NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 52: Something To Lose
At around three in the morning, Vera heard a small bell. The chime made her eyes open instantly, her senses on alert as she sat in bed to see the source. In the mirror, enchanted to show whoever entered the main room, she could see nothing. A moment later, the main door closed as slowly as it had opened, and a figure unseen was tracked moving towards her bedroom.
Only when two quiet knocks and three quick ones after were heard did her shoulders relax. Vera lowered the wand and headed to the door to unlock it so the ‘intruder’ could enter.
“That was a longer trip than I expected,” she commented, moving to hug Harper before stepping back as the smell hit her. The Illusionist truly was an expert in her field, being able to hide that stench. “Where exactly have you been? Whatever you’ve been stained by is putrid.”
“The Dungeon,” Harper replied, making Vera’s eyes narrow. Elijah had ventured into the depths during the night? Not an uncommon time to visit the Dungeon when wanting to go unnoticed, but she knew that the man was meant to arrive at the castle in the morning. When exactly did he expect to sleep? “He, Aleksi Grey, the unknown man seen before, and a woman who was a similar age all went in together during the early night. They traveled to the fourth floor, hiding there and training for about an hour, before being ambushed by a Neogi.”
The spider monsters?
“Aren't those normally found on the seventh floor at the earliest?”
“Yes, but they suspected that it had hidden as a hatchling, only growing to its full size after the Royal Guards had cleared the area,” Harper explained, taking a step inside the bedroom after Vera had gotten a good distance away. Carefully, she removed a certain bracelet from her left arm, trying not to get too much gunk on it before placing it on the table. “The artifact worked as you predicted. My abilities were increased to a point where they were unable to detect me.”
That was great to hear. It had taken quite a bit to find something that could work for the resident Illusionist. Neither had expected needing anything of the sort, since even the Royal Mages had never caught wind of Harper’s presence, but their scrambling had allowed them to dig up something that further hid one’s presence inside the Royal Armory.
Vera wasn’t sure anybody even knew of its existence when they saw it in the list of items, though nobody would know from now on. It was too useful.
“A fourth person in that ensemble now,” she muttered, as she thought about the words some more. “Anybody we would recognize?”
“Nobody we have met in person before, Your Highness, but I have started to form a theory about recent events,” Harper continued, pulling out a dirt-covered paper that was burnt on the edges and filled with water spots. “Do you have the report I gave you a few days ago about the sudden appearance of posters during the night, which were suddenly removed within only a day’s time?”
She did, though she ordered to be given the report again along with having a full recap of the entire day’s activities after seeing the poster in question. Elijah Ceade, a man of mystery who had already revealed remarkable secrets after Harper listened in on his conversation with her father, was truly in the center of so many things. So many that she was starting to doubt she’d ever known him to begin with.
No matter what, the next few days would be interesting. Whether that was a good thing or not, she couldn’t say.