“Blind Gods!” Tristan yelled, “Where’s the forsaken key!”
Three hours later, he still had not managed to get into the vault. He had searched upstairs, torn apart every locker, and looked through every drawer. There was a substantial number of long shafted spears, buckets of oil to be boiled, and not much else upstairs. In the office, there was a plain wooden desk that looked sturdy enough to stop a cannon.
There were four drawers, two on either side of where the chair sat. They were all locked, but Tristan tore the faces of the drawers off, nullifying the simple latches. There were several sign in sheets in one. Despite now having the names of several people and a few objects that had been removed, it did not help him get it open.
Another drawer was filled with office supplies. He expected a quill and inkwell, however, Deep Cradle had invented a self refilling quill that distributed ink via a small spinning ball. Tristan pocketed the unique invention. The other items were more normal, wax, several stamps, and a letter opener. The third drawer was filled with envelopes and the final one had a lamp with oil. It was all so mundane, exactly what Tristan did not need.
Why couldn’t they leave the keys to the vault beside the vault? On second thought, that was a profoundly stupid thing to do. Tristan wished these people could have at least been consistently stupid.
Turning he examined the door again. It was a large round disk, radiating the force of adamance. Even if he had his knives, there was no way he could cut his way through, as even the stone the hinges sat in was saturated with the same force. The surface of the door was smooth, except for four keyholes that ran across the center.
Normally, Tristan would have picked the lock, but he had never seen any locks like this before. In the Caldera, locks were little more than rods with specially shaped protrusions at the far end. The protrusions on the key matched a cutout inside the lock, that would allow the door to open when twisted. It was little more than a removable door knob.
If this door had similar locks, he would already be inside. No, it had an odd type of lock that had pins stacked two deep running down the interior of a foot-long cylinder designed to rotate. He knew that he probably had a massive advantage over other burglars, with his ability to see the entire mechanism. However, he lacked the experience to use that advantage.
“Any ideas, Vulcan?” Tristan asked.
“This seems terribly complex,” Vulcan muttered, “Maybe the peasants had locks like this, but the nobles would use the force of exclusion to keep doors locked. Anyone who could break the material the door was made of, wouldn’t be stopped by a mechanical lock in the first place.”
“Exclusion,” Tristan mentally flipped through ‘Natural Forces’, “I thought that was used to isolate experiments from environmental factors.”
“Sure,” Vulcan explained, “But it can also exclude environmental factors like essence signatures. If you make an essence signature mandatory to open the door, the one at the focus of the exclusion force will be the only option to open it.”
That gave Tristan an idea, he held out a hand and a stiletto construct wove itself out of his essence, “So you’re saying that you need to be in the right position.”
“Well it had nothing to do with your status and more to do with the unique essence signature every person has,” Vulcan explained.
Tristan was no longer paying attention. He slid the narrow dagger into the keyhole. Without his metal sense, he would not have been able to gain anything from this action, but he was able to see the metal pins move when the dagger touched them. He used the point and pressed up on a single stack of pins.
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They were set into a spring, but he was able to press them nearly all the way out of the cylinder. Frowning he reduced the pressure until the base of the top pin and the top of the lower pin were even with how the cylinder should spin. Was it really so simple?
Tristan tried to get them all pressed into the correct position with the dagger. Unfortunately, each pin needs to be pressed into a different position to unlock the door. Removing the stiletto, he examined the blade. If he chipped the blade he could make it work.
The weapon was made using architect alloy, so it would be easy enough to chip. Creating a pair of clippers he gripped the edge and snapped the stiletto in half. He would need a thicker blade. His second attempt went better. He made his blade the same width as the keyhole and used the clippers to cut the blade into a jagged formation.
When he finished, the knife resembled a poorly made saw, but it repressed most of the pins when it was inserted. It took another three knives and an hour of work to cut a knife into the shape of a key. With a twist, he watched the mechanism within the door retract a bolt from the wall. Feeling good, Tristan removed the key and went to the next slot. The bolt reset.
Frowning, Tristan realized that he would have to make four separate keys. He was once again glad that he would not need to worry about the spriggons breaking in. Today would be exhausting. Hopefully, it would be worth it.
“It's odd that they had key blades, isn’t it?” Tristan asked while cutting the other keys to the appropriate size.
“Maybe, I think it is poetic that a guard would have a key blade,” Vulcan said, “It would also be a sign of trust, giving away a copy of one of the four key blades to distinguished citizens. It would not even compromise security if you kept one of the four keys out of circulation.”
Tristan could see Shadow Fist using this tactic to cultivate loyalty and weed out traitors. It would be simple enough to put an identifying mark on the key. Something that couldn’t be changed, like the mass of the materials it was made from could be used to identify the original owners in the event of a robbery. Key blades, when Tristan built his safe haven, he would have to look into creating something like this.
He slid the last one in place and watched as the final bolt slid out. Bouncing from foot to foot in excitement he asked, “What do you think is inside?”
“No weapons or armor, they should have been used when fighting the ent’s rebellion. Though the truly powerful stuff might still be inside. I would expect buckets of essence reservoirs, vanity artifacts, and lots of those jade chips,” Vulcan said, “Maybe a bit of gold and jewels as well.”
Tristan was a bit disappointed. He had been hoping for a real metal artifact weapon. He supposed there wouldn’t be any of them. Possessing a metal affinity was apparently very uncommon. Not to the point of being unknown, but metal kerns were only about one in a thousand if they weren’t culled. That meant few resources were dedicated to combating them or stopping them. That was something he supposed he should be grateful for, if this door had glass pins he would have never gotten it open.
Grabbing the door by one edge, Tristan pulled with all his might. Then fell on his butt as the giant metal door swung open easily. He almost got clobbered by the door as well. Muttering curses under his breath, Tristan climbed back to his feet.
“Good craftsmanship,” Vulcan commented as he examined how the counterweight to the door was set up. If he hadn’t just fallen over, Tristan would have agreed.
Stepping inside, Tristan was surprised. He had been expecting something grand. In his mind, he pictured marble floors and pillars of granite, carved in the shape of Deep Cradle’s heroes. The treasures of this nation laid out on velvet cushions upon tables made of expensive wood. What he saw was a warehouse.
Rows of metal shelves stood in rows, wooden crates packed onto them. The floor was stone, but it was the stone grey of the walls. Shelves doubled as pillars and no light source illuminated the very cavelike vault.
Walking up to the nearest shelf he saw several labels in the language of Deep Cradle. While he could have Vulcan translate, he could also just check. Pulling the wooden crate out he set it on the ground and removed the lid. It was not nailed down, making it easy to remove. He had high expectations for this, what did Deep Cradle value enough to lock behind the walls of a lethally trapped fortress and a gate made of adamance?
“Really!” Tristan shouted, when he found a set of three bottles packed in the crate, “What makes booze so valuable?”
He grabbed a bottle and was about to throw it at the wall. This was most likely a valuable vintage, but he did not care about that. He was not sure he could even get drunk anymore without taking a lethal dose of alcohol.
“Whoa, wait up there,” Vulcan called, “Just because it's in a bottle doesn’t make it a drink.”
Tristan paused, that was a fair point. He paused, and let Vulcan read the label. After a few moments, Vulcan recoiled, “Go ahead and throw it at the wall.”
Now Tristan was curious, “Why?”
“It's treated blood,” Vulcan said, “Some of the more monstrous sects figured out how to process a living person into a pseudo artifact. What you are holding is a free ride from tier one to tier two. You are also holding the processed kerns of about twenty people who had their blood drained and processed while they were still alive.”
Tristan dropped the bottle and stepped back. Maybe these people had deserved what they had coming. Using artifacts was one thing, cannibalism was something completely different.