questions being raised about his fight with Maxine. But at the same time, it wasn't something he could ignore. Not personally - and, according to his political advisor Tel'wehn, not publicly either. Reluctantly he found a day to clear his schedule and set Marcus to address all concerns while he was out of office. Silk and Tylar would join him for the support and in case anything unexpected happened during his first real 'public' appearance as Natural Affairs Councillor. To avoid tiring Traveller, he even took a boat, adding almost half a day to the travel time and ensuring he'd arrive later in the day, when the relief effort was likely to have built up ahead of time.

His concerns were well-founded. By the time he arrived, there were already familiar faces gathering at the base of the wreckage. "Silk, stay close and keep that thing discrete." He didn't like the idea of walking around with a literal armed bodyguard at his side, but frankly, he liked the idea of not walking around with one even less. "Tylar, uhh. You know what to do. Answer questions, handle the hassle, and just let me get on with it." His second-in-command gave a smooth, perfectly-executed bow and brandished his brightest and most friendly smile. "As for the rest of you... well, uhh. Get to it."

The one wolf at his side and the four wolves in the shadows of the Beneath all sprung into action with no more prompting than that. Each one picking out a section of wreckage and clearing it one bit at a time, while Vabina occasionally appeared behind one of them when called, pawing away at the dirt and rubble with giant claws and heavy paws. Gaddwin fluttered high above, his own personal set of eyes-in-the-sky to relay information back to him, and Cyshe soon joined along, after creating her own set of strange-looking watery wings, though the illusion was shattered immediately because she didn't even try to flap them as she spun about in the sky, making little cartwheels and clearly refusing to take this seriously at all. Nir'wei stood with his hands in his pockets and avoiding eye contact. It didn't help his case that he looked bloody guilty, but it didn't matter if it was for a completely different matter - he still felt guilty, and it was still an incredibly difficult thing to hide when literally standing atop the monument to his failure.

[Darius Baer]

Darius nodded when Balthazar assured him that he was doing much better. Not that it was required, of course. The mage had been covered in blood and unconscious when the seafarer had last seen him. If it hadn't been for his and Oram's efforts to drag the man to safety, he might not be feeling up to performing a rescue mission of his own.

"I'm glad you are on he mend," Darius responded sincerely, though such niceties felt out of place upon the rubble of Smooglenuff Manor.

The Scalvorian was pleased when Ari'sora took to the skies. She would be able to provide a pair of eyes from above alongside Katara, and when the bearded blond looked up, it was the hawk diri that he caught sight of, her thin trail of smoke enabling her to stand out, despite her smaller wingspan.

"Do you remember when we chased that thief?" he asked, squinting as he looked skywards for a few more trills before lowering his gaze. "You made a portal that he travelled through. Do you think you could make another, to get us beneath the rubble more quickly?"

Darius was thinking out loud, and he knew the idea was not without its flaws - they would presumably need to find a pocket of space within the rubble to teleport to - but it might mean reaching any potential survivors more quickly, and that made it worth discussing.

As he waited for a response from the mage, he heard a commotion behind him and he turned to see a figure he'd last seen just before the eruption. He was shorter than Darius, and he didn't look too pleased to be there. The human raised a hand, hoping to get the newcomer's attention.

"Nir'wei, correct?" he called out, before beckoning him to come closer, and attempting to lighten the man's mood with a small dose of humour. "I think you'll find it's easier to dig with your hands out of your pockets!"

[Balthazar Black]

5 Ymiden 720

Balthazar waved to Ari'sora as she took off to serve as their eye's in the sky. He could understand what she was feeling because he felt it as well to some extent. He had needed saving at the end as well. Hopefully he wasn't wasting her time by making her fly around in the sky while they dug around on the ground. Balthazar cast a look around to try and figure out where he and Darius would be best suited to help move things when Darius asked about the time they had chased the thief. A grin spread over the mage's face and he offered a soft nod. "I do remember but," Balthazar paused as he tried to think of how to explain it, "it's not a good idea." Balthazar didn't seem content with that explanation though.

"I have been where the ruin is so I could open a portal down there but it would pull through some rubble through, then the edges would be broken and the portal would collapse. We're better off digging, but fortunately I'm good at moving rocks." Balthazar hoped that explanation would help Darius understand why he didn't want to make a portal. He figured he didn't need to mention that he was trying to avoid using more of that magic for a little while. Darius called out to another one of the volunteers helping with the dig and then Balthazar recognized him. Another member of their little band. Nir'wei. He seemed to be in a bad mood but that was going around. Balthazar wasn't sure that humor was exactly the right response but he gave a little chuckle at Darius's words all the same.

"And you'll find digging is easier when we aren't just talking about it." Balthazar pointed out as he walked a little bit up the somewhat dried hill that had been created by the landslide crashing through the Baron's Manor. If that hadn't been bad enough, when the landslide hit, the floor of the manor collapsed into the tunnels beneath it. Balthazar remembered the tunnels collapsing around them. He remembered his mad dash through the opening he thought was safest. He placed both of his hands on the ground and took a deep breath as he tried to hear the call of the earth beneath him. He was looking for openings, tunnels, anything out of the usual. Not all of the earth he heard was created equally. Some of it had been fabricated and designed for a purpose other than it's own. They were pieces of the house buried beneath the earth. Yet there were other things in the earth that were not comprised of any sort of stone with a vague shape that the call of the elements wasn't enough to recognize. It seemed that he would need to try something a little different.

Balthazar took a deep breath and began to douse for a particular note that he'd become quite familiar with in his time as an Element- death. There was plenty of death to be found in the frequency of the larger ruin but Balthazar was trying to focus deeper than that. He was looking for the note of death in concert with the note "human." He was hoping it would lead him to a body but instead he felt his senses pulled to everyone around him. Attunement was rarely as specific as he wanted it to be. All the same he was a master of the craft and knew better than to give up because he heard the note all around him. He simply had to keep listening. He kept dousing and focused on the ground beneath him where he inevitably heard the same notes. He was searching for a specific needle in a haystack of needles and he didn't have the Baron's frequency at heart so he could not douse for it. "Having any luck?" Balthazar shouted up towards Ari'sora in the sky as he moved quickly down the mound of earth he was working with.

Balthazar held both hands out towards the earth and slowly brought them up above and around his head in a circular motion that ended with them extended out towards the earth again. With each cycle he took another deep breath, pushing more thoughts out of his mind to help focus on what he was trying to convince the earth to do. "Just the things that aren't you..." He mumbled to himself in one of his many circular motions he brought his arms around in. He was afraid to make the earth like water because of what had happened that caused the tragedy, but Balthazar took some risk. He softened the ground a little more with each rotation of his arms and then he began moving in a pulling motion as if pulling a sheet from a cot. He pulled the sheet and put it back. Then he pulled it again and he put it back. Over and over he worked the softened earth carefully before suddenly lifting his arms and a large mound of the earth with them.

Balthazar held the earth in the air, looking for a safe place to put it for a few trills before settling it to the side and creating a slight hill. Then he collapsed backwards onto his rear, taking deep breaths to keep the slow nausea that was setting in at bay. Too much, too soon... but he'd done it. In his digging Balthazar had uncovered what appeared to be a portion of a room protruding from the ground. There was a familiar door frame standing buried halfway beneath the earth. From his seated resting position, Balthazar didn't see much of what he'd uncovered other than the door frame but the others were free to look while he took a moment to breathe.

[Rei'sari]

5th Ymiden, 720

Location: Faldrass


Ari'sora searched the ground intently from her vantage point in the sky. There was a lot of dirt, debris, ash...all things one might be expected to find in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption. But nothing that might be of interest. The mansion and everyone in it was just...gone. Buried. Ari'sora realized that that was to be expected, though. It had fallen into the caverns during the earthquake. Ari'sora shuddered at the thought. She was painfully aware that the mansion had fallen into the caverns below it as it collapsed because it had been falling on her until she had been rescued. People had spoken of a landslide that was threatening the mansion during the chaos. Looking at it now, Ari'sora realized that it must have happened. The mansion had fallen into the cavern, and the landslide had covered it up as if it had never existed at all.

But as she flew overhead, people were digging on the ground, and that slowly began to change. She began to see a bit of a wall here, and a roof tile there as the efforts of the men and women working on the ground began to pay off. Ari'sora noted these, but didn't comment on them. The people digging were sure to report anything that they found themselves.

After a while, she heard a shouted question rising up to her, and she turned in the direction where the man was standing. She was about to reply that she herself hadn't found anything, some of the people on the ground had, and they might appreciate extra help digging out the wall that had been found. Where there was a wall, there might be a door, after all. And if the room on the other side was even partially intact, they might find something within it.

But she was distracted by a flash of glitter as the light reflected off of something shiny.

"I might have! I'll tell you in a few bits!"

Ari'sora circled in for a landing, searching for the exact location of the source of glitter she had seen. When her feet touched the ground, she winced slightly at the pain that flared in them at the pressure on her injured feet. She ignored that though, focusing instead on what she might have seen from the air.

After several bits of searching, she found it. A'ri'sora squatted down and carefully dug it out from where it was partially buried. It was an amulet the size of her palm. There was a blue jewel of some kind that was shaped like a dragon. It had smaller amber colored jewels for its eyes, and it was clutching a small red gem in its talons. The setting and chain were golden. Ari'sora guessed that that must mean that it was actually made out of gold, and not just painted such given the obvious wealth that anyone with a title like Baron must have.

She was about to bring it over to the man she had spoken to earlier when she noticed a raised portion of the ground. Was something buried there? After a few bits worth of careful digging, she found that there was. Someone's hand lay exposed after her efforts. The hand bore an onyx ring with a blue gem on it. Ari'sora didn't think that she would be able to dig whoever this was out on her own, but there were plenty of people who were good at digging scattered around the area.

"There's someone over here!" she called loudly.

Then she made her way over to the man who had asked her if she had seen anything earlier.

"I found this over there near the person I just found." she told him, offering him the amulet.

Then she looked at the door and the portion of a room that had not been there before. Remembering that the man had magic that let him control the elements, Ari'sora realized that he must have used that magic to uncover the room. Ari'sora felt deeply uneasy about going through that door...even if it were possible to do so. Being buried alive was a prominent feature in the nightmares that plagued her every night, and she had no desire to make that nightmare a reality. But if the others wanted to go in...she would too. At least...she would try to make herself go in.

[Nir'wei]

Attention gathered sooner than he'd hoped; no sooner had he really touched down and began his work, as it were, than he heard familiar voices calling his name, and hands being raised in greeting. For a moment he cursed removing his Charm of Anonymity during their first meeting, and introducing himself with his real name - but trust was as invaluable as privacy, and while he hated sacrificing one to maintain the other, he could only hope that in the long run, he'd made the right choice. At least they weren't calling him to blame for this mess, yet. "Six of me are digging and three of me are scanning the area. This part of me needs to make sure there is no overlap." It sounded much easier than it was. Swapping between the visual spectrums of multiple spirits and animals at once, telepathically communicating with each of them one at a time and listening to the feedback between each of them as they sniffed and burrowed through the rubble and dirt felt almost akin to trying to read five books at once. However, with time, and as the wolves began to separate themselves into more distinct 'regions' of the wreckage to explore at their leisure, the pressure at the back of his head eased and he finally found enough mental space to start focusing on... well, himself again.

He'd unknowingly gravitated towards what had once been the courtyard. Though there were no longer any landmarks to orient himself in the immediate vicinity, the feel of the volcano looming overhead, the distance to the distant trees left unspoiled by the carnage... it hadn't been too long since he'd stood there, and he remembered it all, vividly, from multiple angles thanks to the snaps collected from his companions.

Was Maxine still alive?

"Sir," Tylar intoned with a touch to his shoulder, bringing Nir slowly from the light meditation trance he'd unknowingly settled in. "The workers have uncovered something." The man gestured and Nir'wei walked slowly, pulling Greyhide from his investigations and up to his side with a gesture of his hand, in case more excavation would be needed. A door, its frame still intact, protruded from the floor, closed but with hinges that suggested it could swing outwards, mostly unhindered. It must have been sturdy, too, to survive the destruction of everything around it, with nothing but small clinging remains of dust and mortar lining the edges to suggest the thing had even been attached to a wall at all.

"Was this the remains of the Command Room?" Greyhide pushed forwards to sniff at the door and confirm his rising suspicion, being the most familiar of them all with its distinct tones. "It was the one place most likely to survive the landslide, given it was near to the middle of the Mansion..." he deduced, before trailing off, realising what this meant. "And it was the last resting place of... you." Ari'sora had died in that room. Or, she'd come so very close that there was hardly any distinction at all. "With the Baron. And... everything else." Despite the surprisingly intact remains of the room uncovered, there was no hope for finding any survivors as Greyhide trotted around the edges of the doorframe and began to dig through the mess of dirt and stone that made up the rest of the unearthed study, for the same reason he honestly didn't believe Max was alive; even if they weren't crushed, the lack of air, food or water for so long since the initial eruption was just far too long. The best they could hope for here was to find the remains of the Baron and his staff in preparation for a proper funeral.