When the Final Seal Breaks

6th Entry

We went down to the mines for a few days. For lack of a better idea, I may as well call the red stones rubies. I'm not interested in the chemical make-up of the crystals, but that's what I passed them off as in my world anyway. So, we were looking for rubies for a few days.

Of course, I wasn't grabbing some mining gear and picking away at the walls, I was just touring around the various mine shafts that were safe to enter.

Crystals work differently here. In my world, they formed deep underground due to... pressure and... minerals... well I started that sentence thinking I knew something about it but basically in nature they form slowly over time or in extreme conditions. Here, they seem to grow like plants, or rather weeds. I had some time to talk with an overseer about the process of gathering the crystals, and that wasn't the only thing of note.

When one crystal starts forming, and they were clear like processed crystals right from the start, more would pop up around it. This wasn't actually new information to me, we found that by seeding smaller crystals into different kinds of stone, we could promote growth into the larger crystals we eventually brought with us to the fight in the past.

The second interesting tidbit they had was that there were actually four kinds of coloured crystals. This was news to me, we had only found three in the past, but I already knew only the rubies would affect the Demon Lord. The other stones are what I would call green Emeralds, which were the new variety, white Diamonds and... well, off hand I can't think of a name for a brown crystal. They're not popular in jewelry in my world, and they are apparently so rare that when I mentioned them, no one here had even seen them before.

There were so many rubies before, but no one had found any of those either. As of late, it was all diamonds and emeralds. Then again, maybe we exhausted the rubies in the past. So many things to consider.

Strangely, I actually did find a small cluster of the brown crystals, but I left them as is. Orleris questioned why I didn't want to take samples of all the crystals back with us, since even though we weren't able to locate any rubies, we might find out more about why the crystals could seal the Demon Lord if we researched them all.

To be honest, its partially because I wasn't very fond of the brown crystals myself. I mean, colour aside, they emanated an unpleasant aura not unlike the miasma when magic was put into them. Research was halted on the brown crystals, and we couldn't see any effects from the Diamonds at all. I felt it was good that there were so few around now. I didn't have any reason to think the Emeralds would be any different.

I should probably explain to Orleris and the people here the full details of why we halted research into them in the past. We should all be on the same page here before they decide to go ahead with research anyway. My disinterest alone isn't enough to sway them, but maybe an explanation is.

After all that time underground, today is a day off. I'm still wearing Orleris' cloak, though now I just don't unbuckle it so I can pull it on over my head in the morning. Also, I received a sleep gown that Orleris had ordered for me... or the closest alternative that involves barely any construction of form. It didn't require any special material or fasteners though, so at least my days sleeping in my world's clothes are over. Still waiting on my day cloak though.

***

As usual, for Navar when it came to anything to do with Lil, no expense was spared for the journey to meet the mysterious figure. When they had the comfortable carriage lined up, with travel supplies stowed away, Navar had finally stopped to ask where exactly they were going.

In their planning the previous day, Orleris had told them just the general direction, to the East, far beyond the sealed forest. The only town nearby was only just barely large enough to be called one and was just a collection of craftspeople that were keen on remaining as isolated from the outside world while they honed their crafts. Any craftsperson worth their salt lived there including the man that Orleris had commissioned for all his clothes.

And Lil's.

She had spent a long time wondering about the dominance of the cloaks, and as far as he knew the style had been developed in that little town centuries ago. Less than eight centuries ago though, it seemed.

So, they started by heading there- Central had applied an official name of Craftstown to it, but no one used that name, aside for Navar who directed their driver.

Once inside the carriage, they set off, and Orleris tried to read more of the Diary. As usual he only made it through a single entry. Every time his thoughts wandered even the slightest bit the figure of the ashen man would rise again in his mind.

Eventually he gave up and put it away. He felt a little bad. Even after she had explained to him about the crystals, he had still taken a sample each of the 'diamonds' and 'emeralds', and even managed to take a little sample of the brown crystals she hadn't named.

"Can't read?" asked Eloitte, looking up from her own notebook. She was going over some technical notes on her magical absorption barrier device, no doubt working on a way to make it stronger.

"What was it like when you had your revelation with the Goddess? Right now, its like every time I blink, he calls me again." He closed his eyes and held a hand over them. The image of the being was right there. He could tell they were slowly getting closer.

Navar, who had been excitedly writing in his own diary froze to pay attention, and Eloitte closed her notebook. "The Goddess pulled me into a dream state. It didn't happen in reality. I was in a bubble of warmth, and she held my hand and asked me some things. I knew it wasn't reality, but I talked with her in the same way I do here, with my voice and words. Once I opened my eyes in reality again it was like I had just blinked. But after that I never saw her again." She closed her eyes as if trying to feel for it again.

"Dream state might be the right word for it, but I don't feel like I'm there, just that I can see and hear him. He seems to be able to understand what I want to say but I'm not saying words."

"If that's the case, then perhaps this being is much weaker than the Goddess," Navar said, suddenly entering the conversation. "He can't pull you into the space, just let you gaze on it."

With his fantastic revelation, Navar began to furiously write again.

Eloitte meanwhile shrugged. "I don't know what to think. But the Goddess I saw wasn't the kind of being that you described. The only thing really in common is reaching out to people with visions."

When he had first seen the vision, he really did think that it was just like the visions people had from the Goddess in the past, as written by those who had received revelations, but listening to Eloitte only made him nervous. He felt less and less like he was going to find some answers, and more like he was heading into a trap. But it was better than doing nothing.

As the other two travelling companions settled back into their respective notebooks, he picked up the cell phone – now at seventy percent – and began to charge it.