paradisalogs | Mineas Well Revisited

Who: Felix and anyone on the expedition
What: Exploring Mineas Well
When: November 17th-18th
Where: Mineas Well
Rating: PG

After days of walking in the dense woods, the group eventually came across a slightly grown over but clear path leading through the trees, courtesy of marked circles on the towering trees all around them. Many of the trees seems filled with some kind of strange fruit, though they seem rather grey and unappetizing to look at, and the wizard leading the group only stares at them with an frown. Those who have been here may before may recall these were once glowing tubular creatures that came alive at night. But now they seem dead, or at least dormant. Early after setting out this day, they come across a large hand-made gate, absent of any fence to connect to it, sitting just slightly ajar in the middle of the path. A sign to one side reads "PRIVATE PROPERTY: To all uninvited guests:
please ring the bell to speak to a messenger. Thank you." A cord extending from the branches above seems to indicate it leads to such a bell. After a moment of consideration, Felix pulls it, and it rings softly in the quiet. After a few long beats, nothing at all happens. Sighing, Felix pushed past the gate with a slight shove, and towards the clearing on the other side...

...and the enormous tree on the other side, many hundreds of feet tall, with several levels of tree house built into the different sections of it's branches. Unlike last time, it seems a bit to dim here. Too quiet.

EXPLORING | STAYING THE NIGHT | THE MORNING

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Perhaps naturally, Felix is contenting himself with ransacking Flora's former room and office, digging through the desk and later on, pouring over the maps on the walls, making notes in his journal before he tries to take them down, muttering softly to himself as he works. There are several of note. One with several crisscrossing lines in different colors. Another with a pink diamond in several spots on the continent. And another with six large stars in a few rather recognizable locations. Cair Paradisa. In the Cindbreach mountains, where Cair Libet once dwelled. Another in the far northeast, where the mysterious Cair Ivera sits. Cair Draconis, on continent to the north. And two more, never seen before to his eyes - nearly in the center of area called the Candlespine mountains, and another on an island in the middle of a circular bay on the continent to the south.

Edited 2014-11-18 03:54 (UTC)

Ah, Felix is after the maps. Duke waits until Felix is done inspecting one before looking over it himself.

The joys of not having been able to see here.

"The stars are castles, have previous expeditions passed through diamonds before?"

Felix wanders over to peer at the other map, humming to himself.

"There," he says, after a moment, and points to an area on the eastern coast. "Terre Haute."

Galadriel has had much the same the thought. Her journal is out and she is making notations on an older map, updating it with the these new additions.

"I wonder where she has gone- and under what circumstances."

Felix is silent a moment. The room around them is eerie in it's peacefulness, and he's afraid to say what he believes, but it seems the only thing logical to his mind.

"She was old. I don't think she would simply pack up and go. This tree gave her power, and power isn't easily surrendered. The fact that the tree is in this state tells me she's no longer in this world. There's really only two options, in that case. Either she was killed somehow, or the castle finally sent her back home."

It's a concise and, to her mind, reasonable assessment. She had, in all honesty, been thinking along much the same lines.

"For her sake, I shall hope it is the latter." She's silent for a moment more, not wanting to be morbid, but feeling the need to continue. "There seems to be no sign of conflict here, at the least."

"I'm inclined to agree. This whole place speaks of abandonment rather than a battle. And I'm sure she would have been difficult to kill here. I am more than certain she used it to protect people inside of the Dead Zone. She should have been just as capable of defending herself."

At least, from physical attack. Which only leaves him to wonder why and how the castle sent her back after so much time.

"And with her gone, the bond to the tree seems to have broken. It seems to have been a kind of partnership. Without a bond, the magic in this place seems to have withered."

"Would that I knew how she sustained it here to begin with. Unless we chance upon some answer in her papers, it seems we are destined to remain ignorant as to how she managed to thwart the Dead Zone."

"The tree has more to do with that than Flora did, I am quite certain. Lente said as much to us when we spoke her. Both it and the crystal those shards came from are something of a power to rival the castles." He pointed at the table where the small pink crystals lay scattered.

"Oh, I do not doubt it. But it was Flora who found some way to harness that power, was it not?"

"We can't be sure it was a quality unique to her," he said. She wasn't native to this world after all. Her presence was as circumstantial as anyone's.

"It's possible that, with her gone, someone else may be able to do as she has."

Ashura followed him, trying to handle some of the storm he left in his wake as he took his own note of things. His eyes fell on the maps as he leaned against her desk, noting the other castles, and that sparking a conversation he had with a particular dragon not all that long ago.

"I wonder... if those are the Castles the dragon spoke of, the ones she and her companions made," he said aloud, more to himself than Felix or anyone else in the room, glancing down at the papers in his hand as if they might hold some hidden clue the maps would not give up alone.

Felix wasn't one to let a question go unanswered, as averse to silence as he often was. The tree in this state unsettled him, though he was one of the few here who remembered what Mineas Well looked like alive and full of light.

"Undoubtedly. All but these two are marked on the maps we have," he said, pointing to the two in the south with light fingers. "And if her story was true, then those and Cair Ivera are the three remaining of the five."

Ashura watched his fingers, looking to their relation to Cair Paradisa.

"Do you think when winter passes we should seek them out?" He asked him. It would be a tough journey, he did not doubt, but maybe there was something there that could explain not only this but their own predicament.

Felix frowned, though the expression was more thoughtful than anything else.

"Winter is a poor time for walking around in the Dead Zone. However...I do still have that key..."

He glanced at him, humming softly as he tapped his fingers against his arms, debating.

"You think we should use it to a place we have never seen?" He pondered. "Though I suppose it would negate a dangerous trip through the Dead Zone.."

"That would be the advantage, yes. The disadvantage would be unknowingly letting something in. Which is what has stayed my hand this last year. I'm still not sure the risk to us is worth it. But neither is a journey in winter. It will have to wait until spring."

He turned to face Ashura more fully.

Ashura nodded, watching him. He rose and came closer, wrapped in his thicker traveling robes against the bite of a settling winter.

"Well, that gives us the winter to decide, at least," he said, crossing his arms for more warmth. "Shall we ask the others what they think we might do? It would affect us all, after all."

"When we return, perhaps. I'm not sure people's answers will have changed. There's so much fear concerning the idea. And I'm just as guilty of it."

Fear ruled so much of what he did, after all. And not just in this one path.

Mineas Well Revisited

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