“No one likes an audit, but they are a necessary part of any bureaucracy”~Mage-King Er’randel, 10 years after starting his rule
The lab she walked into took up two entire floors. The centre was a large open space, with multiple small patches of dirt. Plants took up more than half of the space, with some vines even being the only thing that connected the floor to the upper bookshelves.It had to take significant effort to keep everything stable here and it only set Bernin more and more on edge. A druid was significantly stronger in nature and while she had expected some things from the lab, an overgrown jungle was far from her expectations.
Haspal himself was an affable man, standing just over her height and wearing a set of dirty overalls. The overalls were filled with multiple implements, some clearly magical, others looked to be simply ordinary gardening tools.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of another mage in this small town?”
“I’m afraid it might not be much of a pleasure. I’m here on behalf of the Agency of Responsible Spending and Experimentation. You’ve been selected for a full audit.”
“Ah, a full audit?”
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“Yes, we will be going over 5 years of financing and experiments to make sure nothing unethical is going on and that the money we sent over is actually being allocated correctly. I’m sorry Druid Haspal, I know this might seem to be coming from a strange place, but I do sympathise. It’s rarely fun for the audited party.”
Haspal signed. A good sign in Bernin’s book. He wasn’t getting angry, or worse attacking her outright.
“Well, that does put a damper on things. I’ll go grab my own administration and we’ll see what else you need to get started.”
“Quite alright, if you would prefer, I’d like to work my way inward. Can you get me your most recent and oldest notes please?”
“I suppose… The recent ones will be a bit… unfinished though, if that is alright”
“Perfectly understandable, still that’s where I would like to begin.”
Better to start with the newest ones and by comparing it to the oldest, she would hope that if any ciphers were introduced she could spot some inconsistencies. It was quite easy to rename something, but to keep that constant for 5 years, that was a lot more difficult.
Her conversation with Haspal was on the right track though, he had shown great cooperation for now. Despite what she told him, she really did enjoy this kind of thing. She just hoped his writing was at least a little bit legible. She had required a translation spell, not that long ago, but even that one failed to make sense of the chicken scratch of a particular mage.