A Lesson in Improv

Was it disappointment she saw in the eyes of Kore? Silvaria didn't blame her, though. She was from a jam packed city full of life and activity. This place was...well not filled with death but you'd be hard pressed to find life either. The entire area, for hundreds of miles was nothing but desert, with hills cropping up from the earth every few hundred meters. A dry wind blew across, bringing with it a wave of fresh, nauseous stench from the well. She had nothing but fondness for the place, though. This was where she grew up, where she saw her mother work, where she etched every inch of the place in a 500 meter radius with runes. She didn't understand their significance then, only knew that they tended to light up whenever she was around. 

Weirdly enough, her mother wasn't the one to teach her rune magic. She did teach Silvaria a magic but she didn't practice it often. That magic required some weird rules Silvaria didn't really enjoy doing. But still, she kept them safe in her memory because they were a collection of memories she had of her after all. Those were precious, more than most things Silvaria had come to know in the world. 

So why did Silvaria's mother opt to raise her away from civilization? All Silvaria could say was that she did not trust anyone. She must have had her reasons but by the time Silvaria came to the woman, she was already well over 100 years old, a very very old woman. It was a miracle she had lived to see Silvaria's 16th birthday. Perhaps it was magic though, Silvaria understood.

To the frustration of the young witch, the tools of a much older and experienced witch, even if dead proved to be hard to crack. In this case, while the dagger uttered mysterious whispers, it refused to show her anything. Similarly, the locket, was vague in pointing to a direction. Kore seemed to have practicality in mind when she flipped her phone and recorded the voice on the device. Silvaria wondered if she could record magical whispers in an electronic device, though. It was kinda funny though, how Kore's defensive thing, Pride was active, and at some point before she reached to pull out the dagger, Silvaria asked, "Why do you have your shield up? I'm fairly confident in this place and its ability to safely contain anything that might come from it." Maybe she did not trust her, Silvaria thought. 

She nodded at the request, it really didn't require all that much effort on a scrying spell, especially when the base for it was pre-written. Kore's mentality going into this was clear though. A being of shadow emerged- her familiar? Silvaria wondered. Fortunately, the array did nothing before its presence, which pretty much confirmed that it meant no harm, which was good! A smile appeared on her face though because she seemed very into this thing and Kore's excitement bled out, infecting her as well. She shivered at the thought of it, when the dagger was removed and a creeper placed in it. 

Just as Kore said, there was nothing blocking her magic from finding out about it. The Mirror displayed all the information about them, from their abilities to where they came from- Kore. And then the dagger was hurled at it, where it would kill the poor thing instantly. Silvaria hoped there was some yield at least. "This spell is my mothers. It needs no enhancing. If something is blocking scrying, then you can't just force it to be shown, not without utterly destroying the thing in the process, which, this dagger, it might be a bad idea to attempt that. Whoever made it probably wants us to attempt that." Her mother taught Silvaria a lot of things, including never to take anything at face value. Everything had meaning behind it after all. This is why she didn't force it despite the mirror coming empty.

The mirror went on to show them what would happen if she likely stabbed herself with it, it just turned her ghosty in a very interesting turn of events. What was uninteresting however was the locket. It didn't seem to do much except take in magic from around it. And then it took off, a direction that alarmed Silvaria for a moment, because it was headed right to the sink hole, right to her home. 

She was ready to arm the place if she absolutely needed to, not that she needed to because it would've started up itself the moment it sensed ill intent, which was why it was inactive when Shade popped up...kinda why it did nothing when the locket plunged into the heart of the sink hole? The drop wasn't monumental by any standard, roughly 30 meters across and over a 100 meters deep to the core, it was but pitch black with a pool of water at its depths which was the source of that foul smell. The magic only happened when Silvaria stepped closer to it, at about the same pace as Kore did. The inner wall lit up with thousands upon thousands of intricate designs and patterns, some big, some small. Promptly after wards, Silvaria jumped along with Kore. 

As they did, the walls seemed to transform, turning rocky edges to layers of colored smooth sandstone with columns carved into the Earth and entrances, some large, some small, all leading to chambers beyond. At the very bottom of the well, by the time they landed, it was a marbled floor, a fountain built into the side, against the wall from which water flowed out. The horrible stench was replaced instead by a fragrant smell. It honestly looked more like a tower with stair cases leading to each floor carved into the Earth for 500 meters around the entrance of the pit. Well, a tower with an exposed top. There were drains on the marble floors to let rainwater sink whenever they did get them so as to prevent flooding. 

The locket's destination seemed to be a somewhat dusty old shelf that had a rolled up map on one of it's racks. Silvaria picked it up and spread it open on the ground. "Seems, whatever we want is in Louisiana," Silvaria commented, crouching next to Shade, to try and pet it, unsure if it would let her but it was worth a shot. She wanted a familiar in some future, too, she decided then and there but honestly there were more important things on the agenda at the moment. See, one of those things happened to be finding out about the truth of the dagger and the locket. And after tonight's venture, they were definitely infinitely closer to finding that out. Bonus, they figured out the secrets, or most of the secrets of a necromancer! How cool was that? Very very cool.

"Well, I doubt it'd have gotten very far even if it had a mind of its own. It seems to run on mana and without a source to feed it the juice it needs, that thing is just another normal trinket." As she spoke, she picked up the locket, flipping it open to see inside. "Maybe this item has more just a sentimental value to the owner, i.e: this thing is probably taking us to the other individual here besides her." She proposed her own theory.

"Perhaps she was telling the truth, and perhaps you have means of telling if she was lying, and perhaps she only believed she had no living relative...or as you insinuated, they might not be wholly living." Silvaria folded up the map and kept it back on the shelf.



She let Kore take possession of the locket out of her hand. To be honest she found no interest in such a thing, at least she did not yet. "Fine by me though, I should tell you this, magic is just magic. It simply depends on who uses it and how they use it. I set up runes that influenced how people acted and behaved. That takes time though, if we fought here and now, you'd be able to take me very easily. I don't mean here here." Silvaria laughed,

Silvaria's face lit up. "ooooh you're going to give me a job? Nice! And alright, I won't do anything crazy. Uh 6 sounds fine cuz I need the sleep and uh I've never used a mobile phone in my life."



She didn't quite like the prospect of being alone again in the middle of a desert though, it was with the thought that she said what she said next. "You know...I have plenty of rooms here if you wanna stay the night. Go back in the morning?" She hoped Kore would say yes. The shadow cat was funny though, "Not quite solid though, isn't he?" Silvaria jested.