“It is a pleasure to meet you all, I am the Lady of Cranes.” The Lady of Cranes had a poised smile on her face and a posture that spoke of ingrained etiquette, the picture of eastern elegance.
Jacqueline didn’t trust her one bit. Anyone with impeccable manners could not be trusted, and the Lady of Cranes had exactly that. She also seemed to know more than her, and that was irritating in itself.
“Now, now, do not stare at me like that,” she said, as her curved eyes narrowed in amusement. “I am not here for whatever scenario you may have of me in your heads. In fact,” she said, spinning her umbrella to her back, “I am here for your own good.”
Nobody spoke in the silence that came afterwards. Otto yawned. The boy opened his mouth, closed it, and fidgeted.
“So you say.” Jacqueline broke the deadlock, unimpressed. “But only we can determine what’s good for us.”
The Lady of Cranes covered her smile with a pale hand. She looked like a cat that had caught a particularly juicy rat. “Of course. I will not take away your ability to judge my actions, though, it would be nice if you would agree, would it not?”
The Lady of Cranes waved a billowing sleeve patterned with white feathers, and distant wingbeats reverberated between the peaks. A swoop of cranes that wouldn’t look out of place in an ink painting flew up from below with a cry. The birds obscured the figure of the Lady of Cranes in a bending waterfall of feathers, disappearing above the clouds and leaving nothing behind. The Lady was gone.
“Where did she go?” The boy turned this way and that, even going so far as to crawl to the edge and look underneath.
“Dunno,” Otto said, halfway between a yawn and a grimace.
Jacqueline did not anticipate that the Lady of Cranes would leave just like that, but she didn’t show it outwardly. Her mind turned, feeling a bothersome premonition settle in her chest at the spoken foreshadowing.
Ding.
This sound, again. She was starting to think that this sound was a signal to disaster; a beacon before trouble came knocking at her door. And if it was, it wasn’t a very good one, being barely a second before the problem.
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[ Event ] Crane Seeking
Find the Lady of Cranes. When found, you will gain a transferable item from the Lady of Cranes. This event will not end until she is found.
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Jacqueline wondered how she could pummel the text into the ground. It was true that not everything in the world could be hit with a well-meaning fist, but it wouldn’t surprise her if this could be.
Out of the three people, only the carrot-headed boy was visibly dazed by the floating announcement in front of them. Jacqueline thought that he really shouldn’t be. It was a given that if such things happened, they would continue to happen when they could. It was Moira’s Law—she felt a hint of pride in remembering the correct name.
The boy clutched at his head after a moment of mental reboot and started muttering again. Looking like he was agonizing over a difficult decision, he pulled out an old, leather journal. He started flipping pages, scanning the contents with a squint—Jacqueline was starting to think that he was simply nearsighted—until his eyes lit up.
“I’ve got it!” he crowed, and then flinched at the volume of his voice, doing his characteristic head whip with vigor. Staring warily at Jacqueline, he slipped his journal back inside his jacket and scooted towards the connect between ledge and wall.
“Oh dear, don’t tell me you’re going to climb down with your bare hands?” Jacqueline made a worried expression. From what she had seen, he didn’t have great bravery or anything of the sort. It would be a kindness not to call him a coward, and with that, she was puzzled on what made him so confident.
“N-none of your business.” The boy seemed taken aback that she had started talking to him and even more taken aback that she had seen through him. It was more of a guess than anything, but he didn’t need to know that.
“If you die because I didn’t dissuade you, that would be my business.” She shifted her weight and he flinched. She raised her hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not your enemy. You should have heard her, right?”
“Yeah…” His wide eyes narrowed as if figuring something out. “You’re not a good person. What do you want?”
Jacqueline’s brow twitched; she hadn’t done anything yet and he was already accusing her. It was both refreshing and displeasing. Refreshing because if he was a hundred percent certain about it and listened to her, she could get to the point and save time. Displeasing because he had dashed her mask into the rocks, and now she couldn’t paste it back without cracks.
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“Why do you think so? I’ve done nothing to warrant your blame,” Jacqueline said, unresigned.
He glared. “That’s exactly what the villain would say!”
He was more delusional than she thought. She knit her brows, hesitating between emotional outburst or silently miffed. In the end, she chose neither.
“Are you comparing me to a storybook villain?” Jacqueline gave him an incredulous look as if to question his intelligence.
He muttered a “Yes!” then blushed when he realized what had spilled out of his mouth and said louder, “I mean, no!”
This was annoying, she decided. “Then why?”
“The book said—” He clamped his mouth shut. “No, nothing, anyway, whatever you want, I’m not doing it.”
She wanted to laugh. The more one said it was nothing, the more it wasn’t. It was common sense. And since the “nothing” he accidentally spilled brought to mind the “bound article” statement she had seen, it was a bit more than simply “nothing”.
Jacqueline huffed. “I’m not asking you to do something. I simply don’t want you to die; can’t you believe me on that?”
The boy visibly wavered, but then his expression turned stony. “No.”
He was not to be influenced through morals and emotion, then.
“Fine, then. Go ahead. Climb down,” she said, acting more disgruntled than she strictly needed to. “It’s not my problem if you die because we didn’t pool our bound articles together.”
“W-what?” His knees knocked together, almost pitching him off the platform. “What do you mean?”
“Teamwork,” Otto said, the man who had ignored all of his to-be teammates after the roasted bird.
“Yes, exactly.” She didn’t turn to look at Otto, feeling a little bemused at being backed up by the person who had never spoken unless spoken to. “Teamwork that you just rejected.”
The boy looked conflicted, staring up then back down. She watched him turn his back, though his actions weren’t really hidden on such a small ledge, and rifle through his journal again.
Once he had finished his business and faced her, his face was all but impassive. It was an impressive poker-face with someone who didn’t seem to control his facial features at all, but his eyes still showed too much intensity to be true indifference.
“Okay. Okay, let’s work together,” he said, “but you have to promise to never uh, betray me—us, do anything to harm us, or keep information from us.”
“Of course,” she scoffed. “What kind of a teammate would I be if I did?” She folded her arms together. “You really think so little of me.”
It would be stupid of her to make an enemy of her tentative allies in a place where everything was uncertain. The event text had said that “you” had to find the Lady of Cranes, and it didn’t define whether that “you” was singular or plural. While she didn’t want to do as some random words dictated, she never cut off a route unless she had to.
“It’s just in case,” he added, quickly. “I’m not trying to be mean or anything.”
“It’s fine,” she said as she pursed her lips.
As that was done, the boy moved slightly closer to the two others though not by much. Jacqueline took a seat by Otto again, pleased that she would likely know how the boy was getting his conjectures soon.
Otto started the article introductions. “It’s a bound skill called Tramp’s something. Dunno how it works, but it gives me things for money.”
“Same,” Jacqueline said. “Or actually, not really. Mine’s a bound skill as well, but it says it freezes people for a time.”
The boy fidgeted. “Er, mine is a journal, one that records suspicious activity…? Something like that.”
Whatever she was expecting, she was not expecting the contents to be about suspicious activity. She had done nothing suspicious. Suspicion was subjective in the first place, and whatever parameters the journal had clearly didn’t work properly.
“Interesting.” Jacqueline tapped her chin. “Well, how do you want to go about all this?”
With that, they began throwing ideas at each other. Actually, only Patryk with a “y”—the boy had finally introduced himself—did any throwing. Otto spoke only to answer what was asked, and Jacqueline spent most of the time kindly explaining the reasons why Patryk’s half-baked plans would not work.
Outside of the tossing of proposals, they also discussed the insanity of Otto using the last of his rumpled bills to magic up a roast pheasant and that the Lady of Cranes might just be a crane if the journal was to be believed. Thirty-eight cranes before, and thirty-nine after, the journal had written.
In the end, there was a tentative conclusion. There would be as little usage of granted articles as possible, and they would check that odd sequence of cracks in the corner to see if it really was a mysterious mechanism that led down the mountain.
As Patryk fussed over the distinctly un-mysterious looking scratches with an open journal, Otto squatted by him, humming an old pop song about financial problems.
Jacqueline ignored them both and fine-tooth combed over the rest of the wall and floor, poking at all the nicks and notches, bumps and protrusions that she could see. She really didn’t want to believe that she could be bested by a journal of all things; surely, she could find another way.
Click.
Rumble.
One incredulous face and one curious one turned to face Jacqueline and the now visible entrance in the rock.
She smiled, preening at the attention. “I might have opened a doorway into the mountain.”