.·✧☆Stellarium☆✧·.

Chapter 5

Nova, The Search | 2,735 words

My travel bag weighs heavy on my shoulder as we wait for the kid from Carina to show up. I know I made a good impression on their house, but I still can't help but be nervous. I'm stretching my curls and watching them recoil when the carriage pulls into the entrance steps. It feels like we’d been waiting forever (20 minutes at most), and out steps Alexander. As he steps out, I am a little surprised the son that was training was, in fact, him. I don’t know, I was expecting someone… older? To be fair though, I think we’re the same age. “Hey, nice to see you again!” We shake hands “It's nice to see you too.” Honestly, it's a bit weird to not see him in a formal setting, guess I never thought about what he’d wear outside of events.

“Were you briefed about what we’re doing?” I ask, which is definitely reasonable because we had to swear just yesterday that we wouldn’t share our plan with people not present at the meeting. “Yeah, my dad got permission from the queen.” Speaking of, I was slightly startled because I didn’t notice Serena was behind us a few paces. “Hey, you three. I would like to say some things before you start moving out,” She clasps her hands together. “For one, don't let anyone know that this is happening. If other houses catch wind, we will be in a deeper mess than before,” A small chill runs down my spine when I hear that and imagine the possibilities. “Two, do not engage in fighting if you don't have to, I know some of us already have,” Sybyll looks at me when she says this, and I give her an elbow nudge in response. “But let's keep that to a minimum. Any one of you being gravely injured is cause enough for me to send in the royal guard, busting this whole operation.” Point taken. “Finally, Nova: please keep us updated over here, this will be your responsibility. With that, go on and start the investigation.”

“We should begin with where the confrontation was,” I say. “Lead the way,” Alexander replies. The walk is quiet, I think about how I should have maybe packed a puzzle if this is going to be indicative of the entire trip. When we reach where me and Arthur fought, I can see that the room has been barricaded so that the scene was preserved. We enter, and Alexander immediately gets to work. His fingertips glow with his card color as my old footsteps are brightly highlighted, I’d never seen anything like this before.

“What kind of magic is that?” Sybyll asks him. “It's a small specialty studied mostly here in Crystalia. It's used to track people through their magic. It works because the energy being produced will leave an impact on the environment, be it chips in the wood or slight scorch marks. It's useful in high profile cases like this with a lot of power being used.” We follow the highlighted footsteps up to where Arthur and I had our fight. Two sets of footsteps, I assume that the less bright ones are his. Small blemishes in the floor light up brightly as well. It’s kind of embarrassing how I wasn't able to keep my cool, so I'll just keep that to myself and let them think that it was from the scuffle. “So, the assailant had significantly weaker magic-” thanks for the reminder. “-meaning that footsteps will be faint, but the sword is still giving us a good route to go off of.”

We follow it out of the ballroom, through a back hall that apparently staff use. I had no idea it even existed, so Sybyll was the one to point it out. We make it outside of the castle from the back entrance, but the trail is muddled with the faint trails made from the castle workers doing their jobs. “We’ve hit interference,” Alexander mumbles to himself and wavers to the right, “It's stronger this way, follow me.” We get to walking again towards the capital city, built around a river that holds a lot of important nobles here as it surrounds the castle. “How are you still following the trail?” Sybyll asks him. “You can feel very slightly where it's stronger on your fingertips, we had to do interference training when I was learning. It's kind of like a buzzing? Think like when your limbs fall asleep.”

We end up in the backroads of Stellarium, the capital city of the kingdom. I don't actually get out very often, so against what logic I have, I find this kind of cool. I eventually snap back to reality when Alexander says, “The trail ends here.” We’re in an alleyway, one that leads into a main road, the range of his magic illuminating the slightest bit of the many trails left by passersby. “What do you mean it ends here?” I ask. “More accurately, because we followed it so late, our signal has faded and the fresh magic trails are stronger than it.” I seriously will not believe it if this is where the journey ends already. “How are we meant to find the sword now?” It's clear he’d already been thinking about the answer to this, “We have to do this the old-fashioned way, ask around and see if our target left us something to follow.” Okay… great, now we have to figure out who would be awake at that hour and wouldn't mind telling a suspicious group of teens if they saw a random guy.

Hey, you know the train station here works all hours. They log the ticket sales, don't they? Unless he’s hiding here in the city I bet he took one,” Sybyll says. Alexander and I share a look of dread, knowing what we’re about to get into. “What? What's wrong?” I sigh, “It's Auriga, they have jurisdiction over transport and are a pain to deal with.” A pain is an understatement. They are the WORST house to deal with, and that's no exaggeration! Ever since the country started modernizing, transport boomed, and they’ve been living in the lap of luxury. I’ve been given nothing but grief from them about ‘legacy’ and ‘birthright’, as if they weren’t dirt poor before the train boom. I guess my disdain was more obvious than I thought it was because both of them were staring at me. “Cmon Nova, this lead is better than no leads,” They’re both waiting for me at the alley exit onto the road. “Yeah, I'm coming.”

When we reach the train station, I keep catching myself staring at the ceiling. I follow near the back of the group while listening to Sybyll and Alexander talk about magic specifics. I am amazed by the architecture, watching the sunbeams dance on the tracks from the windows on the arched top. Sybyll apparently takes the train pretty often, so she knows the place. She leads us to the main office of the station, where we meet who I think is the secretary.

“Hi, welcome in!” The secretary says to us, looking up for a second from his paperwork. “What brings you in here today?” The man is almost sickeningly cheery. Alexander pulls out his badge showing the house seal of Venatici from the front pocket of his shirt, “We need to search your ticket sale logs.” The front desk guy’s smile doesn’t waver for a second “Really? Well, we haven’t had word from Venatici about any ongoing investigations, and you don't have the proper paperwork to conduct any kind of search and seizure of records.” I literally hate this guy already and watch as he crinkles his eyes and raises his brows, all while maintaining that smile-sneer. “Mhm, so maybe next time come in here with a more convincing badge and proper paperwork.” Who does this guy think he is? The sole protector of the station’s assets? Arthur sputters and his face turns cobalt with blood, about to snap back with something when Sybyll steps forward to the desk.

“Where would we manage to get the proper paperwork to conduct search and seizure?” She asks. “Oh, well it might take a while to get a copy of it, mhm? I can send out a call to get you some, but oh, it will take a few days and you'll need a signature from the guild leader of Venatici.” He laces his fingers together and leans towards us on the desk. “And then once you get that signature it will probably take another few to process and verify that you kids didn’t forge it.” This is going to take forever, and we don't have that kind of time, I have to pull rank. “Do you know who I am? This is really important legal business that you are obstructing. I hope you realize that is a crime.” Unfortunately he just chuckles at this, “Sorry princess, but these processes, in fact, still apply to you. I suggest you kids leave the station office before I get security to kick you out and report you for your fake badge. We wouldn’t want that, right?” I am half a second away from some choice words when Sybyll grabs my arm. “Let's just go.” I scowl at him on our way out.

We recoup on a station bench, my face in my hands while we people watch. “That's the last time I pull rank,” I say miserably. “I can't believe he thought my badge was fake” Alexander says exasperatedly. “I mean you saw it, it's completely real!” I don't think that's really our biggest problem right now. “We are just a group of teenagers to most people, the only one anyone would know is Nova, and that's if they read the paper,” Syb points out. A collective gloom settles over us when I halfheartedly say “We could just break in and look for it.” Sybyll gasps, “We can't do that! If we’re caught we could get banned from here!!” Sybyll is trying not to yell or project so people aren’t drawn in to eavesdrop. “Maybe we should just do the paperwork?” Alexander asks, “I don’t think Charlie would mind.” They don’t get it. “We don’t have that kind of time on our hands, the story is going to break sooner or later. Consider our mission over once that happens,” I think I catch Alexander biting the inside of his cheek nervously. “I think I’d personally prefer coming back successful once that happens.”

“I’ll do it if I have to,” he says. Sybyll is messing with her bangs and looking away, “I see your point, but I think you’re going about it all wrong.” I have no idea how else we’d do it. “I’m open to suggestions, if you think of a better plan we’ll go with it.” Sybyll is quiet for a few moments and finally relents. “Fine, but if we get in trouble it's on you to get me unbanned from the station.” I didn't mind the comment particularly, because I’m pretty confident I could pull strings to get all of us unbanned from the station if needed. “Where do you think they would keep the records?” I ask. “There's probably a room full of the records locked up inside the office,” Alexander says. “The better question is how we’d get into the office, and when,” Syb interjected, which was fair because I hadn't even thought about it. Since the station runs 24 hours, that probably means there's someone overseeing it 24 hours too. “Well, the guy has to get off his shift eventually, right?” the other two nod. “We could sneak in when his ends, get what we need and get out.”

“The day shift ends here soon, there's a small window at around 6 where the office is down because the night shift guy is usually late,” Sybyll adds. “But we still don’t know how we’d get in; they lock up shop during the shift change.” We watch Alexander root around in his bag when he pulls out some weird small rods, “I know how to lockpick! I was told it wouldn't be useful because of my badge, but this is the perfect situation.” I look at him a little weird “Not to be rude, why did you learn to lockpick then? If Venatici didn't teach you, then why learn?” I ask. “Ah, I just thought it would prove useful on a mission. Like right now it's useful, but when I was learning I thought it would be a bit of a higher stakes situation.” I get it, he thought it would be super cool.

As the day cools and the sun starts lowering, we prepare to spring our plan into action. We watch from a distance as he leaves the office and locks the door behind him, waiting until he's a reasonable ways away. I whisper to move a million times because we aren't sneaking fast enough. Alex starts working on the lock, Sybyll is our lookout, and I produce the cover. I originally thought about using invisibility, but that kind of spell is a lot of work especially for my lack of illusions training. Instead of bending the light so that we look see-through, I got the idea to put up an illusory wall that looks like the office entrance to hide us. This was still a great deal of work, and it felt like forever for Alexander to get through the lock.

Once we’re inside we immediately start looking around for the files, but everything is organized in a way I don't understand. Alex went around picking the locks on drawers and cabinets for me and Sybyll as we looked around. I guess we got lucky that station management was taking a day off or something because the door to the main office was unlocked. We entered the main office after clearing the head desk room, Syb didn't want to come inside the main office and opted to stay on guard duty. The room was full of filing cabinets labeled with dates, “What time would our target have taken the train?” he whispered to me. “Uhhhh.. It was about 12 to 1 in the morning?” It took me a second to remember it. He picks up the folder for my birthday and the day after, thumbing through both. “There weren’t any passenger trains running at that time” I paused. “What do you mean? Is this a dead lead?” He thinks about it, “No, it doesn’t have to be.”

“Explain, and quickly, we’re going to run out of time,” I practically hissed. “He could have stowed away on that train, and would have had motive to since it was headed out of the country.” If this is true it could spell disaster. “We need to move soon, someone’s coming,” Sybyll whisper-shouts from the other room. I quickly memorized the city that the train went to, and put it back as seamlessly as possible. “Grab the file for today and see what trains are running,” we hurriedly thumb through today’s trains and lady luck strikes again. There’s a train that plans to eventually run where we need to go, Parum-Lucis specifically in the Forran Empire. It departs in the early evening, and is a luxury liner, perfect. We make it out just barely in time as the sun sets, giving enough time to talk about the findings.

We make our way back to the bench from earlier, the station now much less populated than before. “We found the logs, and we think he stowed away on a train headed towards a town in The Empire,” I say to Sybyll. “It's not a for-sure lead though” Alex adds. “It's our best chance at finding wherever he went though. Plus, there's a luxury liner this evening headed there,” I'm trying to be as persuasive as I can. I really want to go on this 1. because it's currently our best chance at finding the sword, but also 2. I've never been on a train before. Yes, it's selfish, but serves our goals so is it really that bad? “Do we even have the money for that?” Syb asks. “Yeah of course we do, I'm rich,” I say. Alex shrugs, “I mean it's our only plan. “Let’s do it then,” she replies. I am ecstatic and trying not to explode when we purchase the tickets and board the train.