Void Rift (rp) - Intermission

There's a slight bubble from the water cooler nearby, but other than that, near to silence. All Alice needs to do is open the door...

 

Alice opts to gently knock on her office door.

 

Silence. It seems she still owns the office, as nobody seems to be inside, as well as her name still being on the sign next to it.

 

(The head detective's office)

 

OOC: I mean you said her so...

"Come in." The head detective says.

 

OOC: Whoops.

Alice nervously opens the door.
"So sorry about yesterday..." She utters sheepishly.

 

"Well, no point hanging onto the past. You're back on the case, the king told me personally about your abilities as a detective. I'll give you five days to get as much information as you can on the missing ores and gems, I'm sure you won't disappoint." The head detective says, looking up from his paperwork.

 

"I need the location of the mines, and you to trust I'm not dead for the next five days." Alice says confidently.

 

The head detective reached under his desk, pulling out a draw full of folders. After searching throught the folders, he gives Alice one detailing all currently known information about the mines, mostly their location outside of the kingdom and the rumours about where the missing ores and gems could be going.

 

"Screw the rumors. See you in... I'd say three." Alice says, walking out while leaving the papers.

 

"Good luck." The head detective says as the door closes.

 

Alice heads out to the location after switching back into her ragged robe.

 

It seems to be a fairly active mining facility on the outskirts of the kingdom, earth guardians working hard under the watch of Shadows. Various minerals are extracted and brought up in minecarts, stored in labelled crates.

 

Alice looks for any shadows that might be going deeper, then merges with them silently, making her presence next to impossible to notice.

 

She manages to merge with one heading into the deeper mines, walking over to an earth guardian who looks especially tired out.

"Hey! Did I say you could stop mining!?" They shout.

"P-Please, I've used up so much magic already...I can't mine anymore." The earth guardian says, her clothing torn and ragged, an expression of sadness and fear on her face.

"Excuses excuses. Get back to work! Unless you want to earn your pay an alternate way." The Shadow says.

"N-No! I'll mine, please!!!" The earth guardian pleads, her eyes widening with fear.

"Then mine!" The Shadow shouts, slapping the earth guardian across the face. The earth guardian weakly picks up a pickaxe and starts mining, tears running down her face.

The Shadow heads further into the mine, looking around a bit before removing some rocks against a wall and revealing a small passage, crawling through and re-blocking the passage. At the other end of the passage is a small room, a stack of money and a letter in it, which the Shadow reads.

"If you want some more slaves, then your current ones better provide us with more gems. We ain't kidnapping for nothing you know, and the head of the mining facilities will get suspicious if you start slacking on your loads. Don't play us like fools, we know you can balance out your actual job with our stuff.

-The Cracked Skulls."

"Boss won't be happy, heh heh." The Shadow says to himself, taking a cut of some of the money and stashing it in his pocket, before taking the money and letter out of the passage.

 

Alice just keeps hersef unnoticeable, mentally taking note of everything she hears and everything the shadow senses.

 

Crystal kneels to check on it some more.

 

It's a six-petaled black flower, but it seems to give off a subtle aroma. Nothing big, but it seems to overpower everything else.

 

Crystal stops examining the flower, and goes on to look at/for any trees.

 

There aren't any trees, just smaller plants, it seems.