Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 128 - Disobedience

Previously:

While writing a letter to her fiance, Nelaira thinks about the events that led to her current predicament. She remembers how her squad of ten found a hidden entrance to a long staircase climbing through the mountain, first discovered by Zor Arite. There they find a green valley filled with wildlife and ruins of a village. Nelaira uses her day off to explore the ruins and finds a diary hidden inside a pillar. While picking herbs Luki finds a patch of land where a large quantity of ash is buried under the soil. He finds it suspicious but his comrades disagree. Nelaira stumbles onto a hidden cellar in the ruins of the village that contains food that is 16 years old. Nelaira gives their archaeologist the diary to translate. The writer of the diary is the village chief's son and he talks about his life. It seems the diary was written after the mage wars, which makes everyone wonder what destroyed the village if not the wars.

Nelaira wanted to investigate the possibility of survivors but her superiors ordered her to proceed towards the Valley of Eternal Snow. The diary speaks of outsiders that came to the village one day from a utopia without Ink.

* * *

The archeologist was quick to nod his head approvingly. His nod froze midway when Nelaira turned to him with a questioning look: "When was this diary written?"

"I'm not sure when it was written." The middle-aged man with the monocle admitted. "The dates are from the year 1430 A.O. However, I don't know what A.O. stands for, thus I can't calculate the year in A.W. (After Wars)."

"Can't you use the agometer to measure how old the diary is?" Laica suggested.

Agometer was an arcane magical artifact enchanted to use a time spell fragment to sense the age of particles. It could accurately sense when that specific particle was created, however, it couldn't tell what form that particle took through the ages.

Episode 128 – Disobedience

"It would show the age of the materials the diary was made out of, which in turn would show the age of the materials or creatures those materials were made from." The archaeologist explained. "The shown age on the agometer could be decades or even several centuries off from the actual time the diary was used. The agometer won't tell you how old the writing is, or even when the ink was made. It would calculate the age of the ink by the age of the oldest ingredient used to make it. Same with the leather, the age of the leather would include the age of the animal from which it was taken from. The paper would be as old as the tree that it was made from, which could have been centuries old before it was made into paper." The archaeologist explained.

The two girls would have inquired about the matter further if Luki didn't choose this time to interrupt everyone's excitement with a bucket of cold water: "Don't you think this whole 'welcome' business was strange?"

Nelaira resisted the urge to face palm herself and let out a tired sigh: "Do enlighten us...what was strange about it?"

"Who would welcome several dozen potentially Tainted individuals inside their sanctuary just like that? Don't tell me they forgot to check them for the presence of Ink?" Luki rolled his eyes.

"I'm sure they checked them in some way during the welcome. Otherwise, they wouldn't have welcomed them with open arms." Nelaira frowned. "Just because the diary doesn't mention them checking it, it doesn't mean they didn't check it."

"Alright." Luki raised his hands in the air in surrender. "Let's say you're right. What about the sister of the writer of the diary? How did she hear them coming and how was she sure they had no ill intentions?"