Unspeakable Secrets The Alchemist Series (A Dark Medieval Progression Fantasy)

Chapter 35 The Code

Connor awoke before the sun had even crept over the horizon.

He tiptoed down the passageway as quietly as possible. The others had worked on decoding the documents even after he'd gone to bed, and he didn't want to disturb them.

He went down the stairs and into the pantry. He didn't want to wake them with his cooking, so he selected some cold meats, bread, and a bit of cheese and made himself one sandwich after another.

"I'm glad to see you're treating yourself better," Adelia said from behind him.

He nearly choked on his food. "I hate it when you do that," he said.

"I thought you had your fancy sense-heightening potion? You should've heard me coming a mile away," she said.

"It only works if you actually make noise. Besides, I hadn't taken one. I'm trying to conserve them to keep up my stockpile. The last time I made a potion, my codex helped me find a new one that was within my skill level.

"I want to see if there are any others I could make that might be useful, rather than just making only sense-heightening potions," he said.

"Okay, so how are you feeling?" she asked.

"Hungry," he said. He took another bite out of his sandwich.

"You know what I meant," she said.

"I'm still worried about Victor, but I'm doing better," he said, "I don't know what deal you made with the goddess, but my scar is almost gone, and so is the pain."

"I'm glad to hear that," she said, "and I'll tell you all about it, but not right now. We have more important things to do. Like finding Victor and making these bastards pay."

"Works for me," he said.

He polished off another sandwich, and the two of them went back to sorting through the documents and trying to break the code.

Korvac had his thieves out looking for any leads, but Connor doubted they'd find anything. With Bvorn dead, the documents from his office were their best hope of finding something that would lead them to where Victor was being held.

Vadik joined them later, and the three of them went through the documents again and again.

They picked out what little they could of the papers from the safe. Whatever they could find of the ones that weren't just ash. Adelia's eyesight was particularly helpful with this, so Connor took a sense-heightening potion and gave one to Vadik as well, so they could help her go through them better.

But, even with the potions... it was tough. The pages were covered in soot, and a strange white dust they could only see after they'd taken the potion.

Even the most intact pages had sections that had been burnt away.

And, when part of a word or page was missing, they couldn't even guess at what lay in the gap. At least, not until they finished breaking the code.

"You should have asked him about the code for these papers," Vadik grumbled.

"My time with him was cut short, remember?" Connor said.

"And how can you not already know the code? I thought you were working for Bvorn," Adelia said.

"I was working for Victor to infiltrate The Shadowcloaks," Vadik corrected, "do you have any idea how long it took me to work up to just be dealing directly with Bvorn?

"And these codes are all for his personal files! What was I supposed to do? Say "Oh hi, Bvorn, could you just tell me the code you use for your personal documents? Why? Oh no reason at all, just curious." I'd have been killed!"