2407 Varkala 2, Daleth

Nothing has changed since Kymalin was ordained by the Heiress in that one public gathering. The camp went back to its daily activities, not a single step out of place. Which made it harder for her, since her task was to figure out what acts were out of the ordinary. She had tried to keep watch over all the things she passed by but it seemed declaring her allegiance in public had formed a shield around her.

The guys at the gambling circles weren't as enthusiastic as before when she joined them last night. The conversations were muted every time the soldiers catches her in their vicinity. The whole dining hall goes quiet whenever Kymalin ducks inside.

Only Raena stayed the same throughout their training sessions, where she would still pummel Kymalin until her arms hurt and Kymalin would still resort to being on defensive against the Magistrate's powerful strikes. Where had she learned these crazy skills? Was it from the previous magistrate before her? If so, where was that magistrate now?

Thousands of questions with no definite answer circled in Kymalin's mind as she tore down the camp in her quest tonight. She shook her head and focusedo n the most important one: what's going on with the upturned soil popping in various places around the camp?

That's her goal for tonight. Maybe tomorrow, she would turn her attention towards the flickering sky.

Or so she kept telling herself.

She had been at the soil thing since the public gathering and the Heoress hearing about the weird things she noticed over the course of the year. She promised the Heiress she would have found an answer last week. It's been a couple of days already and she has gotten nowhere. None of the soldiers would help her either, even as she invoked the Heiress' orders. They would always come up with an excuse, leaving Kymalin to dig the soil up on her own.

Not that it's hard. She could dig very well on her own. What irked her was that she was supposed to scour the whole camp for a thing that might or might not exist and the camp was frustratingly huge.

Perhaps the Heiress could help? Maybe she has an inifinte amount of magic that she could level the entire camp or know the traitor on her own? Kymalin frowned. If so, why would she gather the whole camp and hire a volunteer to do the job for her?

Kymalin tightened her hand around the shaft of the shovel she borrowed from the supplies tent. It was a long trek up and down to the last place she dug yesterday and back. She blew a breath. Whatever. Just..focus on getting the job done. No matter how it made her look like a graveyard servant more than anything.

She had been getting closer and closer to the camp's outer rim anyway. Perhaps, whatever the rebels were planning included the middle part of the camp and not the useless outside layer. Yeah. one last nighto n working with the outskirts. She'd start searching in the middle tomorrow.

So, on she went, spearing her shovel straight at the dark, compact soil uncharacteristic of the common earth found in Zoriago. Gone was the silt-like texture composed of fine grains rivalling sand. Cardovia's soil looked like the rich, fertile lands in Penleth and Narfalk.

Made it harder to dig up, though. It's known to get everywhere and was easier to make mud with than any type of earth in this island.

The night wore on and Kymalin toiled alone. Several of the night patrols in pairs or groups of three passed her by, shining their lamps in her face and almost succeeding in blinding her. They ignored her most of the time after seeing her muted blue hair and trousers stained with flecks of dirt. The only thing left for them to do was to call her Dirt Lady.

When the fourth spot she looked yielded nothing but a pile of buried coins from somebody's coffer, Kymalin suppressed an internal groan. She sighed. Just one more spot left and she's calling it a night.

She moved to a patch of land just a few steps away from the hole she made. A tent stood below her, shadows dancing under the influence of a lit lamp. Whoever lived inside it thought that dancing to a folk song in the middle of the night wouldn't be seen through the thin fabric their tents were amde of. Well, how wrong they were.

Keeping Kymalin's amusement to herself, she speared her shovel into the soil, expecting it to hit nothing but dirt. Something clunked. She paused, squinting at the dark earth as if that would make it reveal its secrets. Then, with heart thundering and interest piquing, she raised her shovel and speared for the soil again.

Thunk.

Hmm. Metal. And a bit on the bulky side, at the least.

She dug with renewed vigor. Soon, she has unearthed a strange mechanism, which she struggled to get out of the hasty hole it was shoved in. After putting back the soil to cover up her mess, she propped her hands on her hips, staring down at the strange contraption lying next to her feet. How in Rudik's ass would she haul this to the Heiress's tent? It's in the dead center of the whole camp!

In the dark light of Crozal's crimson rays, the device looked like it's made from copper or iron. She studied the patchwork of gears and cranks stuck into it before being cased by a sheet of metal melded in haste. She poked it at one side. Nothing happened. She poked it on another, close to the head where a series of jagged blades sat like a propeller. Then, in a flash, the device whirred. The blades moved, catching Kymalin's palm before she could retract it, slicing through the flesh. Then, it stopped.

Nira's bottoms. What was that? Kymalin opened her palm and studied her wound. Unlike her first mission, she wasn't going to faint at the sight of her own blood pooling out of the cut or from the pain starting to throb in her skin. She noted how the serrated blades cut her skin in three, jagged lines, running parallel to each other. The lines were long, deep, and ran from her palm to the skin on her forearm. Her eyebrows met. Wait a second. Wasn't this the same...

The memory of seeing Raena fix her bandage in the armory tent flashed in her mind. Kymalin had joked to the Magistrate that their roles were reversed. Raena had given her a quick nod before tying the roll of fabric around her arm faster. It wasn't fast enough to hide how jagged her wounds were.

Back then, Kymalin had dismissed it, thinking to herself that maybe the enemy was good enough to land precise strikes down Raena's arm like that. But now, seeing how her skin was cut in almost the same way...it made sense now.

The mud in Raena's nails. Her wound. The way she disappeared and returned with that injury. Her refusal to answer anything Kymalin asked her about the weird things in the camp. Kymalin's gut sank.

Raena Elkian has something to do with this.