Today I was woke unexpectedly by Chiron, who seemed really jumpy for some reason... Not scared or worried jumpy, just... Jumpy... Like he knew something was going off. Well he obviously knew more than me because nothing special was happening today that I knew of... After getting him to calm down, I went out to have breakfast, Chiron following close behind. I was a little unsettled by his random need to follow me, and his jumpiness, and it wasn't made any easier when everyone else seemed to be in bed. For the last few weeks he had remained in my room, and had recently been joined by Hermes. But this odd behaviour seemed unfounded. Could he sense something that I couldn't...? After breakfast, I tried multiple attempts to get him to stay in my room whilst I went to the lab, but he wasn't having any of it! He kept walking out of the room, and getting in the way of the door, and all we achieved was waking up Hermes... He looked up at us, huffed once and promptly went back to sleep. In the end I gave up, and judging from the sounds from nearby, we had woken someone else as well. Heading off to the lab, I wanted to see if AMPHIS had made much more progress before heading off for a rest, but when I got there, I was surprised to see AMPHIS slumped across the desk, the pen held precariously between two fingers. I tried not to wake him up, but as I crept closer to the desk, Chiron decided to knock the pile of books over, causing AMPHIS to wake up with a start! At first I cringed, but then all I could do was laugh; AMPHIS was now sitting bolt upright, looking very serious, with a piece of paper stuck to one side of his face.
"Hmm... What!?"
AMPHIS took a few moments to adjust to where he was, slumping his shoulders and settling into a more comfortable position. After stifling my laugh, I began asked AMPHIS if he had managed to get any rest at all last night, but the massive bags beneath his eyes, and the almost constant gape of his yawning mouth gave me his answer...
"I got distracted... Sorry. I translated something of interest yesterday... Oh, where is it..."
AMPHIS seemed completely oblivious to the piece of paper that remained adhered to his face; he flicked through a stack of papers, obviously not finding what he was looking for, until he crossed his eyes and stared and the paper attached to him. Removing it, he blinked several times, and moved the paper further away from his face, before exclaiming that he had found it. He handed it to me; the crumpled paper still retained a small shaping of AMPHIS's face, but written upon it, I could read his translations of the Latin into English, presumably after decoding it first. Reading through it, I immediately understood what AMPHIS had said, and went to wake the others. This was big. Very big...
We've had a discussion about what AMPHIS managed to translate last night; AMPHIS however has been ordered to get some rest, per COLUS's instructions! After reading the notes that AMPHIS has made, I passed them to COLUS, who read them and passed it round further.
"It seems Syeonyx made a good call bringing those books up for AMPHIS to translate. That page contains information which suggests whoever was down there was aware of the portals. It doesn't say if they found any, nor does it mention what they would do if they did find one, but it seems to me that they're looking for them for some reason or another. We'll need to wait for AMPHIS to translate some more later, but we need to keep this in focus. There could be an entire stockpile of information down there that could prove invaluable to us. We need to utilise it."
"But this still doesn't prove if they were part of HoN Co., SERVERE or someone else... This could be a complete stranger... They could have their own intentions for using the portals..."
"Well remember in that wooden shelter, there was a lever that opened up the bookshelves, revealing a hidden passage. It wasn't complete, so someone had obviously started that recently, and left in a hurry... Maybe if we find out some more by translating these books, we can find out what exactly they were looking for..."
"Good thinking. We still have to treat this as a possible threat. It's better to do that rather than throw caution to the wind and suffer because of it. At least if we;re wrong we can laugh it off."
"So do we go down into the shelter and begin digging out the passage some more?"
"No, now just yet. We still have a tunnel to finish, and then we've got to secure an entrance before checking on the master portal status. I'm beginning to think that it might be an option to go under the cover of night. If you had to leave in a rush, your way back through the tunnel would be better safeguarded due to low light levels. But ultimately it's up to you three. After you finish the tunnel that is. Meanwhile, I will help OROTHO and Joe make the necessary components for the security door at the entrance. We need to be ready to go as soon as you give us the go ahead."
We all stood up and headed towards the lab, COLUS, OROTHO, Amie and Joe stopping in front of the iron, whilst the rest of us continued towards the end of the tunnel.
We did it! We've managed to finally get to the point where we can now begin digging out the tunnel towards the East! We're finally on the last leg of the journey, and soon we'll be putting the door into place, and restarting our campaign against HoN Co.! It's taken a fair number of days to get to this stage, but now that we're here, it feels better than ever! We've only started on the tunnel heading to the East because OROTHO and COLUS had to put in a tunnel brace and support a small part of a crumbing stone wall. Our tunnel couldn't afford to have holes and cracks in it. It had to be one hundred per cent sound. This wasn't much of an issue as the iron we were replacing the stone with was just as strong, and we had plenty of it. A few hundred metres off to the East, and we can begin the entrance way to the surface.
Syeonyx signing off
No comments:
Post a Comment