𝟎𝟎𝟐 Caul's Folly

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𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐰𝐨

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𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐰𝐨

Ⅱ 𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒍'𝒔 𝒇𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒚





ONCE THEY MADE IT BACK TO THE RV, DICK QUICKLY EXPLAINED EVERTHING TO RACHEL AND TIM. Cole chimed in to make a quick comment every few sentences. Even as Tim laughed at Cole's jokes every few seconds they seemed to be on opposite sides of the RV.

"So, if anybody with Trigonic blood can get the Horn, then I'm just as qualified as Sebastian," Rachel thought aloud and Tim scribbled through a book. "We just need to get there first, right?"

"Theoretically, yes," Dick confirmed. "But we need to know where the horn is in order to do that."

"Which we don't," Terran added, leaning her elbows on the table as she stood beside Rachel.

"Roberta was able to translate this text. It appears relevant, obviously, but at the same time, it makes no sense," Kory spun the translated book to Rachel who carefully read across the page.

"Sun star explodes. Blood portal. Horn of Power sounds," Rachel read aloud.

"Nice three-step process," Tim muttered, writing the lines in a notebook.

"Do a cross-reference, see if anything pops up," Dick ordered.

Tim paused, looking up at the others, "What if it's not about the words?"

"Like Gematria?" Cole questioned and Tim nodded quickly.

"What's Gematria?" Terran asked, looking between Tim and Cole.

"It's basically like, semantic numerology," Tim started. "In most ancient languages, each letter has a numeric value."

"Like Scrabble," Rachel offered.

"N-No. But Sure, basically," Tim stammered. "Gematria is all over Biblical interpretation. That's how we ended up with 666 being the mark of the beast from Revelations, even though technically, it's about Emperor Nero, but still..."

"So this might be an alphanumeric cypher," Dick said with a nod.

"Maybe," Tim shrugged.

"But how do we know the values?" Rachel asked, glancing down at the book.

"Standard code-breaking," Cole piped up. "Start with the word you know in Veaman like, sun."

"Krag," Terran said and Tim quickly scribbled it down.

"Across most ancient languages, the numeric value of that is 100, so if that's true for Veman-"

"Enter the known values and let the computer look for a pattern," Dick called, swiping the iPad and displaying the database on the screen. Dick typed sun into the search bar and the computer beeped as it started to beep and everyone stepped closer. The screen loaded showing both translations of the word with a dozen numbers in the centre.

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