Toren focused his mana-sense past the enchantment and into the box. Mana-coins! Silver rods… and a ribbon-tied scroll.
A scroll that looked a lot like the property deed he signed to claim the abandoned tavi grove.
He really didn’t want to leave such good loot unclaimed, but left the lockbox alone and settled on a pack tucked under the bed as a consolation prize. The unnecessary risk and the reasonable expectation of superior loot in the basement below pushed him toward counting the trapped lockbox toward the [Reaver]’s share—and thus, the [Reaver]’s problem.
Leery of getting too close to the trapped lockbox, Toren held his breath while hooking the stowed pack with his booted foot from as far away as possible and dragging it out from under the bed and closer to the open doorway.
The two enchanted wands he was sensing in the pack would be both valuable and, with a bit of luck, useful—as would most of the things stored in a pack clearly meant as getaway survival supplies.
He’d confirm the pack’s contents later.
Toren gave one last glance back at the trapped lockbox. With the door broken, someone was sure to see it and do something stupid. Annoyed, he chalked ‘Magical trap inside!’ onto the door and closed it as best he could.
There. That would have to be enough.
Hurrying down the doored corridor, Toren sensed another room that might have belonged to one of the Conclave goons, but he passed it up in favor of the final door, which opened onto a dark staircase going down.
The slight breeze and faintly fetid smell that greeted him wasn’t encouraging either.
“I should’ve brought Falma with me to carry things,” Toren groaned.
The second pack was awkward to carry while already wearing a large pack, but looping a strap over his head and shoulder made it manageable enough to unhook the oil lantern from the wall and work the clicker to spark it alight.
Mana-sensing wasn't revealing any immediate dangers below, and [Danger Sensing] likewise was quiet, but he wanted to have at least one hand free just to be safe. It wasn’t unknown for [Rogue]-type Professions to have mana-hiding Abilities.
Drawing the enchanted blade, Toren descended the stairs into a dirt-floored open area with cobblestone walls. When no ambush jumped out of the lantern-cast shadows, he visually inspected the damp-smelling space.
Behind the staircase, a stone pipe led down from the ceiling through a grate in the floor. The muffled sloshing sound within the pipe reinforced his guess that it carried wastewater from the shared bathing and water closet he’d found on each floor.
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The pipe wasn’t what was interesting but rather the grate which was large enough to have a man-sized gate leading to the darkness below—to the under-tunnels, no doubt.
The gate was secured by a chain with a mana-lock—a mana-lock with a depression that was suspiciously sized and shaped like those mystery tokens he’d been acquiring.
The suspicion only made Toren want to hurry and get out of there more.
An office-like room and the storeroom were the most promising remaining locations for the loot cache, assuming the silver and stolen valuables hadn’t already been moved to another location. Thankfully, the iron shackles chained to an empty space of wall were unoccupied. One less thing for him to deal with.
Both rooms were locked behind sturdier doors than what he could easily kick open. Disappointingly, what mana he could sense in the storeroom seemed to be from foodstuff.
“The office had better have something good,” he muttered while hanging the lantern on a wall hook and fishing out the fanciest of the acquired tokens.
CLACK.
The welcome sound greeted the token coming into contact with the depression on the office door’s mana-lock.
A faint echo of something from below the grate to the undertunnels made Toren freeze in place and listen, his heartrate increasing and his blood beginning to burn with mana from the tension, but the sound didn’t repeat.
Breathing out some of the tension, Toren entered the office and began his search.
Relief sighed out of him at the sensing the contents of the lockbox on the desk. Mana-coins. This one wasn’t trapped either, as far as he could tell. He had made the right choice leaving the trapped lockbox to the [Reaver].
Assuming the [Reaver] didn’t take offense…
Toren grimaced at that thought but shook away any hesitation about claiming his share of the loot. Saying a quick prayer to Horevi, he gingerly placed the token against the lockbox’s lock and was rewarded with another sharp clack.
Opening the hefty box’s hinged lid, confirmed his expectations: mana-coins, silver rods—less coins than he would’ve liked, but enough to make an equal share. Toren wasted no time filling his coin pouch and two sacks with the contents.
The coins secured, he turned to quickly searching the rest of the office’s contents.
Two leatherbound ledgers sat open on the desk. Partially closing the first he saw it was labeled: Payments received. A quick scan for the most recent entry showed only one entry for the day:
> Emina Hatterswick (200$ received) (40$ finder’s cut)
The amounts were neatly written and used the symbol for silver rods—an ‘S’ with a wood dowel through it to hold the coins in place—rather than simply writing ‘rods’ as less-educated people normally did.
Glancing back through the dates, the daily totals for ‘services’ were quite high except on days where only names were entered, once per tenday it seemed.
Toren turned his attention to the second ledger, labeled: Protection and Debts. As with the first ledger, Toren looked for the most recent entry.
> P368 Warnel Hatterswick 200$ (150$)
> P369 Emina Hatterswick 100$ (50$)
> P370 Laiya Hatterswick 100$ (50$)
> P371 Falma Hatterswick 100$ (50$)
The columns were listed as ‘fee’ and ‘owed’. It was all surprisingly business-like. The odd designation before the names was interesting but also worrying if the numbers were an indication of the size of the Conclave and the extent of its infiltration into Farharbor—something that only reinforced Toren’s gut instinct to avoid making it his problem.
Toren nabbed both ledgers. Another problem for Reaver Yorne to handle. Yep.
When he came back up from the basement, an irate woman’s voice carried from the now crowded common room, “What have you done? Who will keep us safe now? How will we get food?”
Toren mentally groaned. People like that were the reason he didn’t want to deal with this shit.