Of course, Rille had to be left behind. There wasn't any way for her to follow. She'd stay in the cave system just before the cave with the boats. The same area where we had lunch. The area was sandy and was fairly comfortable. She wouldn't have any worries about being caught either. Her only issue would be boredom.

So we decided it would be ok for her to leave and come back for me. She still felt that she needed to look for Filmore and wasting the rest of the day just waiting for me wasn't a good use of time.

She'd come back to the cave tonight and sleep there. I'd join her at some point and we'd head out again in the morning.

I debated with myself. Should I say anything to her about her mother? Even in her grief the things Marcy had said didn't bode well. It would be soon. Very soon according to Marcy. Maple rooting was happening faster than anyone expected. Marcy said it seemed like Maple was encouraging the rooting rather than fighting it.

I suspected her meeting with Chance had something to do with it. If Rille was now leeching the luck from her mother instead of the other way around it would explain why the rooting had sped up. Why Maple was encouraging the rooting was the question.

Marcy said she'd be sitting with Maple today. They were letting her keep baby Paisley with her. So Marcy said that she'd sit with Maple until the time came. Being out in the forest seemed to bring out the best in the baby too.

Marcy said that Paisley had had a growth spurt. She'd gained weight and her tree had gotten thicker and it had a few more leaves. Marcy didn't know what that meant, but since her child was happy and thriving it gave Marcy some peace. Any amount of peace at this time was needed. Marcy truly loved Filmore.

She'd told me she knew he was dead. She had felt it. There was something just missing one moment. At first, she didn't know what that feeling was until her handler told her the news. She said she knew at once that Filmore was dead. There was no doubt in her mind he was dead.

So when I told her about Chance she told me it was ok to stop looking. She already knew. So finding the body wouldn't bring him back. The mission we were given by a god was more important. Find out what is going on. Find out why this happened to us. Make it right. That was the mission I was given by Marcy and I was determined to make it a successful one.

Marcy would take care of Maple. I'd take care of the mission. Rille would find Filmore. We each had our roles even if we'd given them to ourselves.

I doubted that Filmore would be found at this point, but now that Rille knew to look for bones instead of a body she might be successful. She still had hope that he'd be alive. I'd thought the same thing until I'd spoken with Marcy. That there was a chance, but after listening to what Marcy had to say I gave up that hope.

Marcy and Filmore had been blessed by a god. Their union and love had been blessed. Blessings were a mysterious thing. There were the big blessings, the gifts of power gods gave their followers. Then there were the small ones. Tiny acknowledgments from the gods. It didn't show up in any skill set but it holds influence nonetheless. That small blessing was most likely why they'd both survived.

If Marcy said she felt the lack of Filmore, that he was dead, I believed her.

I used my new air magic to dry the clothes I'd stolen. Rille watched from the water as I dressed. She started to giggle when she saw the wig I'd found. Even I knew that bright blue hair was a give away that I didn't belong down here. So I'd broken into the storage closet the caretakers had used to store the 'good stuff' from the people who'd died.

I found a black outfit that was a bit big on me but had a passing resemblance to the guard uniforms hat and all. The boots were a bit harder to match. I couldn't find a pair even remotely close to my size in black. I ended up with the darkest brown I could find and endeavored to darken them up with a pot of shoe black I'd also found. I had thought that I'd have to use the shoe black in my hair as well, but the wig was a lucky find.

A grey-brown with a braided ladies bun and finger curls that were meant to frame the face and disguise that the hairpiece wasn't natural. It had seen better days and my skills with hair didn't help when I tried to fix it up. I decided that wearing the hat over the wig was the best bet to hide the rat's nest I'd made of the thing.

Dressed and relatively dry, I turned for Rille.

"Well?"

"I'm surprised your wings weren't more of a problem. From a distance, it just looks like you're hunched over a bit."

"It's good that the shirt is a bit bigger. I don't have to bind them up."

"Well, good luck then," Rille called from the water.

"Thanks, you too," I waved at her as she dove under.

The door out of the cave was unlocked. Since it was an emergency exit keeping it unlocked was logical. The hardest part would start now.

The halls were a labyrinth. Some of them obviously man-made and others followed the path the cave naturally took. I started leaving marks as guideposts. A scruff of my shoe blackened boots against the turn of a corner. A quick knick out of a door frame with my knife. Every room had a number but not all the numbers made sense.

I wasn't the only one who thought the numbering system didn't make sense. Someone else had been here before me marking up the doors. They were a bit more obvious about their methodology. Triangles were carved into doors that were personal rooms. Housing for the staff underground.

Rooms with signs didn't get marks, storage, janitorial, bathing. The circles were interesting. Those were staff rooms and meeting rooms. X's were guardrooms. I took the time to find an actual guard uniform that fit me but still couldn't find boots small enough. I found a knife harness that fit though. It rubbed my wings, but with the harness and knives, I looked more like a guard. People didn't question other people who were armed unless they themselves were armed. I also found an ID some poor woman had left laying around. It wasn't a guard ID, but a personnel ID. Still, with it around my neck on a lanyard, I looked more the part.

The key to being in a place you didn't belong was to act as if you had somewhere to be. If you were just passing through on your way to somewhere else people didn't question you. It was when you loitered about and stood around. That's when you were most likely to be busted. Keep moving. Don't stop. Act like you knew where you were going and where you had to be.

The few people I did pass didn't even bother looking up. They saw the uniform, the ID, the weapons and didn't say anything. They didn't see me. Which was what I wanted.

I wandered around for hours before I figured out the layout and that was mostly thanks to a map I'd found in one guardroom. The map was a huge time saver. Even with all my walking, I could see that I'd just been going back and forth along the rows of inconsequential rooms. The staff housing was near the emergency exit. That was logical.

There appeared to be another exit on the west side. As well though if it went to another cave the map didn't say. The stairs going up were marked. As was the central ward area where they kept all the people who'd lost their minds.

There were places that were labeled Research 1 Research 2 and so on. In this area were larger suites of rooms. Suite 1 Suite 2, but the previous owner of this map had been gracious enough to label who the rooms belonged to. In a chicken-like scrawl Suite 1 was labeled Bitch. Suite 2 labeled Boss. On down the line. So I took it that these were the room for the upper echelon. Though no rooms labeled Rience were on here. Could Boss be Rience? I doubted it. Boss was most likely the guard boss.

What was even more interesting were the areas that weren't labeled at all. Considering that this particular area housed the top guys and the research the unlabeled areas were probably important. Still, with importance came higher security. No, my first stop would be the Bitch.

My luck told me I was right.

Adrieane the pinch-faced bitch. Secretary to Rience himself. The one person I most wanted to get my hands on. If anyone kept records of what was going on it was her. Furthermore, I knew she wouldn't be in her rooms right now. She was busy browbeating the extermination squads.

I now had a destination, but the closer I got, the more people were about. The researchers and the caretakers of the wards as well as guards were all walking about going places. None of them bothered to even look closely at me. I belonged. I had the uniform and I belonged. No need to question that.

I turned the corner and found myself in a hall. One side of the hall was lined with people looking through the glass into research area 1. Through the glass were two rooms. The first being a smaller room enclosed in glass. So you could see into the second room. The first room had people standing around a table going over something together. The second room beyond that had people in whitecoats pushing in two people strapped to gurneys. They were both air types but something was wrong with their wings. Wings when injured regenerated. These wings, they looked like they'd been stunted in some way.

"What do you think they are going to do to them today?" a man in a white coat stepped up beside me and asked. Shit. I broke my own rule. Keep moving don't stop.

"I don't think that the blue one will last much longer," a woman who'd been standing by the window turned and answered the man. Blue one? Did she mean the one with blue wings?

"It's surprising how they've kept them from suiciding, all the crazies I mean," said the man.

"We're supposed to call them afflicted, but I see your point."

"Are they going to breed them?"

"Not today, it's two females today. It's probably more regeneration experiments. See he's got a lightning rod. He must be a lightning user." The woman pointed to one of the white coats in the room. I didn't want to watch anymore. I had a feeling I knew what was going to happen and I was right.

I turned to leave just as the magic-user created an arch of lightning that hit the woman with the blue wings. I could hear her screams even through the glass. Why anyone would want to stand around and watch was beyond me.

Thankfully, everyone in the hall was focused on the scene before them and they all ignored me. Around two corners and I was suddenly at the Bitch's door. I passed by it at first going around the next corner just to make sure no one was heading in this direction from there. Then I turned around and went back to her door. I tried the handle.

Of course, the first locked door in this damned place. I looked around the corner again. No one coming. Good. Here's hoping the picking a lock in the middle of the day with a hallway full of people just around the corner wasn't crazy.

The lock was simple enough and gave way after a few seconds. It was easy. Surprisingly easy and there was no magical backup. I was in the room and had the door relocked. It wouldn't do if she came back and discovered the door unlocked. I could hide in a suite this big, but not if an unlocked door gave me away.

There was a bedroom, a bathroom, an office, and finally this open receiving area with a small kitchenette. I looked around the bedroom first. For someone who was so fastidious, her personal habits were questionable. Dirty clothes were scattered across the room. Along with plates of half-eaten food. Her breakfast from this morning was stacked on top of her dresser.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

I doubted I'd find anything here.

Her office was the most likely place. However, unlike the front door, her office was booby-trapped with magical locks. Any records I'd been hoping to find were under magical lock. I only had to pass my hand over the drawers for my luck to tell me that something bad would happen if I opened them. The only drawer I could open was one with excess paper and pens.

"Well, shit," I sat down at the desk and looked around. All the places likely to contain any sort of information were locked. I couldn't pick a magical lock without knowing what sort of lock it was. I spun around in the chair slowly. Taking in all the room. The cabinets and drawers were not happening. Unlike her bedroom, her office was well kept. No papers tossed about for me to go through, not even anything in the trash can. I swirled around in the chair again.

What now? I stopped when my luck gave a twinge. I was facing the bookshelf.

It was a small shelf and from a cursory glance nothing but hard to read technical texts both medical and scientific. Some books on monster diversity. A few corner store romance novels. My luck was telling me something was here though. I ran my hand over the books hoping that my luck would tell me what it was I was looking for. Nothing. Something was here, but it wasn't going to tell me what it was. So what didn't belong?

I pulled out the monster book. Nope, this was standard. You'd be able to find something like this in any Guild library. I put the book back and my eye caught the binding of one of the romance novels. Smaller and thinner than the textbooks. Those certainly stuck out.

I pulled one off the shelf and was surprised when the cover collapsed in my hand and another book fell to the ground. I looked at the book on the floor then the empty cover in my hand. The pages had been taken out of the romance novel and this little book had been covered up using it. I picked up the book and the dimensions were about the same as the romance so using the romance book as a false cover instead of a textbook made sense.

I opened the book and I felt a smile creep up my face.

"Yes," I whispered.

Diaries. They were diaries. I'd been right that she couldn't resist keeping records.

This one was new. It started only a few days ago. I carefully covered the diary with the false cover and put it back in place. Then I pulled out the romance beside it. Yup, A filled diary. Dating about six months. There were at least four years of diaries here.

I didn't dare take time to read them, but she'd notice if they were missing. I flipped through one and paused at an entry.

"Well," I hissed through my teeth and I leaned forward in the chair my arm bumping the false cover.

The false covers gave me an idea. I got to work cutting up paper in about the right shape and size. I filled the false covers with the blank sheets of paper and placed them back on the shelf. Most people didn't go back and reread their own diaries. It was just luck that she'd started a new one just recently. She'd take down that one and only that one leaving the rest alone, hopefully never knowing that they'd been taken.

I'd brought a bag with me, it was another dead person closet find. It looked like it could keep things dry enough in a downpour in the rain, but I doubted it would keep things dry if fully submerged. My idea of using the submerged bucket air pocket trick wouldn't work for seven little books.

However, if that diary entry was right, I wouldn't have to worry about any of that and she'd been kind enough to complain about all of it in her diary. There'd been one hell of a monster Fire Lizard in the volcano a few years back. Disaster class. She was sketchy on the details of how it had been dealt with but had remarked that the level 4 fire core had been placed in the vault with the other unique items Rience collected.

Among those items were two things I was particularly interested in. One would be handy in getting the books out of the lake. The other, well. It may or may not be useful. Still, I'd see what my luck told me when I got there.

Adrieane had written down how much of a pain it was to open the vault, but in doing so she also detailed just how to open the vault. All her bitching about magic locks and her not having the right affinity to open the vault really helped me out. It just so happens I did have and air affinity. It was lucky I hadn't tried to open any of her magically locked cabinets since her magical affinity was mostly earth and fire. Fire users tended to like things that blew up when opened. The lock on the vault was of air magic though, which is what caused Miss Bitch to detail her complaints in her diary.

I had a bit of a bounce in my step as I turned the corner. I hadn't been paying attention and practically ran into a man pushing a gurney down the hall.

"Sorry," I said as I moved around him. On top of a sheet was a single detached blue wing. Under the sheet was a body. A dead person. The smell of burnt flesh hit me as we passed each other. My stomach turned.

I turned and watched the man push the woman around the corner. What the hell was going on? Did they really just kill that woman? There was a part of me that understood that this was likely the end result for everyone who'd lost their minds during the change. Still, having that reality pushed passed me like that made me more than a little ill.

My walk was more subdued as I made my way to the vault. The people I walked passed either ignored me or gave me a simple head nod of greeting. The head nodders got a nod back and we all carried about our business.

The vault was before me. Somehow I expected a massive door with nine guards and a few monsters guarding the entrance. The things inside this room would be enough to turn the tides of war. You would think that the entrance would be a bit grander than the same looking door I'd seen countless times on the way here. It was just a simple door with one crazy complicated air magic lock.

A lock that I'd been way too confident in being able to break without setting off alarms. It seemed that the Bitch really didn't understand air magic. She'd made the lock seem difficult, but she hadn't mentioned the fact that it was impossible to break without a blood connection to the person who set it. A blood lock. Used most often in older aristocratic houses. On top of the crazy complicated air magic lock. There was no way I was going through that door.

However, the magic was only on the door. Not the room. I glanced down the hall and looked at the door. I laughed when I read Janitorial printed on the label. This was just too easy.

I opened the door and stepped inside. A broom closet but a fairly large one. I got to work and moved some things around. The shelf with bottles of floor polish got pushed out of the way. While on my stomach I took out my knife and began to scratch away at the wall close to the floor.

"Yes," I whispered. I stabbed the knife straight through the wall. A wall that was made of nothing but damp concrete. Having put up concrete walls they thought they were good, but they failed to account for the cave damp. This entire area was, in fact, a huge cave complex after all. The damp had rotted the concrete and here I was able to just cut it away as if it was plaster.

Once the hole was big enough for my fist I stuck my eye to the hole and looked inside the room. A large bag was blocking my view. It seemed the hole I'd created was directly behind a shelving unit. The bag being the largest thing on that bottom row of that shelf. Lucky.

I made the hole bigger making sure to clear away the concrete as I went. I left it in a mop bucket by the door. With any luck, someone would see it and just empty it without thinking to investigate where it came from.

When the hole was big enough I wiggled my way in. I pushed the bag off the shelf as I went.

"What the hell is inside you," I swore at the bag. It was heavier than I thought and took a lot of strength to move it.

Once out into the room I looked around. Everything was laid out on shelves. Shelves along the wall and shelves set up in the middle of the room. There didn't seem to be any sort of system about it either.

A huge vase, big enough a man could sit in was pushed up against a chest that had monsters painted in gold all over it. There were tattered sets of bloody clothes sitting directly beside a golden crown. It was certainly a vault of curiosities.

The level 4 monster core was easy to find. A lumpy amber-colored stone the size of a child's head and right beside it was the bag. Made out of dragonhide, though most people wouldn't know that from a glance. It looked like a simple brown leather shoulder bag. Perhaps a bit more expensive-looking than regular bags, but common enough. It was what the bag did that was special.

I picked up the bag and stuck my hand inside. I felt nothing but empty space, my hand not hitting the bottom. Then I looked inside. There was a bottom. I could see it and when I was looking my hand touched the bottom. It was only when I wasn't looking that my hand didn't feel any resistance. A magic bag. One that had been made using the magic only the gods and dragons could use. Abyss magic, or dimensional magic. It didn't really matter to me which one it was.

I grabbed the level 4 monster core and tried putting it in the bag while looking. The stone didn't fit. Then I tried shoving it in without looking. Just like the Bitch had said, the bag swallowed up the larger object easily. If this went in the water with me the books would be safe and dry. I dropped my entire kit into the new bag, and just to be safe fished it back out again. You had to think about what it was you wanted and it came to your hand. If you put something in there and forgot about it, you'd never recover it unless you remembered you put it in there.

On the other side of where the monster core had been, was my other target. A Demon Charm. It looked like a simple leather necklace with a lapis lazuli teardrop pendant. I guess making it out of gold and precious stones would make people want to steal it. For a demon who was trying to play at being human wearing something flashy like gold and jewels would be the opposite of what they'd want. A pendant that disguised demons, making them look human.

It was just a theory but I placed the pendant around my neck. In a matter of seconds, I could feel the difference. My wings were gone. I'd grown a bit taller. I looked at my arms. They'd shortened. I was back to my normal human self. For a brief instance, I thought about keeping it for myself.

I could pass as human if needed, I could walk on land. For the most part, my mobility wasn't any different than before I changed. Rille, she could benefit more from this pendant than I could. Still, it didn't hurt to keep it on for the time being.

I walked around the vault looking at things. I didn't want to take everything. You never knew what sort of backlash a magic item had and I suspected most of the things in this vault were magic in some way.

There were items that my luck told me not to touch under any circumstances. A seemingly innocent looking music box practically had me on the floor ducking in terror with the wallop of warning my luck had given me right before I'd touched it.

There were other things my luck told me to grab. A hair clip made out of abalone shell, a shawl pin made of bone, a large carved wooden button, a pair of black dice made out of black stone, and a small pouch with a handful of pearls. I won't lie. I was tempted by the gold. There were the crown and countless bits of gold jewelry, but I refrained. While my luck didn't tell me they were dangerous, it didn't tell me to take them either. I'd rather not press my luck by taking unnecessary items.

I was passing by one of the shelves when the earthquake hit. A massive one. I reached out and tried to grab something. The shelf shook and a large clay box fell from the top shelf and hit me. I'd managed to duck in time so it hit the back of my skull and scraped up my back. I fell to my knees just in time. The shelf began to tip over. I rolled out of the way. As it came crashing into the shelf beside it. Items went scattering everywhere.

I sat on the floor and waited until the tremors passed. Then I stood up and assessed the damage. I had a huge knock on my head, but I wasn't bleeding. That was good. The hat and wig probably protected me from most of the damage. The room was a mess, but in hindsight, that was also good. They wouldn't discover the theft if it was left in such a state.

I left the room, pulling the heavy bag after me. I'd discovered that the bag was filled with rocks. That was why it had been so hard to push out of the way when I entered. Why Rience wanted a bag of rocks and why they were special was beyond me, but the bag they were in was big enough to hide the hole I'd made in the wall. After moving the shelf with the cleaning supplies back into place you couldn't see the hole from this side either. Hopefully, the theft would go unnoticed for a long time in that mess.

It was time to leave. I'd been down here for hours. It was hard to tell the passing of time underground but my stomach was certainly giving me a clue. It was past dinner time. On top of being hungry, I was hurt. I needed to get to Rille and eat something. If I'd managed to concuss myself I needed some medical attention, but I couldn't do it here. I had to be seen coming from the lake with Rille. After that, the healers could help.

There was some chaos in the halls. Some people were injured and other people were getting help. Others milled around in groups to gossip. What had caused the earthquake this time? They were getting worse, weren't they? Living underground was becoming more of a hazard. Do you think we could argue for hazard pay? All sorts of pockets of people talking about the same things.

I had to be extra cautious making my way back. There were more people in the living areas than there had been when I entered. Of course, they were on their way to their rooms when the earthquake hit. So now they were all hanging out in the halls talking.

I managed to make my way to the boats. I passed one guard on the way. My heart nearly dropped when he stopped me.

"I just checked the docks. Everything's fine."

"Orders," I answered with a shrug. He nodded and let me pass. This guy was too low in the ranks to question orders. If someone had ordered me to check the boats that's what I would do. It didn't matter if it had already been done. So I was safe enough.

There wasn't anyone else to see me take off my boots, or the hat and wig. They didn't see me change out of the pilfered guard uniform either. Back in my normal clothes, I jumped into the water pulling the bag along with me. I eyeballed where I thought the entrance to the cave was and dove down. Then I surfaced and reoriented myself. I was a few yards off. Then I took a deep breath and dove. It was harder than I thought. Working my way back through the tunnel and into the rest of the cave system. Rille had been pulling the bags on the first trip. I underestimated how much the weight of something like that drug you down.

Just when I thought I was in serious trouble I surfaced. The sandy beach area felt like heaven. The air was amazing. Now, where was Rille? She should have been here by now.

She was probably making her way through the tunnels. The tunnels took some time and if she'd been searching for Filmore until sunset then she wouldn't be back for another hour or so.

What did I do in the meantime? Eat the food I'd packed. Even though I could see in the dark I couldn't read the diaries without light. It was a good thing that I'd stolen a magic lamp out of one of the guardrooms on the way back. A little touch of magic and the lamp gave off a calming yellow light. Now to settle down and learn what Chance had sent me to discover. I cracked open the first diary and bit into an apple.